Chatterbox #351 – From Intermediate to Fluent

Hello and welcome to Chatterbox, the QLIP series for intermediate to advanced English learners that is designed to help you improve your fluency and reach the next level with your English. My name is Andrew, I will be your host for today and joining me for this episode is a very special guest, Jesus Flores. Jesus is making his second appearance on QLIPs. He was on the show back in 2024, but he's back for round two and in our conversation that you'll hear in just a moment, we talked all about how he built his fluency from the intermediate level to a very, very, very high level of English. I think Jesus is amazing. Really, I really enjoyed our conversation that we had. He is very natural with his English in many different aspects of it, in his pronunciation, in his grammar, in his vocabulary use, in his idiom use, his phrasal abuse. Across all of the aspects of English, Jesus has reached a super, super high level and I was thinking in my head as I was talking with him that is almost like he's like the Michael Jordan or the Wayne Gretzky of English learning. Like he's one of these guys who has really just accomplished so much and has hit the top levels of English fluency as a second language English learner. And so I think it's a great idea to have these kinds of people on QLIPs from time to time because not only do I find them really inspiring and speaking with Jesus, I got all pumped up to study Korean, which is my second language. He really inspired me. So thank you, Jesus, for that inspiration. But I think for you guys as well, it's great to hear from people who have achieved these really high levels of fluency. Jesus is also a QLIPs member, so he hangs out on our Discord community from time to time. He pops into some of our QLIPs speaking classes from time to time. And so he's just an awesome community member as well. And I really enjoyed getting to talk with him. So we'll get to that conversation in just a second. Before we do, I want to let you know that there is 100% free study guide for this episode, for every QLIPs episode where we have a special guest. We always give the study guide away for free. So yeah, it's a great resource. Usually only for members, but because it's a special guest episode, we're giving that away free for everyone. So just click the link in the description to get that. Check it out. And I hope you'll find it helpful for following along with this episode. Of course, Jesus is an English learner. He's someone who's learned English as a second language, but his vocabulary is extensive. And I do have to say he does use some kind of difficult words from time to time in this episode. So probably for some of you, the transcript will be really helpful and you'll find that in the study guide. All right. Well, I think let's get right to it. Without any further ado, let's welcome. Jesus onto the show. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Here we go. And joining me now to talk about his English language learning journey, specifically going from intermediate to the advanced level is my special guest for today. Jesus Flores, Jesus, welcome back to QLIPs. Thank you, Andrew. I'm very happy to be back. It has been a long time in the making. Yeah, a long time in the making for sure. The last time you were on the program was in 2024, maybe a couple of years ago. That's correct. Yes, it was episode 319 of the chatterbox series. Okay. Wow. Okay. Episode 319. Great. So great to have you back. And, Jesus, I wanted to have you back on the show because you're such a great example of a successful English learner. And I think it's important for our audience to have these role models that they can look up to. People who have gone through the process of learning English and have done it successfully. And you're really a great example of that. I mean, your English is amazing, super fluent. Your accent is really, really native like, I'm sure I know you live in the States, Jesus, but I'm sure if you didn't tell people that you weren't a native speaker, most people wouldn't assume that you're an English learner. They'd mistake you for a native speaker. So you've hit like the highest of the high levels with your English. And so you're a great guy and expert to talk about this topic. And so yeah, I'm excited to dig in and get into it today. And we decided to focus on the media that you used to help you break through that intermediate plateau. Often we call it the intermediate plateau, right? Like, when you first start learning English at the beginning stages, sometimes you can make really rapid growth with your learning. It feels like you're constantly learning new things and applying new things, but then you hit that intermediate level and that rapid growth just doesn't come as quickly as it used to. And we feel like we stagnate and we don't really improve, but you were able to break through this intermediate plateau. And we're going to talk about some of the ways that you did that. And yeah, I'll maybe let you take it from here, Jesus, what are some of those ways that you were able to break through that intermediate plateau? Basically, what happened in my case was that I created my own immersion experience. And in order to talk about that properly, I need to set some context. As some of the listeners may remember, back in 2024, when we recorded my first appearance on the podcast, I mentioned a very important pivotal, I would say, year in my English language learning journey. And that was 2008. I will bring that up again here because it really sets the stage for the way that this happened for me. So just to recap, in 2008, I was doing a lot of things related to English. The most important thing was that I was preparing to take an