1 00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:13,739 What's going on, guys? Today I want to talk to you about a very, very important sentence that I hope you're using and you should be using it so often that you're sick of it, because this is what I've been doing in Portuguese quite a lot. 2 00:00:14,490 --> 00:00:22,399 Anyway, let's just get into this video and we'll have a chat about which sentence I think is probably one of the most important ones in English, especially when you're learning, ok? Let's go. 3 00:00:30,260 --> 00:01:09,842 Alright, so the sentence is 'how do I say that?', ok? Right? This, that, whatever the word is. 'How do I say this?'. I'm using this so often in Portuguese at the moment and it is helping so much, so obviously I have the luxury of having a wife who is from Brazil and speaks Portuguese natively, but this is something that I've had to sort of push myself out of my comfort zone to do as often as possible, and it's getting to the point now where I'm saying it probably five to 10 times a day, probably more than any other sort of phrase that I sort of always utter in Portuguese, ok? 4 00:01:11,330 --> 00:01:34,507 And the phrase is 'how do I say...' And then the thing, ok? Obviously this is difficult because you may need someone who speaks your native language at times if you want to be able to just insert that word in your native language. Otherwise, though, I try and do this quite often in Portuguese where I will try and explain what it is that I want to say in another way that I know is incorrect, but I know will give my wife, Kel, the idea of the word that I'm trying to use. 5 00:01:41,219 --> 00:01:58,467 For instance, if I forgot the word for 'car', I might say 'Kel, how do I say or what's the word for the four wheeled bike with an engine?', right? So, I remember all these other words that are indirect ways of describing the thing that I want to learn the word for, 'car', or maybe an expression, you know, and I say to her 'how do I say...' the thing. 6 00:02:06,379 --> 00:02:28,723 Lots and lots of my students that I have when teaching English do not do this often enough, even in our lessons where they're comfortable with me. They don't ask me this kind of question often enough and it was something that I hated doing as well when I first.... I'll tell you the story, last year, probably about this time last year, maybe a month or so earlier, so maybe about June last year, I moved into a house full of Brazilians, including my wife. 7 00:02:33,192 --> 00:02:49,359 So, there were four Brazilians and there was me, we were in Canberra and I said you know what? I don't want to leave with Australians if I can avoid it, we're in Australia and I want to improve my Portuguese, because I want to speak your native tongue, Kel, I want to speak your language, as well as you speak mine. 8 00:02:49,980 --> 00:03:09,237 And, so we actively looked for some way to live with other Brazilians, because there were loads of Brazilians in Canberra. When we moved into the house, I said to her I'm only going to speak Portuguese here with you. I'm going to do my best every single day. Obviously, from the beginning, this was really difficult because my Portuguese wasn't as good as it is today, obviously, a year later. 9 00:03:10,541 --> 00:03:31,469 So, I had to ask all the time 'how do I say this? What's the word for this? How do I pronounce this"'. I had to use those kinds of phrases all the time. At first, my experience was sort of embarrassment. Anytime I sort of got stuck and had to say, you know, 'how do I say this again?', especially if I've already asked and I've forgotten, right? 10 00:03:32,940 --> 00:04:01,397 But I found that really quickly, within only a few days, I began to be more and more confident and see it as less of an embarrassment. It wasn't a big deal anymore. I would just constantly ask, you know, I almost got to a point where I was shameless. I would always be asking 'how do I say this? How do I say that?', you know? 'What's the word for this? What's the word for that? How do I say this kind of phrase? If I want to ask for this, what's a more natural way of saying this thing?' 11 00:04:01,560 --> 00:04:35,827 And, I guess, that is what really helped my Portuguese accelerate, because at any time I could have just reverted back to English. Most of the other people in the house who were Brazilians spoke English, at least well enough to understand me, and if I'd reverted back to English, I would have been up here in terms of my control of the language and they would have been here, instead of the opposite where their Portuguese was up here and mine was down here and I was trying to climb up, but it would have defeated the purpose because if you never exit your comfort zone, you're not going to improve, right? 