Hello, everyone, I am the director of education at Easee Globe.

And I'm here today to talk to you about common things an English teacher might come across in Taiwan and how we solved it.

First, I would like to talk to you about grammar.

I know you don't like it.

English grammar's crazy.

WHY?

And I know you understand it.

But the problem is using it.

So, a couple of mistakes we see a lot.

No s's on verbs.

Did you know that "s" is our favorite letter?

We love the sound of s's.

Where are your s's?

Also, "-ed"

Chinese doesn't have past tense, but English does.

And we really need to hear that sound, or else it hurts my ears when you're talking.

I don't understand what you're saying.

Number 2, English grammar.

Yeah, we just talked about it, more?

I know!

So English grammar's really hard.

All of my students say "I want really long beautiful sentences!"

We don't talk like that.

Americans, we're lazy.

We use "S.", "V.", "O."

"subject", "verb", "object"

Who is doing the action?

What are they doing?

And what is the object of the action?

So, easy, "S.", "V.", "O."

Number 3, Common words.

So many students tell me they need so many words.

How many words are in Chinese?

How many words are in English?

Thousands and thousands.

You'll never learn them all.

But every day, we only use a few thousand words.

Three, maybe four, maybe five thousand words.

Grammar words, verbs, mostly.

After that, it's a bunch of nouns you'll never need.

So study the most common words.

Part number 4.

There are three or four different steps to learning a language that are critical.

Input.

You have to listen and read English to learn it.

But you also need output.

You have to say English to learn it.

And number 3, critically important is frequency.

Don't quit, keep going, keep going, keep going.

Another really important part at Easee Globe, as we take into consideration, is the difference between students' needs and students' wants.

Most students know what they want, but they don't understand what they need.

There is a real difference between needs and wants.

And what do I mean by this?

The student would come to you and say,"I want, as a student, business English.", "I want grammar.", "I want pronunciation."

I have this goal, and I'm gonna hire a teacher to walk me across a bridge.

But it doesn't work like that because the goal and the needs are the same.

It's more like building a building, like Taipei 101.

You have to build on it, layer by layer.

Fluency comes from frequency.

You have to get the input.

What can you do?

At home, you can read the newspaper in English.

You can listen to the news, BBC.

You can watch TV.

This is frequency.

There is also a process involved.

So, it's one layer by one layer.

You can't just say, "OK, I'm gonna build the bridge and then be better at English."

Because it doesn't work like that.

Also, you have to give me your opinion.

The output part.

When your teacher asks you a question, or when I ask a student a question, and they say, "yes.", they say "no".

That's not practicing.

That's not building fluency.

In the USA, when I ask my friend, "Hey, what do you think about Barack Obama?"

He's not going to say, "I don't know."

He's going to say, "I think this, this, this. Because, because, because..."

These are perfect opportunities to practice your English.

That's all I have for today, guys.

Thanks, and see us again.