Real English Conversation: Advanced English Lesson

You are invited to a real English conversation between me, Vanessa, and my husband, Dan. Hello. You submitted some questions to us about daily life, and we are here to answer them. Our answers may not be incredible, but the English will be. Oh, yes. So I hope that you can follow along in this conversation. You can click CC to view the full subtitles if you don't catch everything we're saying. Like always, I have created a free PDF worksheet for you, which is right now over Dan's face. But this PDF worksheet has something I've never offered before. It includes a whole bonus conversation video. What? So today in this lesson, we're going to be answering some questions, but if you download the free PDF worksheet, you will unlock access to the bonus conversation lesson. It is not going to be available publicly on YouTube. You will never see it anywhere except in the worksheet. So all you have to do is click on the link in the description, enter your name and email address, and voila, just like that, the worksheet will land in your email inbox. You can open the worksheet, and there will be a link you can click to view the bonus conversation. I want to give you a sneak peek. In the bonus conversation, we will be talking about questions like, what dishes do you like to cook? Do you have a garden? Do Americans easily understand other English accents? What is a book you have enjoyed recently? How do kids learn to spell in school? Wonderful questions submitted by you. So make sure you click on the link in the description, enter your name and email address, and get the free worksheet for today so that you can unlock the bonus conversation. Okay, Dan, are you ready? I'm ready. All right. Let's get started with our first question that was submitted, in fact, by one of my Fearless Fluency Club students. The first few questions have been submitted by my course students, and the bonus conversation questions have been submitted by you on YouTube. So maybe those bonus questions were yours. All right. Let's get started with our first question. Conversation question number one was submitted by my lovely student, Sergei. Sergei asked us, how often do you go to the grocery store, and how do you get there? He asked if we use public transportation or just a car. Thanks in advance. All right, Dan, how often do we go to the grocery store, and how do we get there? I would say we probably go maybe twice a week. Oh, you think that often? Well, once a week for the big shop, and then there's sometimes a little shop peppered in there. Okay. I don't go to the grocery store very often anymore, because I'm at work, kind of far away from all the grocery store action, and you're a lot closer to the action. Yeah. The action of the grocery store. So much action. It's a lot of fun, especially taking a toddler into the grocery store. It's so fun. Actually, it is really. It's okay. Yeah. But I usually go once a week. Okay. Take a big shop, get a big shop, have a list, know what we're cooking that week, buy a bunch of stuff. And then I usually forget something, or we realize, oh, we have some fresh stuff that we need that wasn't available at that store, so we have to go somewhere else, and we might go another time somewhere else. We run out of milk, usually. Yeah, we do run out of milk. Some product we run out of. So we actually live close enough to a grocery store where technically we could walk there. Oh, it would be pretty- If we were really ambitious. Torturous to walk there, though. Well, to bring back the groceries wouldn't be fun. That's it. We could bike there, but the infrastructure in America is not great for biking, so it would be kind of annoying. You'd be sharing the road with a lot of- Cars, yeah. It'd probably take 30 minutes to get there, and if we drove in a car, it takes like five minutes. Yeah, we're five minutes away in a car, so we just drive there. And you can't take kids when you bike, at least our young kids. So you have to find, it has to be a time when you're with the kids. I'm going to bike to the store, 30 minutes to bike there, do the shop, 30 minutes back. It's just not convenient, and that's kind of the U.S. It's on my bucket list to bike there someday, because I know it's close enough, but yeah, with all the kids and all the action going on here, it's, yeah, we're busy, so we usually just drive. Yeah. But that's not our main grocery store. We like a grocery store called Trader Joe's, and it's kind of like our favorite place ever. I feel like I mentioned Trader Joe's so much. Yeah, they've mastered the art of the grocery store experience. Yeah, if you visit the U.S., yeah, if you visit the U.S., I recommend going into Trader Joe's, just buying a few things, because people there are so nice, and if you want to have just like a spontaneous conversation with someone, that's a great way, because they'll usually say like, oh, how are you doing? Are you doing anything interesting this afternoon? Oh, have you ever tried this before? Where are you from? Like, they'll generally strike up a conversation, and that's part of the marketing, is, and it works. I love going