Learn Australian English in this vlog episode of Aussie English where head out for a walk and give you 1 tip to make your English unbreakable!

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AE 476 – Vlog: 1 Tip to Make Your English UNBREAKABLE!

On the fields of the Serengeti the antelope eat trying to stay aware as the minds roam around.

What the hell are you talking about, mate. This is Australia and those are roos.

Fun fact: Australia actually used to have lions roaming around, but they were marsupials. Anyway, we’ll talk about that more at the end of today’s episode so stick around.

So, all geared up. (I) got this puppy recently, a dead cat. Hopefully it makes the wind go away. And then, I got Kel’s camera in here as well. Food, drink, should be good. Let’s sort this out.

Not today, guys. Not today. So, (I’ve) had a few little fails just to begin with. I bought the windsock for the microphone that’s currently sitting on my camera so that there’s *wind sound* while I try and chat to you guys, but I noticed that when I put the windsock on the camera I had left it, I had flicked it, on accidentally. And so, the battery had died, but I brought a second battery, ya suckers! So, this time I actually didn’t get caught with my pants down in a bad spot and I just put the other battery in there, and hopefully it’s working now, and if it’s not, I have this little sucker working here. Although, I’ve just realized that I haven’t put the wind sock on that. And so, that might not be working too well, but we’ll see what we can get. We’ll see what we can get. Anyway, I am going up here. (It) should be good, should be good, but I’m getting to that point now, (I’ve) come here probably 10 times in the last week, two weeks, (I) haven’t come here more than once a day, and I’m getting ready to puke if I see another kangaroo, or have to photograph another kangaroo. I’ve done that so many bloody times this week. But I’ll tell you what, repetition, repetition, repetition, guys that’s what makes perfect and we’ll get to that soon, okay! So, let’s go! Boom!

So, I’m puffed out running up these hills trying to record all this B(-roll) footage, and then suddenly this echidna just runs across the road. So, I had to switch lenses and try and get a few shots before he waddled off into the distance. I will never get sick of filming echidnas. So cool!

Don’t worry! It’s perfectly legal. It’s just easier to get through the fence than the gap here in the gate. And as you would expect, kangaroos everywhere. It’s my path two, guys. Let’s give peace ears to this Kangaroo, guys. Peace!

We’ll get there eventually, guys. I promise. You’re telling me! I know it’s hard. I’m the one who’s had to walk up this hill. You just had to sit there and enjoy this, looking at my bum as I go past the camera. If you’re not learning English while doing that, I don’t know what you’re doing. And I’m puffed out, not because I got bad cardio, which I do, I’m just in a rush. That view guys. That viiew.

I tell you what, this land really reminds me of my grandfather’s farm, which is like 700 kilometres away from here, because it’s just full of these rocks, lots of these trees, broken trees, all the stuff that snakes and lizards love to live in. So, if you’re somewhere in Australia running around somewhere like this in summer, watch yourself. There’s going to be snakes everywhere. Look at it, though! Beautiful!

This is what I was coming here for, these rocks up here, they’re really nice, in the middle of nowhere, but (it) should be a good place to sit down and and record a little chat.

(I’m as) sweaty as can be, guys. It’s cold, but, I tell you what. Oh, alright, don’t fall down on these rocks. So, today I wanted to chat to you about… what did I want to chat to you about? Language learning and learning from your mistakes. Cheers. Oh, that’s good. Kombucha, guys. All the way!

So, I had a few anecdotes that I wanted to chat about today with regard to learning languages, and obviously learning English is related to this, and works in. There’s a lot of parallels between these two things.

So, as you guys may know, I do a lot of photography as I am currently talking to you on camera. That’s what this is. I also did jujitsu for a very, very long time, Brazilian jujitsu. (It’s an) amazing martial art. It’s like chess with the human body. Lots of thinking, it’s very cerebral, it’s not just brute force, and I absolutely love that martial art, because, I think, and the same with photography, it requires a great deal of learning. If you want to advance really, really quickly in either of those endeavours, as I always say, it requires a sophisticated approach. So, you can’t just expect to show up every day and learn without thinking about what it is that you’re trying to do, learning from your mistakes in particular. That’s the biggest thing, I guess, I wanted to get across. So, I had two anecdotes, and I think this applies to English, it applies to any learning of any kind, learning English, learning any other language, learning any kind of sport or hobby, whatever it is, you’re going to learn so much faster if you analyze your mistakes, if you learn your mistakes, if you treat your mistakes like something that you can learn from.

And I’ll give you two examples before I start talking about fragility, resilience, and anti-fragility.

