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Obsessive Behavior - Commentary Lesson

Hi, welcome to the commentary for Obsessive Behavior. This is an interesting little Dear Abbey letter, quite short. In fact, you know, I was thinking about the different levels of our members. Some of you, most of you, are advanced learners. You have to be advanced, just to read my home page and my newsletter and understand it.

So most of you are advanced, probably Dear Abbey is pretty easy for you. But some of you are at a lower level. I would say probably an intermediate level. And for you, I think the Dear Abbey lessons are much better.

The article lessons, the main articles can be very difficult for some people, especially for intermediate level learners. And some of you have complained to me in fact, that “A.J. these articles are much too difficult for me”.

If that’s the case, if that’s true; I recommend focusing on the Dear Abbey lessons and the pronunciation lessons instead. They’re easier and they’re shorter. So even if it is a little bit difficult, there’s still not so much new language to learn, like the articles can possibly be.

So for the intermediate level members, I recommend focus on Dear Abbey. It’s great level for you. And for the advanced learners, I recommend also using Dear Abbey, but in a different way. You’ll still learn some new phrases, especially casual English phrases.

But you can also use it to really go deeply with some things that you may already know. Focus on the mini-stories and the point-of-view mini-stories and really get this to go deeply by listening again and again and again, many, many times.

You all know the past tense for example; however, when you speak, many of you may make mistakes with the past tense. You may use the present tense, when you should use the past.

I know many of my San Francisco’s students do this. Now if I give them a test, they will all do very well on the past tense. Yet when we actually speak, they don’t use it. What’s the problem here?

Well, the problem is “knowing and doing” are totally different. Knowing is a left brain activity. It’s an analytical activity; it means you analyze, you break it apart, you think about it. That’s one kind of knowledge.

But using a language, being able to speak English fluently is a different kind of knowledge. It’s more like playing a sport, okay? You can know about basketball, you can study basketball. It does not mean you can actually play basketball, right? Studying basketball and playing basketball are totally different.

Well it’s the same thing with English. Studying about English, learning the rules, conjugating verbs, taking tests. That is totally different than using English; speaking English fluently, understanding quickly, speaking quickly and correctly. Totally different than studying the grammar and taking the test.

This is why I think that obsessive test taking and obsessing about English in general is very, very bad. I have a lot of students in San Francisco, for example, who obsess about the TOEFL test. That’s why my little mini-story is kind of a joke, about those students. Not a mean joke, it’s a nice joke; but it’s true.

There are a lot of students like this. In Japan, oh my God, so many students like this. They’re focused on the TOEIC, or the TOEFL, or the university exam or a Grad school exam, but it’s always a test.

They, a lot of the people don’t seem to care about actually learning English and using it, or about countries that speak English, America or Australia or England. They are not interested in the cultures or the people or communication; it’s just this damn test.

And they think that if they focus on the test and they do well on the test, that means, “uh, now I can use English, now I can speak English”. And they’re always very shocked that even if they get a good score on the test, when they actually try to understand Americans for example, they can’t. They can’t.

So many students come here to San Francisco. They have a good TOEFL exam. They go on to the street, and they, someone chats with them, talks with them at a bus stop. And they’re confused, and they don’t know what they’re saying, and when they try to talk, they speak very slowly, they can’t remember.

They’re trying to conjugate verbs and translate. Their pronunciation is terrible. And Americans don’t understand them. They try to say something and Americans are confused; “What? Huh? What? Huh?”

And that’s a terrible feeling. I know, I, I had that feeling in Thailand. I would try to use Thai, people could not understand me. I became very upset and frustrated.

So you have to separate these ideas. They’re different. This idea of studying English, learning the rules, memorizing the grammar and taking tests. That’s one thing. And then the other thing is speaking English fluently, using it correctly, knowing the grammar deep down.

Feeling what is correct, feeling, not knowing, feeling when something sounds correct and when it sounds wrong. Speaking with good pronunciation, speaking without translating. Now that it is a different kind of knowledge. It’s a skill.

And they don’t mix very much, the test taking, analyzing, memorizing part; it’s good if you want to get a PHD and talk about English in your own language. But it’s not very good if you actually want to use English. So you’ve got to focus on using English. And if you want to use English well, just do not obsess about tests.

The students who obsess about the TOEFL exam, for example, they’re always my worst students. I mean %95 of the time, when I have a student who is obsessed about… obsessed is kind of the emotion. Or I can use it as a verb “to obsess”.

So if I have a student who obsesses, using it as a verb, who obsesses about the TOEFL exam, for example; they’re, I know they’re probably going to be quite low. And I also know they’re going to learn very slowly.

Because if they obsess about the test, that’s all they will focus on. And when they obsess about the test, it makes them use different kinds of study methods. What do they do? Well they study grammar, so much grammar, grammar books, grammar books, grammar books.

