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Hello there. Kevin here, with another episode of the Feel Good English podcast, the podcast that helps you improve your English and your life.

Today, I have an interview with Drew Badger from englishanyone.com. Drew has been doing great things for English learners around the world. And today, he’s going to talk about his one most important language tip for you.

So, if you are trying to become a more confident, fluent English speaker, he will give you his advice on what is most important to become fluent faster.

He’s also going to talk about a book that has changed his life, and how you too can use the lessons from this book to change your life and English. The name of the book is called “The Richest Man in Babylon.”

The book has been around for a long time that has a very powerful lesson that can help you in your English learning. Drew will also talk about all the concepts he has on Youtube, which has been helping hundreds of thousands of English learners around the world become better from beginners to advanced, from children to grandmothers. So listen to the interview today and learn a bunch of great, valuable lessons.

By the way, this is the last month for you to become a member for free. Why would you want to become a Feel Good member? Well, Feel Good members get transcripts to all of the podcast episodes for free.

They get the past episodes and all of the future episodes, if you want to learn the content from the podcast episodes more deeply to help you memorize vocabulary permanently, use the words that you are learning in your own conversation, and become a member this month, August, you can become a member for free.

So after the episode, go over to feelgoodenglish.com, join us become a Feel Good member and become a badass English speaker.

Let’s get into the interview with myself and Drew.

The Interview

Hey, Feel Good audience. I’m here with Drew Badger from EnglishAnyone. How are you doing, Drew?

I’m doing alright. It’s a little bit choppy, though. Maybe the Internet connection on my hand isn’t so good, I don’t know… A choppy Internet connection. Let’s see if it gets less choppy. So, anyway, tell the audience where are you right now? Where do you live?

I live in a small part of Nagasaki, Japan, which is on the smaller southern island, so not as far South is Okinawa, but the main islands of Japan, and then Okinawa as well, but yeah. So, that’s where I live, and it’s not that from… I don’t know. Well, people might know Nagasaki because it’s famous from the bombings from World War II, but people still do live here and people are walking around just fine, and it’s a nice place to live.

So, how did you end up in Japan? You’re an American, right?

Yup. So, I’m from Chicago, and I ended up in Japan. Actually, I came here originally because I wanted to study Japanese gardening and I couldn’t get a visa to do that, so the only way to get over here was through teaching, and I did the JET Program, which is Japan Exchange in Teaching, and I came over here and I did not get to choose Nagasaki, I have actually originally chosen Kyoto, which is the traditional capital of Japan, or Hokkaido, which is the northern big island in Japan, and they were just like “Go over Nagasaki,” so that’s where I went.

Well. So then, of course, I have to ask. How did you get into Japanese gardening?

Well, I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but I think it was like a third or fourth–grade field trip. In Chicago, there’s a museum called The Museum of Science and Industry, and behind that, we have Osaka Gardens. So not the best example of a Japanese garden, but a pretty decent one and certainly different from what an American would typically build, and I went there and I think I was supposed to do some kind of assignment, but I just sat there and enjoyed the garden for the whole time, and I thought, “This is amazing. This is completely different from what I’m used to,” and I just started learning about Japanese aesthetic design, and so that’s interior, as well as gardening design, but that’s how I got interested in the first place.

Do you still work a lot with that? Now that you’re in Japan, do you have your own garden? Did you still pursue that hobby?

It’s kind of on hold at the moment. Actually, I have a bunch of plants, little bonsai, like the trees in little pots, but I think last year, the condominium complex that I live in, we had a lot of work done.

So, we have to take all of the plants and put them elsewhere, so people can g something that helped me a lot, was adding just one more thing when you try to speak: So, often, people have conversations, and you’ll be asked typically the same questions over and over again, like “Where are you from?” “What do you do?” and then people go on auto – pilot, where they say “I’m from Chicago…” “…and I do this.” Try to tell people to remove themselves from that auto – pilot situation instead of just saying “I’m Drew, I’m from Chicago…” say “I’m Drew, I’m from Chicago, and I like to play basketball,” and then you can say “I grew up from Chicago.