So, jujitsu. I started jujitsu in about 2012, maybe 2013, and I did it for just… I went bonkers, I went nuts, I was there every single day of the week except for Saturdays and Sundays, ’cause I was wrecked and needed to recover, and I would be on the mat for hours a day. And I remember when I first started, I was a muscly guy, not anymore, but when I first started I was a bit of a muscle, I’d been working out quite a lot, and I thought, you know what, I’ll just muscle my way through all of the people that I fight. If they’re smaller than me, bigger than me, I’m strong, I’ll be able to defend myself. Boy, was I incorrect. I was completely wrong. A lot of people who had been training for a long time, let alone only a few months, demolished me, they destroyed me, simply because they were applying really, really good technique, technique that they’d learnt from analysing their mistakes, improving, and paying attention to details, and learning from it as much as possible, using every single mistake that they made whilst they were fighting, whilst they were trying to do different techniques. They would ask for feedback. That’s an important thing. They would get feedback from their partner, from the teacher, from their friends. What they’d done wrong. It’d be pointed out, it’d be interrogated, and they would learn from it like that, as opposed to just muscling their way through it, including myself when I first started, and hoping that you would eventually get better.

The quickest way to do this is to analyse, is to interrogate, yourself and it requires quite a bit of humility, because you have to go in there and say, I’m not good. I suck I’ll be better though. So, it requires humility and it requires confidence, which are two things that a lot of people need to work on including myself.

So, jujitsu was an eye-opener with regards to learning, just learning in general, and I learnt a lot faster after a month or two of getting my arse handed to me, getting beaten up, and then paying attention to what I was doing wrong. Every single fight that I had against someone as good as me, better than me, even worse than me, I would ask for feedback. What did you do wrong? Did you say anything stupid? Did I make a mistake? It was really obvious that I didn’t notice? And can you tell me how I can fix that?

So, that was jujitsu and I noticed a massive improvement after I applied that principle of getting feedback, looking for feedback constantly, and being humble whilst also being confident in myself that I could improve.

Okay, so jiujitsu story: humility and confidence. Work on it. Apply it. Think about it. How can you apply this to English? Next time you go in and have a conversation with someone, next time you’re in an environment where someone can give you feedback, am I humble, can I ask for their feedback, and am I confident and know that with their feedback I’m going to learn a lot, I’m going to improve, and I’m going to move forward one day at a time?

And my coach used to say, don’t aim to be better than me. Don’t aim to be better than anyone else. Aim to be better than you were yesterday by 1 percent. 1 percent a day. We can all achieve that guys, you know, even if it’s just watching a YouTube video.

The second story. The second story, guys, is photography, and I’ve only just taken this up as sort of like a full on hobby this year. I’ve needed something else to kind of tinker with the gears in my head and give me something else to think about so that I’m not just always pulling out the last few hairs that I’ve got stressing about English and teaching English.

But the photography is one too. You can’t hide. You can’t hide. You can’t brute force photography. I… you know, I’ve learnt. So, you have to go out there. You have to take loads of photos. You have to try loads of different things. You have to put yourself out there. And then after that, you have to be humble and interrogate your photos, you have to analyse your photos. Why don’t I like this? Why is this one bad? Why is this one better? Why is this one really good? How can I apply these things next time when I’m out and about doing photography?

Same thing with English. Every time you get feedback and you can then apply these things to your English, you want to think, okay, next time I’m not going to make that mistake. I’m going to focus on. I’m going totry and use that. I’m going to put myself in a situation where I’m forced to use that piece of English, where I’m forced to have a discussion that makes me feel uneasy, you know, pushing those comfort… that the boundary of your comfort zone, trying to get uncomfortable on the edge to keep growing.

And so, with photography recently, I’ve been sending photos to my dad who’s been a photographer for 35-40 years and asking for feedback, brutal feedback. What do you think? And again, you’ll know when you’re getting good feedback. People can be arseholes. People can be horrible. I think you guys will be able to tell when someone’s being genuine and saying, you know what, you’re doing well, keep doing what you’re doing, but you could do this, you could try this, maybe if you did like this, you would sound a bit more native. I do it like this. Take that on board, and then give it a go. As opposed to someone who just says, you suck. You know, obviously, those people aren’t trying to help you and aren’t being completely honest in their feedback. They’re probably just being horrible because of their own confidence issues.

So, photography. I’ve been taking as many photos as possible. I’ve been getting out and about as often as possible. I’ve been going to the same places to try and take the same photos better every single time, although, they’re still pretty average. And I think you guys can do exactly this with English. Have a conversation about an interest of yours. Notice, can I talk about this thing really comfortably? Am I having issues? What I want to describe after the conversation?

Think, what else would I have liked to have said? What else could I have said? And think about it, maybe even in your own language. Try and turn this into English that you would use next time you’re talking about something that you’re passionate about that is bound to come up in conversation again. Right?

So, those are two anecdotes and I’ve had to sort of try and apply this to Portuguese as I’ve been learning Portuguese and trying to improve as quickly as possible. And I tell you what, guys, learning to be humble only gets easier.

