Welcome to the InFluency Podcast. I’m Hadar, and this is episode number 88. And today I’ll be answering your questions.

Hey, hey. Welcome to the InFluency Podcast. Welcome back. Thank you for coming. Thank you for being here. As I recorded the intro – you know, I just said “Welcome to the InFluency Podcast” – I had this jittery feeling in me because it’s been a while since I recorded a full podcast, just me speaking to the mic.

So as you know, if you’ve been listening to my podcast, a lot of the episodes that I share are episodes where I share with you the audio of my YouTube video, which means I deliver my lesson or my episode to the camera. And then I share it with you on the podcast as well. And I know that a lot of you love listening to my lessons in a form of a podcast. You know, I told you many times before, I’m a podcast kind of girl. So, podcasts for me are the real deal. But I haven’t recorded a full podcast in a while.

So, as I was preparing for it, I got really, really excited because you know that it’s very different for me, when I just speak to the mic directly to you. It feels a lot more intimate than when I record the video and then it goes to the editor, and then I watch it like five times. And I’ll share with you a little secret – I do not let it keep watching my videos. I’m like, recording a video or recording a podcast, done. Passing it over to someone else.

I don’t need to hear it again. I know what I said there. I was the one saying it, right? Why do I need to watch it? Of course, I do. Because sometimes there are parts that I want to take out. But in the podcast it’s a lot freer, cause it’s really like a real conversation. So, hi. Welcome back, Hadar. Anyway.

Today, what I have for you is really exciting and I’ve been meaning to do that in a while. It’s just that I’ve had so many other things to talk about, but I don’t know if you know that, but on my website, there is a button that says ‘Ask Hadar’. And there you can submit your questions, and I’m going to be answering those questions on the pod.

So, first of all, if you don’t know that, I’m going to link to it in the description, so you can submit your question for the next episode I record. And I’m apologizing here for all of you have submitted it in the past, and haven’t gotten an answer yet.

Now, we’ve been getting a lot of questions, so I’m going to just select a few. And it’s just going to be around different topics. If I didn’t pick your question right now, it does not mean it wasn’t a good question – it’s just that I’m trying to cover all areas of English because there are a lot of them. And I’m hoping that, you know, the questions that people ask will resonate with you as well.

Because, you know, it’s so funny to see how we’re all in the same boat. And a lot of things that bother certain people are the things that bother you too. And it’s good to see, first, that you’re not alone. And second, to hear people discussing it, or me now, here, on the podcast. And then to get answers to your unasked questions. Maybe you didn’t even think about this as a problem, or maybe you didn’t think about the fact that you have a question, but hearing me answering the question would be like, “Oh, yeah! Same for me. I relate to that too.” Great.

So, I always encourage people to ask questions because it’s not just for them to get answers, it really is about helping others get their answers too. So it’s just a heroic act to ask questions. Think about it.

Another reason why I’m super excited about recording this today is because – and that’s so not related to English – it’s a Saturday night, and it’s so quiet in my studio. Because I have a beautiful studio in Tel Aviv, but the thing is that the street is so noisy and people keep shouting downstairs during the day, which makes it very hard to record a podcast. And for those of you who listen closely to my videos, you might hear some people shouting every now and then in the background. That’s because that’s where my studio is located.

So, on a Saturday night it gets really quiet. And I’ve been at home all day, I rested. And I didn’t have to put the girls to bed, which is an extra bonus because I came here, to the studio. I love putting them to bed, but if I don’t have to – and I’ve spent the entire day with them – then sometimes it’s nice. And I get to record and talk to you instead. Okay. Just a little bit of the behind the scenes of everything that’s happening here.

Okay. Let’s just move on to the first question, because if I keep talking, it’ll be, we’ll get to the 30-minute mark without me answering one question. And how will I be helping you if that’s the case?

The first question is from Wei Zeng. And she’s asking: “My problem is I can’t use ‘he’ or ‘she’ and ‘his’ or ‘her’ correctly without thinking in speaking, it sounds silly. Like, I was talking about my daughter and I kept using ‘he’ until my daughter reminded me, ‘she’ – not ‘he’. She’s just 6 years old. Could you give me some suggestion or design drill to improve it?”

By the way, I love that you’re asking for a design drill because it means that you know me very well, and you know that this is going to be my suggestion, right? Wei Zeng: “I like the video about the R bootcamp” – yes, which is what I do in the art bootcamp.

