Learn Real English, as our name suggests, uses only real English conversations.

But what do we mean by “real”.   What is a “real” conversation and what is a “fake” conversation.

Our definition of real is authentic… meaning, all conversations in our lessons are natural, spontaneous, and unscripted.   Most programs use written dialogues that are read by actors.

The problem is, written English is quite different from spoken English.  In authentic conversations, we use different vocabulary– including lots of idioms and slang.   Natural pronunciation is also much different than actors reading a script.

That’s why watching CNN or the BBC will not help you understand real conversations.  Real people don’t speak like news announcers.  In authentic conversations, we speak faster, we cut sentences, we shorten words, we pause, and we use lots of filler words.   You won’t hear any of that from actors or news announcers.

Our goal was to give you absolutely authentic conversations.  So we called our friends and family and we recorded the conversations.  Often, these people didn’t know they were being recorded.  We wanted them to speak in a totally natural way, so we told them AFTER the conversation was finished.

As a result, we have a large collection of totally authentic conversations.

Of course, you need more than just the recordings.  You need to understand the recordings.  You need to understand all of the vocabulary– especially the idioms and slang.  In fact, you need to do more than just understand– you need to learn all of the English in the conversations very deeply– so you will understand it when you are having a real conversation with a native speaker.

So, our next step was to create lessons to help you understand the real conversations.   We started simply, with vocabulary lessons.  In these, we explain the common idioms and vocabulary found in the conversation.  This is an audio vocabulary lesson, so even when you’re learning vocabulary you are also improving your listening skills.   But don’t worry, all of our audio lessons have text transcripts.  So, if you don’t understand something, you can quickly look at the text and easily understand.

Next, we created Mini-Story lessons– our best lessons.  In these lessons, we use important idioms and vocabulary from the real conversation.  We then create a funny story using those idioms & words.   This is important, because you remember much better when you hear a new phrase in different situations.  You hear it in the authentic conversation, you hear it in the vocabulary lesson, then you hear it again in a completely different story.

The Mini-Stories are designed to teach you grammar and vocabulary in a completely intuitive way.  You listen, you answer a lot of very easy questions, and you naturally learn English grammar without study.  You’ll love the Mini-Story lessons– they are fun and they are very effective.

By using this entire system, you quickly learn all of the real conversations.   You learn to understand the English that native speakers use everyday when they talk to each other.   You learn real communication, not textbook rules and drills.

That’s why I’m so excited about these lessons.  They were fun to make– and I know you’re going to have fun listening to them.

Have a great day!

–AJ

Learn Real English is an exciting project.  Kristin, Joe, Tomoe, and I realized that most English students have a problem.   They know formal English– which is the English they learned in schools from textbooks.  But they don’t know real English.

Real English is the casual English that native speakers actually use.  We don’t speak like CNN announcers!  We don’t speak like the BBC newscasters!

In real conversations, we speak fast.  We use a lot of idioms and we use a lot of slang.   We shorten some words and stretch others.

We don’t always speak in complete sentences.  We rarely use textbook grammar.

And we don’t speak like the boring actors you hear in most English lessons.  We speak with emotion!

The reason I dreamed of creating Learn Real English was because of the suffering of English students.  In my classes in San Francisco, I always saw the same sad story.   A student would arrive from another country, feeling great.  They had studied textbook English for many years.  They thought their English speaking was good.

But then, they would try to communicate with real native speakers– and they couldn’t understand anything!  They tried to talk to people on the bus– but couldn’t understand anything!  They tried to talk to people at parties– but couldn’t understand anything!

These poor students felt sad and frustrated and angry.   They had wasted years studying textbook English that no one actually uses.

And so, we have created Learn Real English to help you understand REAL English conversations.  We want you to talk to native speakers and understand them.  We want you to feel confident and happy when you meet native speakers.

We want you to love English.

So enjoy our Real English Conversation Lessons and enjoy our blog and podcast.

Your suffering is finished!  Its time to enjoy REAL English!

–AJ