I… it was difficult for me to constantly ask what something meant and for asking for corrections from Kell and from all the other people that speak Portuguese that I work with in order to improve, but it only gets easier. And now, I don’t even think about it. I am constantly, everytime I don’t understand, I just say what was that? What do you mean? What was that word? How would you use it in a different context? Can you give me more examples, etc.? And it just becomes a habit. And so now, I have this habit, and I think you guys need to apply this in English, you know, humility: What did I do wrong? And confidence: I’m going to do better. Okay, pat yourself on the back.

You know, whether you’re horrible or you’re amazing, thinking you’re horrible isn’t going to improve you, right. I was talking to Kel about this recently. You need to have a positive attitude, because even if you are horrible or bad, not as good as you would like to be in whatever endeavor that is, thinking you’re horrible isn’t going to help you. Thinking you will get better, thinking that you’re okay, you’re just human, you will improve, you will get better, is definitely going to keep you on the right path heading in the right direction.

Before we finish up… You know what? I’m going to do this bit up there. Okay.

The last thing that I wanted to talk about was fragility, resilience, and anti-fragility.

Alright, so, the basic idea of fragility is obviously something that’s fragile will break. So, that’s a mistake in English. If you don’t learn from that mistake, you’re fragile.

The basic idea with resilience is that if you break, you heal, you heal back together, right. And so, in the sense of resilience, resilience with regards to language learning would be making mistakes, but not letting it get to you, and then continuing on doing what you’re doing. So, a lot of people always say you need to be resilient, but I think that’s garbage. Resilience is just the ability to keep going and not learn from what you’re doing wrong.

Whereas, anti-fragility is that when you break, when something goes wrong, you heal back together, and then you come back stronger. So, you learn from your mistakes. You make a mistake, you find out what happened, what went wrong, you learn from it and it won’t happen next time. Next time that same mistake won’t occur so you’ve learnt from it and you’ve become stronger than ever before.

You know what? Sticks when the best analogy, guys. Bones are a better analogy, right. So, imagine that you’ve accidentally broken a bone. I’m just kidding. I’m not actually going to do that. And the bone is set. You put it back, you know with your whatever they do back in the day, you know, use sticks like this. Make your bone ready to heal, the bone heals up, and it becomes stronger. You’ll often see in x-rays that the bone where it broke is actually thicker. That anti-resilience (anti-fragility*). That is facing adversity, facing something that went wrong, learning from it and coming back stronger than before. This is what you need to do with your mistakes in English. Treat them as broken bones. The bones break, they heal, you learn from your mistakes, and you come back stronger and don’t make those mistakes again in the future.

So, there you go guys. Be antifragile, don’t be resilient.

Anyway, guys, I hope you enjoy this episode. I hope you got something out of it. Time to head home. I’m buggered.

Oh, Jesus I’ve got to walk all the way back down there now.

How you goin’ mate? How’s it goin’?

Jesus! Jesus, guys! There’s crap everywhere. Far out! Poo all over the shop. Look at that, guys. Disgraceful! And your eating in this, you’re eating in this, guys. Disgusting! You animals!

How you going, buddy? Just having a cheeky scratch? Just chilling out like a lion.

I tell you what, guys, I’ve been here so often recently taking photos of these poor dudes, I feel really sorry for them. I almost all of them by first name now. Not this one though. This one, I’ve forgotten his name. But, yeah, I’ve been here a lot recently. Thanks you guys for your patience. Thank you.

So, yeah, guys. Thanks for joining me. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Hope you got a bit out of it. Don’t break your arm over English, though, you know, be careful. Let me know what you think in the comments below, guys. Don’t forget to subscribe. Smash that bell if you want to keep up to date with all the new videos coming out. And if you have any questions, if you have any suggestions for things you would like me to do videos on in the future, put them down in a comment below and I will see what I can do. I will see what I can do. No promises, but I’ll see what I can do.

Anyway guys… bah! F*ck man! What is this? Littering everywhere. What is this? Anyway guys, I hope you have an amazing night and I will chat to you… Night? Could be day, morning… and I’ll chat to you soon. See you, guys!

I tell you what, I just realized I put my jacket down in some fresh kangaroo poo. Jesus! Man, first world problems.

All right, guys. Let’s do some facts about Thylacoleo.

So, the standard name for Thylacoleo carnifex, that’s the scientific name, the standard name is the Pleistocene Marsupial Lion, and this is because they are so similar to lions from Africa.

So, these guys have slicing cheek teeth. They have large stabbing incisor teeth similar to canine teeth of carnivorous mammals. They have a huge enlarged thumb claw that may have been used for disemboweling prey.

But these guys are marsupials. They had a pouch and they raised their young in pouches just like kangaroos or koalas.

Now these guys were between 90 and 160 kilograms, about the same size as a lion. They were a meter and a half from head to tail and about 75 centimeters at their shoulder.

They were found all across Australia during the Pleistocene Epoch, so within the last two million years, but I believe they went extinct after the last Ice Age.

Whatever the case, I think these guys were incredibly cool animals. I really recommend that you check them out, and I will chat to you guys later. Have a good one.

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