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Welcome to the level up English podcast, the best place to come to practice the English language. Learn
about the British accent and culture. With me, your host, Michael Lavers. Hello, welcome back to the
podcast. Thank you for being here. I hope you're all having a fantastic week. At the moment I'm
currently melting in my little office here, because it's a very hot day in England, and I have to close the
window to record the podcast. So I might make it a shorter one today. We'll see but it's very hot and
sunny day. So hopefully I can finish this up and go for a walk. And if you listen to last week's episode, you
do know that I love hiking. If you missed that one, go back and check it out. There's a lot of good hiking
vocabulary there.

But today I'm going to be talking about problems and excuses that people make when it comes to
learning English, and why they are not relevant to be quite frank. But before we get to that, I've got a
few things to talk about. So first of all, I quickly want to mention Italki as I do every episode, and that is
because they are fantastic. So Italki is an online teacher database. So if you want to get a free $10, which
you can use for online English lessons with any teacher of your choice, there's probably thousands to
choose from. You can get those free $10 by going to my website, [Link]/free. So I've got
a new link for you. [Link]/free If you don't want to type that, which of course I
understand, you should be able to look across on your podcast app. And there will be a link in the
description of this podcast. If you have some time you want to improve your English, definitely consider
doing that. And it's also a great way to support me and the podcast and keep it going as well. Of course,
there's also the transcript. So if you want to read what I'm saying, while I'm saying it, and improve your
listening and vocabulary, then don't forget to check out the transcript which I always include in the show
notes as well.

And I have also a podcast review. So the review I'm reading today very short, but that's fine. I'm always
happy. It's a five star review from Angeio234567. And they said it helps me a lot. I like it so much. This
podcast helps me a lot to improve my English. So, thank you very much Angeio from Peru, That's very
kind of you. And thank you to everyone else who has been kind enough to leave me a podcast review, it
really does help get the word out and help more people hear about me. And finally, I would ask if you
haven't done so already, you might want to check out my website, brand new website level up English
dot school. So just type in [Link] into the search bar. And you'll see what I've got so far,
you've got a nice community building. And if you have any English questions, or anything you want to
talk about language related, cultural related, anything like that, we've got a nice community page. And
of course if you have more like technical questions about grammar learning techniques, is a place to ask
it in the community on level up English. So hope to see you there. At the moment on the website. We've
got free calls So we've got phrasal verbs training course, very important to have fluent English with
phrasal verbs. We've got an expressions course to teach you some really common English idioms. And
we've got free mini lessons free mini lessons. So many of you will know that I am sending out weekly
free email lessons. But the thing with email lessons is once you miss it, it's gone forever. So if you want
to catch up on the lessons I've sent in the past, those will all be in the free mini lessons. And I'll be
updating them every now and then. So if you want to find a great place to practice your English and
hopefully a nice community as well, then check out my website level up English, build your profile over
there, and let me know what you think. Okay, so the topic for today I'm going to call it no excuses not to
study

This is another thing I was thinking about several months ago, because I get a lot of messages from
people who want to learn English. But people often have the idea that English lessons will kind of come
to them like they want. It happened, but they don't really want to put in the work. And I know, listening
to the podcast are not like that, because you're all hard workers, because you're putting in the time and
you're listening to this podcast. I'm really passionate about helping people improve and learn, of course.
But of course, I cannot do the hard work for you. And in fact, nor can any teacher. So that's the thing
about language learning. There are no magic shortcuts. There's no it's not possible to become fluent in a
month, as many people will claim. And it does take hard work and commitment and that's very
important to understand. and hard work requires sacrifice. So this word sacrifice is very important. And
it means when you're giving up something to do something else. So whenever you do something in your
day in your life, it is a form of sacrifice. Because you're stopping something else that you could be doing.
It could be very, a very small sacrifice.

If you decide to study for 30 minutes in the morning, you are sacrificing perhaps a little bit more sleep,
or half an hour spent watching TV, something like that. On the more extreme end, you could be
sacrificing a chance to see your friends or even make new friends. And now I wouldn't necessarily
recommend that because it's important to have your social time. But the point is, everyone has the
same 24 hours in the day and we can allocate these 24 hours to our priorities. So I'm going to say it here,
it's not possible to get free lessons, you can have a free language exchange, but then you're paying with
your time you're paying with your time in that case. But if you want a lesson for a teacher, it will not be
free. So improving will require some kind of sacrifice. And this could be a sacrifice of time, sacrifice of
money or something else. But the great thing is that everyone can sacrifice something. So of course not
everyone can afford to pay for online lessons. It's just not possible.

