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© Александр Чумаков, 2023
ISBN 978-5-0060-4260-5
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
INTRODUCTION
A lady said to me, «Your English is perfect.» It was when I happened to be in Istanbul one day. And she was an American, teaching English in one of the private schools of Istanbul. When she learned that I was Russian, she didn’t believe me. Her words were, «You are not kidding!» Then I told her that I was teaching English in Russia. She went, «This is a though thing to do. You must be proud of yourself. How did you learn English that well?» I was extremely happy to hear that from a native speaker, from an educated native speaker.
I said, «Let me tell you part of the story. Years ago, when I was in third grade, I couldn’t understand a word in English. But everything changed one day, when a new teacher of English appeared in our school. He inspired us. He motivated us. He believed in us. He became my English hero. I promised myself that I would speak English like he did. I started learning English every day. I started taking some extra classes, learning new things about English. I totally changed my attitude to English. And she said, «It was one of the days that turned your life around.» I smiled and said, «Yes, exactly.»
Now let me introduce myself to you. I am Alexander Chumakov, the author of this English course called «Boost up your English».
It is my sincere desire in this new book to help you do the same. It is my hope to help you start speaking English better than you are doing now. It is the purpose of this book to help you improve your English so that you can start speaking English the way you never did before. Here I am sharing ideas through stories. The stories that can not only help you speak English better, but also can help you become a better human being. And this is my ultimate goal, my final reason, my number one purpose in life.
You are now ready to speak English easily, freely and confidently. You are serious about speaking English better than you are doing now. Since you are looking at this page and since you are listening to my voice you are engaged in a sort of inquiry, in a question I assume. You are on the process of wanting to speak English better or else you are teasing yourself with some kind of flirtation with your desire to improve your English, which you are not serious about. But I assume maybe you are not serious about but sincere that you are ready to start speaking English the way you never did before. And on the way to becoming a better English speaker you meet a character called a guru, a teacher or a mentor. And what is the function of a guru, of a teacher or of a mentor? He is the man who looks at you in the eye and says, «Come off it. Stop it! I know who you are and what you want.»
So you come to the guru, the teacher and you say, «Sir, I have a problem. I am unhappy. I want to become a far better English speaker. I want to speak English the way I never did before. I want to know grammar better and write in English better. How can I do it?»
And the teacher looks at you and says, «Who are you? Who is asking the question? Why do you want to improve in English? Why you ask? Come off it.»
So what the teachers are doing is they are playing with you. They say, «We are going to put you through the mill.» They put you through different kinds of tests like: grammar tests to show you that grammar is difficult, it is very difficult and it is boring. They want to see if you really want to speak true, real and excellent English. And the reason they do that is simply that you won’t begin to work harder at your English until you feel you’ve paid the price for it.
And what they want of you is to pay the price. They want you to invest your time, your money and your energy but they cannot guarantee the final result, simply because no one can. But they say if you are dead serious about becoming a great English speaker, if you are ready to fight that procrastination, if you are willing to work harder at your gifts, at your talents, they will make a place for you. It means they will help you get what you want.
So the conclusion is you have to pay the price in order to get what you what, but it is not necessarily to be hard and difficult, but you have to invest your time, your money and your energy to get what you what. In your case, it is to speak English far better than you are doing now.
And from the Bible we know that «As you sow so shall you reap» It means if you put everything you have into everything you do, success will come to you. It always works. It never fails. And you know that from your own life experience. I am not preaching you and I am not teaching you how to live your life, what I am doing is I am reminding you of that. It is a reminding session; it is not a teaching one. Because when know better you do better. Now you are totally ready to take your arduous but exciting journey in order to boost up your English to start speaking English the way you never did before. With this book in your pocket you can be far better. You can be way better. You can be incomparably better.
I wish you good luck!
See you soon.
HOW TO USE THE COURSE
My dear friend! My congratulations! Welcome to Boost up your English.
Hello! This is Alex your English teacher. You are now ready to speak English easily, freely and confidently.
Here I am going to tell you what you should do to start speaking English easily, freely and confidently, the way you never did before.
How to use the Story
Each story, each set has several different lesson files. All lessons, in a Story, in a Set, have the same name. These lessons go together. Every day, you will listen to all the lessons in ONE Story, in ONE lesson SET (all the lessons go with the same name). You will listen to only one set for 7 days or more, but not less than 7 days or not less than one week.
