#433 - How to Stop Using the Same Basic English Words — Speak with a Rich Vocabulary (Like a Native)
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Do you ever feel stuck using the same basic words in English over and over again? Let's say for example that you go to see a movie in the theater and then later a friend of hers asks you how it was and then your response is, "Oh, that movie was good." But really? Is that how your experience actually was? Because maybe what's in your mind is something more along the lines of, "Oh, the movie was really captivating. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time."

So if you watch today's lesson until the end, you'll discover how to express your thoughts and your feelings in English more naturally, just like you do in your native language. So I have with me here today the CEO of RealLife English, and you could also say that he's the final boss of understanding natives because really, if you can follow him, you can pretty much follow any native speaker. You're not going to be scared of any native speaker when you speak with them. So Justin, how's it going?

It's going pretty good. Great to be here. Let me say final boss, right? It's kind of like a wordplay there. What does that actually mean? So final boss in like in a video game, in like Mario, for example, you have Bowser, which is the final boss there. But if you haven't played any video games, maybe think of Thanos from the Avengers or Darth Vader in Star Wars. Those are the biggest villains in those stories. And at the end, the hero...

faces those villains right so justin's not a villain but you can view him as this final boss that if you're if you overcome this challenge of understanding justin you're good to go with pretty much any other native speaker right yeah an interesting example because you might say like oh yeah you know overcome the villain people might they probably won't understand you're gonna have to explain it but if you say final boss that hits a spot it's gonna communicate right yeah hits the spot yeah what is that hits

Hits the spot means to really, to be very granular, to be very direct and precise in your aim of something. So, Justin, let's get straight to the point. Why is it that most intermediate learners suffer from this issue of always using the same basic level words like good, bad, nice? Like the example I gave in the beginning, like, oh, it was a good movie, but you have so much more they experienced there and you're just not able to articulate it. So what does that happen?

Because it's what you have. It's the best way to communicate at the beginning, right? Or intermediate level, right? You haven't acquired the tools, so you've got to do the best of what you have, right? And this is important. You've got to get out there, make mistakes, just get through that process of just feeling like,

I'm not at my best right now in my communication, but then through that desire, right, you get better. You live your English, you consume more, you study more, you learn more, right? And then you develop more nuanced communication, more nuanced in the sense of like more precise, right? Not just nuances, nuanced. Yeah, nuanced in anything, right? You start off and you have the general shapes of things, right? But it's like...

kind of low fidelity. Like you're seeing through a picture, but it's like, it's not very precise and exact. Right. So you're seeing the shadows, but over time becomes high fidelity.

Right. It becomes much more just like any expertise in any area. Right. The more you learn, the more precise you can be and the more surgical. Right. Yeah. Surgical. I think this is a Brazilian word, actually. I think it's filtered into my English. I don't know if we use this so much in English. Yeah. Yeah. Surgical is precise. Exactly that. Like a surgeon is very precise. Right. Exactly. There's actually a meme that I remember. It's really funny. And it reminds me of this situation where in your mind.

you have all this beautiful way of speaking, like you have all these things that you wish you could say, but when you actually open your mouth to speak, you don't know exactly how to articulate all those feelings, all those thoughts, right? And the meme is, I guess if you're on an app, you can see the actual image that I'm talking about here, but it's like a dinosaur. The drawing of a dinosaur on one side that looks like a child drew it, and it's like how I speak, and on the other side, how I think, which is like a beautifully drawn, like an illustration of a dinosaur drawing.

And it's pretty much what happens, right? So how do you develop the capacity to express yourself more clearly, you know, to go from low fidelity to more high fidelity, as you were saying? Get your hands dirty, right? Get your hands dirty. What does that mean? So...

If you get practical, if you go and do something yourself and you're just, again, getting practical, your hands are going to get dirty, right? Like most activities, like, I don't know, gardening or doing the dishes. What does that mean? Like there's even another phrase, like rolling up your sleeves, right? Why do you do that? Because your hands are about to get dirty. So like you're just getting ready for the action, right? Yeah, you can say that too. Roll up, you know, roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty, right? Exactly. Those two can go together. Yeah. Go together. Nice, uh,

Connect the speech there. Go together. Go together. So the T there in the middle becomes a da, da, da, sound like a flap T, go together. But anyway, I was asking you, what's a good way for one to start developing this more rich vocabulary?

