9. Watching video lessons.

Today we are finishing the long talk about some of the most frequently used methods of learning English and it is

9. Watching video lessons.
I believe, this method of learning is the next in its value to the individual lessons with a teacher.
The amount of educative materials on all imaginable subjects in all areas of life is overwhelming!
Just go thru the offers and find the course you think may work better for you.
Here's one trick though: you have to know how to use the course. Just watch-listen-read approach won't work :-(
The goals you are so willing to reach , come only as the result of wise and patient jet simple routines of repetitive verbal drills.

Conclusion.
Being the one of millions of English speaking and thus often teaching individuals I realize the fact that the rest of the 'brethren in arms' may and will have different approaches to the same subject of learning-teaching English and I am sure most of them have the right to exist and prosper on the market.
That's why I urge you to go thru some of the methods you may find attractive for you and as soon as you are
satisfied with the results, go ahead with these approaches.
On the other hand, experiment, look for other ways and methods until you get what you want.

Wishing you best of success
George  

8. Learning English in groups.

                    Learning English in groups is one of the most popular methods of developing English.
While advantages of group learning are quite obvious, there are a few drawbacks of which I would like to warn you.
             First, you've got to be lucky with your teammates who are the same age, ambitions and as much of enthusiasts as you are. This is the key to success.
Frequently I am asked about the number of students in a group.
 I remember being a part of a group of French learners that allowed me to say something in French for not longer than 15-20 minutes during four 45 minutes sessions.
The French teacher was conducting the lessons in such a way that only nominees had a chance to react on his replicas. So, I had to wait for my turn to come.
So, as you can see, a waste of time. Those of you who naively believe that you...: "will learn the mistakes of others while they are answering and then you will not repeat the same mistakes and get better..."
 will recognize that the reality is very far from this expectation.
            Another thing that makes group work less effective is the difference of students' skills levels.
 This slight inconvenience will immediately make the better students get bored while the less prepared will be trying to work with the teacher.
 You may as well be lucky not receive critical comments and remarks on your performance as I've monitored in a good number of different groups.

Ok, instead of the resume:
The most popular belief that it  is always easier (i.e. merrier) to learn English in groups may be true, but to become a good speaker of the language you have to hire an instructor only for yourself!
Training to speak English is more an individual sport rather than a group one.
That's all for now.
I hope, you have found these practical notes useful.  
Best regards
George

7. Having free online lessons.

Having free online lessons is another way of learning English.
As in anything you want to learn, it is necessary to find a good instructor, someone who thinks not only about establishing her image and reputation thru teaching but also caring about growth of her students.
As soon as you find such an instructor, try s few hours and if all meets your expectations get down to business of practicing with the instructor.
Don't have any illusions, though: free is the catch. On the second-third session you will understand that the instructor uses you only for promoting her educative materials or private paid lessons.
So, if you have no intention to go to paid lessons, your sessions will not last forever.
Cheers
George

6. Listening to educational CDs in a car.

                 Very frequently I hear from students of English a question about listening to educative CDs in a car.

There are some pros and cons in this method of learning and I would like to share them with you.

                 First, if you are able to focus on what you hear, it works well: you hear the message and the more often you hear the vocabulary, the higher probability of remembering it and ultimately using in your speech. 

The message, itself, (as any message), the more often you hear it, the less attention you pay to it. 

What I see as a huge problem is that after 3-4 minutes, the driver as any listener, loses the track of the information heard and comes back to her current problem.

                 As any training system, listening requires a high level of self -discipline and high level of concentration.

I have told you several times already about developing of listening skills and repeat it again: it gets effective if only listening is done correctly.  

                So, listen to the English CDs in a car or not?

Try it and make your own decision.

Practicing listening skills is a serous process and should be done under control of a language trainer.

Till next message.

