Boost up your English. Александр Чумаков

intuitively, playfully like a child by answering easy and simple questions. Yes, grammar is boring. Yes, grammar is difficult. Yes, grammar is very difficult. But if the input is so interesting and so comprehensible you forget that you are listening to English. The world disappears around you. You enjoy the process. You acquire the language. Grammar takes care of itself.

      Forth: The POV Lessons.

      What do the POV lessons mean? POV Lesson. They mean the Points of View Lessons.

      In this lesson I am telling the same story, but from a different point of view. I mean, I use different time-frame. Usually it is the Perfect Tense and the Future Tense.

      Too many students try to go ahead. They want advanced material, advanced grammar, advanced vocabulary, and they say, «I already know the beginning stuff.» Well, you know it intellectually, but you don’t really know it deeply. And most students really need to go back and focus more on the core, the basic, the fundamental parts of English: simple sentences, the past tense, the present tense, the future, the perfect tense, the stuff we use every day in conversations, you need to master that.

      That is why the motto of this course is «Repetition is the mother of a skill»

      Fifth: My comments

      In this lesson I am going to talk briefly about the story. I am going to say just a few sentences or maybe more in order to support the message of the story. I am going to philosophize just quickly say a few sentences about the story itself – just a very short summery of the story. And then I am going to give you my own ideas on the story or I am going to offer other people’s ideas that can help you understand the story much better. And of course, I am going to focus on the moral of the story. In other words, what the story can teach us and what we can learn from the story to improve not only as an English speaker but also as a human being. All this, I am sure, will help you get the main idea or ideas, the message of the story and of course, you will listen to English more, you will learn more and you will enjoy it more.

      To stay committed to learning English, to remain curious about learning English and to maintain your motivation for learning English, I encourage you visit my YouTube channel which is English is easy and fun.

      Here is the QR Code with the direct access to the channel. Just scan it with your phone’s camera and it will take you there. I am sure you will be enjoying it. See you soon.

      WHY DO WE LEARN STORIES HERE?

      Why do we learn stories here? That is a great question. You know, how much I love the “Why-questions”. Let me tell you why all my books, why all my English courses have stories and why the method I use when I teach English is called a story-telling method.

      Story-telling is one of the best methods for learning foreign languages.

      We, human beings, are storytelling creatures. Our brains love stories and we all learn from stories. Stories are vital. We convey our feelings, our mood, our energy and the truth with stories. We convey the mystery of the language. And most importantly, we learn English grammar intuitively like children do. That’s why stories.

      I don’t mean, don’t learn Grammar. No. Grammar is important. I am saying that Grammar is difficult. Grammar is very difficult. Grammar is boring. It is hard to say anything interesting and comprehensible to people when teaching them languages and you have to focus on Grammar rules a lot.

      Now let me share with you what one of the greatest language teachers has to say on language learning and language acquisition. His name is Stephen Krashen. I totally agree with him.

      “There is a big difference between language learning and language acquisition. When you learn a language, for example, you learn English. You learn grammar rules, right? You learn all about the sentences and how words work together. And when you want to say something in English you make the sentence in your own language first, and then you drag out of your memory the words you need and put them into the sentence. That is painful. That is difficult. That is boring and it takes time.

      When you acquire the language you understand what you hear. You can only acquire the language when you understand the language, you understand the message. The message has to be interesting and comprehensible. The message has to be compelling and understandable. Only when you are totally involved in the story, the world disappears around you. You forget that it is in another language. You acquire the language. Language acquisition happens.

      I don’t mean, don’t learn Grammar. I don’t mean, if you study Grammar, go to jail. No, Grammar is important. I am saying that Grammar is difficult. Grammar is very difficult. Grammar is boring. It is really hard to say anything interesting and comprehensible to people when teaching them languages and you have to focus on Grammar rules a lot. What I have to do as a teacher is say things that are interesting, comprehensible, and then Grammar will take care of itself. And this is hard enough. All I need, as a teacher, is to make sure that you are paying attention and you are interested in what I am saying. It’s a good story. That is what you need. My job is to spread the story.”

      Yes, Steven Krashen is absolutely correct and I cannot but agree with him.

      It is very easy to give people input, information that is comprehensible, which means understandable, but not interesting. That is school.

      It is very easy to give people input, information that is interesting, but not comprehensible, not understandable. That is the outside world.

      Some teachers in Universities devote their lives to giving us input that is neither comprehensible nor interesting.

      My job is to do both and that is hard. But this is the most important task of language teaching. The easy part is the theory: comprehensible and interesting. Fine! But tough, difficult part is how do you make input interesting and comprehensible? Not just interesting and understandable, but compelling. Compelling means extremely or very interesting. Compelling means so interesting you forget that it is in another language. That is the goal. That is why I sit down and create these compelling and comprehensible, interesting and understandable stories for you.

      When you tell a story something remarkable happens: imagination flies and magic begins. What’s why stories.

      By the way, there is a good and useful video on my YouTube Channel about the same topic. I am encouraging you to go and watch it. Here is the direct link there. Just scan the QR code and you will be there. Enjoy watching it.

      MY JOURNEY

      In this article, in this part of the book, I want to tell you about my interesting, exciting and adventurous journey, the time of my life, when I was an ordinary English teacher. After university, I got a job as an English teacher at a small school. I was very happy. And I said to my self, “Oh, my God, I have a job”. But soon I began to have a feeling that I wanted to become someone bigger that just an ordinary teacher of English in a small local school. I began to feel bored and everything began to look wretched to me. And then came a day that turned my life around. I learned about Oprah Winfrey and about her show with the same name “Oprah Winfrey Show”. This show literally revolutionized my life. It changed my life completely. The show that she had had for 25 years in the heart of America. The show that became a life-changing event for millions of people from more than 150 counties across the globe.

      That was the beginning of my journey from being a mediocre, average, typical English teacher to becoming a total master of English. Everything was done. I went back to school. I attended a lot of master classes, seminars and workshops of great, fantastic and enthusiastic teachers. I learned a lot from them. Finally, I got my master