CHAPTER 1

A Better Way to Learn

English

If you’ve picked up this book, chances are

you’ve wanted to speak English for a while.
Maybe you’ve even taken classes. You prob-
ably need English to improve your career.
Maybe you want to travel internationally or
study abroad. You know that English is the
key to international business and
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international travel. So let me ask you

something.
Do you feel nervous or shy when you try to
speak English? Do you still struggle to un-
derstand what someone is saying to you des-
pite years of study? Are you embarrassed
about your pronunciation or worried you
speak too slowly? Are you frustrated that
despite all the time you’ve invested in learn-
ing English you still can’t speak it? Despite
your goals, is it difficult for you to actually
use English in your job, travels, or studies?
Do you sometimes feel that you’ll never mas-
ter spoken English?
If you answered yes to any of these ques-
tions, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re fairly
typical. Most English students feel this way.
Most adult English learners are stressed and
frustrated about their speaking ability. Some
feel completely hopeless and feel they’ll nev-
er be able to speak English powerfully. Not
because they’re bad at languages, but
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because, like you, they’ve been taught using

the wrong methods.
The good thing is that it doesn’t have to be
like this. There is nothing wrong with you.
You can learn to speak English naturally and
with ease. You can use English effectively in
your job, travels, and studies. You can feel
relaxed and confident every time you speak
English. In fact, as a long-time English
teacher, I’ve helped thousands of students all
over the world become fluent and powerful
English speakers.
How did I do it? I did it using a teaching
method I developed called Effortless Eng-
lish™. Effortless English™ enables you to
learn English naturally and automatically –
the way children learn before they enter
school. Too often, English classes get so fo-
cused on tests, textbooks, grades and
“levels,” students forget why they’re there in
the first place. They forget about the real
world goals of a more successful career and
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exciting international travel. With Effortless

English™ you never lose sight of the fact that
the ultimate goal of learning a language is
communication. Instead, you learn to speak
English both quickly and with more
precision.

Effortless?
I understand if you’re skeptical – particularly
if you’ve been trying to learn English the tra-
ditional way. You’ve put in the hours: mem-
orizing vocabulary lists, doing grammar
drills, reading boring textbooks. “How?”
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you’re thinking, “can speaking English pos-

sibly be effortless?”
Believe me, I feel your pain.
Back when I started teaching 15 years ago,
my students were all excited to begin con-
versing in English. And I was excited to help
them. At that time, I taught in the usual way.
I used textbooks and I focused on teaching
grammar. I thought this was the best way to
teach, and none of my students complained.
I still remember one particularly intelli-
gent student of mine from Venezuela named
Gladys. Gladys was determined to speak
English well. Talk about effort! Gladys atten-
ded every one of my classes. She always sat
in the center of the front row. I can still pic-
ture her eager and smiling face. She took de-
tailed notes. She listened to every word I
said. She also studied at home. Every day
Gladys studied her English textbooks for
four hours or more. She also tried to learn 50
new vocabulary words by memorizing word
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lists. Gladys was my star student and I, too,

was sure she would succeed.
Six months later, however, she still could
barely speak English. Her speech was hesit-
ant and unnatural. She constantly made
grammar mistakes with even the simplest
sentences. Her pronunciation was difficult to
understand. She still thought in Spanish and
tried to translate to and from English when
she spoke. Worst of all, Gladys felt nervous
every time she tried to speak English. Speak-
ing English was a painful experience for her.
Gladys was extremely frustrated. After so
much effort, she had barely improved. As her
teacher, I too was frustrated. I was sure
Gladys would improve quickly and couldn’t
understand why she had not. I followed all of
the traditional teaching methods. I used the
standard textbooks and the standard
classroom activities. Gladys was intelligent,
disciplined and consistent, and yet her Eng-
lish speaking barely improved.
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Sadly, I realized that Gladys wasn’t the

only one who had not improved. Her class-
mates also had barely improved. It was frus-
trating, and I felt like a complete failure as a
teacher. But when I asked my colleagues for
help, it turned out they had the same prob-
lem – very few of their students were im-
proving either! At that point, I realized
something was wrong – something is wrong
with standard methods for teaching English.
The worst part for me was that everyone ac-
cepted this situation as “normal.” The other
teachers didn’t seem to be concerned about
their students’ lack of progress. All the teach-
ers were using the same methods and getting
the same poor results.
In most parts of the world, students study
English in school for years. Yet, the vast ma-
jority of them never learn to speak English
well. After years of study, they still have
trouble with real English conversations. They
still feel nervous and shy about speaking.
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A few years after my experience with