I like to play basketball, and I also enjoy Salsa dancing,” or whatever that happens to be, but with each time that you’re doing that, especially to people that work, maybe they have to do customer service or just recently talking with a young woman out here in Japan that actually works at a hotel, and she was saying “I don’t really have many opportunities to practice…” even though she has foreign customers that come through her hotel all the time.

I was saying “Wow,” like literally a fresh start each time a new person comes up to the front desk, you try saying something new, maybe you’d make a mistake, but who really cares, right? Because you’re (inaudible) people again, anyway.

So each time you get somebody new coming up to you, it’s a time to try to just say at least one more thing and try to change a little bit of something around that you normally say. So, the more you actively try to use the language that you have, it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to learn a lot of more words because fluency doesn’t mean like a knowledge of a lot of words; it’s more of the ability to use the words that you have in just a fluent way, meaning like you can do it automatically. So, try to use the best piece of advice I can give you.

As you notice, that’s really cool, and then I hear a lot of teachers talking about it that way. I think it really simplifies the learning process, and one is people actually want to improve their speaking skills, they have to improve their speaking muscle by actually using it, but also not thinking that they have to learn so much new vocabulary and learn so many expressions and use phrasal verbs, all thousands of phrasal verbs and use all that stuff, which takes years to get. You know, I’m still learning English vocabulary. There’s words that I see, and when I’m reading books that are new to me, just adding little by little into your own speaking and using it slowly and adding it slowly also helps you use it correctly, right?

Yeah. Indeed. Absolutely. So, what I did was when I was first, I can at least give you the quick rundown of when I first came here, and I mean I was incredibly depressed because I couldn’t speak and I mean I’m being dropped in a new country. I have no friends over here, I wasn’t even in a place I’ve selected.

I’ve certainly come to enjoy Nagasaki now, but certainly, when I first came here, and I’m living in a rural area, and most of the people around me didn’t speak any English at all, I have maybe one teacher at the high school or the junior high school that I worked at, but in my everyday life, even just going to the grocery store, or even trying to get a haircut, or something , it’s something like we have no mouth. You know, you’re trying to go there and express yourself, but you’re like “Blah! I want to cut my hair.

I don’t even know how to say basic things like that.” So, you feel almost like a child again, like you’re trapped in an adult’s body but you can’t express yourself. So what I decided to do instead of just like reading books and opening up more things, where I’m just going to use flashcards or listening CDs that kind of thing.. I started creating these speaking missions, and one of the stories I tell students is that there was a grocery store near my home, and actually, every Wednesday, they used to play DVD, maybe they even still do, play the theme to Indiana Jones, because it was like “Sale Day” or whatever it is over and over again, but I would get in there, and I would have a particular grammar point that I wanted to practice like “Where is the milk?” And then, I would just say “So it’s like practicing “where is something”, and I would know if I was correct or not because I actually was taking to the thing I was looking for. So I’ll would walk up into each of the staff members, and I would say “Where is the milk?

Where is the coffee? Where is the sugar?” It didn’t matter if I actually was not going to purchase those things, and part of the reason I did that was because I know these people are busy, they’re not going to turn around and ask me questions about philosophy or politics or whatever, and they’re just going to say “Oh! The milk is over here…” and through that I’m practicing the actual- using the language. I am making sure I am using it correctly I’m practicing the actual using of the language and making sure I’m using it correctly. So each time I say it, I get a little bit better, I get a little bit more comfortable, and it becomes more organized.

Sure, and I think some people might be hearing this. It’s easy when you are in a country, where you are learning that language. You target languages there, but you know, I even developed some courses.

With the Internet, you can create these situations as well. Speaking missions as you go online, and you could find just about any situation you need to do online and do the exact same thing. Having a focus on and connecting it to what we said before, focusing on one specific task, a very focused set of language makes this easier and more effective, I think because you are also not also just saying “Hi! How are you? What’s your name? Where are you from?” when you go into the store every time. You have to be very precise and get things done. And I think when you use language to actually get real life situations, to accomplish things in real life, that’s when the language really connects, as you are actually using it to do things.

Yeah I mean, you get to see immediate benefit right there.

“Hey, I found the milk at the supermarket…” and this lady actually showed me and she was like “Yes, I understand what you’re saying…” and now, it feels good, especially at that level, and this is one of the other things that I explained, so by merely just talking before we got into the call about like personal finances and how the emotional component of what you do is so important.