I think one way is this concept. I think we talked about this one here before, but I like this term. I say it'd be a vocab connoisseur. This is what we say. So a vocab connoisseur. So connoisseur, I think it comes from French probably. Probably. Connoisseur, and I think like in Portuguese it's conhecer, in Spanish it's conocer. Right. But conocedor, conocedor, right? So it'd be a knower of something. A knower, yeah. But you sort of, you get to know the nuances of something, right? So a wine connoisseur, I used to work at a restaurant as a waiter. Right.

And we, I didn't know much about wine, but we would have wine tasting, right? Wine and cheese. And so we'd have my notebook with me, taste the wine, smell it, because my palate hadn't been developed, right? Everything hadn't been developed. I didn't really have the sophistication of my taste, right? And so we'd taste it and just try to be aware. What's going on? Be curious. Hmm.

I wonder, what does this mean? What's happening here? And you develop more, a much richer palette of tastes. And the same thing with vocabulary, right? But the difference is, I didn't have another language to show me my wine palette, right? But different people have different linguistic abilities

to communicate and be articulate and say many things and education levels and everything. So you don't need to be perfect, right? Everybody has their needs, right? But I think a lot of people want to really reach the point where their ability with the language they're learning mirrors the way they communicate themselves in their native language too because this is the way you think, right? You don't need to translate. This is the key to not translating, right? Because

ultimately you have all the tools to be to be able to make it right so i think there is this this sense of being curious a lot of people just aren't curious about new words right so if you hear a word that you don't know it's just being curious being like hmm yeah note of it it's like you're watching a tv series for example right you're watching uh you're listening to this right now just take notes right take notes uh jump on the app you can you can practice with the flashcards we help you remember right we help you sponge up those words

And use them. Right? So you can double check. But anyway, that's the short answer. Long answer to short question. No, but I think to summarize the last part of what you're saying, curiosity. And curiosity is something that needs to be exercised. How do you exercise it? I think there's two levels, now that I'm thinking about it. There is the internal energy level. You just feel that burst of energy as soon as you see something new and something that piques your interest.

sense of wonder. Peaks your curiosity, peaks your sense of wonder, right? This is a common complication. What does it mean? It's just a

is a peak like to look through right this is a word like peak yeah this probably comes from french too like if you see the spelling right it's not exactly english but the pronunciation is the same it's just like there's a sudden uh peak like uh like if you imagine a graph like you're just like oh you pique my curiosity right there you go yeah because like it gets your attention it catches your attention right so when that happens you've sensed that

So it's the first level of curiosity, I would say. And then there's a second level, which is like you do something about it. Because if it's just like, you know, it's just interesting and it piques your curiosity in a way that, you know, you want to do something, but you don't do anything about it, you're never going to really, you know, get there. And this makes me think of the real life way, which is our methodology for learning English. When you talk about activate it, activate your English, which is a superpower that any person can develop. There's two sides to it.

There's curiosity. Be curious. So that's just like that sense of wonder for new word, right? New sound. And then two, deliberate practice. So what follows up curiosity is a deliberate practice of doing something about it.

writing it down, right? Now we say like the two, like we're ninjas learning languages, right? So the two ninja swords, you have one sword over here that you pull out. This is like connected speech, right? Hearing the musicality of language, right? Yeah, that's why I said sound. Like if something, a sound catches your attention, not just words, right? But the way they're pronounced and...

also word chunks which is multiple words right worships sort of the bridge between the two right but but then the vocabulary collocation because it's like ultimately if you use the right word like you said in the final boss right where the edge of my seat you can say the edge of my chair but

Probably a native speaker might have to pay a little extra attention to people to process it a little bit. It might actually be harder for them because they're used to hearing the edge of my seat, not the edge of my chair. It's important to say the right thing because people are listening. They're trying to expend as little energy as possible. You want to get the collocation right, the way the words fit together. Probably like other things that we talked about as well. That's true, yeah. Now,

Even in a phrase, edge of my seat, the way it's usually pronounced, it's not edge of my seat, right? There's connected speech there. It's a word chunk. Edge of my seat. Edge of my seat. This is actually why people struggle to understand me sometimes.

