How to work with the source?

Find the 15-min video explanation and the flow chart in the community of Practice under "Natalia's video tips".

This is one of the essential skills: working with the source and knowing what the source is.

So many non-native speakers ignore the source of information or fail to understand what information they can trust. Instead of checking in with the source, they start frantically looking for the correct answer inside their head. Only...it's never been there. It's impossible to find or remember what you don't know. The source of information (if your goal is native-like fluency) is people: educated native speakers of English who you want to learn from. You can choose who you want to learn from.

People are the source, and not a textbook, not a teacher, not a Youtuber who's busy monetizing content, and not your own fantasies about the language. So many learners get stuck in their own speaking habits because they are convinced that what they are doing is working. They are convinced that they must be able to memorize and recall the right answer at the right moment, but they never learn to understand what the "right" answer is, and how to tell the right answer from the wrong one.

My rule of thumb is this: I trust the information if I have found at least 10 examples in at least 10 credible sources.

People stop too early... They google a word, see a number ("This word has been used 2M times on the internet"), and they accept it as the ultimate truth, never attempting to check their understanding. People seem to be bored with the idea of learning and exploring. They just want to instantly know the answer, even though this strategy has never led them to big results. People memorize lists of words, forget them, try a different app to memorize them better, and eventually forget them again or fail to apply the knowledge in real-life conversations. Somehow "immediacy of response" is mistaken for "knowledge" in society. When people say nonsense in a confident manner and fast enough, they think they look like experts. The question is - to whom?

Check your source. Check in with the source. Learn self-correction and apply it daily. Watch the video in the community of practice. Daily practice happens in the community too.

How to learn fast?
More than half of all the mistakes that people make as they’re working on improving their English skills are not language mistakes, rather their stubborn old speaking habits.

People speak on autopilot never paying attention to their inner state or the immediate feedback that their conversation partner is giving them. People are consumed by the idea of being correct, excellent, impressive, convincing…and by outperforming others. They fail to see the person right in front of them. They forget that they speak to be heard and understood, which means they need to learn to hear and understand others too.

The question is not how to learn fast. Ask yourself instead “How can I get rid of the habits that no longer serve me fast?“

If you’re in the autopilot mode all the time, there’s no room for change. Achieving native-like fluency in English is about creating change, and not about consuming new fancy grammar rules or memorizing advanced vocabulary. Creating a change means replacing old behaviors with new personal norms. We can see the new only in the repetitive, meaning you have to keep going and change those behaviors every day instead of waiting for one big event or retreat that will change everything in you once and for all. If students simply fall out of love with their old speaking habits, they will immediately sound better in English. But they’re not aware of how they sound. When I stop them and give them back what they have just said, they start hearing themselves, and they immediately know how to self-correct. However, applying the knowledge at home and consciously stopping your autopilot when your coach is not around is hard work. But I love to do this work, and I know that I must keep doing it. We need to help adults to learn to self-regulate so that they can help their children self-regulate their emotions and persist to create a necessary change.
Attentiveness is the #1 skill in the system of exercises to achieve Native-like fluency for a reason. Without attentiveness, there’s no focus, no discipline, and no awareness.
To speak better, I need to let go of what doesn’t serve me any more.
In other words, I need to stop the behavior that’s holding me back, and it’s not negotiable. What has to stop has to stop.

https://youtu.be/DIMdezNhHUQ

Always work with the source. That’s exactly what I mean.

YouTubers (or anyone who can’t validate the claim and is not a credible source) should not be YOUR source of correct English. Always check in with the source.

https://soundcloud.com/natasha-tokar/improving-writing-skills-for-advanced-non-native-speaking-learners-make-writing-personal

A new episode is out! Soon on Apple Podcasts and wherever you get your podcast

Weak verbs vs strong verbs

There’s no hard and fast rule for deciding when a verb is weak or strong, so how can you pick them apart? Here are a few ways to tell whether you’re dealing with a weak or strong verb:

Strong verbs are more specific
A strong verb will be specific and evocative. It won’t make the reader fill in extra information to paint a more vivid picture—a strong verb will just paint that picture for the reader.

For example, if I write “John closed the door,” you don’t have a ton of information. You know John closed the door, but I haven’t indicated his mood or what else might be going on in the scene. ‘Closed’ here is a weak verb. If I wrote “John slammed the door,” we have a more clear picture of what’s going on. We get the idea that John is angry or upset.

Using a stronger verb gave us a more specific, detailed image of that scene.

Weak verbs tend to lead to wordiness
Because weak verbs don’t pull their weight, they force the author to make up for them. This will often result in authors adding lots of extra description or excessive punctuation to compensate for their weak verbs, when really they only need a stronger verb. Consider the following sentence:

John closed the door angrily and stomped away. “I hate you!”

‘Stomped’ is a pretty evocative verb, but it’s being deployed here because ‘closed’ isn’t pulling its weight. We wouldn’t need to tack on an extra clause to this sentence to suggest that John is angry if we used a stronger verb to begin with.

“John slammed the door. “I hate you!”

See how we get the same basic effect with fewer, more precise words?

Strong verbs aren’t necessarily big verbs
Weak verbs aren’t always short or simple verbs, and strong verbs aren’t always long and complicated verbs. Too much of either is a problem. Overloading your prose with multisyllabic verbs will make your prose feel tired and exhausting, while having a limited selection of short, simple verbs might make it feel two-dimensional.

Basically, you’ll have to take a look at the scene you’re writing and decide what sort of verb you need. In dialogue, for example, you almost never need anything other than “said.” A weak verb is probably best there. However, if you’re writing a dramatic chase sequence, you probably want to reach for something more evocative than “ran really fast.”

