My name's Tony and I'm from England and

I'm an English teacher in Japan

So many things to talk about today

so let's go straight to the whiteboard

So, here's the last lesson I showed you about greetings

All of these greetings simply mean *Japanese translation

and like I said in the last lesson, the answer to all

of these is "Good, thanks. You?"

Or in America...

If you haven't seen this lesson yet, please have a look

there is a link underneath this video

So, these greetings can be used for a quick greeting

there's no conversation expected

and for these situations,

this question and answer combination is perfect

But there is another situation,

a situation where you're expected to

have a conversation

This conversation can also be seen a lot

in your English classes

So, in these situations, the same question here

is absolutely fine

You can use these questions here in this situation too

But what about the answers here?

If we stick with "Good, thanks. You?" will it work?

Well, that didn't go very well!

The conversation just went round in circles

Because we have this "you?" in there

there's no way a conversation can ever actually begin

So, lets take out this "you?"

We're expected to have a conversation here so

you simply have to say something, anything, to let the

conversation begin

But how? English is really difficult, right?

Yes, but there is an order and a pattern

Starting with a subject is very important

I'm always telling my students to remember to say

the subject. Usually it's a person

OK, next type of word. You need a verb

A verb is something you do with your body

In this example, we're talking about recent events so

we need to use past tense

For example..

OK, after this we need a noun

The name of a thing or a person

Put (very) simply, use a noun here

And finally we can add a time

Again, we're talking about a past event here so

you need to tell the person when all this happened

We have our pattern, so let's try

*Japanese translation

*Japanese translation

We're following the pattern, everybody OK?

*Japanese translation

Nice. We have our pattern, we have our structure

Person, verb, noun, time..

Person, verb, noun, time..

So, let's apply this to the face to face situation

from before

What's going to happen?

I have to say something

OK, we finally started and had a conversation

It was a strange conversation but

the reason the conversation started was because

"blue Tony" found something to say and just said it

In actual fact, any one of those words flying around

his head would have been absolutely fine

"Work" - Perfect. You can say so much here

Seriously, anything is ok,

but please, just say something

And do NOT worry about making mistakes

Making mistakes is NEVER a bad thing

In fact, it's a very very good thing

When you make a mistake you give yourself

a chance to learn.

Firstly, English is just a tool for communication

if you can get the other person to understand what you're trying to say,

mission accomplished

My Japanese in this video is far from perfect.

I'm not using as much honorific Japanese as I should

my intonation isn't great,

my vocabulary and grammar could all be much better,

but if you're sat there and you're understanding me

isn't that enough?

Just imagine NOT being scared of making mistakes

Imagine actually wanting to make mistakes

You'd get better really quickly, right?

Don't think "I don't want to make any mistakes today",

try thinking "I want to make so many mistakes today"

"so many!"

10 mistakes

20 mistakes

30 mistakes

mmm!

Go for it! Please, make mistakes

Also, don't worry.

While you're speaking English, Batman will not jump

out and scare you

I guarantee it

OK, so next time let's have a look

at actually "how" to study English

Important study methods

I've been Tony

If you want to speak English,

I'm always right by your side.

GOOD LUCK!

GOOD LUCK!