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Chapter 2: How to Feel Great & Start Winning at English Right Now
“Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game.” – Michael Jordan
Our brains are hardwired to move towards pleasure. We do things that feel good to us. We do them effortlessly and for long periods of
time without wanting to stop.
So one important thing when learning English is to make it feel really good very quickly. This is easy to do. It’s all about how you learn
and how you recognize the progress you’re making, and then how much you smile and celebrate and help yourself to feel great about it.
If you want to feel a lovely warm burst of success and confidence every time you sit down to learn English, then the number one thing
you should do is impress yourself by speaking full English sentences.
Make full sentences from the very beginning when you’re learning English. As you will see in the next chapter, it’s a very big mistake to
sit in English classes learning independent lists of words and grammar with other students. Because firstly, it’s incredibly boring, and
secondly, at the end of classes like that you have not been speaking real English. So you don’t feel like you’re getting closer to your goal
of speaking real English with confidence.
When you focus on English for an hour, learn a few very common words (see the upcoming chapters) then immediately use them in full
sentences. When you learn ‘to go’ start saying full sentences with ‘to go’ right away, don’t wait.
‘I want to go to the cinema because I like movies.’
‘When did you go to London?’
‘She goes to work at 9am every morning by bus and she buys coffee on the way.’
These sentences are fine for complete beginners in English. Think about it, they are grammatically very simple, yet they are long and rich
with meaning – exactly the type of sentences we native speakers use in everyday English conversation. Of course, at higher levels you
can use more complex structures if you like. But always remember that everyday spoken English is in fact quite simple, in terms of the
grammar used.
I use present simple and past simple 500 times a day. And I don’t think I’ve made a sentence in ‘future perfect’ since 1999. There is a
big myth around language learning – that you have to know the most complex grammar to be n advanced speaker. Actually, you can
speak wonderful English with very simple sentence structures. If you don’t believe this is true, just look at the sentences in this book. I
am writing almost exactly like I speak. It’s pretty simple language, don’t you think?
Repetition of the basics, with slight variations, is the key to any skill – especially English. Bruce Lee has a great quote about this;
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once. But I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
So from the beginning, make realistic sentences. And practice the simplest structures 10,000 times, like Bruce Lee. At every level of
English, make long sentences, because you can. And because that is how we speak naturally. You are instantly using the language – you
are speaking English just as you will on the streets of London one day.
Study with someone who understands this, and who is intelligent enough to use these strategies to help you make these full sentences and
have little conversations. We’ll talk more about how to find and train such a conversation partner later on.
Every time you sit down to learn English, try to have a little conversation. And repeat and repeat and repeat. Practice the new word
inside 5 or 10 or 20 different sentences. You will feel great because you are instantly using it in real spoken English!
Do not feel like you have to practice lots before you begin talking in English. You can begin talking in English NOW. So just begin. Put
every new word into 10 or 20 full sentences and see how good it feels.
If you’re alone, speak it out loud anyway. Talk to yourself – it’s a great learning habit. Don’t be shy, no one is going to hear you. And if
you’re in a café, you can pretend you’re on the phone or something.
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