there, because people are nice. They got good vibes. They all wear shirts like this. They're really happy. Hawaiian shirts, that's what we call that. All right, let's move on to our next question. So in this conversation lesson, we are going from light question, like, how often do you go to the grocery store, to serious question, then back to light question, so the next one is a little more serious. All right. I'm ready. All right. Carmen, Masako, Dongrim, and Tracy all asked variations of this question. How do you do it all? Kids, business, work, house, food, chickens, how do you do it all? They didn't even add the chickens, did they, or did they? No. A very good question, I feel like, here, the way that Tracy worded it is, Vanessa, you are so busy. I believe your daily life is quite hectic. You must care for three children, film lessons, prepare lesson plans, among other things. I am just curious if you have time for yourself. Dongrim said, do you often do overtime? You run your business. I think it must be inevitable. Masako said, you have numerous roles and responsibilities. What's your highest priority? Carmen said, how many times a week can you carve out spare time for yourself? Thanks a lot, dear teacher. So this is all asking, basically, how can you do so many things and maintain your sanity? That is a really good question. Well, I don't know. How do we? May I answer this first? Yeah. What do you think? I need some wisdom. I would say we don't do it all. Uh-huh. Yeah. We can't do it all, right? Yeah. See, we have to pick and choose a lot of things. I know for me, personally, I've had a lot of hobbies in the past that I've just had to cut out of my life, especially the ones that are non-essential. For example, I used to play video games. I just have a zero video game policy now because it doesn't contribute anything to the family. And I could sit here and be a sourpuss about it, but overall, I'm a lot happier now contributing in a different way than just having that as a hobby just for myself. So you've got to be a lot more selfless in the position we've put ourselves in, especially because we've added not one, not two, but three children to the mix. It is hectic. That's a good word for it. It's hectic. So yeah, it helps a lot if you have a good relationship and have good communication and can share a lot of stuff. So in the past, I actually didn't work a regular job at all. So I did a lot of child care and a lot of household stuff. Yeah, you worked for my business for a while. And I worked for your business as well. And so, yeah, I didn't have a job outside the home, I should say. And I would say that that took a lot of the load off of you at the time, and you were a lot busier back then. But then we went through like a huge transition phase where we basically organized a lot of our life to be able for me to work outside the home and for you to have less work. And you hire more people now to do some of the stuff. So yeah, that's my answer. So there's a lot of strategy that goes on behind the scenes. And you have to share stuff really well, and you have to make sacrifices in your own life. That's some really good wisdom. Yeah. That's the gist of it. Yeah. I hope you guys cannot just hear the lawnmower that just started beside us. I wanted you to hear the beautiful bird sounds because there's so many wonderful birds. But talking about... It's America. This lawnmower's got to go right now. Talking about like not doing it just ourselves, Speak English with Vanessa has a wonderful team of people. So for example, David will help to edit this audio so that that lawnmower is not so loud. If that were up to me, the audio would just have the lawnmower really loud and I couldn't do anything about it. But because the business is capable of hiring people to do various jobs, I don't have to do everything. That would not be possible with three kids. And I'm not the best at everything. I feel like Kevin edits these videos, David helps with the sound, especially if there's other things going on. I used to edit the videos. Not for YouTube though. Oh yeah. You did for the courses. And like Elsa helps with emails and Amber helps with some lessons. Like there's so many things going on that I'm not doing myself. I'm helping to manage that, but you have to depend on other people. Like that is essential. And sometimes that's not what you see. Like you just see the final product, whether it's, oh, we have homemade dinners for our family every night. A lot of work goes into organizing. How can we have a homemade dinner for our family every night? Or how do I run this business? Well, there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff that you never see. Like Dan just made our dinner for tonight. It's one in the afternoon. Dan made our dinner. Chopping. He organized what it is. Like that's the behind the scenes stuff that it takes a lot of work and organization, but it really helps things be smoother. I would say for me, the one mindset tip that helps me lessen the hecticness of my life, it doesn't always work, so take it with a grain of salt, but it is when I'm doing something, I try to be in that 100%. So if I'm