Wei, this is very true because one of the ways to overcome those challenges is to create some sort of repetition and you already know this, right? Because between you and me, it’s not that you don’t get it, right? It’s not that you don’t get when you need to use ‘he’ and when you need to use ‘she’.

And when it comes to such confusions, and it usually happens with words, like maybe two words that you keep confusing, like in this example. Or tenses, right, you keep using a certain tense, even though you know or if you had the time to write it properly, you would know what’s the correct way to write it. Right?

So, we have issues with tenses, we have issues with words. We also have issues with sounds, right? Like, I know it’s a Z sound, but I keep making an S. Or I know it’s supposed to be ‘ur’, but I keep pronouncing it as ‘l’.

So, you know, it’s not that we don’t get it, no. It’s not that it’s so difficult and challenging to understand. For the most part, all your challenges have nothing to do with you cognitively understanding it – unless it’s conditionals [jokingly] – but sometimes it’s just understanding it on the paper, sort of. Right? And then you need to implement it, and that’s the hard part.

And this is where most people stop. They just think about it and they’re aware of it, but they just expect themselves to behave differently without changing something physically. Because language is physical. It comes out of your mouth, and to produce it, your mouth need to have a certain shape and form to release or to express or to execute what you have in mind.

And usually, when there is a gap between the English that you know, and the English that you speak, it has to do with the orders your brain gives your mouth, and also your ability or the ability of the mouth to produce those sounds or those words, or to repeat those grammatical structures.

Now, I’m going to record a podcast soon about habits, and speaking habits. So, it’s not just about the learning habits, it’s also about the speaking habits. And to me, you know, grammar mistakes, vocabulary mistakes, they’re just habits. And if we treat them like habits, which means things that you’re used to doing – and you want to change that because it would serve you better – things that you’re doing in your body and so used to it, and that’s how you go on autopilot.

So, if we treat it like habits, rather than, “Oh, my English sucks. Oh, I’m horrible at learning languages. Oh, I have this thing with vocabulary. I have this thing with grammar where I just can get it and grasp it.” I mean, it’s not, don’t tell yourself those stories. I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s as simple as habits. You’re just used to saying it a certain way. And to develop a new way of saying it, you have to train your muscles in your mouth and to create those connections between the thought and the physical activity of creating the words or sounds or sentences. So, you have to kind of like rewire your brain to be able to produce the new outcome.

So, Wei, what I would do is, first of all – and I treat all of it like pronunciation, because I see that it has been very effective in the years that I’ve been teaching pronunciation – and I just apply that onto learning pretty much everything else.

And that’s why I created the Sprints, because the Sprints are those drills. And I’m going to link to them in the show notes if you don’t know what the Sprints are. And the Sprints are drills of certain sounds, words, and grammatical structures that show up in a repetitive way. And they’re high volume, really quick. So, it gets you to literally train your mouth to say things differently.

And simply by this repetition, you get it, or at least your subconscious part of the brain gets it. Which is what we want. Because, you know, logically you get it, but obviously that’s not enough, right? Because you can’t give that order to your brain to retrieve that word or sound on command. So, these repetitions really help you allow these things to become more available.

So, just like I would tell a student that confuses S and Z, I would say, first of all, I want you to just sit down and go between ‘he’ and ‘she’ back and forth. And I’m using ‘he’ and ‘she’ cause that’s what Wei is struggling with. But for everyone else listening, you must have a pair of words or a pair of sounds that you struggle with. So I want you to do the same thing with the things that you struggle with.

So, you take those two words and you start going back and forth between the two: ‘he – she’, ‘he – she’, ‘he – she’, ‘he – she’. And you need to do it for like 3 to 5 minutes. That’s how you get started. First of all, to create this distinction between the two words in your brain and be intentional about it.

So, I want you to sit down and do this back and forth – ‘he – she’, ‘he – she’, ‘he – she’. And every time you say ‘he’ – visualize a guy, and every time you say ‘she’ – visualize a woman. Because if you want to teach yourself something, you want to use visualization because the subconscious part of the brain. Which is what is, you know, what we need to be able to make these changes. Words are not enough – we need imageries. Right? We need feelings to be able to really allow things to sink in.

So I want you to visualize it and shift between ‘he’ and ‘she’ again and again and again: ‘he – she’, ‘he – she’, ‘he – she’, ‘he – she’, ‘he – she’. And slow it down and visualize it. ‘he – she’. So it really requires your concentration.