George

5. Exchanging messages with English-speaking forums' participants.

The Internet offers nowadays an enormous amount of various groups of people who unite around a common subject of their interest and exchange messages on various topics.
As a rule these groups are formed on the principle of a free registration with online names and passwords. As long as a member of the forum wishes to take part in a discussion, she logs in and sends her comments.
"The more the merrier,' is the motto of the forums, which simply means that unless the writer violates the rules of the group, she can write whatever she wants.
No one is taught the English language here and nobody corrects  the mistakes of less prepared linguistically members.
What really helps is that one has a chance to get in touch with the English used by  native speakers, a modern English used by modern people.
Some forums are extremely useful, though. The ones where professionally-oriented folks, such as photographers, musicians,  etc. flock 
These are the places where one can get a useful piece of information on the subject of her interest, to learn the terminology and the vocabulary of the industry where these people work.
Unfortunately, professionals rarely take part in these communities unless they intend to sell their products to forum members.
Otherwise regular comments or opinions of the participants carry limited educative value.
Till next time
Bye-bye
George

4. Listening to American music

4. Listening to American music
If you are a fan of music this way of learning to speak English may work well too.
Surely, it is not the tool that helps you to speak, but the best method of memorizing the phrases (provided you know what they really mean) and possibly using these phrases when you speak English.
This method has a huge advantage, something that belongs to the whole philosophy of practicing a foreign language, which is a REPETITION!
As with any subject of you admiration, with the songs you love you certainly wish to stay longer and more frequently, hearing and repeating the words and melodies of the songs, thus memorizing the language of the songs.
On the other hand, the songs are often full of colloquialisms that are used by groups of fans and therefore not really used by regular people.
A word of advice, though. If you are deeply in love with pop music, try to identify which vocabulary still has a potential to serve you in real life with real people.
If, on the other hand you flock with the guys humming the melodies of their music icons, you are quite safe with the vocabulary picked up in the lyrics of the songs.

3. Reading books, underlining unknown words...

3. Reading books, underlining unknown words, finding them in dictionaries and later...
(see point 2)
Seven-eight years back I had a student who once had told me he had to 'survive'  7-10 opening pages of almost any new book. 
Then, as soon as he learned the author's vocabulary, the rest of the book 's could be read without a dictionary.
I'd tried to check this statement and had to agree with my student.
The readers' notes, underlined words or written in pencil Czech equivalents on the pages of the English books that I borrowed from the library, proved this observation. 
I have thought about reading English literature by learners of English and now would like to share with you a few ideas.
Here are a few general goals for reading literature.
1. Getting information (the most used these days)
2. Entertainment
3. Other.
Reading books in English brings an additional goal: learning a real language used in real life by real English-speaking people.
Here are some pros and cons, though.
Well, literature written by a English native speaking (and writing) author is certainly a big bonus for a learner of English.
But one has to be careful: English is so hugely different in all pats of the English-speaking world, in all kinds of groups of people, in all spheres of human activities where folks speak English.
Another readers' 'headache' is the time when the book was written: English changes slightly almost every five-seven years and changes more 'dramatically' every decade.
So, if you still say: "How do you do?" meeting an English-speaking individual for the first time, instead of 'Hi' or "Hello', get ready to receive an ironical look, at the least.      
That's why I recommend you to choose a book that was written 3-5 years preferably by a writer who started her writing career not long ago. 
Otherwise you are in danger of familiarizing with the language which was used decades ago.
( Or, which is the best choice, read newspapers. )
All right. Let's assume, the book is chosen.
What to do next?
To read for comprehension or understanding each word and therefore, learning the language?
English publishers came to the answer to this question very wisely a long time ago.
They adjust the books to the levels of readers, i.e. the same works are published for the readers of various levels.
That simply means that the same story can be offered with the authentic vocabulary, initially used by the author and several versions of the same text adopted for readers of different levels in accordance with their general knowledge of the language.
I'm afraid, I cannot help you here with the decision making.
One thing I know for sure: nothing is more frustrating that underlining every other word in the authentic text and, on the other hand, reading a primitive text where every word is clearly understood.
Whatever your choice is, always remember: reading is an educative process and apart from any purpose you may try to follow, development of your command of English is one of the most significant goals of reading any English text.
Try, perhaps, to find a balance between a generally informative and linguistically educative reading.
Define the vocabulary you use in your native and learn the same vocabulary in English: it will help you express your ideas easily in a foreign language.
Remember, contrary to a popular statements of your educators, advocates of the method of  thinking in English for speaking English, you always unconsciously create your phrases in your native before producing them in a foreign language unless you speak English 6-7 hours ever day for at least one year...
Remember also, which method of reading you take for yourself, 
                                                  You are responsible!
Till next time, bye-bye.
 George

