This is the Let's Master English Podcast and I'm your host, Go Chain!
Hello everybody, this is Co-Chain and I have a very special podcast today.
I was lucky enough to interview Al Sensei.
Have you ever heard of Al Sensei?
He is one of the famous online English teachers.
He's a great guy and I think I like this idea of interviewing other English teachers.
So if you like this podcast, please let me know and I'll try and do more of these in the
future.
So I talked to Al Sensei about his move.
Now he used to be in Japan.
Sensei is the Japanese word for teacher and now he's back in the United States.
I asked him why.
Al has a great online presence but he has a brand new book coming out which sounds really
excellent.
So we talk about his book and have you guys heard of Clubhouse?
Clubhouse is another social media platform that people are using.
It's a free service where you can go online and speak.
Al Sensei is really big on Clubhouse.
Maybe I should be on Clubhouse too.
You can join him in his clubhouse in his rooms and talk with him, start mastering your
English.
It's a really great opportunity and to find out all about that, I have the interview.
So let's begin.
Al, thank you so much for joining me.
How are you doing?
Wonderful coach Shane, thanks for having me.
I really appreciate it.
So Al, as far as I know, you were in Japan.
The same time I was in Korea, you're not in Japan anymore.
What happened?
Excellent question, yeah.
About three years ago, I decided to make a move just for personal reasons, but I decided
to move to the beautiful state of Hawaii in the USA.
And yeah, it's been great.
And people who have followed my material, I'm sure, are familiar, are, you know, know
the situation.
But yeah, I just decided to kind of make a lifestyle change.
And my love Japan, we'll always love Japan.
I'll probably go back at some point, but for this point in my life, yeah, ready to check
something new out.
Yeah, that's great.
You know, I made the move back to the United States several years ago too.
I was nervous at first because you know, I'm coming back to America and my whole life
was invested in teaching English.
So if this online English career doesn't work out, what the hell am I going to do?
Is that a concern for you?
Yeah, well, a little bit, a little bit.
And, you know, I know that I love tourism.
I love travel.
I'm sure most people listening, I love travel as well.
And I knew that if I was just part of it, you know, if I was here, I really wanted to
get into the tourism business.
If not, there's a really, really healthy English teaching environment here as well.
A lot of students from around the world like to come here obviously as a place to learn
English because it's, of course, an exotic tourist destination as well as, you know, a beautiful
place to live.
And so, yeah, we have a lot of English students from around the world who come here.
So I knew that would always be possible if I wanted to do it with a company here.
And I could always, you know, do Alcense online as well.
So, I wanted to explore that part of my, we'll call it passions or interests or hobbies.
And well, not a hobby.
I wanted to do it professionally.
And yeah, it was actually doing it for a couple of years until COVID it.
And then, yeah, decided to get back into Alcense because pretty much the whole tourism industry
shut down here.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, absolutely.
I didn't think about that.
Hawaii, when, you know, obviously it's just a beautiful place, but the tourism, it must
be just crushing COVID-19 must be crushing Hawaii right now.
Well, I mean, it's really coming back.
So, you know, things have gotten better.
We are really appreciative of that.
And so what's happening now is we're getting a lot more tourists from the mainland.
From mainland means the, you know, the other states in the USA.
And so, yeah, we're getting a lot of tourism from the mainland, which is great.
So the restaurants are packed again.
I'm actually longer lines than I saw before COVID.
Hotels are getting more capacity now.
There's the tours and things like that.
The kind of the touristy activities are still slow to come back.
So if you do want to visit, you can, but I think there are still, you want to check your
local restrictions because we still don't have Asian visitors.
So I think at least from Japan, the place that I know very well, I think they can come.
But when the problem is when they go back to Japan, they have to do a two week quarantine.
So I think that is limiting the number of Japanese visitors at the moment.
And maybe in other parts of Asia and maybe other, I think Australia is still banning travel
if I have that correct.
So we have a lot of mainlanders, but yeah, things are coming back, but it was bad for
a while.
Yeah, exactly.
And you know what though, it's bad for a while, but I'm thinking here, I'm putting two
and two together.
Because of COVID, you kind of got back to Al Sensei a little bit more regularly.
And now I see, am I reading this right?
You got a book coming out?
Absolutely, Shane.
