Hello there, it's me, Gabby, your American English coach from gonaturalenglish .com.
Have you ever thought that learning English was painful, challenging, and difficult?
Well, it doesn't have to be.
You can actually enjoy yourself and learn English quickly with fluency.
Let me tell you something.
You don't have to be bored in your English class learning from a textbook.
The way that I learned a lot of other languages, Spanish, Portuguese, French, is through stories.
Now, this is not something that I'm selling.
It doesn't cost any money.
I simply want to show you how, as an intermediate English language learner, you can enjoy learning by reading or listening to stories.
Now, it's entertaining.
It's fun. You probably read stories in your native language.
But have you thought about how you could do this in English to improve your fluency quickly and actually have fun doing it?
Maybe you're a student and you have free time during the summer, or maybe you have some time on the weekend if you're working that you can enjoy a story with.
And instead of reading it in your native language, you could read it or listen to it in English.
And teacher Ryan is going to show you exactly how to benefit from stories and improve your fluency at the same time.
So it actually does require some strategy.
I mean, if you just read or listen to a story and don't really think about it, that's fine.
It will still help you.
But we're going to show you some really special secret strategies that will help you to hack your way to fluency much faster.
So I want to also show you a way that you can hack your way to learning any skill much faster.
I've been learning online with a website called Skillshare, where they share skills in the format of thousands of online courses accessible through the website called Skillshare.
You can actually learn from anywhere, from your home, from your laptop, from a cell phone, from a smartphone.
And the course I've been taking is by Cat Coquillette, which is an intro to Photoshop course.
And I'm learning a lot about how to improve my photography, my designs to share with you all.
And they have thousands of courses on different topics, even on English fluency.
But if you're at the advanced level of English or even high intermediate, you could take all of their courses because they're really about creative skills.
Most of them will help you in your career.
But they are for hobbies, for your career, for your enjoyment, even to put on your resume.
So whether you want to improve your skills and learn something new to get a job and make money from it, or simply for pleasure in your free time, Skillshare is an awesome, awesome resource.
And the first 1000 people who click on the link in the description can get a one month free trial of Skillshare.
That means access to thousands of professional expert quality courses on Skillshare.
So think about how much you could learn in one month's time.
I want to make sure you understand the insane value of this free trial.
So don't hesitate, click on that link right now to get your free trial and create your account today.
And who knows, maybe we'll see each other in the same class.
What class do you want to take?
What topics do you want to learn?
Tell me in the comments because I'm super curious to know what else you're interested in besides of course English learning.
Today I'm sharing two stories from my adventures around the world.
You're going to learn new phrases and vocabulary.
And make sure you're paying close attention because at the end of the video, we have a small quiz to test your listening comprehension abilities.
Hi everyone, I'm Ryan and welcome to Go Natural English.
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Go to the description and it's the first link.
Description, first link.
Story number one, a disaster at the border.
So at the beginning of 2018, I was in Ukraine, which is a wonderful country.
I love it there. I always feel happy and the people are really friendly.
I totally recommend Ukraine.
But I needed to take a bus from the western part of Ukraine to Poland, then fly to Sweden and then fly to the USA and subsequently fly to China, where I would teach science.
Subsequently refers to the next thing in an order.
So bus, then plane, then plane, and subsequently another plane in this case.
So back to the first thing, the bus.
Normally the bus ride takes eight hours.
And I thought that I would allocate 24 hours.
So I have 24 hours to do an eight -hour trip.
I'm safe. No problems.
Wrong. It was a disaster.
We left the city at 1 pm, and it took 90 minutes to get to the border.
But when we arrived, the traffic was backed up as long as you could see.
I didn't even see the border.
There were so many cars backed up.
I was a little annoyed at this, but I wasn't nervous.
But then the hours started passing.
Five o 'clock, six o 'clock, seven o 'clock, eight o 'clock, and it's getting dark.
And I'm thinking, we haven't even moved.
We're in the same spot for hours.
And I have a flight, and I have a flight in Warsaw that I need to take.
Eventually, it became super dark at the border.
There was no lights, and we're still waiting, barely moving.
And it starts to get frigid.
It's so cold in winter in Ukraine.