Most of the time, I met countless numbers of Japanese people that know so many words, but they can’t put them together in any coherent way, and they learn another word so that additional word doesn’t make them feel anymore fluent anymore. It doesn’t help them feel like they’ve actually made in you feel an improvement in your overall fluency.

So I say don’t focus on things that you are already strong, and you have to look at something like your weakest point. The weakest aspect of your fluency or whatever that happens to be, if it’s listening or speaking confidence, but if you focus on that, I think even just saying “Hello” or “Where is the milk?” to some woman, a complete stranger in the grocery store can make you feel awesome and say “Wow I can actually do this,” and it’s really not that of a big deal, and I really tend to be that kind of person that speaks the language. Even though I had like failed to learn Spanish and French, and then Japanese again, when I first started learning them…

And there’s a very easy way for students to find the areas that they’re not confident in, and then a lot of times, it just comes out of a certain vocabulary and words used in those specific situations. For those listening out there, when you’re walking around your neighborhood, in your city, you are going about your day, look around, and see if you can describe the things around you, or imagine you’re walking into a store that sells paint.

Could you ask about certain paint colors? Could you describe what you want to do at your home with paint? And you’ll quickly realize “Wow. If I was in there, I probably would be a little lost.” So, that could be your next speaking mission, you know. Call up a paint store in the U.S. and talk about paint.

Absolutely. I just want to make the point clear, in case people are thinking “Well, he lives in Japan, and he was able to do that.” So, I lived in Japan for about two and a half years, and I went back to America.

And so, I’m living in Japan now, it’s been kind of back and forth, but my Japanese even after two and a half years was okay, but I actually did a lot more improving when I returned to America because it was in that situation that I actually had to make an effort to find people to practice with, and it’s almost the opposite of what you would expect because he will say “Well, there’s just Japanese people floating around all over the place.

They are here and there and everywhere.” But wait, you don’t really have the opportunity to speak with them all the time, unless you just stop people randomly on the street, which I tried occasionally.

But it was back in America that I actually sought people out, so I found a couple of Japanese, kind of language study group, someone who is living in Seattle at that time for about two years, and it was there that I did a lot more improving than what I had done in Japan.

So, to anybody, that’s saying “Well, of course, he lives in Japan.” People are in a situation, especially you’re learning English, it’s much easier to do that than learning pretty much any other language.

So, when I’m trying to find Japanese speakers in America, that’s much more difficult than it is for maybe even somebody in Vietnam, looking for English speakers just because like you have to be in kind of certain places in America, where there’s much more likely to find Japanese persons to practice with, like Seattle or San Francisco or larger cities.

So if you’re in a small town in Texas, it’s going to be a little tricky to do that. So you can do that, like finding people through the Internet, which is how I found people, and then I did some practicing online just by meeting people and talking with them that way, as well as actually meeting people in person.

So, the Internet has made possible no matter where you live to go out and meet people, and one of the best places I recommend people meet actual native speakers to practice with is Youtube.

So, this is just a very simple place anybody can go, and instead of looking for videos in your native language to watch, watch videos that are in English, and then look at the people commenting below the videos and start communicating with them, and you might not be able to connect with everybody or even very quickly, but if you do it a couple of times, you’ll get used to it and you’ll make some connections with people, so you can start developing that into better relationships.

I think a lot of people make the mistake of trying to move too quickly, and they walk up to a native speaker and say “Hey! Will you let me practice my speaking?” Every day, native speakers: they’re not qualified to teach, they don’t really understand how the language works.

They can speak with you, but if you ask them questions about why something works, then they’re more like “I really don’t know why that works, but you know, we can just practice speaking if you like.” So, try to take it slow, and go to where the actual native speakers are, if you want to practice speaking.

So, this is just a very simple place anybody can go, and instead of looking for videos in your native language to watch, watch videos that are in English, and then look at the people commenting below the videos and start communicating with them, and you might not be able to connect with everybody or even very quickly, but if you do it a couple of times, you’ll get used to it and you’ll make some connections with people, so you can start developing that into better relationships.

