About This Article
I’d like to recommend an English learning video series produced by englishanyone.com. The videos were recorded quite a while ago, back in 2013, but the language learning philosophy and methods they present are still relevant today.
Before getting into the video’s content, I want to share how this article itself came together. Writing it was an interesting process in its own right — an exploration of how to use AI, and how to improve writing efficiency with AI assistance.
Below is my own rough retelling of the video’s content in Chinese, based on my personal understanding.
Key Takeaways
- There are many approaches to language learning. One is exam-oriented: studying with notebooks, focusing on grammar, vocabulary, and writing skills, all with the goal of passing exams. The other centers on English used in real-life scenarios — a more natural approach, similar to how babies acquire their native language: learning English in a natural environment, with lots of listening, speaking, and communicating.
- What I want to introduce here is the second approach, which the video calls real English.
- The learning method presented in the video applies not only to English but to other languages as well. The author himself learned Japanese this way.
Content Summary
The following content is based on my dictated Chinese transcript, formatted and polished by ChatGPT.
Video Introduction
The video is eight minutes long and presents its main content in three segments. The first segment introduces the course. The video’s author, Drew Badger, is the founder of englishanyone.com, and this is a free seven-day video course he created, delivered mainly through email and video. Each email includes related materials — the printed transcript of the video — so learners can study along with the videos in the emails. I came across this video on YouTube. That covers the opening content.
Course Content
Below is a line-by-line understanding of the video’s subtitles.
This video is a free seven-day video course. It thanks everyone for using the free course and expresses how glad they are to teach. This excellent email video course not only teaches specific English content but also systematically improves your English through email. You just need to open every email, watch the videos, do the listening exercises, read the transcripts, and repeat these steps over and over to absorb the knowledge and make your English more fluent. Learning a language takes time, but eventually you can communicate in English, find a job, and use English in real-life scenarios.
Learning Goals and Advice
The author shares his experience of learning English in Japan and emphasizes the importance of learning goals. He points out that most students learn English from textbooks and lack a connection between their goals and how they learn. In the course, learners need to define their learning goals — such as passing an exam, traveling, or making friends — and work hard to achieve them. After the course ends, the author continues to provide advice and tips via email to help learners keep going, and asks them to make their own vision board to record their future goals. You can ask questions in the comment section below the video and keep learning to become a fluent English speaker. He hopes everyone will share their learning goals, help each other, and achieve them together.
Original English Script
00:00:05 Hello there, I’m Drew Badger, co-founder of Englishanyone.com. And this is your first video lesson in your free 7-day email video course. First of all, I just wanted to say thank you, thank you, thank you.
00:00:23 It’s amazing that we get to teach you and we’re really excited that you’re trying our fantastic free email video course.A unique email video course that will not teach you specific things in English…
00:00:55 Begin seeing real improvement in your English much much faster in order to use this complete system and have your English improve much much faster.
00:01:05 You have to open every mail, watch every video, listen to all of the listening exercises and then read the transcript, do all of these things many many times and you will absorb all of the things you need to learn in order to get fluent in English. Remember that learning a language takes time and you can…
00:03:52 Speakers and actually have great conversations at your job or wherever you go using real English then you need to learn real English. This video course will teach you all of the things you need to know in order to get there.
00:04:10 So first think about what you want when I first came to Japan, I thought about all of the things that I wanted to do with Japanese.
00:04:50 You want then you decide how to get it in my case if you look at my vision board up here. I wanted to study Japanese gardening, I also wanted to be fluent in Japanese. Fluently and that’s what I wanted.
00:05:17 The problem with most students of the English language is that they want to be able to speak with native speakers but they are learning textbook English. So maybe they have a goal but they are not connecting the goal with how they learn.
00:05:34 In this video course, if you want to pass a specific exam or you want to travel, do you want to meet interesting people and have conversations with them? Do you not just want to get a job but really have great conversations with the people you’re working with?
00:06:12 All of these things are very possible even if you think you can’t speak. It’s just how you’ve been studying. If you’re ready to take your English to the next level and keep watching this video series, we will teach you everything you need to know in this free 7-day email video course.
00:06:32 You will continue to receive tips from us as we go through in email after this video English course is finished. We really hope you’re excited to continue and really excited to teach you the secrets you need to know in order to get fluent in real English.
00:06:53 Tonight’s homework. What I want you to do is make your own vision board. It can be something on a computer. I made mine on a computer or it can be just something on paper. Cutting out pictures from a magazine and writing words, anything else like that that you want to see for your future.
00:07:11 Anything else like that that you want to see for your future. Comment down below this video, ask us questions, and get ready to keep learning. If you are a real student, a real spoken English student, it’s really easy to get fluent. You just need the right learning method.
00:07:41 Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow and we also look forward to hearing about your goals for learning English. Make your vision board, tell us what your goal is, and tell everyone you know what your goal is. We will help you achieve it, starting tomorrow.
My English Vision Board
References
- Youtube Channel EnglishAnyone.com
- Download the original videos and subtitles from Baidu Netdisk
- Download the prompt used to edit this document
Send power-learning01 in a message to the WeChat official account to get the download link for the resource pack mentioned in this article.