2. Learning vocabulary in city transport on the way to and from work.

"What's wrong with this method of developing one's English skills?" you may say. Commuting and reading magazines, books, or just listening to music is a regular thing to do, right?If so, why not to spend the same time with learning English vocabulary, instead? 

Actually, I personally, have nothing against it. All methods are good, why not transport self-studies? 

Let's talk about a few most common habits of travelling learners or learning travelers. 

Group A. These students just learn all from small dictionaries. Any time these dictionaries can be taken from the beg and after a few minutes of 'learning' taken back into the bag. 

Group B. After texts vocabulary from the textbooks are read and learned by the advocates of this method. 

Group C. Card 'players'. A pack of self-made cards with one language on one side and their equivalents on the other one. 

Group D. Printed/hand-written lists of words collected from the texts or other sources.

A tiny bit more thoughts about each approach. First of all. Whatever is done is netter than nothing is done at all. Period. 

With method A learners have little motivation for blindly repeating the vocabulary and the temptation to divide the words on 'necessary' and 'unnecessary'. Let's say a student sees the word and based on his own native language experience accepts this word or phrase as a candidate for probable future life usage or, on the other hand, for neglecting. The real life situations where the ones or the others may or may not be used can be very much different. 

Method B seems more productive for a learner knows the situation described in the text and hopes that something similar may some day happen to him. This learning makes more sense, though. 

Method C doesn't make much sense to me as it evolves a mechanical memory for learning the words and phrases that are not gathered into a story and learned separately from the contest. 

Method D is the most useful as it goes as a logical continuation of the process of learning that was started in a classroom.

As a conclusion, we can acknowledge the fact that the bus, train or metro atmosphere with people talking around can hardly help us concentrate on the words and phrases we so no wonder that most of transport learning has little or no progress at all.

Till next time 

George 

Nine 'most useful' methods of learning English.

Dear Friends,
Let's talk about nine, accepted by many, 'most useful' methods of learning English.
Starting from the least effective, here's my list.
1. Watching American movies with subtitles.
2. Learning vocabulary in city transport on the way to and from work.
3. Reading books, underlining unknown words, finding them in dictionaries and later...(see point 2)
4. Listening to American music
5. Exchanging messages with English-speaking forums' participants
6. Listening to educational CDs in a car.
7. Having free online lessons.
8. Learning English in groups.
9. Watching video lessons.

1. Watching American movies with subtitles.
I have never met one person who had not advocated this method of learning English.
Well, as in many areas of human life, we like living in the world of nice dreams, fantasies and illusions.
 Watching American movies with subtitles is one of our most pleasant learning English fantasies.
Most of my students believe that the fact of seeing an American movie will automatically and inevitably bring them to a higher level of their English.
This just not true and here is why:
We go to movies, don't we, to spend good time, to enjoy a nice work of movie-makers, esp. if their film had received movie awards. Popcorn, coca-cola, and other attributes of movie-trips multiply the enjoyment.
Now, imagine an English learner who is at a start of her endeavor of developing English speaking skills, watches the movie, tries to grasp a few words of English speech and simultaneously reads the lines of translated sentences.
(sometimes a far cry from what it is in English).
After a few minutes she finds herself in the position of neither spectacle nor learner.
Do you agree?
About the next point, #2, tomorrow.
Till then, bye-bye
George

Spiritual Values vs Materialistic Values

Something about a well-known subject of happiness.
I believe there are two basic concepts of getting closer to the state of happiness:

• Collecting materialistic values and 
• Gaining spiritual treasures.

