The Effortless English Club Automatic English For The People Emotional Mastery 2 Main Text

Hello and welcome to the next lesson "Emotional Mastery 2." So in Emotional Mastery

1 we learned about changing our physiology, changing our bodies to change our

emotions. Remember in that less I said there are two ways to change your emotions.

Number one is physiology, we talked about that. There is something else you can

change so you can be in a peak emotional state as you learn English and that is your

focus, your mental focus. What you think about consistently, that will change your

emotion also. So what do I mean by mental focus? How do you change your mental

focus? What should you focus on? What should you not focus on?

First, let's talk about the negative. What should you not focus on? Try to remember

when you were in school in your English classes. What did you focus on when you

were in school? What did you think about, worry about, consistently, frequently? Well

probably tests, right? That was one I always thought about. You probably were focused

on tests a lot. “I gotta pass this test, I gotta pass this test." Tests, and then grades.

"Will I get an A? Will I get a B? Will I get a C? Will I fail this course?" So you were

thinking about judgment, other people judging you, the teacher judging you, getting a

grade, getting a score. How did you feel about that? When you think about tests, tests,

tests a lot and you think a lot about a score, a grade, A, B, C.

Or maybe now you're thinking about the TOEFL exam and you're worried "What number

will I get on the TOEFL exam?" How does that affect your emotions? Do you feel more

relaxed or more stressful? Well, most people feel more stressful, of course. The more

you think about judgment, the more you think about a test score, the more nervous you

become, the more worried you become. And that's not good. You actually learn more

slowly when you're worried. You learn more slowly when you're nervous, when you

have anxiety.

Again, l'll talk about Dr. Stephen Krashen, our favorite researcher. Anxiety is a major

part of his research. It is the single number one most negative factor in language

acquisition, in language learning. Anxiety means worry or stress and there are many,

many studies about this. They study different language learners, study different English

learners. And they put them in a situation where they are more stressed or more

worried. And they have others that are in a more relaxed situation. And the relaxed

students always learn better and faster.

So let's say after six months the relaxed students will have better grammar, better

pronunciation, better listening and understanding, better writing skill, better everything.

The anxious students, the worried, nervous students, the stressed students, of course,

have worse pronunciation, worse speaking ability, less vocabulary, worse writing, less