So, so cold. And to describe this, you can say frigid.
So frigid. So cold.
No one on the bus spoke English, and I don't speak Ukrainian.
And this was a problem because I didn't know what was happening.
Why are we not moving?
Is everything okay?
Can I walk across the border?
At this time, it was midnight.
So we've been waiting for 11 hours.
Another hour passes, and we're finally move a little bit.
It's 1am. So it's 12 hours of this journey still sitting at the border.
But now I can finally see the border control.
And this is exciting.
But 12 hours, I was famished.
I was so hungry because there was nowhere to eat, and I didn't have any more food.
There was really nothing I could do but wait.
And eventually, an old man offered me some cookies.
And this was wonderful.
It was so kind. It raised my spirits.
So when something raises your spirits, then it makes you happier.
And this man offering me some cookies was so wonderful.
I ate the cookies. But at that time, I was almost out of water.
I barely had any water left.
I drank my water. I ate the cookies.
And the hours kept passing 2am, 3am, 4am.
And I realized that I would miss my flight.
I wouldn't go to Stockholm, which means I wouldn't go to the US, which means I wouldn't be able to go to China.
I would have to start from scratch.
I'd have to start from nothing.
What am I gonna do?
There was also no wifi there, so I had to use somebody else's hotspot.
I started looking for jobs in Ukraine.
Where can I live? How can I get a job?
What can I do? How can I make money?
I didn't know what was going to happen because I was going to miss my flight.
Four more hours went by, and now it's 7am.
I have been in this bus for 19 hours.
We've been waiting.
Soon, the sun came up, and it started to make people feel a little bit more happy, but we were all upset because we were sitting at the border for 19 hours.
19 hours, we sat at the border.
But eventually, we crossed through, got our passport stamped, and we started driving.
But we weren't out of the woods yet.
We weren't done with trouble or danger because a tire popped.
Of course, the tire popped on the bus, and we had to wait three more hours for someone to fix it.
Eventually, they did fix it, and we finished our drive to Warsaw after 30 hours.
So we sat in this bus for 30 hours, and it only should take eight hours.
Oh, I definitely missed my flight, and I didn't know what I was going to do.
But how does the story end?
Well, I have a friend named Fufi, and Fufi was able to find a plane ticket, a new ticket to Sweden so that I could take the flight to the USA and then China.
And it worked. I ran to the airport in Warsaw, got on the plane, switched planes in Sweden, went to the US, and went to China, and happily ever after.
And now I'm here. So it was wonderful, but definitely a disaster at the border.
So great job. You finished story number one.
We had nine or ten phrases and vocabulary in there.
Hopefully, you understood all of them.
The second story takes place in Italy in 2019.
Me and my girlfriend had traveled to Milan as part of a joint birthday celebration.
And joint, in this case, means a shared or together.
So it was a together shared birthday celebration.
We really wanted to do some hiking and see some wonderful nature.
So we went to the Lake District and arrived to a city named Leko.
We immediately started searching for a place to sleep, and we started with couch surfing.
Couch surfing is a wonderful way to meet local people.
It's an exchange of stories and hospitality, and it's a really wonderful way to get in touch with a culture.
So if you've never tried couch surfing, if you don't know what it is, check it out, couchsurfing .com.
It's really fun. I've done it many times, and I highly recommend it.
Unfortunately, we didn't find a couch surfing host, but we did find a hotel.
We decided to stay there.
But we were famished, which you know this word.
So we needed to go get some food.
We went for a walk around the lake and stumbled across a pizza shop.
We accidentally found a pizza shop, and it was delicious.
We loved it. We had a lot of food, and then we went back to our hotel.
After eating, we walked around the lake for a bit.
After eating, we wandered around the lake a little bit before returning to the hotel and hitting the hay.
To hit the hay means to go to sleep.
It's kind of a funny old saying or expression, to hit the hay.
The next day, we started a hike on a mountain called San Martino, and it was a beautiful day.
The sun was shining.
The clouds were mixed about, and it was really nice, but it was really hot.
And we forgot to bring water.
So when we got to the top, we were shocked to find a well.
And a well is a place that you can pump water out and drink water from the earth.
So we did this, and it was wonderful.