Thanks so much for checking it out.
Yeah, we're really excited about it.
It'll be coming out towards the end of June.
And so yeah, really, really pumped.
It's called English Fluency Power.
And this is basically, you know, I've taught for 20 years now, 18 of it in Japan, taught
you know, a variety of students from high school students all the way up to presidents of companies,
taught a Fortune 500 companies.
I taught at a very famous school in Tokyo, Japan, University.
Just bringing all of that experience plus, you know, observing my best students that I've
had.
And putting that together and putting it all into one place, into one book, years of teaching
and years of studying, my best students, years of studying success and the best people
in the world.
And putting it all into one book, and this will have, you know, your mindset shifts, say
you need to make plus the very actionable steps that you need to take.
And so this puts it all together in one action pack book.
And I'm really, really excited to come out with it at the end of June.
Oh, that's, that's really great.
You know, a lot of guys, including myself, talk about, yeah, I want to do a book.
I want to write a book.
It never comes to fruition.
But is so my question for you is you've given yourself that you say June, you say June,
is the book done already?
It is done.
Yeah.
So it is done.
And we're just putting the final touches on it.
So yeah, the book, it's not only, it's not only a book.
It has, of course, links to resources.
It has downloadable, printable worksheets.
So it's going to have a lot of bonus materials as well.
And so it's going to be a full experience, not only the book.
And so the actual written part of the book is completed.
So now just working on, you know, making sure all the links are linked up, making sure
all the worksheets are done, making sure the, you know, the web resources are there for
people and the bonuses are in the works.
And so yeah, it's going to be really big.
And I hope that people will check it out when it comes out.
So I'm looking at your Twitter page right now.
And I see your hot link right in your description there in your, at the top of the Twitter
account.
It says Englishfluencypower.com.
And I visit the page.
It's a good looking book.
It's a really great book.
And is this link here for a newsletter that's going to keep me updated on when it comes
out, what's in the book and where I can buy it?
Absolutely, Shane.
Thank you.
Yeah.
So if you visit Englishfluencypower.com, so you're going to have a sign up page where if you
just enter your name and email, you're going to get updates as we go along.
There's going to be surprise bonuses.
There's going to be emails that come out to you regularly.
And there's also a free gift that I'm giving away for signing up.
A brand new car?
I wish I could give that away.
Shane, maybe if we were, you know, Bill Gates.
Oprah Winlon.
Yes.
Yeah, Oprah.
But we're not at that level yet.
So the free gift, I think, is probably going to be even better for a lot of our students.
Imagine that.
And this is my 25 hot idioms for 2021.
And so what I've done is I've handpicked idioms and phrases that are particularly in style
right now.
And I want everybody to be using up-to-date phrases.
And I know you focus on that as well.
So I think it'll be a good match for your audience.
And so yeah, I give examples of what the phrase means and how to use them.
And there are 25 of them just for this year.
So make sure to go get that as a free gift for visiting English fluencypower.com.
That is so great.
And I see your regular website is alcensei.com.
Is that right?
Can you spell that first, please?
Yes, sir.
Thank you.
Alcensei.com.
And so again, my name is Alcensei, as most of you know, or aware of, I'm sure, is the
Japanese word for teacher.
So that is where the name comes from.
Outstanding, outstanding.
So the end of June, is that right?
End of June.
Yes.
And you have my word.
It'll be available at typical places we buy books like Amazon, right?
It will.
It will.
However, to be frank, it's going to probably be a little more expensive on Amazon.
So what I want people to do is make sure you sign up and you're going to get updates.
And you know, if you're more than welcome to get it on Amazon, however, it's not going
to have any of the bonuses.
It's not going to have any of the special videos and things like that.
And so when you sign up there, you're going to get updates and I guarantee you, I promise
you, you're going to get a really, really good deal and it's going to be, it's going to
be amazing.
You're going to get a really good price and it's going to include lots of bonuses and things
like that.
So you want to make sure to sign up.
That's wonderful.
Al, I'm going back to your Twitter page and I see you are also on Clubhouse.
I've never attended a Clubhouse live session regarding English teaching.
Is that something that you're still active with or you're going to do and how is that
working out for you?
Yes.
So Clubhouse, if you are not on it yet, is I think it's an amazing tool for English and
for English speakers, people who want to speak English more in practice.