I think a lot of people make the mistake of trying to move too quickly, and they walk up to a native speaker and say “Hey! Will you let me practice my speaking?” Every day, native speakers: they’re not qualified to teach, they don’t really understand how the language works.

They can speak with you, but if you ask them questions about why something works, then they’re more like “I really don’t know why that works, but you know, we can just practice speaking if you like.” So, try to take it slow, and go to where the actual native speakers are, if you want to practice speaking.

So, moving along quickly, you have a very interesting book that you said really has helped you in your business life, and life, in general, and what we do on the Feel Good English podcast is talk about books and pull lessons from these books that can help others apply them to their lives, and while doing this, we help improve our English as well.

So, Drew, what’s the book you are going to talk about today?

Well, I wanted to talk about “The Richest Man in Babylon,” and it’s a powerful book that changed my life and started getting me to look at things in a new way, and I think it was, if I can just kind of dive right into it, one – there’s really so many great lessons in the book about money and finance, but really, the kind of bigger picture lesson is to follow the people that are actually doing what you want to do successfully.

So, don’t just get advice about money from your dad because he’s your dad, unless he actually knows about money and has wealth, but if he doesn’t have money or he doesn’t know about women or whatever, then don’t get advice from that person. I think you can see a lot of that certainly like the financial world; there are lots of gurus online or other places that are happy to give advice, but if they’re not actually rich themselves, then I would caution you to not listen to those people.

So, the more you can actively pay attention to and follow the good advice and choose not to listen to the people just politely like “Oh! Thanks for the advice,” but you’re going to ignore it in your own line. That’s the best thing we’re going to do to get through that, and it doesn’t matter if you’re getting fluent in money or you’re getting fluent in working out or getting fluent in a language.

It just means to be when you use something and make it a part of your life, so that it becomes automatic. So, when I stopped learning the way people were teaching textbook–wise, you know, like the actual textbook in Japanese, and I maybe went to maybe like three or four classes at a local community school when I first got here and then I quitted, like it didn’t help me at all, and I was embarrassed, and I just like I don’t want to do this.

So I thought like native speakers, native Japanese speakers aren’t learning like this, so why don’t I follow what they’re doing? And making me see “Okay. I need to be learning like a native speaker if I want to think like one and speak like one and act like one.” So that’s how I teach now, and I help people learn as a native English speaker.

I think that’s great, and I think one point from these two, especially the Internet again, bringing that up is how it connects students with so many great teachers like yourself.

Teachers have different learning styles, and a lot of them will follow formal methods, which is based on following grammar rules, learning it slowly, making sure that everything is right from the beginning, and from my experience, most English learners don’t want to learn this way because they don’t really learn this way effectively, but finding teachers that can teach them through more effective, faster, more interesting ways like your programs of EnglishAnyone, people can connect with that and use what works for them and follow people that have learned languages the way they want to learn language.

Just like you, when I was learning Portuguese, I hated the traditional methods, the classrooms, and the books, and I did just a few classes like yourself, but it didn’t work for me, and what did work being out, connecting with people, and putting myself in uncomfortable situations, knowing that that’s where I’ll improve.

But, it’s the student’s choice, as well as they need to discover what really works for them and what’s going to motivate them and inspire them. Last question about the book, why is it called “The Richest Man in Babylon”? What does that connect with the lessons?

It’s kind of the story of, in general, like the Ancient Times, Babylon was a place of tremendous wealth and prosperity, but you know, even though they had slaves and they had like a stratified hierarchy of like different levels of people, but the richest man in Babylon was kind of at the beginning, you’re greeted with, a couple of low levels. Every day, people are saying “We’re really good in our craft, but why don’t we seem to be making much money?” The opposite, we’re not really like an opposite, but more of a parallel story in the book, is “Within this land of Babylon.

Why are there a few people that amass all the money and everybody else doesn’t seem to like have their financial order or financial house and order? So, the King was saying like “Whoa! We can’t necessarily just like take money from the rich guys just because he has money and give it to the poor, which would be like taking away his hard work and effort,” but we can ask him to teach the rest of us, and hopefully, this man, which is the richest man in Babylon in the story, is giving advice, stating the reason that most people don’t have their financial house and orders because they didn’t learn how to do it, and it makes complete sense, and it’s just one of those things that we don’t learn in school because our education system is really creating employees, as supposed to entrepreneurs, and so employees don’t even need to know much about money., like the less you know about money, the more you’re trapped as an employee doing much you want to do.