And then, I want you to create 20 short phrases for ‘he’ and 20 short phrases for ‘she’, or with a word ‘she’ and ‘he’. What do I mean by short phrases? That you do it on one breath, like up to 5 words or 6 words, but not more than that. Why? Because you want to do it on one breath and really quickly, and go from one to the other, to the other, to the other. “He’s a good guy.” “He told me that himself.” “He’s over there.”

And then you do the same thing for ‘she’. And you drill those exercises. Ideally, you can even record them for yourself and just play it when you have time and drill it. Right? So, and every time you do it, visualize the person. And just by the fact of you using these two words so often – that will develop awareness and more command when you use these two words. You simply don’t use them enough. And when you do, you’re unaware. So as a result, you don’t know if you did something right or not. So, I would, first of all, do that.

And you can do the same thing with ‘his’ and ‘her’. I have a feeling that mastering these two words will be a by-product of the first exercise. But I wouldn’t trust that, so I probably would recommend for you to do the same thing. ‘his – her’. ‘his – hers’, ‘his – hers’, ‘his – hers’, ‘his – hers’. And then create 20 phrases for each and drill them.

And then – you know there was a ‘then’, right, it’s not enough – and then you want to record yourself speaking freely. And you want to deliberately talk about, let’s say, your daughter or your friend or someone, I mean, gender has to be involved. So, you can talk about him, her, he, and she. Like, we need to be certain that you’d be using this. And you want to talk about that.

And be intentional about how you use ‘he’ and ‘she’. So every time you say it, a lot of times it’s just it happens, because we don’t think about these words. We don’t think about pronouns before we use them, that’s another reason. It’s not like one of those big fat words, that are nouns, or verbs, or adjectives that we very clearly know what they are. No, pronouns are just fillers for us. And we don’t put a lot of emphasis on those words.

So, I want you to be intentional about how you are speaking and using it. And then, as a bonus practice – you don’t have to do it, but it’s great. If you have a conversation with someone, or if you just want to record yourself speaking freely about something, again, you want to talk about people. So you use ‘him’ and ‘hers’ and ‘he’ and ‘she’.

Then you don’t have to think about it, but you want to record yourself, and then listen to your recording and see if anything changes. And if not, keep doing the same thing. I think that that would be the most effective way for you to actually see results that last. Because that’s how we change habits. It’s not easy, it’s not going to be like this one thing that you do and like, “Oh, okay. That’s it. It’s gone.” Because as I said, you know these things, but your mouth refuses to. So you just need to train it and leave it no other choice, but to use it correctly.

So, I hope it helps, Wei. And please do this exercise. And for anyone else listening, if you do have a pair of words that you struggle with – do the same thing, and let me know if it helps. Okay, moving on to the next question.

The next question is a pronunciation question by Tomoko Nakayama. And the question is “How do you pronounce ‘year’?” “It’s so hard to pronounce ‘year’. My ‘year’ sounds like ‘ear’. And I keep practicing it.”

Okay. So this is a very common challenge for many, many speakers. And here’s the thing – the word ‘ear’ is the foundation of the word ‘year’. So, to say ‘year’, you do want to have the word ‘ear’ inside of it. So basically, what it means that if you’re saying ‘ear’, then it means that you’re like a 98% there. All you need to do is add something small at the beginning. And that’s something is the ‘j’ sound. J.

Now, you know how to make the J sound because it exists in the word ‘yes’. And I have worked with many, many different speakers. A lot of them struggle with ‘year’, but I don’t think I’ve ever come across someone that cannot pronounce the J sound in isolation, especially if I ask them to say it in the word ‘yes’. Sometimes it’s replaced with ‘dj’ – ‘gjes’, but that’s a different conversation. But still, even those people – Spanish speakers in particular – have no problem pronouncing J separately.

So, I’m assuming that you’ll be able to pronounce ‘yes’. And if you’re able to pronounce ‘yes’, now we want to isolate it into just the beginning sound, which is ‘j’. Now, what happens here, I always like to add a little bit more clarity around what the tongue is doing. For some people it works, for others it’s just, “Why are you bothering me with all this information?”