I think I need to speak more clearly. I speak kind of fast and sometimes I kind of trip over my words. So I apologize for that. But what is that, by the way, to trip over your words? I just trip over my words. Yeah. When you're speaking really fast. All right. So trip. Somebody might trip and might be walking and fall over because of your ear.

lost her balance exactly but it's it's figurative in this case nice so to summarize what we were talking about here there's these two ninja swords right and it's important to pay attention to both to have that sense of curiosity for both now i was thinking just another question that i had for you is that usually teachers give the learners their students a list of words to learn right

like even on youtube you you go to youtube and you see all these lessons like learn 50 words or 100 words and while that can be useful you know to watch a video that gives you that but when it's just a list like this i don't feel like typically that's so effective because i didn't learn it this way but i don't know about other people so much like as with my own students back in the day when i was teaching them directly like in person

I wouldn't do that. You know, so how do you feel about that? On the one hand, it's each to their own. It's like, you know, whatever works for you. But on the other hand, like one of the things that we do here at RealLife English, we all talk about living your English, right? So there's expression in English, live and learn, right? You live and you're making mistakes and you learn, right? But we kind of apply this to English too, right? Because in traditional methods, so it's oftentimes like, oh, I'm going to learn here. I'm going to study this.

someday i'm gonna apply it someday and so it's like always pretty in the future but never worked that never works right for english at least yeah so it's like we say live your own connected to the things that are fun natural convenient right so as you're doing it you you might be watching a tv series you might be talking to somebody listen to the song there's a gap you don't understand it you want to understand it so you learn it in that moment and it's going to

it's going to stick much more likely to stick right it's going to be much uh much more effective and then in this way so uh i mean just to give an exaggerated example when i was a kid i studied spanish in high school and it wasn't very meaningful i learned in a very traditional way i wasn't very successful and i bought a dictionary and i was like reading the words this is like

This is a really exaggerated example, right? But I failed miserably. Yeah, it's not very distant from what usually happens, right? And you just said you failed miserably. Nice. We're there. Miserably comes from misery, right? What is that to do something miserably or fail? Yeah, it's a collocation. Those usually go together. I failed miserably, right? I just failed in a way that was like really bad.

painful or obvious more obvious right yeah it just emphasizes failing but adding pain to it almost right exactly i wasn't getting my hands dirty with spanish in this case i was just memorizing a list i would have got my hands dirty i would have uh engaged in the culture like started listening to music or something just been curious about the lyrics and and and really learning a different way yeah versus learn and someday live right so that's a mindset that i think is very important to cultivate

Because if you don't do that, you're just going to fail and maybe miserably. Right. If you if it's important to you, if English is important to you because you know that's going to be, you know, what's exactly what's in between you and a better life for any reason. If you want to move to another country, you have a job that you just want to in a career they want to pursue and you need English for it and you keep failing. That just sucks. Now, one way to start overcoming that is by living and learning. Right.

It may be painful, but it would just be satisfying, I think, to be using your English already. As we say in the intro of this podcast, you know, to be using your English as a doorway to your greatest life. Oh, yeah. Right. So yesterday we were talking, Justin and I, I'm visiting Justin here in Florianopolis in Brazil.

and we were talking about critical mass listening. You're introducing me to this concept, which is actually a concept that I was already familiar with, but it's nice to give it a name. So can you tell us a little bit about that? Because I think that this has a lot to do with this. Yeah, I've been talking about this for a while. I'm looking for somebody to listen to me. Because it makes a lot of sense. Basically, it's like when you learn a language, right, up until you get to the point where you're like intermediate level and you have a

solid level of listening comprehension. It's like a puzzle, right? Putting together a puzzle, right? Different pieces of the puzzle and...