This is very important. You remember that the motto of the course is “Repetition is the mother of a skill”
You will only improve your English quickly if you follow this method – one Story, one lesson set everyday – the same lessons set every day for 7 days (or more). Slower is better.
Now How to use texts:
1. First, try to only listen
Don’t use these text transcripts first. Try to listen to a story, a vocabulary lesson and a Mini-story, the POV stories and my Comments without the text. If you understand them, you don’t need the text – just continue to listen.
2. Use these text transcripts only when you do not understand something.
If you don’t understand part of a Story, vocabulary or a Mini-Story, the POV stories or my Comments read the text. You absolutely must go back and read what you do not understand. This is vitally important. This will help you identify vocabulary you might not understand from just listening. Use a dictionary, if necessary, to find unknown words. You will certainly begin to understand better and remember much better. O course, you remember: You can only remember things when you understand them!
3. Read and Listen at the same time, a few times
Once you know all of the words and phrases in a story, a vocabulary lesson and a Mini-Story, and all the other parts of the Story or set of the lessons, now you can listen and read at the same time. Do this a few times only. Every day focus more on answering the questions. Use your voice. I mean, answer the question in a loud voice. You absolutely must hear your voice!
4. Just listen again
Now you just listen to the Mini-story. Don’t read. You know the questions and the answers very well.
Do not focus on reading – focus on listening!
Put the text aside and only listen to the Mini-Stories. Only answer the questions. These text transcripts can help you, but don’t use them too much.
And of course, you have to listen to the POV lessons and my Comments and enjoy them. And do it as many days as you can, but not less than 7 days, not less than one week.
If you follow the system, you will certainly succeed!
Remember: listening is the key to speaking.
I wish you good luck and every success!
With love and respect,
Your English teacher,
Alex.
HOW I WRITE MY BOOKS
I’ve got stuff to do. I’ve got books to write. I’ve got journeys to take. Of course, to do all this, you have to be driven, committed to do this kind of research and make good, big books, like the course you are about to start. That is all well, but it also takes a price from the body.
When I go in and after I have done all my preparation and research and then I go to write. Certainly, preparation takes time. Preparation takes a lot of time. Frankly speaking, 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for 6 months or as long as the book takes. It is always new. It is always fresh. And you never know how long it is going to take you to do it.
Than I sit down and then I do nothing else but write. I like to keep it tight. I like to live with the book, with the course. I like to be deeply immersed, deeply involved in the stories, not to be distracted from them any ways. I just drop emails. I don’t take telephone calls. I don’t correspond with people. I totally there serving the book and living the stories. And that works best for me. And I think it works best for the stories and for the course.
And of course, in order to write better I learned from the best. Famous writers helped me enormously. Roselyn Brown, for example, once said, “Writing is a job. It is not a hobby. You don’t write the way you build a model airplane. You have to sit down and work, to schedule you time and stick to it”. Walker Perry said, “You’ve got to sit down and follow the schedule. Unless you do that, you won’t ever do anything” Earnest Hemingway said, “I rise at first light and I start by rereading everything I’ve written to the point I felt off”. And of course, Steven King says, “Don’t wait for the Muse. Don’t wait for inspiration. Your job is to make sure that the Muse knows where you are doing to be every day from 9 till 11”. This helped me to grow as a writer. I never wait for inspiration to come. I don’t wait for the Muse. I made it a rule, and now my job is to make sure that the Muse knows when I am going to be busy every day, for example, from 9 till noon or from 6 till 11. I sit down and begin to write even if I have no ideas what to write about. I make characters. I give them what they need and why they need it. I look behind my characters. I breathe lives into them and walk them through difficulties and guide them when it is necessary. And then inspiration comes. It always comes during work rather than before it.
Than starts revision. I revise it. I call my friend who is a fantastic English speaker, a native speaker, a teacher in University of Chicago. We go though the whole thing and we change it. It takes a lot of time. I read it aloud and he listens to me. He likes to say, “Say it again. I have to hear the melody of the sentences.” And if we like the way it sounds, we don’t correct it, but if we don’t we make changes. It changes things. ““I need to hear the music of the language. I need to hear the intonation” he likes to say. He makes great improvements. It’s always better. Then in the studio I make some changes as well. And then in teaching the students change, they change it because they live through the characters when they learn the stories. I get credits for all the improvements because I am the writer. Isn’t that nice?
When I finish the book I go and celebrate it. I think it is very important to celebrate your achievement: to give a party, to treat yourself with something nice, good and beautiful. I enjoy my success. It is a sign of maturity, I think.
