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VIP Extra Commentary – Right and Wrong

Hello, this is A.,. and welcome to an extra commentary this month. I’m going to give you an extra commentary because there’s a topic I want to talk about, just briefly. It’s a topic I’ve noticed on our forums, especially the general forums. You VIPS are usually a little more advanced and understand things a little better so it doesn’t come up very much, but even sometimes a little bit on the VIP social site I’ll see this a little bit.

Like I said, especially in the general forums, I’ve noticed this stubborn belief that there is one right answer or there is one way to do something or say something or write something in English. You know, the one right answer belief, of course, comes from our traditional school systems. Unfortunately, people are brought up, they’re taught from a very young age, through elementary school, through middle school, through high school, university, if you’re unlucky enough to go to grad school than even more in grad school, you get through that whole time period this belief put into your head that there’s a right answer and a wrong answer.

That’s how things kind of work in school. You take a test, there’s a right answer and a wrong answer and the teacher makes the decision of which one is right and which one is wrong. So on a test if you have an essay question the teacher will say no, that’s wrong or that’s right. Usually, though, they use these multiple choice tests. You know, ‘A’ is the right answer and ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘E’ they’re all wrong and that mentality gets, eventually, stuck deep into people’s heads.

It really goes deep and it becomes a very deep belief and people start to see the whole world in this kind of way, right and wrong. There’s a right and there’s a wrong answer.

There’s one correct way to do something or say something and then there’s a bunch of wrong ways and this comes up sometimes on our forums.

For example, the most common example I see is somebody, one of the people on the forums, will find some sentence in one of the mini stories or one of the lessons, somewhere, some isolated sentence and they’ll write into the forums and they’ll say in this example AJ uses the past tense, but clearly that is wrong. In this situation it is obvious and logical that the present perfect must be used. And then they’ll have sort of logical arguments about why that’s true.

I never respond to those things because they’re so ridiculous, but here’s the deal.

Here’s the truth. In most cases, you can use many different verb tenses to say the same thing. The verb tenses, as you notice in our point-of-view stories, the verb tenses just change the point of view. That’s why they’re called point-of-view stories. It changes the timeframe that you’re looking at.

So we have, let’s say, the same event. Somebody goes to the store and they buy some eggs. Well, we can tell that in the present tense if we want to. If we tell that in the present tense it gives the feeling, it gives this kind of subtle feeling that we’re joining the person. That we’re kind of there with them at the same time, going along with them as they go to the store and then buy the eggs. It gives a feeling of immediacy. Like it’s happening right now.

Now, here’s the thing. We could use the present tense to tell that story, that little event, even if that event happened 10 years ago or in the past. Journalists do this all the time and professional writers do this. They will use the present tense to describe an event that actually happened in the past. They use the present tense because they want you to have the feeling that you are there as it’s happening. They want you to feel like it’s happening now and you are there as the events happen, right? It’s just a different kind of feeling when you use the present to describe something like that.

Now, of course, that same event, we could use the past tense. There was a guy. He went to the store. He bought some eggs. Of course, that does tell us that this happened in the past. It’s not happening right now and it gives more of a feeling like we’re just reporting an event. It feels less immediate. It doesn’t feel like we’re there as it’s happening. It feels like it’s a little more distant in time.

So you see how this works. They’re both correct, one is not wrong and one is not right.

It’s perfectly fine to use the present tense to talk about an event that happened in the past. It’s just that the point of view is different. It gives a different feeling. If you imagine that you’re watching the events, if you’re using the present tense it gives you the feeling that you are there as it’s happening.

So in some novels some writers will prefer to write in the present tense about things because it gives a certain kind of feeling. Other writers will tend to use the past tense.

Of course they all will mix them during their novels, but some might prefer a more immediate feeling and some might prefer a feeling of more distance.

So these are kind of stylistic subtle things and you don’t need to worry about this, because I’m sure you’re not trying to be a novelist in English. That’s a very tough task, right? So you don’t need to worry about all the little, tiny, subtleties of it, but what you do need to understand is that there’s not just one right answer. There’s not one way to say something in a certain situation. There are always, always, always many different ways.

That’s one of the special things about language. It’s also true of music and art and sports and a lot of other things.