12 00:04:36,630 --> 00:05:01,139 You've sort of got your comfort zone here and you need to be constantly pushing the edges, so that that zone is constantly growing in size. If you stay in the comfort zone in here and only use what you're already 100 percent comfortable with, you're not going to grow, you're not going to expand that zone of comfort and your understanding and ability to use the language English in this case. 13 00:05:01,380 --> 00:05:32,703 So, the point of this video is that I want to encourage you to say as often as possible those kinds of phrases, like 'what's the word for this?' and if you have to speaking still, describe the thing, even if it's stupid, right? It's like a horse with a motor, but instead of legs it has these things that turn, right? You try to describe a car. It doesn't matter. The funny thing is too, the more often you do that with funny descriptions, people are going to laugh and have a good time with you, right? 14 00:05:32,970 --> 00:06:01,230 It's kind of an icebreaker. It kind of makes the situation funny and, so you'll find that it makes situations more casual more informal and people are more happy to help you because you've made them laugh, right? So, that's been my experience. So, I want to encourage you to say these kinds of expressions. 'What's the word for this? How do I say this more naturally?' or 'how do I say this more like a native?' or 'how would you say this? What's a phrase that you would use when doing this?' 15 00:06:01,380 --> 00:06:45,040 So, the basic thing here is to constantly be asking native speakers how they would say words, collocations, expressions or phrases. So, you want to know how they would do it. You, especially for advanced learners, you guys probably have a way of saying or describing most things, right? You can get by in day to day life with your English the way it is or whatever other language it is that you're learning, but you will never actually sound like a native or at least as close to a native speaker of that language as possible, unless you keep pushing yourself to do that kind of investigation and to get that kind of feedback. 16 00:06:45,100 --> 00:07:30,220 And I think this is kind of the problem that a lot of us face when we get to an intermediate to advanced level in the language. The biggest problem and I think the reason most people kind of plateau, right? They get to that stage of I can be understood, I can communicate with these people and they can understand me. The problem is then that because they understand you, native speakers won't correct you because they understand it too, they feel like they're rude if they do that and that's why it's so important for you to ask questions or to kind of push native speakers to correct you, but also give you feedback on how to better pronounce things, how to better say things, how do you better explain things and have these kinds of interactions with other people, right? 17 00:07:30,370 --> 00:07:58,929 So, you will you will find, I think, if you implement this kind of practice this kind of skill it takes a few days, might take a few weeks to get used to asking for feedback constantly or at least as often as possible and in situations where it's appropriate, obviously, if you're in the middle of a lecture, don't put your hand up and say 'excuse me, Professor, how do I say this?', but with friends and family and other people that you're close with, don't feel bad about doing this because it will really increase your language rapidly, ok? 18 00:08:00,070 --> 00:08:30,787 So, that's really the rant I kind of wanted to have today. I just suddenly thought about how I do this all the time and even today I was doing it to Kel, you know, how do I say this again? What's the word for this? What's an expression that I can use to describe this situation? I just, I do it to the point ad nauseum, right? So, she's probably sick of it, but I know that she will make do with my Portuguese. She'll understand it, as bad as it is, and it's not going to improve, unless I'm the one who pushes, ok? 19 00:08:31,540 --> 00:09:02,042 So, take it upon yourself, go out there, you take responsibility, you'll be the one who asks for feedback, who has these interactions with people asking for how to better pronounce things, how to better say things, asking for advice on how to sound more natural in your language, and I promise you, you're going to improve so much faster than if you were to just try and let it happen passively, right? If you were to just let things do them do their thing without you actively taking control, ok? 20 00:09:02,056 --> 00:09:14,190 Anyway, I've ranted long enough. I hope that helps. Let me know what you think in a comment below and especially let me know if you go out and use this and get some good reactions. Ok? Anyway, I'm Pete, from Aussie English. Thanks for joining me. Peace!