Real English Conversation: Advanced English Lesson

This is the English lesson you have been waiting for. Do you want to finally express yourself naturally in English? Would you like to be able to watch movies and TV shows in English without using subtitles? Well, I have some good news. You're in the right place. Today you are going to learn the number one method to help you be able to use real-life English that real English speakers use in the real world. Not that old textbook stuff that no one actually uses, but real English. So how are you going to do that? You are going to test out my proven conversation breakdown method that thousands of my students have used to be able to express themselves better and go out into the real world and actually be able to use English and feel confident. If you're new here, hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com and I have been teaching real-life English here on my YouTube channel for over the past 10 years to now more than 7 million of you. I can't believe it. Thank you so much for learning English with me and this week like every week I have created a special PDF worksheet just for you so that you never forget what you've learned in today's lesson. This is like a mini textbook. It includes every phrase, the entire transcript of the conversation you're about to see, plus it includes a special bonus. This is a bonus that is not in today's video. It is only available in the worksheet. It is a speaking practice. You will get the chance to practice speaking with me and all you need to do is download the worksheet, click on the link within the worksheet and it is yours. My gift to you. So how can you get this worksheet plus the bonus speaking practice? All you need to do is click on the link in the description, enter your name and email address and voila, just like that the worksheet and the bonus speaking practice will land in your email inbox. What are you waiting for? Go ahead and download it. Many of you have said, Vanessa I love your conversations with other English speakers and that's what you're going to see today. You are going to meet my sister Sharice. We're talking about the city where she lives and this is an essential conversation topic. We often talk about where we live or where we came from, where we grew up and I want you to be able to talk about this topic with confidence. So let me know in the comments. What city do you live in? Tell me something about it and maybe even use some of the vocabulary you're going to learn today because after you see this conversation clip with my sister, something special is going to happen. We are going to dive deep into some of the vocabulary that was used in this conversation clip. My husband Dan and I are going to break down some of the key vocabulary so that you can use it as well when you go out into the real world. And if you enjoy this conversation breakdown method, I want to invite you to join me in my course, The Fearless Fluency Club. We break down real life conversations like this every single month. Plus you have the opportunity to join me for a weekly live stream lesson. You can ask me any questions you need to about English and many students join each other to speak on Zoom and really use what they've learned every single week. You can click on the link in the description to join us right now for only five dollars for the first month. Try it out. See if it works for you. I am sure you're going to love it. All right. I will tell you some more about The Fearless Fluency Club in a little bit. But for now, let's go on and meet my sister and see a portion of our conversation about where she lives. Let's go. Hi everyone. I'm here with my sister Sharice. Some of you who've been in the course for a long time might recognize her, but we're glad to chat again and we're going to talk about where she lives, which might be a place you visited, might be a place you're interested in, and we can just talk about the city and different things because the U.S. is such a huge place. Yep. It's a lot of variety. So, where do you live? I live in San Diego, California. Cool. Which is in the lower eastern, southeastern portion of California. Yeah, like as south as you can get in California. It is. Any more south than we'd be in Tijuana. Yeah, you said you can see Mexico from from a highway that we go on all the time. Okay. Yeah, it's very close. Cool. So we could go probably anytime, but haven't been yet. And you haven't been there long. So let's start at the beginning. Why did you move to San Diego? Because there's many places in the U.S. You've lived many places. I know. I think every time I do a video, it's a different place, but this, the reason we moved to San Diego is primarily because my husband is in the military. He flies helicopters for the Navy. And one of their primary bases is located in San Diego. So there is a huge military population and community that lives there. So when he finished his training, he was sent to San Diego, which is one of the best places you can live if you're in the military because it's a great city. Beautiful weather. And you're kind of forced to live wherever they tell you to live. So yeah, you're going to be forced to live somewhere. Good. It's a great place. I know. I was very happy that that was the location. So that's the why. Yeah. Why we're there. And how long have you been there? Over a year. So