And I want to you to know that I am grateful to everyone who helps me and ever helped me before. It’s my family, my mom, my friends and Jesus. I mean Jesus Christ. I love to say, “I love Jesus and Jesus loves me”. I am a strong believer that no one can do anything good without other people and without something that is bigger than you.
That’s it for now. See you next time!
WHY ARE MINI-STORIES SO POWERFUL?
Why are mini-stories that powerful?
Mini-stories are powerful because I deliberately use the most common verbs like: go, come, take, give, wish, run and there is so much repetition in these stories. And the questions come and again they should be very, very easy and very much comprehensible. So you answer the questions without thinking.
And you no longer deal with the story; you focus on the most common verbs we use in daily conversations.
What do you get from this? The same words, the same questions and you get the basic structures of the sentences with so much repetition.
Even if you start as a beginner it is first noisy and then with time it gets clearer and clearer to you and you feel more and more confident in what you are learning.
Some of the stories are easy, some of them are difficult. Why? It is because of our brain again.
The brain requires two things: repetition and novelty. Novelty it is not necessarily to be something new. It means when you learn something using a lot of repletion, you eventually get tired and bored and you need to give your brain a kind of break. It can help you develop the flexibility of brain.
If you stay with simple stories and never push yourself to harder stories, it is easier for you to get that boredom. But if you push yourself and make yourself learn something a little bit more difficult than you did before, your brain becomes more alert and more alive and you remember much better and faster so you learn better and speak better. That’s why mini-stories are so powerful.
WHY DO MY COURSES?
Why do my courses?
To know the answer ask yourself these questions:
– Do you get nervous when you need to speak English?
– Are you afraid of making mistakes every time when you need to speak English?
– Do you want to understand and to be understood when you speak English?
– Do you want to get automatic respect from people when you speak English?
If you answer «yes» to any of these questions, I go, "Boost up your English" is what you need!»
If you want to speak true, real and excellent English.
If you want to think in English, do my English course, which is called «Boost up your English» and I promise you will boost up your English. You will improve your English. You will elevate your English. You will start speaking English the way you never did before.
Now let me tell you what you learn in «Boost up your English» English Course.
There are 7 units and 3 months of audio lessons.
Each Unit, each story includes:
First: a crazy, funny, and stupid story.
These stories teach your brain:
– to understand English Grammar intuitively.
– to remember words with your ears, not with your eyes.
– to leave behind boring English lessons and
– to create new positive and strong emotions, every time when you speak English.
Eventually, these stories teach you:
– to stop being afraid of making mistakes.
– to stop translating from your language to English.
– to understand that English can be easy and fun.
Second: The vocabulary lesson.
With these vocabulary lessons your pronunciation gets better, your understanding gets better and your listening abilities grow faster. This is a bridge between the story and the mini-story lesson. This lesson will help you build that bridge. The vocabulary lesson also teaches you one very important thing that all native speakers do. What is it? It teaches you to paraphrase. In other words, it provides you with the synonyms you need to say it differently. It teaches you to use them correctly and to speak English accurately.
It gives you freedom.
Third: The mini-story lesson.
These mini-story lessons are the most powerful, the most important and the funnies ones. With the mini-story lessons you teach your brain English grammar intuitively, playfully like a child by answering easy and simple questions. Yes, grammar is boring. Yes, grammar is difficult. Yes, grammar is very difficult. But if the input is so interesting and so comprehensible you forget that you are listening to English. The world disappears around you. You enjoy the process. You acquire the language. Grammar takes care of itself.
Forth: The POV Lessons.
What do the POV lessons mean? POV Lesson. They mean the Points of View Lessons.
In this lesson I am telling the same story, but from a different point of view. I mean, I use different time-frame. Usually it is the Perfect Tense and the Future Tense.
Too many students try to go ahead. They want advanced material, advanced grammar, advanced vocabulary, and they say, «I already know the beginning stuff.» Well, you know it intellectually, but you don’t really know it deeply. And most students really need to go back and focus more on the core, the basic, the fundamental parts of English: simple sentences, the past tense, the present tense, the future, the perfect tense, the stuff we use every day in conversations, you need to master that.