So, so wonderful. And the view from the top of the mountain was spectacular.
The water was glistening.
And this means that it was sparkly and shiny.
It was really special.
And we just sat there for a while, and on the way down the mountain, we encountered an old Italian man named Giorgio.
And Giorgio had a huge dog.
It was a Bernese mountain dog.
So big, but so cute, because the dog had a bucket in its mouth, and it was carrying the bucket around.
We stopped and talked with Giorgio, and he told us that if we wait there, he will return with some wine and invite us to his home.
We were tired, and we said, okay, we'll wait.
So we waited for him, and we walked to his home, which was at the base or near the bottom of the mountain.
And it was amazing, his house.
You could see the whole city.
It was so wonderful.
We talked with Giorgio for a while, and he offered to drive us down the mountain and back to our hotel.
Giorgio is an awesome guy.
If you ever see this, Giorgio, you're wonderful.
I hope to see you again someday.
The next day, Annie had to fly to Germany, and I started hitchhiking.
So hitchhiking is when you put your thumb up, and you ask for a ride from a driver.
And I started hitchhiking from Milan to Rome.
And the first car to pick me up took me all the way to Florence, which is halfway to Rome.
They were a nice, young Italian couple, and we talked about traveling and hitchhiking, and they were really fun.
But I decided in Florence to rough it.
And when you rough it, that means you live without the normal things, right?
And in this case, roughing it, I decided to sleep outside.
So no hotel, no hostel, nothing.
Just sleep outside.
So I slept outside.
I roughed it, and the next day I started hitchhiking to Rome.
And a young Italian girl picked me up.
She was driving really slow, but it was okay.
We talked about South America and traveling, and it was really fun.
But she dropped me off in the middle of nowhere, the middle of nowhere, which means that there was nothing around me.
No people, no cars, nothing.
This was kind of crazy.
I thought, what am I going to do?
And I looked on my phone and saw a small road leading into Rome.
And I thought this was my only chance to finish the hitchhiking adventure.
So I walked down a little hill and had to jump over a gate.
But when I jumped over the gate, there was video surveillance.
And video surveillance means that there was cameras watching me.
And then I saw a sign that said that this was a government facility.
I had just walked into, well, I had just trespassed into a Italian government place, and I was freaking out.
So I started to walk really fast towards the gate.
And when I got there, I had to jump over another gate to get out of there.
And there was two cameras watching me.
I was really worried that there was going to be some cops and they were going to arrest me, but nothing happened, thankfully.
But I wasn't out of the woods yet, right?
I wasn't done with the trouble.
I still had 30 kilometers until Rome, and I cannot walk 30 kilometers with this giant backpack.
So I started walking down the road and there was no cars.
There was nothing. There was like maybe one house far away in the field, but it was pretty isolated.
I didn't know what was going to happen.
I had to wait there for an hour before another car came.
And it was a young Italian guy, and he drove me all the way to Rome.
And I made it. And that was the end of my hitchhiking adventure and a crazy day for sure.
So congratulations.
You just finished two stories.
Hopefully they weren't too boring or long, but I tried to include lots of new vocabulary and phrases.
And now it's time for a short quiz to see what you understood.
Question number one.
Which of these words means extremely hungry?
Is it A, B, or C? Is it frigid, glistening, or famished?
Which means extremely hungry.
Hopefully you got it.
It is C, famished. Question number two.
What does start from scratch mean?
Does it mean to start from the beginning with nothing or to start with an advantage?
To start from scratch.
Correct. To start with nothing.
Number three. Where would you probably rough it?
If you were going to rough it, where would it be?
A luxury hotel, a dark forest, or an English class.
Where would you rough it?
Hopefully you got it.
B, a dark forest. So great job today.
That wraps up today's lesson.
If you have any questions about the words or the stories, just ask me down below in the comments.
I'm happy to answer and help out.
And don't forget to sign up for our newsletter.
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Description, first link.
If you're interested in continuing your English journey today, check out one of our other fun lessons.
Go Natural has plenty of different videos for you to watch.
If you'd like to continue on your English journey today, check out one of our other fun lessons.
And until then, my name's Ryan.
I hope you have a good day, and I'll see you guys next time.
Bye.