But in that case, I'm sure those people have some time that they can sacrifice. For example, to have a
language exchange where you have to teach a bit of your language to but you're also learning English. If
you still feel like "You know, Michael this is great, but it doesn't apply to me." Or for some reason you
feel like you cannot study. Think carefully about your reasons why. So what excuses are you making for
yourself? So, when we talk about excuses, this is the kind of reason you say to yourself as to why you
cannot do something. So I'm going to talk about five of the most common reasons or excuses that
people make as to why they cannot study. One of the biggest ones is time. And this is something I feel
really strongly about because I've been here I've experienced this as well. So people say that I just don't
have enough time to study. And I always have a problem of this because we all have the same hours in
the day. Short, some of us have more demanding jobs. Some of us have big families. to look after. But
for the most part, we all have the same hours. And it just depends how you organise them. It's all about
priorities. So when you say, I don't have enough time, maybe I shouldn't say you because I don't think
maybe maybe you're not saying it. But when someone says, they don't have enough time. In other
words, they are saying, language is not my priority. And that might be fine. You know, maybe that's a
good thing, but you have to be honest with yourself. And for example, when I was a teenager, I really
wanted to learn to play the bass guitar. So I tried it for a few days. And I just didn't. I couldn't find the
time to practice and study. I couldn't find the time to get better at it. And at the time, I just said I don't
have time. But in hindsight means looking back now, I realised it just wasn't a priority.

I had schoolwork, I wanted to spend time with friends, play on my Xbox. Many more activities were
higher on my to do list than the guitar. And that was fine. I was happy with that, and I gave it up. And I
have no regrets to this day. So if you find yourself making this excuse, try going through every minute of
your day, and recording what you do each day for a week. I think you will be really surprised just how
much time you spend on YouTube or kind of doing nothing or wasting time. Again, I know this because I
have been in the situation. I use an app which I mentioned before on YouTube called life cycle. The life
cycle app it kind of monitors what you do in your day. So I know everything I do every day. I know where
I'm wasting my time and it's really surprised Sometimes just how much time I spend doing something
that isn't productive. Even if you can't get half an hour from one of your activities, why not take five
minutes of everything. If for example, you could reduce your TV time, or you know, bath time, whatever
you do by five minutes, then you could also reduce your walking time by five minutes. even get up five
minutes earlier.

So you have five minutes less sleep in five minutes is nothing in most areas, but that will add up to
perhaps half an hour, which you can use to study. Okay, I hope I made my point there was time. The
next area is of course money. This is the big one I started talking about today. So I don't have enough
money. I can't afford to learn English. Learning English is expensive. So of course money can help when
you have money. You can save time. Because you know, time is money as they say. If you have the
money, you can pay someone else to help you and save time. You know, for example, if you hire a
cleaner for your house, it's not necessary, but it will save you a lot of time cleaning is the same idea with
language. So money can definitely help, but it's not a tool necessary. So as I mentioned before, you can
find free language partners. It's really easy. So many people want to learn your language. So just have a
look and see who you can find. Or just get out there and see who you can talk to.

Especially if you live in a city, anywhere in the world. There's probably someone you can talk to in
English, even if they're not a native speaker. They don't have to be native. So let's say you live in Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia. I think reality is my most popular city. I have a lot of listeners there. So hello to you in
Riyadh, if you live in Riyadh, I think it's quite a big city. So there's probably some kind of restaurant or
establishment you can go to. And you can find someone who doesn't speak your language, which I guess
might be Arabic. And in that case, you can just speak English with them. Make a friend, practice your
English. And you can even talk to yourself, that does help a lot talking to yourself thinking to yourself in
English, watching TV, so many free resources online. It's definitely not necessary to use money, you can
definitely become fluent for free. That's a big misconception. You just have to be a bit creative and
maybe we'll be willing to put in a bit more time. The next excuse that people make is that I'm too old.
I'm too old to the language.

