Natalia Tokar | Native-Like Fluency
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🌍 Native-Like fluency in English. Join the community of Practice and learn to learn.
https://nataliatokar.me/community
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"Be great in small ways.

Writing 100 words today doesn’t seem worthwhile when you see people publishing bestsellers.

Exercising for 10 minutes doesn’t seem valuable when you see world records posted on Instagram.

But winning the next 10 minutes is its own form of greatness.

People are so busy wishing for more time and better resources that they fail to make the most of the time and resources they have. Be great in small ways and you may be surprised by what you've achieved within a year or two."

James Clear
I am taking a new updated course on self-regulation tomorrow, and I wanted to thank those of you who chose to join me and practice together. I've always dreamed to create an enrironment of trust where there's no need to announce important ife events on social media, where It'd be enough to look at each other or call each other and say "Oh, wasn't it great! Do you remember how we did this?

It's about creating life together.

My most vivid memories about my best teachers take me to a cup of hot tea and a warm pie at their place. I was invited to be their guest, and it was an honor. I took long walks through the city with some teachers. I went running with others. We had tea, homemade cookies, and long conversations together, and those moments were probably my best lessons.

I will see you tomorrow.

If you want to learn more, click here http://collectivecreation.space/self-regulation
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Do you understand EVERY word of what Matthew McConaughey is saying?
Let me show you the exercise that I did today using this video. Check out Exercise #79 in the Community.
The FOCUS is: understanding fast connected speech + brevity. We're going to learn to explain a metaphor (It's a good one to use it in your future presentations in English 😉)

The exercise took me 15 min. You can follow my unedited process.


Come on board and practice with me. Create your own practice routine. There is always something to do in the community. There is novelty, variety, and JOY.

https://community.nataliatokar.me/c/exercises/exercise79
Your inner state is not something that happens to you.
It is what you experience in the process of doing something.

You have the absolute power to choose what activities you want to engage in.
You have the power to cultivate the inner state that YOU need.

If you want to learn to stay calm and focused when you need to give a speech or talk about yourself in a job interview in English, take good care of your inner state. Do not try to work on your inner state during an English class. Do this work before and after the class. You will use this skill in situations when you need to speak English, but you want to practice the skill when you do other things as you go through your day.

At first, it will take effort. When you start the practice, you will need certain triggers to get yourself into the right state: music, smells, clothing, light, etc... The more you practice, the fewer prompts you will need.
The reason why I’m speaking about the importance of inner state is that native-like fluency means confidence in SPONTANEOUS conversation.

We can’t prepare every single word that we’re going to say. But we can prepare ourselves to have the confidence to say the right words.
NEW schedule!
StoryCLUB and BookCLUB for international teenagers - every Tuesday at 19:00 MSK (GMT+3)
The meetings are free of charge.

We're inviting teenagers who love to read books and listen to good stories in English to join the weekly club meetings. Every session is 60 min long.

It doesn't matter what your first language is. All teenagers from all parts of the world, including bilinguial children, are welcome to join our group of story enthusiasts and practice better reading & speaking skills. Currently, we are all reading the same book, and you can absolutely join and dive into the dog mistery too! (the book is about a dog that was mysteriously killed) We're also learning to tell better stories in English.

During the last session, our club members presented about a Crab Nebula, a Double Slit Expreminent, and Prime Numbers! Now we all know more about physics:)

Here are the skills that we practice during our sessions:

1. Presentation skills in English
2. Structured storytelling
3. Reading out loud
4. Tone of voice and speech delivery
5. Understanding fiction characters
6. Expressing your opinion in English
7. Sharing ideas with others
8. Better reading skills (attentive reading, pronunciation, phonetics, stress etc)
9. Summarizing information


To join us, please send an email to natalia@upskillme.ru with a Subject Line "A club for teenagers"
Listen to this excerpt of 'The Deep Places' by Ross Douthat in preparation to join us this weekend for an opportunity to come together and read aloud to one another.

By reading out loud, we become more attuned to our delivery and our own feelings. When you read to others, you want to make sure they can hear how you feel about the text.

Native-Like Fluency is so much about feeling the language and the people who speak it.

The FOCUS of this practice:
- The rhythm of English (pauses, pitch, stress, volume, etc.)
- Strong verbs and adjectives
- Intonations
- Making sense of information
- Delivering ideas so others receive precisely what you intended to send
- Proper understanding (you can read the passage beautifully only if you truly understand it)

I encourage you to bring a sample of text that you love and allow others to experience the beauty that the page holds.
If you struggle to find a piece you would like to share, please let me know, as I can help you with suggestions.

I'll see you there!
The exact location will be sent to all the confirmed participants.
RSVP here: https://community.nataliatokar.me/c/calendar/reading-practice-sep18

PS - For the full audio clip (and many more) Penguin Random House on Soundcloud has a fantastic selection of audio clips available for a wide variety of books:
https://soundcloud.com/penguin-audio/the-deep-places-by-ross