Aww yeah! Today we have a very special lesson for you guys with the incredible dancer singer and English learner just likeyou, Shakira! Now this lesson is broken into two parts:first we will learn with three of Shakira's and most famous songs and thenwe will look at the five reasons why she speaks such fluent confident English andhow you can do it too. And if you want to get fluent confident English then this isthe perfect place to do it because every week we help you to understand fastspeaking natives without getting lost, without missing the jokes and without
subtitles just like Shreesha who says that thanks to our blog she can speak English fluently and you can too, just hit that the subscribe button and the bell down below so you don't miss any of our new lessons.
Hey would you like to understand nativesno matter how fast we speak? And wouldn't you like to be able to watch yourfavorite movies and series without the subtitles? Well our Fluent with Friends course can help you a ton in reaching your goal andhaving a lot of fun along the way. You will learn alongside the first twoseasons of the TV series Friends which various academic studies show is thebest series out there for learning English and you get PDF power lessons, vocabulary memorization software, access to our Fluency Circle Global Community and so much more and you can try it for free right now with our three-partmasterclass! What are you waiting for?
Just click up here or down in the description below to learn more and sign up! We look forward to meeting you inside. Hey if you like singing and dancing with Shakira then we have a ton more lessons teaching you English withdifferent songs and you can check that out by cleaning up here or down in thedescription below after you finish this lesson. So, as you may know, Shakira is from Colombia, which obviously means that is not a native English speaker even though if she kind of sounds like one so in this part of the lesson we're actually going to take a look at some different interviews with her to try tounder stand together the five keys to her English learning process because she really is living proof that with grit and effort it is possible to achieveyour goals learning English and speak fluently and confidently. So let's go! So as you will see in the following interview the first piece of adviceconsists of making English a part of your everyday life. Let's take a look at how Shakira did this. So Shakira had to learn English in order to reach her goals as a singer Before she couldb arely speak English at all but you can see that tying it to her passions ofsinging and songwriting she was able to make it a fun part of her everyday life.
It truly is amazing that she's able to write her own songs as an Englishlearner with such creative lyrics so how much time do you spend per day inEnglish? You can maximize this time by doing the things that you already lovedbut in English this could be writing a poem singing in the shower, listening toa podcast or even just watching a great TV show. Now second it's important toacknowledge that Shakira actually didn't do it all on her own when she decidedthat she was going to start producing music in Englishher manager got her a tutor. Now while you can learn a lot on your own for mostof us it will be impossible to actually get really fluent confident English without the assistance of a great teacher. Now the reason that this is soimportant is because at some point in our learning journey we hit a wall andwe get to a point where it's really difficult to advance any further on ourown and it gets really slow and really tedious, so a teacher is really great because they can actually provide you with feedback and they can actuallypoint out your errors and give you guidance so that you can overthen and furthermore a really great teacher will actually help you in achieving your goals. Now if you're interested in learning more on this topic then I highly recommend a podcast that we recently made which I'll linkdown in the description below and keep in mind that you don't necessarily haveto get a native teacher, in fact in some cases it's actually better to have someone who speaks your own language because that person has probably had to overcome a lot of the same difficulties that you're going to face on yourEnglish learning journey and furthermore Shakira wasn't afraid to ask for help:her friend Gloria Stefon helped to give her the confidence that she could be assuccessful in English as she was in Spanish so it's really crucial that yousurround yourself by people who support your dream.
Now, who do you have around you that actually supports your dream of learning Englishwhat I suggest is that you find a friend who is also learning English and thatyou hold each other accountable in other words you kind of tell each other yourgoals and you check in every week or every two weeks and you kind of makesure that you're on the right path to reach them another thing you couldactually try is actually speaking completely in English with this friendnow I know it's going to be really weird and awkward in the beginning butactually when you start to do this you will notice just huge changes in yourEnglish fluency. So third Shakira sees the language as a tool to connect with other people in fact after she learned English shedecided that she also wanted to learn other languages so she also speaksfluent Portuguese, Catalan, Italian and French.
So it's really important that likeShakira you see the language as a tool for connecting with different peoplefrom all around the world not as a boring subject that you have to studyand then on the other hand it's really useful when you learn a third languageto better understand the second language as well as the learning processin general. So I personally have learned six different languages and I find witheach new and I learned I understand all sorts of new things about the other onesand I get much more efficient in the language learning process. So for example, for youas an English Learner if you were to learn French you would immenselyincrease your vocabulary in English because so much of this vocabulary isderived from French this is terms like rendezvous, maladroit, c'est la vie thatwe also use in everyday English you just have to pronounce them like anAmerican not like in French. So, the fourth thing is that Shakira has areally big WHY for learning English that is a really huge purpose for why she'sdoing it now on the one hand she uses it to connect to other cultures and we canreally see this in her music she is truly a global citizen and beyond thisshe's using it to make a difference in the world and this is for example howshe's helping children.
Now for you also as an English Learner it is really important that you have a reallybig WHY for learning English and this is not just reaching English fluencythis should be something much more deeply rooted that motivates you throughthe difficult times that you're going to encounter on your journey to Englishfluency now having this big WHY will make you much more likely to be successful. Now if your WHY connects to something that you're passionate about that's evenbetter as we saw for Shakira in the beginning it was just being able towrite and sing her own music so I want to know what is your WHY for learningEnglish? Are you using it to make your own personal contribution to the world?In a recent podcast we talked all about different ways that you can find your WHYand use it as motivation to propel you towards English fluency, you will find thatalso down in the description below. Finally Shakira definitely has a growthmindset now if you have a growth mindset this means that you believe that yourabilities can be developed and is not just something that you're born with nowon the other hand if you have a fixed mindset you believe that basic qualitieslike intelligence and talent cannot be changed or developed. And as I showed you today this is exactly the case of Shakira she had a really big WHY, sheworked extremely hard, she never gave up she surrounded herself by the people whosupported her and she always believed that she could be better, and this isexactly why she succeeded so when it comes to learning English, do you have agrowth or a fixed mindset? How can you know?
Well, first of all when you hit adifficult period or you feel like you can't do something what do you tellyourself what do you hear that voice in your head saying? Do you tell yourselfthat you can't because of where you live, because you can't travel to anenglish-speaking country, that you don't have enough money or maybe it's actuallysomething about you genetically that you just can't learn a language? Or do youtell yourself that you just have to work harder or maybe find a more creative wayor maybe ask someone for help! So Shakira is obviouslyvery hardworking and everything she sets her mind to and I hope that these fivelessons from her will help you to up your game learning English. Now this is actually the first lesson like this where weactually broke down what an English learner is doing to be successful, so ifyou would like more lessons like this where we actually take a celebrity andshow you how they learned English then please give us a like down below and ifyou have an idea of someone you'd like to learn with then just comment it andmaybe we'll make a lesson with them! So finally other than all the tips thatwe've given you today if you want to speak English more like Shakira a really great place to start is with our Fluent with Friends course. because it will give you someconfidence in your English you will learn the vocabulary that nativesreally use and you will learn all about American culture, you can check that outand now it's time to go beyond the classroom and live your English, aww yeah! Zootopia is a fantastic Disney animated movie and it actually features the voice and singing of Shakira! Zootopia is a unique place it's a crazy beautiful diverse citywhere we celebrate our differences.
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