Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
All righty, good morning. Day or night, ladies and
gentlemen, it's been right abouta million years since the last
time I talked to you. Now for real, I forgot about
this podcast. It's been three years since last
time I posted something and I literally came across the page
(00:21):
and I noticed it has more than 2000 followers and just Spotify
my friends. This is frankly bonkers.
So I decided to revive this conversation of ours.
OK so every week on some random day of that week I will be
posting a little episode and this one as you notice titled
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How I Learned English till C2 Level and how you can too.
Now this may come as a an absolute surprise to you, but I
wasn't born speaking English. In fact, I was not born in the
United States or England or Australia or any other English
speaking country. No, no, no, no.
(01:06):
This relationship was fostered later.
In fact, let me tell you just a little bit how that happened.
And also, as you can hear how tospeak pretty good English.
So maybe then if you do what I do, you can also speak pretty
good English. So I don't know.
Now here is the story. My mother, she is Ukrainian, a
beautiful Ukrainian woman, and my father unfortunately died
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many years ago when I was 20 years old.
But he's Russian. But I wasn't born in Russia, and
I was not born in Ukraine. I in fact was born in the third
country called Kazakhstan. Funny thing about that country,
literally just a few years before I was born in it, that
country didn't even exist honestly.
But that does not matter. My first language is in fact
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Russian. That's how that's how it came to
be, frankly speaking. But then, you know, also growing
up in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Well, basically I was five yearsold in the year 2000.
And as you can imagine, that wasa beautiful time of a gorgeous
American movies. American lifestyle was so
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gorgeous and beautiful. Big, beautiful American cars.
American movies showed richness,opulence, this American way of
life. Live in a house with a green
lawn, you know, and the music, everything was so good about it.
So of course I was hooked, just like probably you were.
I can't imagine any other country in the world had
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anything even remotely as good as United States did.
So of course I always liked it, but I never really wanted to
move to the United States just yet.
That happened when I finished myhigh school.
I went to university. So from Kazakhstan I moved to
Russia to university for, for obvious reasons, of course,
because Kazakhstan is an Asian Muslim country and I'm none of
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those things. So what happened is American
University from Mississippi sentfive students on a Christian
mission trip to that little cityof mine in Russia.
So this amazing student, just the same age as I was with my
girlfriend, they come around andthey offered to go on a camp.
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And that was actually 2nd of January right after New Year and
which I spent with my parents atthe time in Kazakhstan.
So me and my girlfriend, we justdrop anything, everything and
everyone. On 1st of January, right after
celebration, we go straight across the border to Orinberg,
this little city in Russia. We board the bus of this new
friends of ours and we go about 6 hours of driving actually to
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beautiful snow, how would you call it?
Like a ski camp was 5 days and let me just tell you, we have
not slept a single night during that camp.
How great it was, and we were not drinking, nothing like that.
That was, in fact, a religious trip.
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As I told you, they were belonging to a church, and they
were there to promote traditional values and talk
about those beautiful things. Well, of course, for us kids,
that didn't matter that much because we were playing games,
singing songs, dancing, going skiing, you know, playing
snowballs. I was so good at that time.
Right after that camp I was basically crying.
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There's three boys and two girlsor maybe 2 boys, 3 girls,
something like that I'm not surebut it was names were Andrew,
Mary who has Brian and Lydia, 4 main names and they were also
their teachers. Anyway, amazing people that fell
in love with the way they were speaking.
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They were so open, they were smiling, they were not afraid to
show their emotions. And for me, that was so unusual.
It's just that you can be so free.
I understood that that is me. This is my personality, which I
was hiding myself somewhere. I always felt like an outsider
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before meeting them. And when I met them, I felt like
I truly belong. That's an amazing, beautiful,
gorgeous feeling. So anyway, right after that, I
go home. Actually, I don't go home, but I
do go to my dormitory and I justcry.
I can't forget about this beautiful experience.
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Honestly, guys, I decided that whatever it takes, I am somehow
going to United States. And let me remind you, my
English was not that good at thetime.
It was OK, it was decent, but itwas nowhere near as good as it
should be. Probably So, yeah, I found a
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program, it's called Work and Travel.