So, for the ‘yes’, the back of the tongue, or the body of the tongue actually, moves up and almost touches the upper palate, in a way that makes you feel all these tingly vibrations – ‘jjj’. It’s very close to ‘djjj’, but the tongue is moving more towards the back for this one: ‘jjj-j-j’. Do you hear the vibrations that are created? ‘jjj-yes’. I’m exaggerating it a bit, but I want you to do it with me. ‘jjj-yes’.

Now, once you are able to recognize what it is that you’re doing at the beginning of the word ‘yes’, then instead of going into ‘s’ – ‘yes’, you’re tricking your brain into thinking that you’re about to say ‘yes’ – ‘yyy’, but then instead of you’re going into ‘-ear’, which you already know how to pronounce: ‘year’. Again, ‘year’. ‘yes’ – identifying what your tongue is doing, focusing on the fact that this is the sound that you’re pronouncing right now. ‘y-‘, y-‘, ‘year’. ‘year’.

Now, the reason why it’s tricky is because the ‘j’ sound or, let me rephrase that, the tongue for the ‘j’ sound and the tongue for the ‘ee’ sound is positioned in the same position. So, then you’re asking yourself, “What’s the difference?” And the tongue wants to take the shortcut and just make an ‘ee’ sound – ‘ear’ instead of ‘year’, right. You’re just trying to be efficient.

But the thing is that for the ‘j’ there is that extra push, extra movement almost, that creates the ‘j’ sound. But then you don’t want to move it anywhere because you want to keep the tongue in the same position for the ‘ee’ – ‘year’.

Same thing with the word ‘yeast’, right? Yeast – the thing put inside the bread so it can rise, the dough can rise – ‘yeast’. Versus ‘East’, right? And then there is a glottal stop at the beginning, usually – E’ E’ East. And here – ‘yeast’.

And again, as with everything, you want to practice it and to repeat it again and again and again. So if you struggle with it and you were able to do it here right now with me, I want you to do it again and again, and again, like 20, 30, 40 times, and then to use it in context. “This year was the best year ever.” “The year of my life.” “I’m three years old” – a very smart and profound sentence that I just said here. Okay? You want to come up with all these different phrases using year correctly – using ‘year’ with a ‘j’ sound. Okay. Good. So practice it, and let’s move on to the next question.

This question is from Nejla. And I hope I’m pronouncing it correctly. Just so you know, in the ‘Ask Hadar’ section on my website you can upload a recording and then I will play your audio recording on the pod. And it’s also a great opportunity for you to share with me the pronunciation of your name. Because sometimes it’s hard to guess it from the spelling, as you probably know. But if you say it to me once, I will totally get it.

So, Nejla is asking, “I’m struggling to learn English, even though I live in the US. I do not know how I can fix it. Also, I have a dream about going back to college to get a degree. I’m from Turkey, and living in Seattle for about 5 years. I went to ESL class, but I could not finish because I started work and changed my schedule. Now I have more time to study, but I cannot concentrate on it. Please tell me how I can write and speak clearly in English. I love to watch your YouTube videos.”

Okay. Thank you so much. And thank you for the great question. And I’m going to be a little hard on you at first, and then I’m going to give you a lot of love. If you want to change and improve, then you got to make time for it. I know you’re busy and I know that you have a lot of plans and a lot of things that you need to do. But if you want to change your English, if you want to improve it, you’ll have to take responsibility for it. And you have to understand that you need to create time for it.

You know what, practice is important, learning is important, and it’s not going to happen on its own. Now, you could do it on your own, but you need to have a plan, you need to commit to practicing every single day or every other day, even if it’s just 10 minutes. But you got to make it consistent because you want to make it a habit of yours.

So, you know I understand that things happen, but this is really the result of the place that you are at right now, which is unsatisfied with where you’re at. And again, I know that you’re thinking, “Okay, live in the US, so I should be able to just, you know, speak English.” But sometimes when we are in an environment when we need to speak English, we get into this survival mode, and we just do the bare minimum to succeed and to survive. And we don’t have that part where we push ourselves to get out of our comfort zone to actually grow and reach a breakthrough.

We don’t intentionally use the things that are hard for us. So we always go for the comfortable place using the words that we already know, using the sounds that we already know, you know, just trying to get by. And this is why it doesn’t matter if you live in the US for 5 years or 20 years. If you don’t challenge yourself, and if you don’t learn something and try to apply it right away, then it’s going to be very hard for you, very-very hard for you to see results, to feel the difference.