If you enjoy doing that, that’s perfectly fine; but I personally enjoy having the option of saying why I want to be doing this because I want to do it, and not because I have to do it in order, pay the bills or whatever. I think it’s a way of taking a bunch of short stories that are all connected with this idea of how you learn about money, what are the rules about that, but teaching it in a simple way that even a young child can understand.

It’s a very popular book. It’s actually a very short book, as well, but I highly recommend it. I’ve talked about this book with my personal learners and many people have gone on to buy the book, or you can even listen to it for free, I think on Youtube, if there’s an audio book version of it, and it’s an excellent book.

Kevin; Wonderful. It’s very apparent how this could be applied to English as well.

Absolutely. I mean, like the biggest lesson there is even, if you’re not following necessarily to the strict person, you should be following the way that people are doing something. So, there are lots of different ways to become rich; you could open an ice cream shop, or you could sell shoes, or you could sell information.

There are lots of things like that, but with all those people following a very simple formula, which is “How can I provide the service that people are willing to pay for?” and then just applying that to different industries or markets.

In the same way, fluency becomes not like what specific teacher I do need to follow, it doesn’t matter if you follow me or yourself or anybody else, it’s more, “Are you learning in a way that’s actually going to make you speak fluently, if that’s your goal?” Some people, maybe they just want to pass tests, and that’s perfectly fine; maybe you don’t care like you’re not really going to be using English in your everyday life, but I help the people that really want to speak, and so that’s why they learn.

Awesome. Pretty cool. Any last words of wisdom for the audience? About anything about the book, about English, or about whatever you want to share? Anything else you’d like to share with the listeners?

I would recommend people: I made a video about this, not too long ago, with the Youtube channel, and people can go there for free videos as well. It was about how you’re kind of stumbling forward as a way of making progress, whether it’s about fluency or financial knowledge or business or even learning how to go to the gym.

I mean, a lot of people get stuck at the very beginning, trying to figure out what’s the best way to do something, and what’s appropriate for me, and they spend all these time thinking, and then they end up taking no action.

So, the best thing to do is what I call “stumbling forward,” and like to stumble I mean you’re obviously you’re kind of tripping forward, where it’s almost like you’re flying by the sleeve of your pants, which means I don’t know exactly what I’m doing. It’s not completely under my control, but at the same time, I’m working towards a goal that I have set for myself.

So, I want to understand how to do it in the best way, and the best way to do it is actually to get out and do the kind of on–the–job training, that’s required for whether it’s fluency or business or anything else. So, the more you can spend time doing and the less time you can spend time, I guess was the time you spend reading books about things, the faster you’re going to reach whatever that goal is.

Right. I fully agree, and I think that’s so important, as we need to learn by doing and through this learning throughout our own action–taking, we also personalize these lessons and we are able to understand them more because they’re real to us, and we’ve made them relevant to our lives, and I know, for me, sometimes, it’s hard to fully understand a lesson somebody else has taught me or I’ve read until I can connect with my own life, and for falling forward, stumbling forward, failing our way through things, we learn faster, right?

And that’s absolutely true with English learning as well. Drew, where can people find you that haven’t heard of you? I’m sure, a lot of people have heard of you already. If they want to hear more of your lessons and want to connect with you more, where should they go?

They can go to englishanyone.com, but I recommend people to just go to the Youtube channels. You can search for EnglishAnyone there, and that will get you people obviously listening to this or probably going to be fairly decent, maybe if they can’t speak fluently yet, but they can understand quite a bit.

So, We have advanced listening, practice lessons, where I speak really fluently, I try to speak even faster and faster than I’m speaking now, but we also have lessons that start at the very beginning, and they teach you everything in English. So, if you have maybe little kids, or if you want to help your grandmother learn English in beginning English Grammar series that they can use as well, and then again, it teaches everything in English.

So you don’t want to do any translating, especially from the very beginning, and want to keep everything simple. So, we have something for lots of different people. We’ve been making videos for four or five years, something like that.

