English Fluency for Busy People: Effortless Daily Practice | Rule 3/7
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Adept English Rule 3. Hi, I'm Hilary and welcome to Adept English Rule 3, the third day of our course, The 7 Rules of Adept English. You're probably getting used to the format by now, the video, the MP3 file and the PDF if you'd like the written words, the transcript if you like. And just to recap on the first two rules of Adept English, do you remember them?

Rule one says listening and understanding what you hear is the most important task of learning. So the only way to become fluent is to listen to a lot of spoken English. And rule two says practice listening.

by repetition helps your English become automatic. This is the only way to fluency. So practice by repeat listening means that your understanding becomes a lot more automatic and you actually begin to think in English. This takes you away from translating and that is a massively important step.

I can't emphasize that one enough. It can't be translating in your head and be fluent. So today we're going to talk about rule three. Now, after listening to rule two, how many times did you repeat your listening? Great if you did it a few times. But if you didn't, I wonder why not? Often people say, oh, it was lack of time. I needed to go and do something else instead.

Not enough time. That's what we all suffer from. So there wasn't enough time to listen on repeat to rule two, perhaps. Now, I talked to you in rules one and two about people not succeeding with their language learning because they're not using the right method.

But rule three also addresses a reason why people don't succeed with language learning. And that is they don't have enough time. And even with adept English, all the listening and repeat listening, it does take quite a bit of time. And that's difficult if you're really busy.

Fortunately, there's a way around this and that's what rule three is about. A really good example of people's good intentions but lack of time. At my local gym, the car park is absolutely full in January because lots of people join the gym with the intention of working out all year round. You can't get a parking space.

But four weeks later in February, the car park's half empty because people

people have not followed through on their intentions to go to the gym regularly, probably because they're too busy and they don't have enough time. They don't stick at it, in other words. And as I said, this is one of the main reasons why people don't succeed in their language learning. They start well, but they then don't continue and eventually they stop altogether because they haven't got enough time.

Again, this is where the Adept English method is better than other ways of learning. The key is to do your English language learning regularly, but while you're doing other things. That way, you don't need to put aside time for your lessons. You don't have to travel anywhere. You don't need to go to a weekly course online.

or class. You can simply listen while you're in the car, while you're on the train, while you're cycling, even while you're running. Almost anywhere where you're not required to speak to anybody and what you're doing doesn't require your full attention, you can be doing your adept English language practice.

Because it's just listening. You can put on your headphones while you're doing the laundry, cleaning your home, walking, jogging, gardening, decorating, cooking as well. You might do your listening while you're doing the boring job.

And you may find that you look forward to doing them that way. It's pleasurable to find yourself improving and your level of English going up. As I've said before, we try to give you topics that are interesting in their own right. We kill two birds with one stone, if you like.

You listen for longer, it's interesting and your brain is doing its English language practice. And the fact that you learn while you're doing other things gives you a much better chance of sticking at it, at continuing your English learning. If you listen to 30 minutes of spoken English on most days, how much better would your understanding be after three months, six months?

or a year even. Even this way, it does take effort to learn a language, but much less. If you miss a day, you miss a week, even if you miss a month, you just go back to it. But working it into your schedule,

Having a regular activity that means you put on your headphones and you do your English listening practice. That means you'll be consistent. C-O-N-S-I-S-T-E-N-T. And consistent practice is what really helps. I understand if you like to watch the video first time through. You might want to see what I look like.

but also you'll probably want to see the words scrolling across the bottom. But from your second listen onwards, it's fine just to listen using audio.

That means you can get on with other things at the same time. So if you make Adept English Language Listening part of your schedule, something that you do every week, ideally every day, it doesn't need to take up your precious spare time. Why not have a look at your routine, your schedule, and see where Adept English would fit? This will mean you're much more likely to be successful. And don't forget,

Listen to Rule 3 several times. Practice makes perfect. See you on the next video for Rule 4. This one is just as important.