And when it comes to learning, you have to be committed, right? You have to make that commitment to say, “I’m going to do it” to keep your word. So you actually do what you say you’re going to do. And you have to take responsibility to be like, “I’m unhappy with where I’m at right now on my journey. What do I need to change in the way I go about it to see different results in my life?”

So that means to clear out space and to do the work. Whether it’s to find a school that fits your needs, or to find someone who is willing to practice with you, or to create a daily practice routine where you know exactly what you’re going to do and you plan it out properly. And I actually have a few podcast episodes and videos about how to practice on your own and how to plan your practice and how to know what to focus on. I’m going to link everything in the show notes. So you can take charge and start doing things as of today without paying even one single dollar, you know. And it’s all a question of commitment and being responsible to the results that you want to see in your life.

Another thing that I’m going to tell you is that, you know, if you want to go back to college, don’t wait until your English is good enough to go to college. Go to college to improve your English. Go to college to pursue your passion and to do something that you love. And along the way, you will challenge yourself, you will go out of your comfort zone. And that alone will push you to use English more and to put everything that you know into practice, and to see massive improvement.

But by the fact that you’re waiting for your English to get better, you’re not only preventing yourself from something that you’re passionate about, which is education, but you’re also preventing yourself from the one thing that is really going to help you thrive and improve.

So, just make a decision to do it. Know that this is really what’s going to make the difference. It’s going to be challenging, you know. You might get stuck, you might not understand everything, but that is what you need. That’s what you need. Don’t be afraid. And if people have issues with that, you tell them, “Listen, buddy, you haven’t had the life that I have. So, I am doing things my own way and I have my own pace. And that’s it. I don’t owe you anything.” Not correct English: ‘not anything’, ‘I do my thing’, right?

This is what you don’t have to say out loud to them. They might not appreciate it as they should, but it’s something that you can say to yourself. Because the reason why you wouldn’t do it is because you might be thinking to yourself, “Oh, people are going to think that I’m not enough to go to college.” And people might be thinking, “Who does she think she is, going to college without having proper English?”

So all of that is BS, and it’s all in your head. So don’t let it stop you from doing what you want and doing the things that would actually get you to where you want to be. And get you passionate about it, get you motivated about it, excited about it. I mean, why do we need English to begin with, to do things that we’re excited about? Let’s not make English boring. Let’s make it fun, and challenging, and exciting, and inspiring.

Because what’s the point? We don’t learn English for the sake of learning English. We don’t learn English for the sake of becoming fluent and sounding like a native. That’s not really the end result. And if you’re saying to yourself, “This is why I want to learn English,” ask yourself again, you know. If no one else but you spoke English, would you still want to speak like a native? Probably not.

So the reason is for you to be able to get what you want in life, and to use that as a tool to improve your circumstances and the opportunities that you get. And then you can change your life. So English is not just English. It’s not just another language. It’s an opportunity for you to be a better person, and to develop yourself and to love yourself.

So, when we remember that that’s really the cause, we understand what is the price we’re paying when we don’t do the things we know we need to do, when we don’t challenge ourselves. And when we just think about improving English, but we never take action. The price is high, and it has nothing to do with English. It has everything to do with who you are, your reality, the people around you and how you think about yourself, and how you feel about yourself.

Nejla, I hope this was helpful, even though I didn’t give you practical advice. I think learning how to learn and finding the inner motivation, internal motivation, is so much more important than the tactics. I’ve got a bunch of those too. I’m going to link to all of that in the show notes.

But today I wanted to talk about something that is more important, which is taking responsibility, being committed, doing what you say you’re going to do, and pushing yourself and understanding why you do what you do, so you can be excited about it and passionate about it.

Okay, that’s it. Thank you so much for tuning in. We’ve got a lot of other questions that I’m going to be answering on a different episode, but for now I hope you enjoyed it. And now that kinda like inspired you to go to my website and ask your questions. And don’t be shy, record a message for me, so I can hear your lovely voice.

And if you liked this podcast, then subscribe on your favorite platform, just look for the InFluency podcast and subscribe. And if you feel courageous, you can even rate and review the podcast. That would be really helpful because that way I can actually reach more people who might need to hear this message as well. Not this specific message, but my general message about English, and life, and love, and Saturday evenings.

Okay, my friends. Thank you so much for being here. And I will catch you next time on the InFluency podcast. Bye.