English proficiency exam. By the time I took it in November of 2008, I had already been preparing a year and a half intense preparation for a proficiency test. And so I was strongly motivated to improve my English. Part of what led me to the advanced levels beyond the intermediate ones was the desire to pass this test, to score, well, to get top marks on the test. And in 2008, in order to do this, I had this idea, although initially it started a little bit differently, but I had this idea of watching anime. Initially, like most people, the first content I had was with the original Japanese language dub with English subtitles. I don't know exactly how I made the decision or how I actually got started thinking about, okay, could I use or could I leverage these shows to help me in preparation for the test? And so very early on, I made the decision to go from subs to dub, English language to dub. And at least at the time, they were relatively easy to find on the internet. And the very first show that I watched was Naruto. I know that I mentioned this back a couple of years ago. But Naruto was the gateway to the hundreds of shows that I ended up consuming over the next three or four years. 2008 was the time when that started. Naruto was the beginning. And one of the first things that caught my attention about the English language dub was that it served as remarkable or I mean superb preparation material for the listening paper of the test that I ended up taking. The audio, the dub's were narrated at a speed that mirrored very closely the practice material that I had access to, you know, back in the day. And it was almost like listening to extended listening, let's say passages or tracks. And so you can imagine that that really solidified listening, you know, in my mind, and it really made, you know, when I look back, made the listening portion of the test or breeze, you know, all things considered. Because I mean, this was a very demanding test that I ended up taking. It's interesting because you see, when I started preparing for the test, the listening portion of it seemed particularly daunting. Because again, this is what started my transition from intermediate to advanced levels. And a lot of the times what happens there is that you are, you're used to a number of words or very simple vocabulary topics or themes in general. But then you are kind of like, let's say, you're put to the test, just to keep the thing going on here. And your abilities are stretched, especially when you have to listen to longer extended monologues, especially monologues. And there's a lot of that actually going on in anime shows. Characters go into, you know, silhouquies, you know, as we say. And so that was perfect practice, you know, for those extended passages that I ended up facing, you know, during the real test. Are you ready to take your English to the next level? Then sign up and become a Q-Lopes member. Becoming a Q-Lopes member is an amazing way to take full advantage of all of the great tools that we give our members to improve their English. As a Q-Lopes member, you will get access to over 1200 lessons that are designed to improve your fluency. And for every lesson, you'll get an interactive transcript and a helpful study guide plus quizzes and more. But that's not all. Perhaps the best part is you'll be able to join us for our weekly speaking classes. We have several classes each and every week. And as a member, you're able to come to as many of the classes as you would like. So the idea is first you listen to the podcast, you think about it, you study with the study guide, and then finally you practice your English output as well during our speaking classes. So for all of the details and to sign up and become a member for an affordable price, just visit our website, qlopes.com. And a huge thanks to all of our members out there. Guys, we really appreciate you and we couldn't do Q-Lopes without you. So thank you so so much. Maybe first you could tell us a little bit about this anime, Naruto, because I'm actually not too familiar with it. I know it's a famous title. I've heard the name before, but like what genre is it? Maybe many people who are not super familiar with Japanese animation style, they don't really know that there's such a variety of different anime's and there's everything from slice of life to like mechanical robot fighting, uh, anime's to sports, anime's and the whole spectrum. So what, what kinds of vocabulary, what kind of language were you hearing in this program? So Naruto, I believe technically speaking, is classified as a shounen series, meaning that it is designed primarily with, I want to say an adolescent or teenage audience. And typically, you are dealing with a hero arc or story, sort of a common of age, you know, mixed in as well. Naruto is about ninjas and, you know, special, you know, abilities and powers. You can even perhaps use the word magic here. But mostly it is about Naruto maturing from, you know, a petulant childish, like 11 or 12, you wrote maturing, you know, into, let's say a role model and facing all kinds of challenges and difficulties along the way. There is, I would say, a lot of language related to introspection, reminiscing, reflecting on the past and thinking about the future. And so you probably would encounter, you know, a lot of uses of the conditional tenses to speculate about the future, a lot of simple and present, even past, perfect to, you know, connect different past experiences and see, you know, perhaps what you have learned, you know, from having gone through a certain process or dealt with a certain situation. Actually, when I say that, the shows were incredible, Naruto and the other three shows that I'm going to mention, they were incredibly rich