Do I have to say which is much more acknowledged by the majority of the humankind?

Collecting material values is the number one choice for most of us.
Here is the trap, however.
The more we have the more we want to have. It holds true with anything: houses, islands, cars, lands, money...you name it.
To satisfy the hunger of our pride, this 'monster' living in us, is almost impossible.
As soon as we have a new car, we think of another one bigger, more modern or more comfortable.
At the very instant we see something worth seeing in the possession of our neighbors, we become restless, sleepless unless we own the same something or preferably, better...
But the worse thing is that these values do not please us for a long time-a day a week a month, perhaps.
Than, at once we find out that a nice journey is what we need for a complete happiness!
We return home and realize that geography is not the way to escape from yourself. 
Yet, even much worse that we feel we are still far from the so long awaited state of happiness: something is still missing and we are sure that as soon as we possess this something we will become happy.

Now, spiritual way of moving towards happiness.
This is how you grow spiritually: what kind of wise books you read, what people you listen to and how much you think about what you are ready to bring to people around you.
In short, your mission.
Your message to the people of the world. Why 'the world'?
Simple: the messages you post in your blogs, the comments you post are read by people from as many as seventeen -twenty countries from all corners of the planet!
You are responsible for forming your readers' philosophy.
Today one of my students asked me if I hoped that what I shared with my listeners would immediately change something in the way they see they thing of behave.
"I'm just doing what I believe is true, correct!" I replied.
I am responsible for anything I say and do.This is my credo and this is my message.
We are responsible for our own spiritual growth because spiritual treasures do not change daily!
That is their real value!
Till next time!
George

Know-How of English Pronunciation.

In my latest message I shared with you some ideas about three basic elements for speaking or starting to speak English
Now let's look critically at the fourth aspect of speaking English which is:
Pronunciation
Who has never been troubled by the way English speakers talk to themselves and to their listeners around the world.
Learners of English are amazed by the variety of sounds produced by the speakers from different parts of the English -speaking world.
But, do you ever think that even in such a small territoriality country as the Czech Republic dwellers also enjoy a variety of accents and dialects?
They can easily recognize a native of Moravia (Eastern part ) or villagers next to the town of Cheb on the West as soon as the moravians or chebians address to the natives of Prague.
 OK, what to do with the English pronunciation? Which one to accept as the right one for you?
Let me ask you a simple question:
"Have you noticed that when you spend a lot of time in the company of someone who often repeats some words and expressions, you unconsciously, begin using the same phrases after your communicative partner?"
 Yes, you got it!
Whatever the way you pronounce the words in English, as soon as you spend some time in the English-speaking environment, you will automatically imitate the accent of people around you.
I have met Czech speakers of English who adopted Irish pronunciation after a couple of months spent in Ireland or American accent during their two-months stay in LA.
What if you have no .... to live/work in an English-speaking country?
Good question!
Find out on the Internet the speakers you enjoy listening and imitate them!    
Just that simple!
The best way, however, is to use the dictionaries where the words are pronounced (Google-translator, for example) and keep repeating the words!
Just get going!
And the final recommendation:
 The more you repeat the better you are at ANYTHING!
English is no exception!
So, repeat dozens of times words and phrases and you'll be fine!
Cheers
George

Three Basic Elements to Speak English

Dear Learners of English
In order to say a sentence in English, you should know the Three Basic Elements:

• The Tense.
• The Word order.
• The Vocabulary.