That is why the motto of this course is «Repetition is the mother of a skill»
Fifth: My comments
In this lesson I am going to talk briefly about the story. I am going to say just a few sentences or maybe more in order to support the message of the story. I am going to philosophize just quickly say a few sentences about the story itself – just a very short summery of the story. And then I am going to give you my own ideas on the story or I am going to offer other people’s ideas that can help you understand the story much better. And of course, I am going to focus on the moral of the story. In other words, what the story can teach us and what we can learn from the story to improve not only as an English speaker but also as a human being. All this, I am sure, will help you get the main idea or ideas, the message of the story and of course, you will listen to English more, you will learn more and you will enjoy it more.
To stay committed to learning English, to remain curious about learning English and to maintain your motivation for learning English, I encourage you visit my YouTube channel which is English is easy and fun.
Here is the QR Code with the direct access to the channel. Just scan it with your phone’s camera and it will take you there. I am sure you will be enjoying it. See you soon.
WHY DO WE LEARN STORIES HERE?
Why do we learn stories here? That is a great question. You know, how much I love the “Why-questions”. Let me tell you why all my books, why all my English courses have stories and why the method I use when I teach English is called a story-telling method.
Story-telling is one of the best methods for learning foreign languages.
We, human beings, are storytelling creatures. Our brains love stories and we all learn from stories. Stories are vital. We convey our feelings, our mood, our energy and the truth with stories. We convey the mystery of the language. And most importantly, we learn English grammar intuitively like children do. That’s why stories.
I don’t mean, don’t learn Grammar. No. Grammar is important. I am saying that Grammar is difficult. Grammar is very difficult. Grammar is boring. It is hard to say anything interesting and comprehensible to people when teaching them languages and you have to focus on Grammar rules a lot.
Now let me share with you what one of the greatest language teachers has to say on language learning and language acquisition. His name is Stephen Krashen. I totally agree with him.
“There is a big difference between language learning and language acquisition. When you learn a language, for example, you learn English. You learn grammar rules, right? You learn all about the sentences and how words work together. And when you want to say something in English you make the sentence in your own language first, and then you drag out of your memory the words you need and put them into the sentence. That is painful. That is difficult. That is boring and it takes time.
When you acquire the language you understand what you hear. You can only acquire the language when you understand the language, you understand the message. The message has to be interesting and comprehensible. The message has to be compelling and understandable. Only when you are totally involved in the story, the world disappears around you. You forget that it is in another language. You acquire the language. Language acquisition happens.
I don’t mean, don’t learn Grammar. I don’t mean, if you study Grammar, go to jail. No, Grammar is important. I am saying that Grammar is difficult. Grammar is very difficult. Grammar is boring. It is really hard to say anything interesting and comprehensible to people when teaching them languages and you have to focus on Grammar rules a lot. What I have to do as a teacher is say things that are interesting, comprehensible, and then Grammar will take care of itself. And this is hard enough. All I need, as a teacher, is to make sure that you are paying attention and you are interested in what I am saying. It’s a good story. That is what you need. My job is to spread the story.”
Yes, Steven Krashen is absolutely correct and I cannot but agree with him.
It is very easy to give people input, information that is comprehensible, which means understandable, but not interesting. That is school.
It is very easy to give people input, information that is interesting, but not comprehensible, not understandable. That is the outside world.
Some teachers in Universities devote their lives to giving us input that is neither comprehensible nor interesting.
My job is to do both and that is hard. But this is the most important task of language teaching. The easy part is the theory: comprehensible and interesting. Fine! But tough, difficult part is how do you make input interesting and comprehensible? Not just interesting and understandable, but compelling. Compelling means extremely or very interesting. Compelling means so interesting you forget that it is in another language. That is the goal. That is why I sit down and create these compelling and comprehensible, interesting and understandable stories for you.
When you tell a story something remarkable happens: imagination flies and magic begins. What’s why stories.
By the way, there is a good and useful video on my YouTube Channel about the same topic. I am encouraging you to go and watch it. Here is the direct link there. Just scan the QR code and you will be there. Enjoy watching it.
MY JOURNEY
In this article, in this part of the book, I want to tell you about my interesting, exciting and adventurous journey, the time of my life, when I was an ordinary English teacher. After university, I got a job as an English teacher at a small school. I was very happy. And I said to my self, “Oh, my God, I have a job”. But soon I began to have a feeling that I wanted to become someone bigger that just an ordinary teacher of English in a small local school. I began to feel bored and everything began to look wretched to me. And then came a day that turned my life around. I learned about Oprah Winfrey and about her show with the same name “Oprah Winfrey Show”. This show literally revolutionized my life. It changed my life completely. The show that she had had for 25 years in the heart of America. The show that became a life-changing event for millions of people from more than 150 counties across the globe.