There are pieces missing, right? And if you have too many pieces missing, it's really hard to see what's going on in the puzzle. Right? You're not going to understand it. It's going to be confusing. It's not going to be very enriching. Like if your comprehension of what you're listening is like 40%, 30%, right? Basically, in other words. Exactly. So, but there comes a time in your learning journey, which if you're listening to this and you value out of this, you're probably close or around this point. But

You've reached the point where it's like you have enough of pieces of the puzzle that you start to even get the general idea of what the picture says, what communicates. So you have a general idea, although there are pieces missing. But you can start learning the definitions or the meaning of the words that are missing, the missing content here, based upon the context. So you understand enough where it's actually entertaining and it's fun.

And you're able to do more of it. So it's like, first of all, you learn by context for it, right? You do more of it. So you accelerate the process, right? It mostly just goes up. It's like learning English through English, right? Learning translation and more. This is living your English, right? Actually, now that you say this, I can give one very clear example. In this conversation that we're just having, it happened. So...

To fail miserably, there's a very simple way to put that with basic words. They just put those two together and it becomes more clear. It's like fail plus pain is failing miserably. But if you don't know that clear collocation, when you express yourself to somebody else and you just say, oh, I know I failed or I didn't do well.

But internally, like you have just something else that you're feeling that you're thinking that you wish you could say. But just because you don't know exactly that particular collocation, you're going to fail miserably in doing that. So it's not hard to learn advanced collocations if you know how they how basic words actually form them.

Like smaller pieces, right? So anyway, how can a learner go from understanding like 40% to maybe 60, 70% probably more closer to listening critical mass where they can just use English to learn more English? How can one do that? Well, you need to build the building blocks. Vocabulary is the building blocks. This is a really important part, right? Connected speech really helps too, right? But you need enough of the building blocks. How many words do you know? How many pieces are missing, right? Mm-hmm.

I think if you're really a warrior, right, you can go and get the

Transcript to just understand every word. It's been like 20 hours I've done this before like reading like by the way, you're the alchemist of the accent. I'll commit the accent alchemist, right? I read the alchemist. I read all the books by Paulo Cuevas No, it's Spanish. Actually read them when I was learning Spanish. Uh-huh, but I used to go through and just like have so many words on the on the on the margin Right, just define everything to find everything was if you're a warrior going through you can just define everything to find everything to find everything and

it gets, you start learning, right? But it takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of effort, especially when you're doing that. It's not so fulfilling for a lot of people, right? So that, or you can, you can go about it other ways. Music is really interesting because it's a, it's a way to enjoy it, right? And you have the rhythm and it's like, it's repetitive, right? Yeah. Or you can like focus on certain niches of vocabulary.

as well. That's it. Like you can let your attention guide you as well, right? You don't need to obsess over everything because you're going to be stopping a lot. And there's a nice balance between living your English and activating your English. So we say that these are superpowers of the best learners, right? So it's a lot easier to learn English by immersion. We're getting immersed in it, which is like when you live it. Now, how much activation you're going to add to this

uh equation it's up to you right what does up to you mean and if that's your choice it's your choice there you go yeah and um you'll make progress and you'll make more progress the more activation you have but then it kind of you know detracts you from all the fun and enjoyment a little bit i would say yeah it's nice to get these little pieces of fun right yeah as you go like again live and learn this is really interesting

And then learning, right? It's like you can go download the app right now and practice the flashcards, right? It's like all these words, this huge ecosystem of vocabulary that we're teaching right now. You can just go, practice, learn, and words come back. We show you exactly when to learn it, right? Through spaced repetition. Exactly. Which is a great tool, by the way, for this, right? Because we're talking about activation. And the thing is that in order for you to expand your vocabulary, you're going to need to see these words again and again in order for them not to just

you know fall behind in that too it's so key it's so key that because the thing is if you just leave it to random chance right you learn this word you find that word but how long before you hear it again right if you're living your english for immersion if you're watching and listening and doing all this stuff maybe it's sooner rather than later but you can system out the program yourself to learn these words so that you sponge them up you don't let them get through it's like um it's like

picking up sand right there's so much vocabulary but if you just let it go through your fingers you're never going to learn it you're not it's the most frustrating thing in the world to you hear the word again later it is i learned that before but i didn't really learn it i heard it i sort of learned it that's short-term memory it's a very good metaphor i didn't make it part of my long-term memory yeah very good metaphor because that makes me think like on the app uh this is not just promotion okay right go we build this app exactly because we identified exactly what learners need