What else do they do? They go buy those TOEFL test books and they take practice TOEFL test again and again and again. And that’s all they do. And that’s not natural English, and it’s a terrible way to learn a language, in general, any language.

So in fact, their TOEFL scores do not improve a lot. Their general speaking ability does not improve at all, usually. And then what else happens?

I have another person in my class who is just really interested in American culture. They really like being here and they really want to meet people and they’re excited. And “Wow English is interesting!” and “Oh, I love English movies!” and “Oh, American books are really kind of cool!” and oh, they like certain movies and music and culture and blah, blah, blah.

Those people learn very quickly. They learn fast. Why? Well, number 1: they’re listening a lot. They’re listening to American movies all the time. They’re making American friends, so they’re listening to Americans speak English, constantly.

These people usually study on their own in a different way. They listen to podcast. They listen to these kinds of lessons on Effortless English. They listen to TV shows. That’s how they study.

The funny thing is that these people also improve on their TOEFL exams, and they improve faster than the people who are obsessed with the TOEFL. And that makes the TOEFL people so frustrated and angry sometimes, right?

Here they are, they’re studying the TOEFL exam, they’re focused on the TOEFL, they’re obsessed with the TOEFL… TOEFL, TOEFL, TOEFL. And somebody else is having fun. And the person who has fun improves faster and they get a better TOEFL score.

And uh, they get so obsessed, some of these students. And they come to me, “A.J. Oh, my TOEFL, I took it again and it didn’t improve very much. Why am I not getting better? And Seiko over here, she’s having fun and making friends and just listening to movies and podcast. And she did better than me. I don’t understand.”

And then I tell them, well, you know, I try to explain the Effortless English method. I try to explain research. But unfortunately these students, they obsess so much, they’re so obsessed with the exam. They can’t hear me. It’s frustrating for me.

I try to tell them, you know, “Please study in a different way, learn in a different way. You will have more fun, your speaking will improve, and you’ll even do better on the TOEFL exam than you are now”.

But they don’t listen. I mean, the students who are really obsessed about the exams, they will not listen. It’s like a, it’s like a mental disease; I don’t know, it’s kind of like some kind of craziness.

They’re so obsessed, it’s all they can think about. So I tell them, “try the other method. Try Seiko’s method, it’s working for her”. But they won’t listen. They’ll say “Oh, OK, OK.”

And the next day I see them, they have their TOEFL exam book and they’re studying the grammar again. And then two months later, they take the TOEFL exam, “Uh, no, I didn’t improve very much. Oh.” They come back to me. “A.J., What should I do?” It’s the same conversation every time.

I have this one student whose Korean, who has been doing this for over one year. Over one year, obsessed with the TOEFL exam. Takes the test, does not improve enough, comes back to me, complains, “A.J. my TOEFL’s not good enough. What should I do?”

Every time I tell her “Well, you should listen to podcast, you should read interesting books that you like for fun”, you know, all the Effortless English methods that you know, I tell her, “Do this. It will help you. Trust me.” And every time she says “Aha, aha”.

And then she ignores me and she uses the same method again. I see her using her TOEFL book, studying grammar. And then two months later, she takes the TOEFL test again, and then “Oh, God, A.J., my TOEFL test didn’t go up enough. I didn’t improve very much. what should I do? What’s wrong?”

I mean, again and again. This has been happening for one year and she still will not change her methods. And this is really a form of insanity, of craziness.

When you keep doing the same thing and you keep getting a bad result and you keep using the same method and you think maybe this time, my result will be different. But again you get the same result. It’s a kind of craziness. And I don’t know why, but these exams, these tests can sometimes make people crazy like this.

So my advice to you, if you need the TOEFL exam; you know, it’s Ok, some of you need it. Some of you want to study Grad school in America, for example. That’s fine, nothing wrong with that. But don’t obsess about the test. It will hurt you. You will learn more slowly, if you do that.

Use the Effortless English methods. I guarantee, you will learn faster than people who are taking TOEFL classes and studying TOEFL books. Your TOEFL scores will improve better and more and faster than the people who are studying the TOEFL test.

I promise you. This is not just my opinion, there’s a lot of research about this. The people who focus on the test actually do worse on the test. The people who use effortless methods also do better on tests like the TOEFL exam or the TOEIC.

So, you know, you have more fun; you learn faster; you do better on the test; your pronunciation is better; you become more fluent; everything is better if you use an effortless system.

So don’t obsess about these tests, please. Put your TOEFL books to the side, put away your grammar books, use an effortless method and you will do much better.

Alright, there’s another pep talk for today, I guess. That’s the end of the commentary for Obsessive Behavior. I’ll see you on the next lesson. Bye, bye.