I was almost late, but I was just in time basically one day
and I would be late. So I pay a whole bunch of money.
And very fortunately my parents at that time could afford it was
basically like $3000 trip for summer.
And then at that time it's like basically like $6000 today.
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And well, even 3000 is still a lot of money.
So the, and at the time, my parents actually started to have
problems with my father specifically.
So that was definitely not a great time.
But my father, bless his soul, an amazing person.
He did everything he could. So I get what I want and then I
go, I go to get American visa. That was really fun.
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American Embassy was my first ever time actually set full of
American soil technically. It felt so different to
everything else I've seen. Very different layout, different
doors, different handles, different people, different
everything. And even diversity wise, you
know, different people like Asians, black Americans, white
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Americans, and all of them speakEnglish and behave in a similar
manner, but that looks so different.
That was new to me. So I go to America in July of
2014, yes, some years ago, and that time I was still not
speaking good English. I don't want to go into too many
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details here, but my first job was really cool was Taco Bell.
If you don't know what it is, it's basically like McDonald's
but for Mexican food. It's Mexican American food, I
guess you could say. It was really fun.
And obviously I didn't care about work.
No near as much as heading out and partying with my friends,
but in a good way. I'm not a party guy.
I don't drink too much, but but that summer was one of the best
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summers I've ever had in my entire life.
I come back to my country right after that and that said, I
decided not well, obviously I just finished the first year at
my university, so I couldn't just drop it and move to United
States or anything like that. And even legally there was not
exactly an opportunity to do that.
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I go second time second year, which was even better right
after. But probably you want to know
how I actually learned English. So no, it didn't happen the
first or second time. It was good enough to
communicate and enjoy the culture and everyone kind of
loved this flare of Russian as Ihad to, you know, to bring to
the table. But then, but then Saturday said
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no more. I'm learning English properly.
So how do I do that? I forced my girlfriend to speak
to me only in English. So basically answering your
question, immersion, immersion, immersion, the more you speak,
the more you learn and was very painful.
And my girlfriend, she didn't really want to to do that with
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me. It was really painful in to
translate all the time. You stop all the time, you can't
even express your emotions properly.
But then after a few months it became normal.
And then after a few more months, we started to see
progress and very good, solid progress.
And Long story short, has been seven years.
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And this woman is my wife right now.
My wife have five years, which is dated for two years before I
proposed to her. And it's not just we speak
English to each other. We speak English to our dog
even. Yes, I do have a poodle.
His name is Berlin, like the capital of Germany.
I know, I know what you're thinking there, but I guess I
could call him Brooklyn. That was our secondary name and
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if it was a girl, she would be Tokyo.
Anyway, we're to speak English to each other and I'll tell you
what, we are right now in Thailand and we circulate
between Thailand and Georgia. Georgia, the country.
I don't live currently in English country per SE, but as
you can hear, I did make myself learn some really solid proper
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English by immersing myself. That's one thing.
The most important thing is to have a person to talk to.
And by the way, one of the things I do right now is I also
teach English just in the evening, basically 2 hours a
day. So if you want, you know, to
hang out with me, play practice in English, you can do that.
I put link in description. But again, you don't have to.
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And I'm not trying to promote myself here.
I just enjoy our conversations. If you really want to talk to
me, just say hi. I'll put my Instagram in
description too, so you know, just come by and say hi.
So what it is I could you just chat in English if you want to
practice. So anyway, let's move on movies.
Of course you need to watch as many movies, as much YouTube as
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you can, only in English. And one extra tip I can give you
is to turn on the subtitles. Yeah, I know what you're
thinking there, but that's not it.
You turn them on and you read them out loud for 3/5 minutes.
You read them out loud. So, so you practice the
intonation, the speed, you practice the actual sound to
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make sure you sound like an American.
That's a very, very good trick. I promise it works.
So that's my big recommendation to you.
OK, now that's my story so far. If you have questions, you can
let me know in the comments. But you know, there's no
comments here in the podcast, soyou can just text Instagram or
something like that. But I'll give you some really
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cool first verbs you can learn based on the story.
First one pick up. Well, I picked up so many
expressions just from watching amovie.
You can pick up mean mean learn in that particular case.
And Speaking of the movies, I know everyone keeps recommending
Friends serious to watch. I'll give you another one.