Gladys, I got a job as an English teaching as-
sistant in Japan. I was excited and eager to
help these young students learn my lan-
guage. I still remember my first day. I was
sitting at the front of the class next to the
main teacher, who was Japanese. As the stu-
dents came into the room, they saw me and
giggled nervously. They sat down and contin-
ued to shyly glance up at me. They were
sweet and curious.
Then the class started. The main teacher
wrote an English sentence on the board. I
don’t remember the exact sentence, but it
was something like, “The little girl goes to
school.” The teacher pointed to the sentence
and began to talk in Japanese. The students
all grabbed their notebooks and began writ-
ing. Everyone was very serious.
Next, the teacher circled the word “goes.”
She pointed at the word and continued
speaking in Japanese. She talked and talked
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and talked, in Japanese. The students wrote

quickly, filling their notebooks with informa-
tion. Finally, the teacher drew a line from the
word “goes” to the word “girl.” And then she
talked more, on and on and on, in Japanese.
This continued for the entire class. The
teacher drew lines, circles, and squares. She
used different colored chalk. And she contin-
ued speaking Japanese.
I was totally confused. I am a native speak-
er of English, and I was sitting in a beginning
English class. Yet I could not understand
anything in the class (except for that one
sentence). I was thinking to myself, “What
could this teacher possibly be talking about
so much? It’s just one sentence.” Yet the
teacher spent an entire hour analyzing, ex-
plaining, and dissecting that one simple sen-
tence. Finally, at the end of the class, the
teacher asked me to read the sentence aloud
“for pronunciation.” I read the sentence a
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couple of times, and that was the only real

English input the students got that day.
Sadly, this same pattern repeated every
day. Day by day, I watched the students’ en-
thusiasm and curiosity disappear. They be-
came bored. They became stressed and con-
fused. Every day they wrote pages of notes,
mostly in Japanese. Every day the teacher
talked and talked and talked, mostly in
Japanese. I couldn’t understand why an Eng-
lish class was being taught mostly in Japan-
ese. During the average class, the students
were listening to Japanese 90% of the time
or more. They heard very little English. No
wonder they never learned to speak! No
wonder they were frustrated and confused.
Honestly, it broke my heart to watch as the
school crushed these students’ natural love
of learning. It was terrible to watch them
grow bored, frustrated, and stressed. And six
months later, none of the students could
speak to me at all, not even the simplest
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conversation. This kind of situation is re-

peated in English classes all over the world.
My experiences with Gladys and in Japan
convinced me that traditional English lan-
guage education is broken. I knew there had
to be a better way to help my students speak
English than what we were doing. So I began
the search for a better way. I devoured books
about English teaching. I constantly tried
out new methods in my classes. I read re-
search studies. I traveled and taught English
in other parts of the world.
What surprised me was how little the actu-
al research supported traditional teaching
methods. As eminent University of Southern
California linguist Stephen Krashen noted:
“We acquire language when we understand
what people tell us and what we read….there
is no need for deliberate memorization.” If
most of us knew, intuitively, that the best
way to learn English was naturally, I
wondered, why were so many teachers and
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students still choosing to use unnatural, inef-

fective and old methods of teaching?
Eventually, I went back to school and got a
master’s degree in (TESOL) Teaching Eng-
lish to Speakers of Other Languages. Along
the way, I did more research and discovered
the incredible new methods that would be-
come the basis for the Effortless English™
program.
I also did my own informal research. I
searched for excellent English speakers who
had learned the language as an adult.
Whenever I found such a person, I inter-
viewed them. Over time, I noticed patterns.
Most of these successful speakers were inde-
pendent students who mastered spoken Eng-
lish outside of school. Most of them used
similar methods, the very same methods
supported by my master’s research. Most
avoided the traditional methods used in
most schools.
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I changed my teaching, and when I used

these new strategies in classes, my students
improved quickly. I couldn’t believe it! They
learned to speak easily and powerfully. And
even better – they were enjoying themselves!
After years of searching and experimenta-
tion, I had finally found methods that
worked.