for cool places in San Diego. Now, I've never been there, but I've seen lots of really cool pictures. I'm curious what kind of recommendations you have. Should anyone want to visit or maybe look up San Diego and just get to know a different city? Yeah, definitely. Do you have any like recommendations for typical places to visit or like off the beaten path places? Sure. I mean, I have a few of both. Uh-huh. I mean, if you want to visit some place that every tourist should see, everyone knows about, it's not a secret, then going to La Jolla Cove. Okay. There are sea lions and seals that live there. Uh-huh. And you can go and walk around and you there's a specific spot where they all live. Uh-huh. And they're on these rocks and on the beach and you can watch them like swimming together and a lot of times they're just laying on the rocks because they need to they get cold easily, I think. So they need to lay in the sun to warm up from the cold pacific ocean. Yeah, so they lay on the rocks most of the time. So they're fun to observe and people love it. So that's really cool and you can get very close. I mean, it's not you shouldn't touch them but you can get pretty close and get some cool pictures. So definitely going to La Jolla Cove. La Jolla Shores, which is next to it, is a very popular beach. I would definitely recommend going there if you're going to go to a beach. The water is pretty clear. Cool. As far as hiking goes, what if anyone wants to surf? Oh, La Jolla Shores. That's a place. Okay. Yeah. I mean if you want to go somewhere where people expect you to be a beginner and won't judge, go to La Jolla Shores and you can feel comfortable. I'm not sure if any of you are professional surfers. If you're professional then go to Black's Beach, but okay, that's like the the one that people go to and they're very good. Would you go there? Um, probably not just because to get there you have to hike down a very steep trail carrying a surfboard. I mean, it's quite dangerous getting to the water sometimes from these. That's another barrier. Remote beaches. Yeah, that's maybe one of the off-the-beam path ones is Black's Beach. Other popular places? Any lookouts or like that are already popular, maybe go to Mission Trails. They have lots of cool hiking. That's kind of the opposite of the beach life. You can go rock climbing up there, bring your own equipment and climb like scale the side of the mountain, which is pretty cool. And then off the beaten path, I have at least one recommendation. We want all the juicy secrets. Or at least that I can explain where it is. It's so Sunset Cliffs is very popular, but if you want to go somewhere like Sunset Cliffs without all the people you can go to a place in Del Mar. Del Mar is more up north. It's only like 20 minutes more north, but if you go it's like around 11th Street in Del Mar you just park your car, walk towards the ocean and climb over this guardrail. No trespassing, climb over that. People walk there all the time, but just not a lot of people know about it. And there's a railroad track. It's an active railroad track, so you have to be careful when you cross it. But you cross that and then there's this trail and you're on this ridge and then there's a huge cliff and then there's the ocean. And it's like the most pristine, beautiful, like untouched ocean. You see a few surfers, like one or two and that's it. And then you just have like the most beautiful views of the cliffs of the city of everything and hardly anyone there. And Del Mar is a very nice upscale neighborhood. So all the houses are also fun to look at when you walk down. So it's like a ridge. It's a little trail and you can, you're in nature, you get the beach, but you're also not in the sand. So if you don't want to get all sandy, this is a nice option for just to walk the picnic. I had my wedding pictures there. So I really do love this spot. It's beautiful. It's really the perfect spot. So that would be my one recommendation for an off-the-beaten-path idea. Cool. That sounds fun. I mean, I can't wait to visit hopefully next year. Thank you. Yeah, it'll be great. I'll respond back, let you guys know. Yeah, you're gonna love it. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing about San Diego and your surf experience, personal life. Yeah, of course. I hope it was interesting. Yeah, we got to know another place that you live. I know. I wonder where I'll be next. Maybe Florida. We'll see. You never know. Well, thank you so much everyone. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Charisse. Thank you. Thanks. Bye. Bye. Well, great work listening to that portion of our conversation, the full conversation we are going to be studying this month in the Fearless Fluency Club. And now it's time to break down three key vocabulary phrases that you heard in that conversation. My husband Dan and I are going to give you a lot of sample sentences. We're going to tell some stories. We're going to make this as memorable as possible so that they will stick in your mind and you'll be able to use them too. All right, let's go to vocabulary. All right. Are you ready to get started? I'm ready. Let's do it. The first expression that we're going to talk about is actually two for one. It is primary and primarily. This has to do with the main thing, the main reason, the main aspect of something. And in the conversation with Charisse, she