The Tense. 
If you want to explain something and to be understood, you should use a proper English grammar tense, one of the twelve tenses.
In fact the more educated you are the more tenses you are able to speak with.
But, for a start learn these four: three Simple and the Present Continuous Tenses. With these four you can say anything you need to describe past present and future events and future intentions (Present Continuous). This is a must, a necessary minimum.
Some even native speakers have hardly any ideas of the total number of the tenses or the names of the ones they use (tested and checked, trust me).

The Word Order.
Simple sentences in English have a strict word order for affirmative, interrogative and negative forms. Learn them and you'll be safe til the moment you feel the impulse of getting ahead towards more complicated (advanced) English.

The Vocabulary.
Record your native command of the language during the day, fix the words you use for daily life situations, be amazed by a limited amount of your vocabulary and make a list of the same words in English.
Learn them and you'll be happy till the instant you have upgraded yourself mentally to the level when you started speaking a more sophisticated native language. This will inevitably lead you to a better English performance desired.

Pronunciation???
It's the talk of the next post.
Till then,
Bye-bye
George

Giving vs Getting

Having filled in the gas into my car, I went to pay for the gas 391 Czech crowns with the intention of giving 9 czk to the cashier.
It was Friday and I felt I could do something nice.
I took of the pocket 500 czk and boldly said to the woman behind the counter:
"Keep the change,"
clearly understanding that 9 czk wouldn't be to much of a loss to me.
The woman behind the counter did as she was asked.
Pleased with myself I left the gas station.
How terrified I was when I after 5 minutes, realized that instead of nine czk I had given a 100 and nine!
I went on driving angry with myself for having made such a stupid mistake when I suddenly thought:
"If it happened, it must have happened!"
After such a self-calming observation I tried to leave this annoying thought and switch my mind into something else.
On the next day I went to a saxophone repairman to show him a borrowed instrument and to buy a new one and to my complete surprise, the serviceman repaired my old sax free ( a work worth of 800 czk) and then agreed to give me a discount of 675 czk for the new one!
Even without a calculator it was clear: the Lord compensated my loss 15 times more (800 czk + 675 czk )!!!
You know what?
When we hear theses stories from others we never believe them (at least I don't )
But how to not believe when this happens to you?
Cheers
George



  

Do You Use the verb ' to like ' correctly?

Hi Everyone
A few days ago, Dasha, one of my students asked me to explain the use of the verb to like.
The link below will take you to this short video lesson.
Enjoy
George
                                 http://www.youtu.be/1B3UTQHSJC0

Written Grammar Exercises: Pros and Cons.

                     Years of teaching English have brought me a great deal of interesting observations about the ways that adult learners use to improve their English speaking skills.
Doing written exercises is one of the most loved by a good number of students.
Why?
Because sets of written exercises are always included in all kinds of entrance tests and final exams.
Gone are the days when the examiners talked to their students trying to test their knowledge during a short conversation on a topic with asking questions and checking student's abilities to react adequately on various language tasks.
                     Patterns with correct answers have become a usual procedure for checking the students' choices for receiving a needed number of points for winning a lucky entrance/ passing ticket.
Such a method of learning English may work for passing tests of a high school, but
         will not work for developing your speaking skills.
               In my video lessons I give the basic rules of saying sentences in all tenses active and passive voice and offer drills to practice your speaking skills.
        Remember: speaking is developed only thru speaking, 
practicing, trying to create sentences, react on questions and asking all kinds of questions.  In short-being able to communicate in English.
Here's another video lesson of my video course :
Learning English Grammar Tenses.

Enjoy!
George
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMjGhS8ohlQ 

  

Listening is the Key to Success

                           Yesterday one of my students proudly showed me a series of exercises consisting of a number of sentences from the text with the questions to each sentence.
"I spent more than an hour doing these exercises," he said.
                       Having not received an immediate, seeming so obvious appreciation, he was waiting for my reaction. I knew, my reply would not please the student, but I felt obliged to damage his false theory of doing the work that lead to now-where. Proving the latter didn't take me long: I read the sentences and offered Honza without looking into his home work, to ask special questions.
He failed to do so. The paradox, however, was that almost all the questions had been written correctly!
Simply said, Honza followed so nicely tested by time and generations of students an old-fashioned method of doing written grammar exercises.