Effortless English Today

Over the years, I’ve continued to test and ad-
apt these methods and developed the Effort-
less English™ system. I’ve organized the pro-
gram to include seven essential rules for
learning English, which have led countless
students to fluency. To build on the success
of my classes, I created audio courses and
began offering them online to English stu-
dents around the world. My audio lessons
are currently bestsellers in 25 countries.
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In addition, I founded the Effortless Eng-

lish Club™ to create an international English
learning community where students can
communicate with other members. I wanted
to create an environment that encouraged
confidence and success with English, be-
cause so many learners struggle with
nervousness, shyness, frustration and fear
when speaking. In fact, for many people
these negative emotions are the worst part of
speaking English.
In our Effortless English Club™ students
are able to interact on our forums and speak
with each other online. It is an extremely
positive and encouraging community, where
everyone is free to “play with English,” make
mistakes, and communicate without fear. In
my opinion, we have the best members in the
world. Every one of our members is focused
not only on their own success, but also on
helping other members achieve success too.
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The result is a supportive “family” of learners

and international leaders.
This book is another resource for students
looking to speak English powerfully and flu-
ently. It is designed to guide you on the road
to fluency, to speed your journey to confid-
ent, powerful, effortless speaking. In this
book, you will learn how to re-program your
negative emotions about English, develop
confidence when speaking, and follow a
powerful and effective road to fluency. You’ll
also learn how to use English to improve
your career and achieve the success you
want.
Over the next several chapters, I will de-
scribe the Effortless English™ system in de-
tail, explain the philosophy behind it, and
tell you why both psychology and method are
important for language learning. I’ll also tell
you exactly how to use the system to reach
your goals.
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Join me and enjoy the journey. You really

have nothing to fear by leaving the old edu-
cation system behind. So let go of the pres-
sure, the stress, the fear and the boredom. I
promise you this natural learning system is
fun, friendly, and energetic – the opposite of
most school classrooms. There is no pressure
– just friendly encouragement and support.
Trust me. I have helped students every-
where in the world… and now I am eager to
help you. I promise I will always do my best
to help you speak excellent English.

NOT "LAZY" ENGLISH

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So what is Effortless English™? By "ef-

fortless" I certainly don't mean lazy Eng-
lish. On the contrary, "effortless English" is
going to be the result of the work you put
in every day. By following my system, you
will make progress and achieve the result
of speaking naturally and "effortlessly"
(unforced, without stress, hesitation or
nervousness).
In other words, "effortless" is the result,
not the beginning. Your goal is to speak
English effortlessly. You want the words to
flow out without thinking, without translat-
ing, without worry or hesitation. You want
to speak English just as you speak your
own native language. Effortless speaking is
the final result, and sometimes it takes a lot
of effort to become effortless!
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It is possible, however, to thoroughly en-

joy that effort. The example I like to use is
that of an athlete or artist "in the zone." "In
the zone" means performing excellently
and effortlessly. When an athlete is "in the
zone" at one level, they are working very
hard – expending a lot of energy, pushing,
totally focused. However, when they are
enjoying themselves and completely fo-
cused, the activity FEELS effortless to
them. There is no feeling of forcing, strain-
ing, etc.
In fact, the name Effortless English™
was inspired by the Taoist idea of "wu wei"
or effortless effort. It's a description of that
flow state where you can be expending a lot
of effort and yet it feels totally effortless
and natural, not forced.
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So the point is that Effortless English™

is not about laziness, quick fixes, or im-
possible scams... but rather about finding
that state of "effortless effort" or "wu wei."
Effortless English means you speak English
fluently. You don't struggle as you speak.
You don't feel nervous or stressed. You
don't think about grammar rules or
translations.
When you speak English effortlessly, you
communicate your ideas clearly. You ex-
press your feelings powerfully. You focus
on connecting with other people, not on
conjugating verbs. You thoroughly enjoy
the process of speaking English as you
work, travel and learn.