gardening with my kids, I'm not thinking about YouTube videos. If I'm sitting in the office coming up with new YouTube video ideas, I'm not thinking about what's for dinner that night. I really try to focus and I think that's especially valuable with my family. When I'm going for a walk, I'm trying to just take a break. Don't feel like I need to be productive at every moment doing all these things because goodness knows when you multitask, you're usually less productive, right? At least I am. So I try to just sit in the sandbox and play with my kids and not check my emails and think about some work thing or think about something else going on. Just try to be 100% in the activity I'm currently doing. I don't do this perfectly, but it's kind of like my goal. It's what I strive to do and I feel like it's kind of a good centering. So when I feel hectic and I look back at the day, I think usually, oh, my brain was all over the place. There were like 500 things going on and I couldn't focus on one of them. And sometimes that just happens. Like you got three kids, they're all crying, you got to make dinner, oh no, I have to answer this email. Like sometimes that happens. But when I get the chance to just be calm in a moment, going for a walk with the kids, planting stuff in the garden, those types of things, I try to just embrace it. Embrace the moment. Yeah. May I add something here too? Okay. So this is a little bit different, but I think it really helps to have the space to do this stuff. If you have a kind of career in place where you have a little bit of flexibility. So a lot of people don't have this in their life. You work nine to five and you may have a little break here or there, but you're just stuck in this very structured system and maybe they even have to work overtime. We're very fortunate because even though you work a lot, it is structured in a way that you can build your own schedule. So that is very helpful and I think it's kind of a privilege we have. But I kind of hope it's the direction the world goes in, in a way. A lot of jobs, you don't have to be in a place nine to five. People are starting to work from home more and they can eat in their kitchen for their lunchtime instead of ... I think the world is wanting more flexibility, especially the next generation. I hear that a lot, that the next generation is not putting up with corporate America. They want more flexibility. I'm very curious what the future holds. There's some give and take there, but you know. Yeah, we'll see. I know every culture's different. This is a can of worms, apparently, this question. All right, let's go on to the next question. Well, lots of people asked that, so I think it's important to dive into it for a while. The next one's kind of connected. Eleonora asks, do you do yoga? But she added on to that, in order to balance yourself. Thank you, Teacher Vanessa. This is kind of also talking about self-care. I wanted to talk about exercise and yoga. First of all, do you do yoga, Dan? No. I tried doing yoga for a while. We did it together when we lived in South Korea, and that was the longest stretch we did it. It's just not really for me. I like the vibes of it, but I am 0% flexible, so it's just, yeah, it's not my thing. I like doing yoga, but I don't have the life right now, so this is also kind of the mindset stuff. I don't have the life right now where I can go to a yoga class. I would love to go to a yoga class twice a week, but I'm choosing to take care of my daughter all day, and I work when she naps. I could hire someone to come take care of her, so I can go to a yoga class. That's possible. We have the money to be able to do that, but that's a lot of coordination and figuring out and organizing, and I'm choosing right now not to do that, and choosing to do other types of exercise that fit with what I'm capable of, because I would feel like that's just adding too much to my life right now, but when she's older and she's in school, absolutely, I would love to go to an in-person class twice a week or something like that. I like the people who do yoga. There's a yoga studio near us that's called Asheville Community Yoga, and it's a nonprofit, which means all the teachers are volunteers. It blows my mind, because some teachers teach there every day, and they're just doing it out of the goodness of their heart, and it's so cool. I love that type of giving atmosphere, but I would go there twice a week or so, and I'm realizing this time in my life is just limited. A season, one might say. It's a season. Yeah, that's what we say. So in two years, sure, I can do that, and that's fine, and right now for exercise, we have the perfect scenario. Fortune has landed upon our laps. Yes, in multiple ways, because our neighbor, our new neighbors, she is a personal trainer. She is so nice. She's wonderful. If you're in the Fearless Fluency Club, you know her. Her name is Lindsey. You met her back in February. She's got us pumping iron. And I go over there, and Dan goes over there separately, because we have to watch the kids. You can tell, right? Yeah. Twice a week, and we lift weights, and this is something I would not do on my