Right. We have learners on the team as well. So we're like scratching our own itch in a lot of ways. What does that mean to scratch your own itch? It's a problem, right? Exactly. So we know that this helps people learn English and also live a better life. Right. But by learning English,

And on the app, we give you a bucket for all that sand, right? So you don't lose it. Like you may go through your fingers, but then you're not losing that. So when I first started like actually learning Spanish, I was backpacking through Mexico. I was spending a lot of time there and I created these flashcards, like these stacks. I had just flashcards, like thousands of these flashcards, these like little cards and cards.

and they were in my backpack and i had i remember it was interesting i studied them i remember exactly when i learned them i remember the exact moment the person i was with a lot of them were bad words too and it's just amazing like like that that was the method now it's like technology comes along later and it's all of a sudden you don't need to manually handle that process or you don't because it's like you might have like stacks of the vocabulary items that you study and it's like oh table

- Portuguese, right? Or Spanish, right? - That's right. - And yeah, and they said all of a sudden, like that happened, right? Technology, so what does that mean? Like all of a sudden? - All of a sudden means at once, right? So now you can use a program, right? I'm just gonna show you exactly when you need to learn it just before you're about to forget it. - From one moment to another, maybe.

overnight right so you systematize the process right yeah just looping back around to finalize this point you talked about like memorizing a list of vocabulary right you can do that great you're going to memorize you're going to put in a short-term memory but really are you going to remember forever right is it meaningful to you right just like the person who crams for their test i'm sure you've done this cram for your test what does cram mean

to try and put a lot of something in a very small space, right? Yeah, so it's like you don't study for the entire semester, and then the night before, you're like crammed for the test, and you don't actually learn it. You just remember it the next day. You suffer a lot, right? But it's not effective learning, right? But if you had studied throughout the entire quarter, the entire semester, right, by the end, you're going to remember it forever. It's going to be a permanent part of your knowledge. Make it a part of your life. Yeah. Right.

Anyway, so just to recap this whole conversation, to recap, to look back and see everything that we covered. So just to recap,

What would be one thing that learners, you could say learners could do, and that one action would already get them closer to having all this rich vocabulary so they could express themselves more clearly, more freely. We shared a lot of tips today. We did, yeah. Right, so the idea of spaced repetition is really interesting. So right now is a good chance to practice your spaced repetition. Take out a piece of paper.

Open a document on your computer and just write down what do you remember from this episode? What are the things that hit you? What are the things that impacted you? Just do a brain dump. What's brain dump mean? Do this. We have a lot of stuff in your mind and then you take it out of your mind somewhere else, a piece of paper. Just dump it. Get it out of your head. Dumping is exactly that. Dumping is garbage too. To dump it or to break up with somebody. To dump a person or dump trash. Brain dump is to get out of your mind on the paper

Just do a brain dump, get it out. And it's always good when you have, you learn stuff, you go through an intensive learning experience or a lesson, if you want to remember it, just get it out of your head, get it externalized, put it on paper. And you can talk to other people about it. So if you want, like whatever you're learning, it's good to talk with other people about it. So do a brain dump, get it out, structure your knowledge, right? This is the first step of spaced repetition, right? You're actually...

test your knowledge of how much you remembered right you can go back and listen to it again if you want and then take notes and do that but but i think if you if you're trying to remember word by word you're not actually learning so you're not you're not connecting the neurons trying to remember those words right and it's okay to go back and listen to it again right to just listen again so the effort of trying to remember is actually what helps you remember right

That is a good point, yeah. So that's spaced repetition, right? It's not just like learning flashcards in a systematic way. It's actually anything you're learning by just repeating it in a spaced way and it becomes a permanent part of who you are.

right it can be flashcards vocabulary it could be pronunciation it can be concepts ideas that you're learning in your life you know not even just english whatever you do yeah i see like i think we always go back to this ultimate tip of making a part of your life make it the part of your day you know of your lifestyle because if you do you're just you you're making sure that you'll see it again you know because you know if it's not something that you're doing just occasionally you're

If it's part of your day, then it's guaranteed, right? You'll see it again. Now, if you have systems like a space repetition system, it's even more guaranteed, as I said, that you will see it.