Weak verbs tend to require adverbs
A quick way to tell whether you’re using a weak verb is to check for adverbs. I’m not going to tell you that you’re not ever allowed to use adverbs, ever, but I am going to tell you that adverbs, more often than not, indicate a weak verb. Replacing the weak verb and the adverb with a stronger verb makes the prose crisper.

Let’s look at John again for another example:

John closed the door angrily.

Because ‘closed’ isn’t very evocative, we had to add ‘angrily’ to let the reader know what sort of mood is going on. Instead, though, we can swap out both the weak verb (closed) and the adverb (angrily):

John slammed the door.

Weak verbs tend to tell, not show
And, finally, a weak verb tends to tell the audience what’s going on instead of showing them.

Remember how adverbs have to let the reader know how the verb was meant to be used? This is what I mean. With a weak verb, you have to do more work explaining the overall vibe. A strong verb does it for you. Let’s look at a different example this time:

Sarah ran as fast as she could. She breathed heavily and looked into the treeline for a long time, hoping the attackers were gone.

We know what, technically, happened, but we don’t feel like we’re there. It feels like we’re being told about it from a friend instead of living it with Sarah. The weak verbs here are ‘ran,’ ‘breathed,’ and ‘looked.’ Let’s swap ‘em out.

Branches whipped Sarah’s legs and scratched her arms as she sprinted. Panting, she stared into the treeline, hoping the attackers were gone.

We could still use a little more transitioning between these two sentences, but see how just swapping out those verbs made it come to life?

I was talking to a student today, and we touched upon the importance of self-regulation.

We decided to define this concept so that we both know in which direction we're headed.

Here is how I define it:

Self-regulation is the ability to regulate yourself in the needed direction with the power of your conscious thought.
In other words, you can apply conscious effort to steer yourself in the wanted direction instead of drifting in the autopoilot mode.

We know:
- emotional self-regulation (balancing & harmonizing your own emotional state)
- physical self-regulation (applied to healing the physcial body)
- energy self-regulation (replenishing your energy, balancing your energy)
- self-regulation in learning (consciously regualting your effort, intensity, variety, focus, and routines to achieve the desired result)


Self-regulation involves collecting information (logical and intuitive), and then taking conscious action to steer yourself in the wanted direction.

What qualities must be trained for a person to master self-regulation on all levels:

LEVEL 1 - attentiveness/awareness (to self-regulate your learning)
LEVEL 2 - feeling (being able to listen and understand own emotions and use them as information, not as an excuse)
LEVEL 3 - self- discipline (without it you can't persist to create a lasting change)
LEVEL 4 - energy (without having enough energy all you have is your imagination, but have no real influence on yourself and your environment)


All these skills and levels can be trained at the same time. There is no wrong or right place to begin.

Self-regulation is not self-control. When you control something, you push it down. The direct meaning of the word "depression" by the way is to "push something down".

We don't want to push down our emotions. We want to learn to self-regulate our inner state and consciously replenish our energy levels.

I continue learning self-regulation with my teacher, and I'm attendig a workshop on self-regulating energy levels and emotions on Nov 12. If someone wants to join me, leave a comment or DM me. I'll help you register. The workshop will be in two langugaes: the teacher speaks Russian, and there will be consecutive interpreation into English.

Nov 12, 2022 (Saturday)
10 a.m. - 6 p.m. MSK (GMT+3)


If you live in the US or Canada and would like to attend, you might want to join a US group where the time slots are more convenient for you. Again, just leave a comment.

Managing and regulating your inner state is essential for self-mastery. Many people allow their emotions to consume them, and I choose to learn the opposite - creating conscious thought forms, owning my energy, and regulating my emotions.

A failure is a growth opportunity, and not a measure of your capabilities

A lot of non-native speakers want to learn more new words. They are so consumed by the idea of acquiring new, fancy, sophisticated, and more "advanced" vocabulary that they forget to check in with the source (meaning, with native speakers). Do native speakers say so? If yes, in what context? If no, what would sound more natural instead? When people insert "fancy" phrases from a fiction novel they're currently reading in their business conversations (hoping to impress everybody), they sound awkward.

Many students refuse to use simple words because they mistake "simple" for "primitive". Simple is good. Simple helps you to be understood. Simple gets people's attention. Just make sure it's not the predictable kind of simple. Our brain tends to autofill a sentence when it recognizes a phrase it has seen a million times before. That's also the reason why people don't listen carefully. They assume they already know what's going to be said...because it's being said exactly the same way ... again. Clichés are dangerous: they might sound new and "cool" to an English learner, but they actually sound overused and empty to a native speaker. A native speaker's brain immediately autofills when it sees/hears a familiar cliché, and it stops paying attention!

Learning new words is not enough. Learning to feel the language is what you want to achieve, and you can't achieve it by shuffling fancy flashcards in 10 different apps. If you want to learn to feel the language, start writing. You will quickly learn that to write better, you need to read better, and you need to read more. To read better, you need to comprehend faster. To comprehend faster, you need to think better. To learn to think in English better, you need self-discipline and an effective practice routine that has "developing cognitive skills in a foreign language" at its core. Learn to see more than just words. You need to see what mental image people are receiving when they listen to you or read your texts. If you overuse clichés, you don't sound any smarter. You are not sending any specific image, rather a generalization, which is not the smartest move if your goal is clarity in communication.

If you want you high standards to be met and have your texts edited and reviewed by a native speaking professional editor, join the Creative Writing Practice.

The task for Week 3 is to write a creative ABOUT page.
https://community.nataliatokar.me/c/calendar/creative-writing-2-0-352aef

This is a MUST-do exercise for everyone who's getting ready for a job interview in English, sells in English, and communicates with English-speaking customers.

Join today and save your seat at a Friday editing session.