Uploaded December 2020 | Updated September 2026, 14 hours ago
Julian sends daily email tips to speak better English: doingenglish.com/emails
Notes and written version on the blog: doingenglish.com/blog/why-you-shouldnt-try-to-forget-your-embarrassing-mistakes-in-english
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I send daily tips to help you speak better English:
doingenglish.com
Follow me on Quora:
quora.com/profile/Julian-Northbrook
.........................................................
Transcript:
Hello, I'm Julian Northbrook from https://doingenglish.com. Let's talk a little bit about making mistakes in English, screwing up in whatever way, and then whether you should forget about those mistakes or not. Wow, that's noisy. This really is one of the big mistakes, ironically, that people make, is forgetting or trying to forget all about their mistakes. What do I mean? Let's say you have a conversation that goes horribly wrong. It could be a conversation. It could be a presentation that you've done in English, whatever situation it is that you are using English in, you totally fuck up, you screw up, you mess up, you say something stupid, the person you're talking to, or the audience you're talking to looks at you like you're a total dumbass idiot, and it's embarrassing.
Sure, it really is. Yeah, I've been there, and not just in my second language either, I've screwed up plenty in English as well. And I've said plenty of stupid things in my first language, let alone my second language. And actually, in some ways, this is a slight digression, but it's true, screwing up in Japanese is actually easier because it gives me an excuse to say something stupid and cringe-worthy, whereas if I'm doing it in my first language, it's like, it's just stupid and cringe-worthy.
Well, time is a good healer. And this is a great thing because we don't want to be completely stuck, hung up on our embarrassing mistakes, and beating ourselves up and feeling bad about it forever. And if you do that, that's a whole other issue, and that's something that you need to fix. But, you also don't want to forget about that because you should hold onto that, remember it, remember how you screwed up, why you screwed up, what it is that you did wrong, and learn from it. And it's imperative that you do learn from your mistakes.
And this is why you don't want to forget about them completely, because if you completely forget about them, if you don't care about them, then you will continue to make the same mistakes. You'll continue to screw up in the same kind of way. And if you consistently screw up, being the same way, making the same mistakes, confusing the same people with the same bullshit again and again and again, well, that's going to reflect very badly on you, and of course, your ability to perform in English as a second language.
In that sense, mistakes are valuable because they're feedback, and they're feedback that you should listen to, learn from, and not make again. Now, the trick is, is you've actually got to learn from them, and you've got to do it properly. How do you do this? Well, I teach, in my MEFA course, a technique called retrodictive learning, which is extremely powerful. And it's basically a way that we can take our past conversations, our past failures in English, and use them as a springboard for improvement, and ensure that we never make the same mistake again.
And this is something that we do at MEFA, right from week one, and in particular, in week six, when we cover it in a lot of detail, practice it, learn how to use it properly. Now, the MEFA, Master English FAST Implementation Course is expensive and places are extremely limited. It is not for everyone, so my point here in this video is not to sell you on this course. Maybe one day when you're ready, it'll be for you, but you definitely want to wait until you're ready, because again, it's not for everybody, and not everybody should join it right away.
However, what you can, and should do right at this point, a low barrier to entry into my world and the way that I do things, as it were, is head over to https://doingenglish.com, and sign up for my free daily email tips. Every day at about 8:00 AM, Ireland Time, I send an email packed with all kinds of ideas, tips, and good stuff for learning English. Every day at 8:00 AM, sometimes, I send more than one email. Usually, it's just one. Usually, it's about 8:00 AM, Ireland Time. That's, once again, is https://doingenglish.com.
Head over there, sign up, and I'll see you in the Doing English daily email tips. This then is me, Julian Northbrook, signing out from another walking with Julian video. See you soon, guys. Bye-bye.
#DoingEnglish #JulianNorthbrook #learnEnglish
Julian sends daily email tips to speak better English: doingenglish.com/emails
Notes and written version on the blog: doingenglish.com/blog/why-you-shouldnt-try-to-forget-your-embarrassing-mistakes-in-english
.........................................................
I send daily tips to help you speak better English:
doingenglish.com
Follow me on Quora:
quora.com/profile/Julian-Northbrook
.........................................................
Transcript:
Hello, I'm Julian Northbrook from https://doingenglish.com. Let's talk a little bit about making mistakes in English, screwing up in whatever way, and then whether you should forget about those mistakes or not. Wow, that's noisy. This really is one of the big mistakes, ironically, that people make, is forgetting or trying to forget all about their mistakes. What do I mean? Let's say you have a conversation that goes horribly wrong. It could be a conversation. It could be a presentation that you've done in English, whatever situation it is that you are using English in, you totally fuck up, you screw up, you mess up, you say something stupid, the person you're talking to, or the audience you're talking to looks at you like you're a total dumbass idiot, and it's embarrassing.
Sure, it really is. Yeah, I've been there, and not just in my second language either, I've screwed up plenty in English as well. And I've said plenty of stupid things in my first language, let alone my second language. And actually, in some ways, this is a slight digression, but it's true, screwing up in Japanese is actually easier because it gives me an excuse to say something stupid and cringe-worthy, whereas if I'm doing it in my first language, it's like, it's just stupid and cringe-worthy.
Well, time is a good healer. And this is a great thing because we don't want to be completely stuck, hung up on our embarrassing mistakes, and beating ourselves up and feeling bad about it forever. And if you do that, that's a whole other issue, and that's something that you need to fix. But, you also don't want to forget about that because you should hold onto that, remember it, remember how you screwed up, why you screwed up, what it is that you did wrong, and learn from it. And it's imperative that you do learn from your mistakes.
And this is why you don't want to forget about them completely, because if you completely forget about them, if you don't care about them, then you will continue to make the same mistakes. You'll continue to screw up in the same kind of way. And if you consistently screw up, being the same way, making the same mistakes, confusing the same people with the same bullshit again and again and again, well, that's going to reflect very badly on you, and of course, your ability to perform in English as a second language.
In that sense, mistakes are valuable because they're feedback, and they're feedback that you should listen to, learn from, and not make again. Now, the trick is, is you've actually got to learn from them, and you've got to do it properly. How do you do this? Well, I teach, in my MEFA course, a technique called retrodictive learning, which is extremely powerful. And it's basically a way that we can take our past conversations, our past failures in English, and use them as a springboard for improvement, and ensure that we never make the same mistake again.
And this is something that we do at MEFA, right from week one, and in particular, in week six, when we cover it in a lot of detail, practice it, learn how to use it properly. Now, the MEFA, Master English FAST Implementation Course is expensive and places are extremely limited. It is not for everyone, so my point here in this video is not to sell you on this course. Maybe one day when you're ready, it'll be for you, but you definitely want to wait until you're ready, because again, it's not for everybody, and not everybody should join it right away.
However, what you can, and should do right at this point, a low barrier to entry into my world and the way that I do things, as it were, is head over to https://doingenglish.com, and sign up for my free daily email tips. Every day at about 8:00 AM, Ireland Time, I send an email packed with all kinds of ideas, tips, and good stuff for learning English. Every day at 8:00 AM, sometimes, I send more than one email. Usually, it's just one. Usually, it's about 8:00 AM, Ireland Time. That's, once again, is https://doingenglish.com.
Head over there, sign up, and I'll see you in the Doing English daily email tips. This then is me, Julian Northbrook, signing out from another walking with Julian video. See you soon, guys. Bye-bye.
#DoingEnglish #JulianNorthbrook #learnEnglish