And what you guys said in the, I don't know if you actually mentioned this, but you talked about atomic habits and James Clear and his work. But the quote I really like, I know you like it too, is that we don't rise to the level of our outcomes and goals, right? We fall to the level of our systems, right? No, I love that quote from the book. And we didn't cover this particular one. I wanted to include it in the lesson. The lesson I'm referring to is how to learn English, how to become fluent in English in 2025, even if you're fluent.

So the book Atomic Habits gives you all these lessons, all these learnings that you can apply that even if you're busy, you can cultivate habits, right? And become more fluent. Now, this is a great one that shows you the importance of cultivating habits, even if it's small habits, because then it's all going to become a part of who you are.

And it's so much easier to do that if you have systems in your life or as I like to call lifestyle. I think lifestyle is just more friendly. Right. It's a word that you can picture something. You can picture your day, your activities. Right. And I think lifestyle is also something that people relate to as something that they want to cultivate. Right. We all want to have a certain lifestyle. Right.

And that lifestyle that I have in mind, if you know exactly what that is, then you can begin today to build that with the Andy mind, right? You can start creating that lifestyle already as you are picturing it in your mind. So yeah. How does that fit in your lifestyle guys? Like how does activating your vocabulary fit in it? Think about it. I've spoken to Nira, one of the people who work with us at real life. We've done lessons where I've mentioned her.

And I just think she's the perfect example of a great learner because she obsesses over the same lesson, the same piece of media and listening over and over again. And I think that is a great habit to have. And she'd do that so she could live her English first and it should activate. The second time she should be listening, she'd be paying more attention to specific things. And I think she'd listen...

for a third time even and she created space for that in her own life when she was going to work she was commuting which means like to go to work uh driving or by bus um that's when she would listen so even without supposedly having time at all you know i could say i have zero minutes per day you know to be doing that but really aren't you you know

doing the dishes or don't you really have anything that you can listen and internalize these lessons while you're doing that so think about it yeah and as you're connecting the things you love the things you do already right and then you become a vocab connoisseur of things that you love yeah

Because ultimately, I think these are just, sorry to say this, but these are just excuses, right? Like that we come up with, like, I don't have time. And I know it's fair to say that. It's not a problem to say that. But what are you going to do about it?

Right. Ultimately, you've got to find a way. And there are some people who have done it. And these people are inspiring just by knowing that they have done it. Then you can do it, too. That's why I brought it up. And that's why I brought up Neera. And I'm going to leave the link in the description for the lesson where we covered her story and what exactly what was exactly that she did. Yeah, Justin, thanks for joining me in this lesson. I really wanted to cover this because I do think that of the learners that I speak with,

there's this gap, you know, between what they're thinking and what they really want to say that usually the resources that learners go after that they seek is like lists of vocabularies. That's why I also asked you that question. And I don't have a problem with lists of vocabulary, lists of words, but if it doesn't have meaning to you, you're not going to, it's not going to stick. If you're not listening or watching this lesson on the RealLife app, what are you waiting for? We just talked about it today and

It is really the best way that you can learn with these lessons. We give you so many resources that will help you internalize all this vocabulary. Plus, it's a great way for you to be able to follow what we are saying. We give you interactive transcripts as well.

So we're going to leave the link in the description below. As I said, you click on that and it'll take you straight to the lesson over there so you can start immediately practicing all the vocabulary, all the advanced vocabulary. You can also search for RealLife English on Google Play or the App Store. That can get you there too, but the link in the description will take you straight to the lesson. So again, thanks Justin.

It was really amazing. I was really wanting to do this lesson with you and I hope to do more lessons in the future. And thanks to all of you guys as well. And guys, remember, as we always say on this podcast, that no matter what divides us, that which unites us is far greater. One, two, three. Oh, yeah.