The best way not to be brainwashed is to do it for yourself on your own. For those who understand the Czech language - do not hesitate and look here Enjoy!

there was a king* and that king had a son*. That young prince was very brave, he was learning English. And that prince was me :-) Actually that prince was not so very young already, he was in his early forties and actually he was not any prince. That king was not any king too. He was an elderly, already retired man, my father.

I can remember a short story that can be interesting more for me then for you. But I will write it anyway. We were sitting in my car, the radio was playing and my father asked me: “You are listening the BBS radio?” He was a little surprised.
I replied: “No, I am learning English. It is from CD”
He was surprised even more. “But this is not an English course, it sounds like a real English”
I replied:”Of course, I am learning English, I told you, REAL English, what else?”
My father is kind of macho man, so he laughed out loud (LOL) and said: “This way you cannot learn anything! If you want to learn English, go to a language school”
It made me laugh too a bit, remembering our last dialog concerning English which took place about 30 year ago. I told: “I was there in such school, don't you remember anymore?“ He stayed silent.
I continued: „The result was not so bad, I became the best chess-player in the chess-club I attended“
Maybe he also remembered because he did not argue and said: „H'm, but you cannot understand anything, it is too quick, there is not Czech language there, just English. Maybe you can catch one word here and there. It is only a waste of time and effort what you are doing“
I expected his opinion. So, I tried to explain to him the situation: „This way I am just listening what I already understand after a short but intensive preparation at home. This is called a passive phase of my listening. At home it was an active one. As you can see, I have a headphone in my ear too. I listen all day long. But most of that time I do not pay any conscious attention to it.“
He started to be somehow nervous, not very at ease. It was obvious that this activity, I do, makes him irritated. He said that it is all nonsense and what I remember word by word was: „You should go abroad to  lean foreign language, there is no way“
I agreed with him this time, but I replayed: „I can create the English surrounding for me here without moving abroad. It goes without saying that this cannot fully substitute the longer dwelling in some English speaking country but it is the best possible thing I can do for it now and here“. I saw that he was not very convinced, he wanted to say something, something probably not very pleasant to me, but he stayed silent. After while he continued: “You will see that I am right, this way you will never be able to speak English well“
 
And maybe he was right. I really was not able to speak English to much this way. You can read about it here. But I was able to understand native speakers well, BBC, CNN, audio-books and different kinds of courses I was interested in... It was my goal at that time. And the other language activities? The reading was not so big problem. It is in reality very similar to listening - only it goes to your head the different way – and there is more time to „perform it“.  And the speaking, my father was talking about? It needed some „special care“ I was writing about it in some of my previous posts. Yes, maybe here is a good opportunity for me to mention our BrainSpeakActivator exercises you can download for free (7 day version) and our new VIP inner circle coaching program which begins these days. You can ask at the end „And what about the WRITING? You forgot to mention it somehow!“

AND WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM DOING NOW!? :-)

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* The characters in this post are non fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is not coincidental at all.

My English started to turn the right way from the time I began to use the kind of approach you can see on this following video. Though it was not exactly this course because it is not for ESL or EFL learners and it is not for my nationality after all. But these principles works. They works mainly (at least in my case it was that way) to make you understand the language you are learning well, directly, without unnecessary and hindering inner translations. So, look at it:

I am sorry, I have to say that  V.F. Birkenbihl is not with us anymore, she has passed away :-( but her method, her approach lives on. Thank you Vera.

I would like to create some program like that, based on V.F.B. approach. I would like it to be an universal program, as far as a language (English will be target languge but mother tongue could differ, and I would like it to be for whatever content you chose (everybody prefers and needs something else) and it should be very cheap at the same time (or for free if possible). So, this is my vision.

 And what really helped me with speaking (I will write about it, among others, in my next post “MEN'S SEARCH FOR ENGLISH – part 3, – probably tomorrow or day after tomorrow) was this method Brain Speak Activator – you can download for free HERE 7 day version. It is very simple, but not very easy to do. Its power comes from one thing I will describe in my next post – part 3. By the way, all three parts (part1, part2, and coming part3) create one whole, but are devided because of lenght (this way it is easier to write for me and easier to read for you too :-) )

Thank you Mike ;-) for the correction of this mistake, not necessary to sing a song anymore!