Dear learners of English,
Writing is the wrong path of learning that will never lead to speaking!
        Speaking is only a product of doing oral exercises!
"What on earth, do I have to do?!" my poor student exclaimed.
"Trust me," I replied.
"Watch my videos and do what you are supposed to do," was my final advice.
"Click the link below and follow the video instructions," I added.
By the way, you can do that too. Just click the following link.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJQj9i8_3A
 Wishing you the best of success
George Rusky

Dear Learners of English
After having learned and then taught English for more than half a century (that long!) I've come to a conclusion that speaking a foreign language is not about getting a number of explanations from your educator. BUT!
Here's a more effective way of fast and stable progress-the following formula:
Demonstration(trainer)
        ->brief instructions(trainer)
                 ->repeating (trainee)
                         ->correcting (trainer)                    
                                        ->practicing (trainee)
 The final result is an imitation of the tutor's performance.
Since I have found out this 'magic' formula, I have helped tens of students who agreed to accept my concept.
Now is the time for you to make a decision of speaking English following my instructions.
Video Lesson Two: Present Simple tense with the verb to have:
                     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX2mAXcd-40 

Happy Learning
George

The First Video Lesson

Dear Learners of English

             Before we go to the first video lesson, I want to share with you a few main ideas that lead me to recording this video course.

             The Learning English Grammar Tenses Video Course is a set of forty video lessons where I am giving you the basics of speaking about past, present and future with the help of all 12 English grammar tenses.

             The course consists of forty lessons that are divided into two groups: one group of lessons will teach you to make affirmative sentences, to ask yes/no and special questions and answer the questions.

              The other group is a set of drills for training the patterns you learned in the previous lessons.

              I haven’t included alternative (“Do you like this or that?”) and tag  ( It’s an interesting book, isn’t it?) questions in my lessons because in some languages these questions are not frequently used (Russian, for example)…

              The rest of the information about the tenses and how they are used in the language, you can read in your native language in the grammar books available in your book stores, libraries or on the Internet.

              Please, read everything in your native language and of your national English Language gurus. They know better than anyone else how to use the English language for expressing your thoughts and ideas that you want.

Later, when you become better practitioners of English you will get more instructions from English native speakers and read more monolingual textbooks.

             Today I am posting the first video lesson where I’m giving you the basic formulas of using the verb to be in affirmative sentences and Yes/No and special questions.

Enjoy the video lesson and remember:

                             Repetition is the Mother of learning.

So, learn the patterns and practice them as often as you can.

Happy Learning

George
           http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqzXMWhB8Kw

Happy New Year,
Dear Learners of English!
 May all you dreams of speaking good English come true in 2013!

The end of 2012 was very hard to me: I had to finish my
Learning English Grammar Tenses DVD before Christmas.
Today I am offering you the first video lesson that I had included in the DVD.
I hope you will find these materials useful and practical.
Happy Learning in 2013!
George
Video lesson: Introduction into English Grammar tenses.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haOLli7n5qs

How You Can Turn Listening Into a Powerful Tool to Speak Better English.

Dear learners of English
They say that even before the birth, a baby hears when their parents talk to her.
Then when the baby appears into the world she spends a year or more to turn her listening skills into the first shy efforts to produce sounds and short phrases.
Later, as a child grows her skills of listening and speaking grow with her.
This philosophy very often brings a lot of educators to a false, in my opinion, concept of learning English as a second or a foreign language in the way children do.
This approach finds a lot of resistance among adult students, first of all.
Why?
       Adults do not desire to play kids’ games and repeat childish sentences with which children start speaking. I tried this ‘modern’ method a few times and always failed because my university graduates with serious positions in their companies refused to learn English of ‘cats and dogs’ and always tried to say something more sophisticated, normally related to their business duties.