own. I don't know how to do that on my own. I have some more skills now. I've been doing it for nine months or so, but it's a social thing. I get to talk to Lindsey. I like her. I like talking with her. She knows more about lifting weights, and she knows how I can do it in a healthy way without hurting myself, and all of that just ... And it's across the street from our house, so I can just walk across the street. Dan comes home from work. I say, bye. I walk across the street. He watches the kids, and the next day, he does that. He comes home. I'm with the kids. He gets changed and goes and works out, and there's not an awful lot of friction. I think that's the thing with working out for a lot of people, for me, that ... Getting there. It's hard to go from ... Knowing what to do. Yeah, not working out to working out, to having a habit of exercising. If you don't have that habit, it's hard to get that ball rolling, as they say. I feel like this is the perfect scenario for us, that we have someone across the street who can give us accountability, and can do that for us, and help us. I just show up. I don't need to think. She shows me what to do. She makes the plan. It's so lovely. Yeah. What about you? I'll add a bit to this, as well. I work out with Lindsey, as well. That's a really good mind-body connection activity, to get your body engaged in a way that we normally aren't, because we do a lot of stuff unconsciously, without thinking about our bodies. Yeah. Obviously, I do a lot of yard work, and I just pick up stuff the wrong way. This is kind of relearning, that kind of thing. Going back to yoga, the nice thing about yoga is it's a lot to do with mindfulness and breathing and stuff. Her stuff is less like that, so we are also trying to do some meditation activities. We're not very consistent with this, but us, in particular, and maybe Americans in general, are very, very go, go, go. Not much slowing down, one thing to another kind of activities or lifestyle. We are trying our best to add some of this mindfulness, meditation, slowing down moments or activities, or even just noticing for five minutes, checking in with your breathing and how you're feeling and stuff like that. Even though it's not necessarily physical like yoga, it's still kind of like a noticing your body and your breathing type of activity. It's about keeping yourself balanced, like Eleonora said. Yeah. We have something called stillness practice that we've tried to do with our kids. Before they go to bed, we sit on the couch, and we have some ... It's like meditation music, just soft music. We light a candle, and we all sit there quietly and stare into the flame. When the song is done, it's about five minutes. Then we get up, and ideally, the kids would feel relaxed and calm and be able to go to bed. Doesn't always work, but for that five minutes, I have seen the kids, and I think we have too, but I've noticed it in them. Take deeper breaths and just release that tension, even if it's for two minutes of the five minutes. Just ... Or five seconds. Yeah. Even just a little bit of that practicing in their lives, I think it's good for us. I like that they get the opportunity to try that. I think a lot of schools are trying to incorporate this, like the school that you teach at does that somewhat. It's an alternative school. I don't know how common it is. I think it's getting more common for yoga to be in schools, and for teachers to do various mindfulness exercises at the beginning of the day. It certainly helps the teacher, because the kids, if they're more centered, they're going to have a better day. But yeah, anyway, those are some of our things that we do to stay fit, mentally healthy maybe, and it's not always going to be perfect, right? It's just different tools that you can have so that you feel physically good, or the kids and us as a family can have a moment in the hecticness to just be still, and to get a five-year-old boy to be still for five minutes, they're really proud of themselves, actually. It's hard, but they're like, we did it for five minutes, all right. They feel really excited that they did it. So anyway, that's our thing. All right, the next question is unfortunately not for you. It is for me. It is, how do you fit learning French into your daily life? This question is from Camilla, another Fearless Fluency Club student. My answer, Camilla, is that first of all, I try to be realistic, and I try to have fun. So what I'm capable of right now, and what I want to do is speak with someone. I don't want to increase my vocabulary a lot right now, or watch a bunch of French movies. I don't really like movies anyway, but that's not something that really interests me. It might interest you, cool, please, watch a bunch of English movies, great idea. But for me, I try once a week to have a French lesson. So for about 30 minutes, I pay a French teacher, and she's a lovely woman from France. And we just talk on a video chat for 30 minutes. She asks about my life. She knows things that are going on, so she'll be like, oh, last week you did this. How did that go? Sometimes we talk about deeper things, or philosophize about things, or