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This one sounds a little bit strange, especially for you
guys, but I watched it with my wife.
It's called Sex and the City andguys, however weird.
First, it's actually really wellproduced.
Series is very high quality. First one was in 1998 but it
feels practically brand new, is so well done.
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It doesn't show his age and English.
The use there is also very very good.
It's high quality, proper Manhattan English, much better
than the English here in France,and much more natural to and
modern as well. So that's my recommendation.
Sex and the City, Watch it, enjoy it, and subtitles of
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without. That's a good proper series to
watch. But let's move on.
Next expression we've learned isto catch on, that means to start
understanding some. OK, but first I'll give you
example. My girlfriend nice struggles,
but after a few weeks English really started to catch on.
That's what I wish you guys to at certain point catch on
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certain English words and expressions and grammar move on,
get by. That means to survive or to
manage. Let me give an example.
During my first work in travel, my English was terrible, which
was true actually, but somehow Icould buy ordering food and
talking to customers. Yeah, I got by once again
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survived. OK, we have two more open up
without the simple right to become more social, confident
and expressive. When I saw American student
smiling and talking so freely, Irealized I wanted to open up,
like to them. That's good, and I wish you to
open up. I hope you do have some good
friends you can open up too. We're social creatures after
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all, right? One more for you to learn.
Stick with something or stick with someone.
That means to keep doing something when it's really,
really hard and English is hard.I know it's actually much
simpler than many others like French or Japanese, but you
know, you got to have certain perseverance to learn it.
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So that's for the example of forcing myself to speak only
English was so painful, but I stuck with it.
That's how I got to C2, and that's how you can get to C2 as
well. Immerse yourself, focus yourself
on the language, talk to as manypeople as you can, maybe get
yourself an English tutor, but that's how you will learn
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English. OK, so that's right about it.
Five more words and I will let you go.
OK, Those were phrasal verbs. As we'll understand something
which is changing year after year.
English is evolving, of course. But now let's check out some
words you may need fluent. Well, my dream was to become
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fluent in English. That means to be able to speak
language very easily, beautifully and smoothly.
To be fluent, OK, all this works.
You'll find also in the description to this podcast, you
can just open it up. Well, if you're driving or
walking, don't stop just for that.
But you know, if you're sitting there, you can open it up and
take a look at that. Maybe not immersive how that
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means given the feeling of beingcompletely surrounded by or
involved in something. OK, or I can try that was an
immersive English experience. Sing or swim.
Well, that's true. Either you sing or you swim.
And let me just tell you the truth.
No one sings. Everyone learns how to swim.
Yeah. Three more words.
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Resilient. That's an adjective means to be
able to recover very quickly from difficulties.
Yeah. Learning language makes you
resilient because mistakes are part of the journey.
On the right about that. OK, clear.
Adapt to change in order to fit to new conditions.
I'd adapt fast when I arrived inthe United States with my broken
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English. Well, that's what you got to do.
You got to adapt. OK, one more transformative.
Causing a very big lasting change in someone's life, just
like English, was a transformative skill that
completely changed my opportunities.
And it will change your opportunities.
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It will affect your life in sucha big way you can't even
possibly imagine and promise you.
So anyway, boys and girls, why should I say girls and boys?
Why do we always say boys first,You know, But we're always
changing, so do we. Thank you guys and girls for
watching. And I'm of course unfortunate
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you're listening right now. And no, there is no video
version of this podcast. There might be in the future, I
don't know, but not for now. For now, I just really enjoy
talking like this to the microphone.
I hope you really enjoy listening to and maybe my
suggestions, You can use this podcast as a sleeping podcast.
You just set the timer on it or even don't send it up on it.
(16:59):
It's not such a long podcast. So turn it on, go to sleep and
let your brain absorb all this beautiful English knowledge.
So anyway, my name is Mark Larish and all my contacts
you'll find right in the description to this episode.
Maybe follow, subscribe to this podcast if you really like it.
(17:20):
I hope you do. Anyway, give me your suggestions
if you want to learn English from me directly.
And again, the link for that you'll find in the description.
So now you go and have a gorgeous, beautiful day.
Thank you for listening and goodbye.