said that they moved to San Diego primarily because her husband is in the military. So we can get the sense that the number one reason is because her husband is in the military. There's a small chance they would have moved there anyway, but the biggest reason, the primary reason so if we want to use it as an adjective, we can say primary reason is because he's in the military. So here we can use it in two different ways, two different parts of the sentence. Yes, and you can even use this as a noun. For instance, a lot of times we use this in business. I think if you have an important project, you might say it is primary that we complete this this week. So that's saying that this is the first thing we have to do or it's the main thing or the most important thing. It's primary and I would say this is a little more of a formal word. You don't really say it throughout the day like even if you said something like I primarily like cereal for breakfast even that you could say but it just doesn't sound quite right. You would like casually you would just say oh, I love to eat cereal in the morning or I mostly like to eat cereal. But you could say I primarily like to eat cereal. Yeah, I would recommend using this maybe in more slightly more formal situations. You can use it in daily conversation if you wish and that's totally fine. But I think my sister used it because this was an interview. So maybe she felt like it was a more structured conversation. And she used the word primarily and it's also just a personal choice. Yes. So you primarily use primarily informal situations. Yes. One other example I'd like to give is we use this in an academic setting often to talk about when you're doing research we might say I found some really important primary sources. And this means that you're not studying someone else's let's say you're studying about World War II and there's a historian who has explained big concepts about World War II. This is not a primary source. Instead a primary source would be a diary or a journal or someone who experienced that situation World War II themselves. So this is a primary source. It's like the first source. So we usually say that those are either the most accurate or potentially the most biased because they are only seeing it through their eyes. Yes. They're not seeing the big picture, but primary sources. Yes, they are at least the closest to the actual event. So they're the first people to really witness this event. So that's why it's primary. Yeah, so you might see this in an academic setting where your professor might say all right, we're going to be looking at some primary sources today about Native Americans or whatever it might be something that is the first source. All right. Let's watch the original clip from the conversation so that you can see how Charisse used primarily. Let's watch. The reason we moved to San Diego is primarily because my husband is in the military. He flies helicopters for the Navy. The reason we moved to San Diego is primarily because my husband is in the military. The reason we moved to San Diego is primarily because my husband is in the military. The next expression is pristine and this means pure untouched by humans or it could just mean clean. So for example, you could say to somebody wow, your house looks pristine. Well, this wouldn't actually mean that it's untouched by humans because it was built by humans and you live in there but it just kind of means that you cleaned it up so much that it doesn't even look like anybody's lived here yet. That would be pristine. That would not be our house. That would not be our house. But oftentimes we use this and I think the fundamental meaning of this would be in nature. If you go see something pristine, that means not many people live there. It's in a natural state. And usually it would mean it's beautiful. So if you're in the middle of the jungle and it's hot and sweaty and muggy and there's bugs all over you it might be very natural, but you probably wouldn't say pristine. There has to be kind of a calming element. So people often use this for the ocean. That's how Sharice used it. We saw the most pristine beach and it was beautiful. What a beautiful view. No people were there. It was pristine. It wasn't cluttered with umbrellas and people. It doesn't mean that there wasn't trash that's part of it, but it also just means there was no sign of humans. It was just the way it is originally. There was water and sand and the dunes and the trees. It was pristine. So this is something that you might find off the beaten path. It is something pristine, especially in nature. Yes, do you think you can use this for people? Vanessa looks pristine. Um, you could. I don't really think so. But I don't really think so. You might possibly hear this, but it's maybe if someone is like completely fake or unreal they look pristine. How her hair and her makeup just looks so perfect. Maybe like your hairstyle is pristine. She's like a doll. Yeah, I think because people like that are very rare or maybe with social media it's more popular. I don't know. But this type of thing is less common than a place or a view. We use this often for nature. So I wonder if there's anywhere near where you live that's pristine. Maybe it's a lake. I often think of bodies of water. Yeah, water. Definitely. Like the lake was pristine. The ocean was pristine and there's