A lot of content, you can go over to four hundred videos on the channel. So, get in there, it’s all free, and enjoy it all, and I’m sure you’ll learn a lot and also connect with some other great people.

One of the really nice things about my channel is that it’s positive, like we actually have a lot of people, you know, the Internet, Youtube, in particular, can be very, I don’t know. You can get a lot of hate–filled comments or people arguing about things on the channel where I actually, I guess am pretty lucky that people are helping to support each other on the channel.

Great, Drew. Thanks again for being here. Very valuable stuff.

Oh, absolutely.

See you, buddy.

Alright. Fantastic. Have a great day.

Going over some of the vocab from today’s interview. In the beginning, Drew talks about the Internet being a little bit choppy. So he’s in Japan, I’m in the U.S. As you know, sometimes, talking through Skype, the Internet can be a little bit unstable.

So, we’re talking about a choppy Internet, that’s exactly what we’re talking about: unstable Internet. Another way you can visualize this is water, like on the ocean, can be choppy. When water on the ocean is choppy, it means there’s a lot of waves. It’s not flat. I asked Drew, and also in the beginning of the episode how he got into Japanese gardening. To get into something is to become interested in it, to start doing something.

How did you get into Japanese gardening? How did this become interesting to you, and how did you become involved in this? How did you get into soccer when you were a child? What got you into soccer?

What got you interested? What got you involved? Phrasal verb.

Drew used this a little bit later: to give you the quick rundown. To give a rundown is to give you a summary of something, and a quick rundown would be a quick summary. Somebody gave you the quick rundown of how I got into Japanese gardening, for example. Oh, they’re using both new expressions, right? So, let me give you a quick rundown. Let me give you a quick summary.

Another thing he said is he sought people out to help him practice his Japanese with. Sought is the past tense of seek. Sometimes, English learners don’t know this one, but he sought people out, meaning he looked for people. To seek out is to search for, and sought is the past tense. So he went back to the U.S, and he wanted to continue improving his Japanese. What did he do? He sought people out.

Another thing Drew says, it’s going to be tricky. Do you know what tricky means? Tricky means difficult. It’s going to be tricky to do something like this. Learning a new language can be very tricky, but taking tips from people who have had done it before and have done it successfully can make it less tricky for you.

And what about in your life right now? Is there anything that’s been tricky recently? Is there any way you can make this less tricky? Maybe making a plan of action?

Another thing Drew says here is to dive right into. If I could dive right into it. So dive, D-I-V-E, is when you go directly into something quickly. Most of the time, we use this for water. You jump into the water, and you dive. You dive head first with your hands.

The Olympics just happened, and there was a diving competition, so you dive into the water. When we talk about diving into a subject, like you’re diving into a conversation, which means you go direct to the heart of the topic, to the heart of the situation. So, I’m going to give you some tips on English learning, and I’m going to dive right into it. I’m going to go there right now.

Drew was talking about how we should stumble forward. Stumbling forward, it means you are failing, but you are progressing. You’re falling, but you are trying things by not being afraid to experiment and fail.

So often, we’ll sit back and we’ll wait and we want to do something perfect, but if we keep moving forward and we use these lessons that we’ve learned from failing. To apply them to our lives and to make lessons that other people have taught us more personal, then we will learn faster, and we will internalize these lessons and make them more a part of our mission.

So, the overall point is to take action and learn from the action taking, failing forward.

So, that will do it for today’s episode. I want to thank Drew Badger again for taking the time to talk with you. Guys, the Feel Good audience, about life lessons, language learning lessons: he has a great content. If you want to learn more about Drew, go to EnglishAnyone on Youtube.

That sure is a great place to start. If you want a free transcript to this episode, you can get it by becoming a Feel Good member, and in August, this month, you can still become a member for free, go to feelgoodenglish.com, and join us and become a Feel Good member and get transcripts to this episode and every single episode in the future- that’s crazy!

I’ll see you over there, until then keep stumbling forward , don’t be afraid to make mistakes, learn from the mistake, and use them to improve your life. Take lessons, apply them, and make them a part of you. Have a super duper day.

Bye bye!