My brain is not young anymore, I cannot absorb information so easily. And there are a couple things that
I disagree with here. You know, I've had students in their 80s before, and that still just as motivated and
excited and passionate about language as the young people as people in their 20s. So age really is just a
number, the brain is still happy to learn at any age. And although it can be a bit morbid, a bit grim. No
one knows how long we've got left on the earth, to be honest. So being too old should not be an excuse.
And if you want a more practical benefit, I have heard studies that learning a language especially an
older age, can help delay diseases and problems of the mind such as dementia, and it keeps the brain
healthy is a really good thing to do. I would say

And I would say it's kind of a fallacy. It's not exactly true that children are the perfect language learners,
because adults are perfectly capable of learning a language. I've seen it happen many times before. It
doesn't really matter how old you are. So that's all I've got to say on that, really, but ages just a number,
don't worry about it. The next point is that I'm not good enough. I'm just not good enough. Maybe I'm
not. I'm not a natural language learner. It doesn't come to me naturally. So first of all, if you feel like
you're not good enough, that's of course why you should practice more. So many people make this
excuse like when they first start learning a language. I don't want to talk to anyone because I want to be
better before I talk to someone. But it's not gonna be so easy to get better, unless you put yourself out
there and start trying So you don't have to do this.

But I really enjoy talking to people very, very soon when I learn a language. For example, I start I started
learning Spanish a few years ago. And I had my first Spanish lesson maybe one week after I started
learning, I didn't really know much. But I was learning so much every lesson that I was really excited
about it. And the teacher was very patient. So it's never too early to start talking and practising. And it
might be true that some people are more naturally gifted in language learning. But that doesn't mean
you shouldn't try. So I am not gifted I've got a terrible memory. I can't remember why I did yesterday.
Language Learning does not come easily to me. But I would say is mostly about the passion. If you enjoy
it. It doesn't matter if you're good. You don't compare yourself to the progress of other people. It's just
your own progress that's important. So every single healthy person on the planet has the ability to learn
a language. I don't imagine many of you will think that's a good reason not to study because of course,
you're listening to the podcast, you're probably already studying.

But when you do doubt yourself, when you do feel bad about your own ability, just remember how far
you've come since the beginning, and think about how far you could get to if you don't give up. There's
no telling how far you could go. The last point, something I've mentioned before on the podcast, and
something I can relate to strongly, is I'm too shy. I'm just way too shy to learn a language and I hundred
percent know how this feels And I will be returning to this topic in the future. I think many people might
be surprised or they might not believe me when I say that I used to be shy. But even when I was 21-22, I
was incredibly shy. I was too scared to have a language exchange, I was too scared to meet anyone to
practice. So I just studied grammar. I just studied grammar alone at home on my own. I think I said the
same thing twice there. But I enjoyed it. It was a nice way to spend time with myself and something to
pass the time with. But I didn't make that much progress. And I would say shyness is not it doesn't have
to be who you are. So I used to identify with that label and think I am a shy person. But that doesn't
have to be the case.

Of course, if you're in introverted, that's fine, that's not a problem. But if you're shy, that implies that it's
holding you back, which is not a good thing I would say. So make baby baby steps, and you have to do
something scary. You have to get outside your comfort zone. And that is where you will grow. Even if
you're terrified to do something, just have a go, you know, organise a 15-minute language exchange or
15-minute lesson with a very friendly looking teacher, and they will be completely understanding and
tell them that you're shy and build up from there. And maybe next week, do 20 minutes, do something
like that. But you have to put some effort in and I promise, you can overcome your shyness. So there we
have it. Those are the five excuses that people often make time money, too old or too late. Not good
enough and too shy.

I hope I've given some good counter arguments for all of these excuses. And let me know what you think
I always love to hear your ideas as well. So I have now moved all of my podcast show notes over to my
new website. So it's all in one place now. So if you want to leave a comment, or view the Show Notes for
this episode, you can go to levelupenglish/school/podcast63. If you go there, you can leave a comment,
talk to me. Let me know what you think if you have any more ideas, or if you've experienced any of
these excuses yourself, and you can also leave a question for the podcast. So probably next week or
some sometime soon, I'm going to be answering some questions. I've received some audio questions.
And if you would like to leave a written question or an audio question, you can head over to the website
as well go to the podcast page, and I'll be a space for you to get your voice heard on the podcast by
thousands of people. So you can be a little bit famous for one day. But I'm gonna leave it there today. It
wasn't a shorter day expected. So I'm a bit you know, hot and melted now, but that's fine. Thank you so
much for listening. And I'll see you next week on the podcast. Have a great week. Bye bye.

You have been listening to the level up English podcast. If you would like to leave a question to be
answered on a future episode. Then please go to [Link]/podcast that's
[Link]/podcast. And I'll answer your question on a future episode. Thanks for listening