no sign of humans or very little sign of humans and it's just breathtaking. All right. Let's watch the original clips that you can see how pristine was used. Let's watch. You're on this ridge and then there's a huge cliff and then there's the ocean and it's like the most pristine beautiful like untouched ocean. The most pristine beautiful like untouched ocean. The most pristine beautiful like untouched ocean. The final expression today is spot. Spot. Okay, so we might think that a leopard has spots. This is one way to use it. Very figurative or very literal, but we often use it more figuratively to talk about a place or a location. You might say, yeah, it's a great spot. You got to visit it. That could be a restaurant. That could be a good view. But it's talking about a particular location. So when you're visiting a new city or you're going to visit someone else's city or maybe someone's going to visit your city, you might say, um, are there any spots I need to to visit or oh, is there a good spot that I can eat falafel or that's a good falafel spot. You got to check it out. So this is a very casual conversational way to talk about place. Very casual. Yes, it's my favorite spot. And sometimes this can't even be very localized. Like I need to find a spot to eat. Oh, as in like literally a place to sit down or I can't find a spot. Yeah, this would be like wherever you're sitting. Maybe it's in a big field or a grassy park or there's a bunch of benches somewhere. You need to find a spot to sit. Yeah, it could even be in a restaurant where there's a bunch of seats and it's really crowded. There's not a spot to sit in. So I need to wait until someone leaves. We don't have any spots available like places. Yes, and I would say this is mostly destinations. This wouldn't really be your home, right? Home is my favorite spot. You could say in the living room, there's a lot of spots to sit. Okay, that's true. Like if you're having a bunch of guests over or just in general, you could say there's a lot of comfortable spots to sit or there's only one comfortable spot to sit and our cat is always there. So we could say it in that way, but not talking about your home. Like my home is a nice spot. That's a little bit weird. All right. Let's watch the original clip from the conversation to talk about a spot meaning a place and you can always check out the lesson guide for some more examples about how to use this to talk about another city, your own city, and to describe places around you. All right, let's watch. And it's cool to have a little hidden secret too that's a good view and doesn't seem like it's too far away. No, yeah, it's really the perfect spot. So it's really the perfect spot. It's really the perfect spot. It's really the perfect spot. Great work learning those three key vocabulary phrases that real English speakers use in the real world. And if you enjoyed today's conversation breakdown method, I want to invite you to join me in the fearless fluency club. Me along with thousands of other motivated English students where you will be able to study and really immerse yourself in a real life conversation like this every single month. Plus you will grow your real life vocabulary, pronunciation, phrasal verbs, and every single week I host a live streamed English lesson where you can answer my questions, you can get feedback, and you're there to be able to study with me. And after this live stream lesson every week students meet together on Zoom and practice speaking together. The only way to improve your speaking skills is to practice speaking and this is a great way to do it. My student Volker from Germany said, The biggest game changer was when I found your course. I gave a presentation in front of 50 salesmen and I became more and more confident. That's amazing. My student Garg from Thailand said, Last month I was working on site with colleagues and I had to speak in English. I had been studying with Vanessa for four months and at that event I realized, oh my god, I can communicate in English. I have the confidence to communicate with my colleagues. Garg, I'm very happy for you. My student Sesam says, my colleagues and friends have noticed my English. They told me, how have you improved your English? It's so amazing. I always thought English was difficult, but after your classes I have changed my mind. Thanks a lot. Sesam, I'm very happy for you that English is not as difficult as you thought. And you are able to see improvement. That is the goal. So if you would like to join me and all of these wonderful students in the Fearless Fluency Club, right now you can join for only five dollars for the first month. This is a trial offer so that you are able to test out the course, see if it's a good fit for you. If it is, you're welcome to stay and become a confident English speaker. And if it is not, no problem. You can cancel your subscription at any time. It is hassle free. So all you need to do is click on the link in the description and join me in the Fearless Fluency Club and all of these wonderful motivated students. Well, thank you 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 meet my neighbors Lindsay and Dani. We will use the conversation breakdown method to understand our conversation about moving from the big city to a small town. And you will be able to express yourself more fluently in English. I'll see you there.