Language is not mathematical. It’s not math. It’s not a formula. It’s not a case where in one situation you always must say this or you must always use this verb tense. That’s never true. This is the problem that so many people get stuck with and this is why traditional ways of teaching English are so damaging and so bad. It’s because they put these beliefs deep into people’s head. You know, there’s one right answer. There’s one way to always say something.

When you have that belief then you’re always trying to analyze everything, right? You’re always trying to break it into pieces and figure out the rules and the formulas and then you’re always debating in your head. Oh, is this right or is this wrong? Is this right or is this wrong? Even to the point where we see on the forum sometimes where we have someone who’s maybe a low intermediate-level English learner analyzing my grammar, a native speaker, and trying to find what’s wrong with the way I’m saying things and then trying to justify it with all this logic and rationale in order to appear,.. I don’t know, appear intelligent… or maybe they just feel that’s what they’re supposed to do because that’s what they did in school.

But you can see how this is such a waste of time and energy and I hope you can also see how confusing that is to these people and if you’re doing it I’m sure it confuses you a lot. If you’re constantly trying to analyze things, if you’re constantly looking for the one right answer and trying to prove why this is wrong and this is right you will never learn to be natural and relaxed and effortless in your speech and understanding.

It’s the same in sports. I like to compare it to sports sometimes. So let’s say you’re playing soccer, football, well when you’re out there playing a game of football, of soccer, the last thing you want to do is be thinking and analyzing. You do not want to be analyzing every movement you make. You don’t want to be trying to analyze and think about what’s the right thing to do, what’s the wrong thing to do, and constantly worrying about that.

If you did that you would move slowly, you would constantly make mistakes and you would never be able to match the other players’ speed and skill. You never would. The best players play naturally and intuitively. They’re not thinking. They’re doing things spontaneously, unconsciously and that’s how you have to learn to understand and speak language.

I would also recommend adopting this as a very general belief in your life – the belief that there are always many right answers. There are always many options. There are always many ways to do something. There’s never just one right answer. I think even in math, if you get to the very, very, very, very advanced levels of math, you can play around with a lot of different formulas and types of mathematics and you can find that there’s not just one kind of geometry. There’s not just one kind of arithmetic.

There are many, many, many ways of looking at the world in a mathematical way even, but this especially true of language, psychology, business, pretty much any kind of human interactions or any field within humanity. There are always many answers. There are always many options. There are always many right answers. There are always many right ways and good ways to accomplish something.

So you have to develop a flexibility of mind to really take advantage of this VIP Program and of the Effortless English System in general. You can’t use those old traditional beliefs: You know- there’s one right answer and I can’t make mistakes. You know- all those beliefs that come from school and work, unfortunately. They just don’t work.

They’re not effective, so you have to get rid of those beliefs.

That’s a big part of your job within the VIP Program is to get rid of those limiting beliefs, to become more flexible mentally, to develop your intuition, to become more comfortable with uncertainty, with just relaxing and letting your unconscious mind understand things, listen to things, hear the patterns, without needing to analyze it and make it into a formula. I know it can be difficult, but it’s very, very, very important.

You gotta’ change your way of thinking and get out of these ideas of one right answer, formulas, grammar rules that you must follow, all of that stuff. You gotta just get rid of it, relax, just listen to the stories and answer the questions. Understand meaning and, most of all, understand that language is a very flexible thing. There’s always another way you could say something. There are always many, many ways you could say the same thing.

All right, that’s a little extra commentary. I just wanted to address that, talk about that, because it’s vitally important. If you’re going to succeed with English, you absolutely must adopt this flexible mentality- and if you’re going to have more success in your life.

By that I mean whether its relationships or your business, your career, you’ve gotta be flexible.

The same is true in business. There’s not just one way to succeed at business. There are many, many, many, many, many different ways, many different strategies many, many, many different opportunities. You know one strategy might work for one person and maybe not work so well for someone else. There’s always another way, so you gotta’ learn to be flexible.

So if you learn like one business system, for example, or one way to do business, you must always realize okay, well this is one way, but there are many others also. You’ve gotta remain open and flexible. So flexibility, openness; let go of this idea of one right answer. There are always many right answers.

All right, I will see you again soon, bye-bye.