whatever comes up. And this type of real connection in French is amazing. She's a wonderful conversationalist, asks great questions, but it's a time for me to just show up, and I'm not responsible for anyone. It feels to me almost like working out with Lindsay. I just show up there, and she tells me kind of what to do. The rest of my life, I have so many responsibilities that when I show up to my French lesson, I'm just talking, and I'm learning because she'll correct some things, she'll write down some things that I can say better, and it's 30 minutes once a week. It's maintenance. It's time for myself. It's maintaining what I know, and it's also time for me because I love any conversation in French. I just feel very excited about it. So yeah, it feels like I'm taking care of myself. I'm also maintaining some French level, and yeah, having a good time. And if you cannot find 30 minutes to speak with someone each week, rethink some other priorities in your life because you can absolutely do it. This is like the number one thing that I tell my students. If you want to speak confidently in English, you need 100% to speak for at least 30 minutes every week with someone else. That's accountability. It's real. It's a real conversation. You are having to respond. You're not just reading a book or watching this video. You are active, and it's real life. You're actually communicating. I think it can be really scary at first, but it's essential. You want to improve your English, so you can do it. As a little plug, since all of these students are in my course, the Fearless Fluency Club, one of the features of this course is that students talk together. They meet together, and they talk on Zoom multiple times a week. And it's student-led, so everybody understands exactly that nervous feeling, that I don't know exactly what to say all the time feeling, but they support each other. It is so amazing. If you don't have anyone to talk to, I recommend joining the Fearless Fluency Club. Join one of the student-led speaking groups, and it will be scary the first few times because that's normal, but after a few weeks and then a few months, you'll be amazed. You'll feel so much more confident, interested, excited, and you'll have friends, which is so cool. Have friends around the world. A lot of my students have actually met up with each other around the world. That makes my heart so happy. Okay, let's go on to our next question. All right, the next question is, do Americans brush their teeth in the morning? Walter, my student, asked it a little more detailed. In general, do American people brush their teeth after or before breakfast or twice? Warmest regards. All right. I don't know about all Americans, let's just talk about us. I think this is pretty hit or miss. I don't think there's a standard, you know? I remember when we lived in South Korea, after every meal, people would brush their teeth. Yeah. It's very, very common. Like after lunch, everyone's in the bathroom brushing their teeth. When I was a kid, it was always brush your teeth in the morning and the evening. Was it before or after breakfast? He would like to know. I think it was before. It was just right after you wake up, I think. Even though it makes more sense after you eat, I would say. You know, nowadays, I usually brush my teeth in the evening and then sometimes in the morning. If I'm feeling like I don't want her to smell my morning breath, then I'll brush my teeth in the morning. So every day almost. Yeah. In the morning, right when I wake up, I brush my teeth. And then I don't brush them after breakfast. And then I brush my teeth before I go to bed. But I do find myself, I would say not using toothpaste, but just like running a toothbrush over my teeth to get like any food out of my teeth. Waving a toothbrush in front of your face. Yes. Magic. Mainly because I don't want bits and pieces of food stuck in my teeth. But I'm also at home a lot. So I have that option. I think if I were in an office, I probably wouldn't have a toothbrush because it feels I remember when we were in Korea and after lunch, people were brushing their teeth in the bathroom together. It struck me that I consider brushing teeth kind of a private thing. Like it was weird that people were brushing their teeth together. Like it's a personal private thing. You're never like in your house with other people brushing your teeth. It's like in the bathroom by yourself brushing your teeth. But because people were doing it at work, I was like, this is not professional. This is not a private situation. What is this? I was really surprised. But I get it. When you eat kimchi, you need to brush your teeth. There's little red flecks of pepper always in your teeth. So I understand how that is a cultural thing. But for Americans in general, if you are an American watching this video, let us know in the comments, please, do you brush your teeth in the morning? Do you brush them before breakfast? After breakfast? Twice? Are you like an amazing teeth hygiene person, dental hygiene? The standard is in the morning after you wake up and in the evening before you go to bed. Yeah. I think that's probably the most common. Yeah. Well, let us know in the comments. All right, Walter. I hope that helped. Our final question for this video here on YouTube, before we get to our bonus. Oh, we don't end on the brushing teeth question? No. Is this one from YouTube. So all the other questions were from my course students. This one is from Usra Raermoon on YouTube. And this person asks, what is a song you can listen to and never be bored? Never be bored. Yes. Never be bored. Okay. Well, this one, this is really cliche. You can probably guess it. You got to just tell me. I have no idea. Bohemian Rhapsody. I got two actually. Okay. Bohemian Rhapsody. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, because it's just like the most exciting song. It's got movements. It's got a breakdown. You can head bang. It is never boring. And it's not boring. Yeah. I don't always want to listen to it. It's great to sing. Yeah. But it's never boring when I listen to it. Right. Yeah. I don't always want to hear it, but I'm never bored. Yeah. And then the other song is maybe a bit of a deeper cut. So I like music from the 70s is pretty much my favorite time era overall. And I like the artist Joni Mitchell, who is a singer songwriter. And she has a song called Coyote, which is just her and acoustic guitar, some conga drums and a bass, a really, really good bassist in the song. And I don't think Vanessa's too into Joni Mitchell that much because it's a little too moody for me. Very, very moody. And yeah, I think she's brilliant. And the song has probably my like the best storytelling lyrics ever. Do I know that song? Have I listened to it? I'm sure you've heard it. OK. Yeah. I think all her music blends in together for you. Yeah. It all kind of sounds the same, but I mean, that's OK, too. It's person by person. Yeah. So but that's probably my favorite song by her. And she's one of my favorite artists. So cool. Cool. I chose one. I feel like there's a couple that I always am excited by. But one that stuck out is Teenage Dream. That one is always exciting. Is the Simon and Garfunkel song. Sounds of Silence. It's not an exciting song. It's like the least exciting song ever. Come to talk to you. Cecilia. Oh, OK. Cecilia, you're breaking my heart. I feel like that song is so ridiculous in the actual the words are ridiculous. Yeah. Like making love in the afternoon with Cecilia up in my bedroom. Oh, my. I come back and wash my face. When I come back to bed, someone's taken my place like it's just ridiculous, but it's not too relatable. No. But the vibe of the song, the like the catchiness, the like foot stomping, like all of that. I love it. It's so every time I listen to it, I get excited about it. And the other night I was coming home from hanging out with some friends and that song came on when I was in the driveway and I was just like, Cecilia, you're breaking my heart. I was so excited. A driveway song is a great song. Yeah. It comes on at the right time. You're like, I'm not getting out of the car yet. It was great. Yeah. Apparently for Vanessa, it's Cecilia. Yeah. I love that song. It's so fun. So let us know in the comments, what is a song you can always listen to and never get bored? What if I want to add one more? Go for it. Okay. Listen, this is on the total other end of the spectrum. Okay. System of a Down. Okay. Almost any other song. Prison song. It'll blow you away. Okay. It might literally blow you away. You might be scared, actually. Okay. Turn it up really loud. You have no idea what's coming. Well, thank you so much, Dan, for joining me for all of these conversation questions. And if you would like to take your English to the next level, you can download the free PDF worksheet, which includes a bonus conversation lesson, just like this one. We haven't recorded it yet. We're about to, and it will not be available publicly on YouTube. The only way to access this bonus conversation is by downloading the free PDF, clicking on that link, and it will be unlocked just for you. So click on the link in the description to get your free worksheets and just enter your name, email address, and voila, just like that, the PDF worksheet will land in your email inbox. You will get access to that bonus conversation, all of the vocabulary that you saw come up today. And also, the cool thing is that you will never need to sign up for my free PDF worksheets again. I will automatically send them to you every week in your email inbox. So you just sign up once and every week I will send them to you. Pretty cool. It is my gift to you. Yay. So thank you, Dan. You're welcome. Thanks for joining me. We will continue this conversation in just a minute for our bonus conversation. I'll see you soon. We will see you soon. Thanks so much for learning English with me, and I'll see you again next Friday for a new lesson here on my YouTube channel. Bye. But wait, do you want more? I recommend watching this video next, where you will listen to another natural conversation between Dan and I, this time about education, including why did Dan not go to school until he was a teenager? Well, you'll have to watch that video to find out, and I'll see you there.