Now, a lot of speculations go around the best way of listening in order to boost speaking.
I believe that listening develops first of all listening.
Here what a lot of educators say: “Listen as much as you can!”
Great. What if I listen to Chinese 5 hours a day without knowing a word of the language?
Will it help me to start speaking Chinese?
In fact, after a week I will possibly be able to repeat most common words of the languages without knowing what they mean in the language I know from the moment I spoke to my parents.
That is why I stand on the position that if you want to improve your English, listening must be a very active process with a strict plan of exercises and desirably under control of an educator.

Here’s the program of listening with the description of exercises and drills that will ultimately guide both a student and an instructor to a desirable result of speaking better English.(Taken from my report: How to improve your English. Fast and easy methods.)

Listening. 
A student listens to the whole text and tries to understand it without looking into the text.
In case she understands the text completely, she has to go to the element of the training on this stage.
If the student doesn’t understand the recording, she can read the text and find out the meaning of the unknown words and then to listen to the text again.
The main task of this element is to hear and understand all the words in the text.
I believe is important to hear all the words in the text, not only to catch the idea of the recording and answer true-false questions.
Why is it necessary to understand every word said?
The way native speakers in various countries pronounce the words in the same sentence may sound differently from the way our instructors pronounce them or we do.
That’s the reason we don’t understand native speakers of English when we hear how they speak. With movies it is even worse.
Yet, when we read the text of the conversation we have just heard, we understand everything.
That’s why we need to compare the written text to what speakers ‘make out’ of it when they speak, especially when we have no chances to ask a speaker to articulate, repeat the phrase or say the same phrase slowly.
I believe listening itself serves us less effectively than when we listen and repeat and check whether we understand correctly what has been said.

How to do so.
• Listen to the passage and try to understand what is said.
• Listen again, this time sentence by sentence.
• Repeat what the speaker says and try to understand the phrase completely.
• Check your understanding with the written text.
If you understand the phrases of the text in the way they are written and pronounced, well done!
If not, try again until you reach the point of complete understanding.
I know it seems like a lot of work and, not too creative and much fun…
                  But if you want to be a champion, that’s one of the ways to the top!

  As for the textbook and recordings, feel free to choose the one on your level of the language expertise.
Try to avoid too much of a challenge, as instead of even slow progress, you may get the feeling that you don’t go forward at all.

At this moment I would like to warn you of asking a language expert for help.
You may find the one who doesn’t accept my method and will try to offer her methods of teaching. In short, do it yourself, follow your intuition.
And remember. I do not promise ‘a rose garden’ to my followers as the most of teachers of English, especially native speakers of English do.
             The way how they learned to speak English does not suit us, for whom English is a second language.
Native speakers of English can educate only children who will learn the language in a similar way as they learned their mother tongue.
             For adults these methods may work only when they are in a community where only English is spoken, which is a rare case. At least for my adult students who always learn English thru their native language and always compare an English sentence to the same sentence in their language.
             Only non-native speakers, teachers of English know how to teach English, especially the ones who have not lived for years in English speaking countries.

Why?
Because the teacher usually says, that it is impossible to speak English without living abroad.(a very popular myth these days)
So, try to do all on your own. Following my instructions you will easily find what and how works for you better and you will start speaking good English even without living abroad.

            Another thing that may also happen as soon as you share your plan of studying with other teachers, they may accept your idea painfully: every teacher is fond of her ways of teaching.
Let me repeat that: I have met a good number of serious educators in various countries and of many nationalities.
Most of them had their individual concepts of teaching their students.
But, it’s not about how intelligent the teacher is, it is about how well you are able to speak after being taught by your teacher, right?
My mentor Brian Tracy often says:
“Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care”
In other words it is not enough to know the subject you teach, it is necessary to lead your student to the results she wants”
That’s the essence of the studying process as I understand it.

George