Don't know about you, but I'm getting ready for our meeting on Sunday!!!

My FOCUS, as I did this exercise, was flow & emphasis.

Of course, I paid attention to the thought chunks, pitch, stress, volume, intonation, pronunciation... This goes without saying. However, I wanted to do some deliberate work to practice emphasis, and I think this excerpt is perfect for this purpose.

I am happy to share this book with people who are planning to join the reading practice on Sunday! Who wants it?

What book are you bringing on Sunday?

P.S. If you're not in Moscow and you can't join the session in-person, you can always send your recording to me, and I'll make share that we all listen to it during our session. I will also be very happy to give you feedback in a voice message back.

You will find the links to listen to this track and practice you reading skills on my blog https://nataliatokar.me/blog/tpost/yfotjuf8g1-reading-practice-the-bodyguard-by-kather

To learn like me, you gotta work out like me, dress like me, think like me, eat like me, and be me…
Do you really want that?
I want for you to be you.

I did 1200 jumps today, 250 of which were double-unders. I know people who’d say “It’s a joke” because they do 2500 three times a week. And I know people who’ll say “That’s impossible” because the last time they used a jump rope was in kindergarten.
We all have different needs, different bodies, and different individual parameters. We need to respect them. However, we’re all very similar: we all have human bodies, we share similar thoughts and values, we’re inspired by similar goals. Respect both the similarities and the differences. Respect your own effort to live the best life for you.

To be able to concentrate like I do, you gotta be willing to do as many workouts as I do.
To practice like I do, you gotta have as many years of work behind you as I do, and this is simply impossible.
People always inspire me, but I don’t want to become them or copy their lives. People inspire me to become who I know I can become. They inspire me to transform some of my qualities that are detrimental, to learn to be more organised, to eat better, to self-regulate my processes, to think sharper, to find my style and my way.

The purpose of my work is to give everyone the power to organise their own learning, to build their own practice routine that will never feel like a “mundane routine”. If your goal is to improve your fluency, you gotta structure your practice around YOU, and not around a textbook or a program.
The methodology that I’ve created is beautiful because it gives the power back to the learner, and to learn is a very natural process. There should be nothing artificial about it. Take your effort seriously and start with a simple practice routine to improve just one thing. For example, give yourself a week to unlearn an annoying pronunciation mistake that you’ve had for years. If you need help with creating such a routine, raise a hand in the community of practice. Join and find tools to create a practice routine that will work for YOU.

A whole minute of double-unders

Watch this video - this is exactly what we will be practicing this Sunday. Come UNprepared:))
And we will be learning to find our focus in each new situation.

Register here https://community.nataliatokar.me/c/calendar/reading-practice-sep18

I did this exercise today. It's a great choice if your FOCUS is the rhythm of English, better pronunciation, better diction, and delivering good stories. The post is public. Join the practice here - https://cutt.ly/OVdw6KF

A new podcast episode about Grammar
https://nataliatokar.me/blog/tpost/ll1r5564n1-how-to-continuously-improve-your-grammar

Here is the book I'm currently working with. The book is available for active community members https://www.amazon.com/Improve-Your-Grammar-Essential-Macmillan/dp/1350933627

If you're wondering what "practice routine" means, how to build it, and why it matters - here is a playlist about it. You can save the video and watch them later. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLamiSctIL4ZTlbudZl3gd1psMERErFJUM

My process.
My progress.

I showed this to people who can’t draw, and they said “It’s beautiful”.

I showed this to professional artists and people who studied art, and they said “Well, it’s ok. It looks nice. You should work on light and shadows. Practice harder.”

If I hold myself to an impossibly high standard, I will always get disappointed in my own work.

Yes, it’s not perfect, but is it supposed to be perfect today? Can it be perfect today if I’ve been practicing for a little over a year?

It’s definitely better than what I drew last year. I can see that.

My message is that you, your personality, your interests, your joy, your motivations, and your results should be at the center of your practice routine.

Start small - one exercise a day.
One drawing a week.
Maybe one sketch a month. It’s still a practice routine. You choose the intensity of your practice.

If you want to improve your English fluency, start with one exercise a day.

Choose your exercises daily. Follow your inspiration, not someone else's plan for your progress. If you don’t live up to someone’s expectations about the progress you’re supposed to be making as you go through the textbook or the program, it’s so easy to conclude that something is wrong with you…or the program.

Follow your inspiration instead. It’s allowed. Develop self-discipline by following your inspiration daily.

Discipline is about accomplishing things. A sense of accomplishment always brings JOY. It always brings about the change that you want to see in yourself.

You can’t accomplish everything in one day or in one exercise. I can’t accomplish all the lessons on shadow and light after completing just one drawing lesson. But I can choose to do another drawing lesson tomorrow because the better it gets the better it can get.

Find endless inspiration for developing native-like fluency and dozens of creative exercises for advanced language learners in the community of practice. https://community.nataliatokar.me/c/how-things-work-here/how-to-use-the-community-and-where-to-begin

We are invited to ignore experience, instinct and intuition in favor of hard data in many areas of life, on the basis that the former is merely “feeling” while the latter has an objectivity that cannot be argued with. We have been led to think that “computable” knowledge is more reliable and trustworthy and less likely to deceive us than knowledge, which we derive from our own experiences of the world. Accordingly, we have attempted to rein in our senses, emotions and feelings. The rise of computing has both played into and reinforced this tendency. It is unfortunate that at the moment when artificial intelligence is dominating the headlines, our confidence in what is special about our own species’ intelligence is waning. Embodied knowledge is what separates us from the artificial intelligence that increasingly defines how our lives are lived—it is our competitive advantage. We should give more credit to the body as a resource for understanding the world. That means a more “sleeves rolled up” and engaged way of “learning by doing” rather than by rational detachment. The more actively we develop embodied knowledge, the better placed we will be to cope with uncertainty and make good decisions based on an empathetic understanding of the world. It is time to recognize that how we know, think, and feel emerges from the interactions between our minds, bodies, environments, and experiences. We should acknowledge and exploit the advantages that embodied knowledge gives us and rejoice in being human.

From The Power of Not Thinking by Simon Roberts.

Find the Book in the Community of Practice - Space "Book Library"

Read the full blog post here - https://nataliatokar.me/blog/tpost/z9sl5k30f1-you-dont-know-what-you-dont-know-reading