And so let me just explain what it is for people who don't know.
It's called a drop in audio application.
And so for a long time, when a queue, it hasn't even been out that long.
It came out last year, I want to say, but it really caught steam toward the end of last
year.
And so it's really only been popular for a few months, maybe five, six months.
And a lot of big names are on it now, like Elon Musk, a lot of famous actors, things
like that.
And so that's one reason you want to get on.
But other than that, so what it is, it's basically a place where people can chat and you can
have a what's called a room where a lot of different people can be talking at the same
time.
Now, not everybody, of course, is talking over each other at the same time, but you can
be in the same audio that's called a room.
And so some people can just listen and other people are invited to come on what's called
the stage and chat there.
And so you can, it's a really, really interactive thing.
It's all audio.
There's no video, so you can be like in your bed.
While you're doing it, you can be in your car.
So it's really flexible that way.
And so what I and a lot of other English teachers are doing now is we create rooms to practice
English.
And so this is really, really great because it's actually speaking.
You're not studying by yourself.
You're not just reading.
You're actually getting in there and you have an opportunity to practice speaking.
And what I've found is that, you know, people join.
I've had people join from Japan.
People join from Turkey.
Just countries from around the world.
And the common thing that I hear on Clubhouse is, wow.
This is my first time speaking English in public.
And people have, for some reason, they have the courage to come and speak with strangers
in this environment.
And I'll be honest with you, Shane, when I started Clubhouse, I was really nervous to
speak.
Even though I'd done, you know, all these hundreds of podcasts and, you know, videos.
But for some reason, yeah, I was really nervous myself.
But yeah, people have, you know, they build up the courage and it's a great, great way
to practice.
I highly recommend people to join Clubhouse.
For a long time, it was only on iPhone and they just opened it to Android users.
And so go and sign up and it used to be by invitation only.
I'm not sure if that's the way it still is.
But if you do need an invitation, you can ping me, email me and I can set you up with
an invitation.
There you go.
And so what we'll close out the, this interview right now.
So give us your social media, your Clubhouse and your Twitter and your web pages again, please
out.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Shane.
Thanks for having me.
I really, really appreciate you having me on your podcast.
So I am Al Sensei pretty much everywhere online.
So Twitter, Al Sensei.
If you go to Facebook, you can just search Al Sensei or if you go to Facebook.com slash
speak natural English, you'll get to the English 2.0 community.
The fan page, that's the name of my podcast as well, English 2.0 podcast.
And those are probably the best places in the Clubhouse to search for Al Sensei and we'll
find me there.
Excellent.
Al, any parting words of wisdom?
Is there something you can maybe, a knowledge bomb, maybe out of your book that you can
drop on people, something they can think about before they actually get your book?
Absolutely.
So whatever you do, always remember this simple three-step process.
And this is something that a friend of mine and I discovered as we started teaching in
Japan.
Basically it's a very simple process.
It's called, I call it the power process and it's a study practice perform.
Study practice performs.
Study is your input.
So you're reading and you're listening.
Your practice is your output, you're speaking and you're writing and then perform is when
you put it all together and you use it in a real situation.
So just remember that three-step process.
Study practice perform and keep repeating and you will definitely level up your English.
You will level up your learning and level up your life.
I love it.
Study, practice, perform, outstanding advice.
Thank you so much Al.
You have a fantastic day and I'm going to do my best to get your book out there to all
my listeners.
I really appreciate it Shane.
Thanks so much and good luck everybody and we'll see you online.
Excellent advice.
I hope you like the interview Al Sensei.
Al.
Sensei.
S-E-N-S-E-I.
Al Sensei.
Pretty simple.
You can find him everywhere.
Al Sensei.com.
On Twitter.
On Clubhouse.
Facebook.
Just Google's search.
Al Sensei and you'll see him.
Get his new book.
To get that book go to Englishfluencypower.com.
That's the best place to get it.
You get all the bonuses.
You can get it on Amazon too but again Englishfluencypower.com.
That's the best place.
Best price too.
Tell me what you think of the interview.
Tell me what you think of the book and yeah.
Again, if you like this stuff I'll do more.
Thanks a lot everybody.
Have a fantastic day.
And together let's master English.