in terms of grammar, because that, you know, that is a fundamental building block of language, you know, and it is how, you know, you make sense, you know, of, let's say, the experiences that you wish to share. And so the mixing of all of these tenses is rate to finally, you know, get a good handle and a native like, you know, handle on how we use tenses, you know, in everyday life to narrate, you know, our lives. And, you know, and to, I guess, you know, continue to learn from that. So there is actually a great deal of grammar, you know, that was, you know, clarified and solidified as a result of all of that. How about the dubbing quality itself? Like, the voices were done by native speakers, I assume, and I've heard that some older animals maybe don't have that great quality of dubbing. But what was your experience like with the dub? I'm sure switching from the original Japanese with the subtitles to the English dub may have been quite shocking at first, but probably once you got used to it, it was okay. Absolutely. Yes. And you see, the interesting thing is that I only really watched the subs for a very short time before I pivoted to the dubs. I want to say to the best of my recollection that I started watching Naruto in Japanese in March of 2008. And I must have probably shifted gears to the English dub a couple of months after the fact May of 2008 give or take. It was not hard at all to get used to the English language voices. If anything, I was biased because I really wanted to maximize, you know, my preparation and the time that I had, you know, before the test, you know, came up. And so that was a very strong motivator to, you know, jump in with both feet as we say into the dubs. And so getting used to the voices was not a problem. I was never really into the debate over whether sub or dub is better. But the quality of the voice acting was superb. My opinion was, or I mean, is that the work put in and the performances delivered by these people were just outstanding. And actually have some names, you know, that I want to mention specifically because, you know, their performances were not only well stellar, but also the way that they talked and the way that they acted is something that inspired me to change my own speaking style to resemble, you know, the way that they talked, even though it was, you know, a show, even though it was acting. These actors, you know, had not perfect addiction. I think it's the best way to put it. And I really wanted to imitate, you know, the resonance, the cadence, the rhythm, all of those things. In Naruto, some people might have heard about Crispin Freeman. Crispin played a character in Naruto that always spoke with a very low and kind of rumbling voice quality. And it was just, you know, so exhilarating to him. And his words were always carefully chosen. It's like he weighed the impact of every word that he chose. And to this day, I remember two lines that were just delivered with such, let's say, artistry, you know, that I have, you know, retained them to this day. It was something like this. We're pulling out as in we're leaving. I think it was Kisame, the name of the character that he was talking to. No, Kisame, we're pulling out. Your moves tend to stand out. That line has stuck with me for all those years. The Crispin's deliverance, you know, of it was just perfect. I mean, it really just was. So what do you think it was about that line that stuck with you so deeply? Was it like the emotional impact of the deliverance? Was it the specific scene that that line took part in or place in? Like what was it about that line that just buried itself in your memory? One reason why that has stuck in my mind is because of the phrasal verbs used by the actor in those two lines. Stand out and pull out from a linguistic standpoint. You know, makes itself, you know, I guess noticeable because you learn early on that phrasal verbs can have a range of meanings, more literal and more figurative. In that case, those two lines that I remember, the use of pull out and stand out were figurative. Pulling out in that case for them meant a retreating from the position where they were in and then stand out meant that what his partner was saying or doing was attracting too much attention. to their presence. And they were trying to be surreptitious, you know, secretive, kind of like, you know, ninjas in a way. And so that is actually a perfect example of what I call learning vocabulary in a meaningful context, one that makes you remember, you know, the proper use and meaning of electrical item or a set. That's why it's been so memorable in addition to, you know, the acting, you know, part of things and, you know, just really getting into character. But yeah, those two things, you know, the linguistic value and the artistic value, kind of like second place, but definitely the language, you know, is what really, you know, made that, you know, has stuck, you know, with me has made me remember that all these years. I actually have another example and I'm going to actually mention here a different show just because I have to just give it the proper context here as well. So Naruto was the very first show I'm actually skip two shows here to mention one that taught me an expression that, you know, I still remember, you know, to this day. Another show that I watched that was again, had all of these same qualities of, you know, superb acting, gold might of information for language acquisition was a show called Romeo and Juliet. It was as you can expect primarily based on the play by Shakespeare with some twists. But the basic plot was the same. And there is this phrase that I remember, which is having or holding the floor when you are in a meeting, for instance, if you are the person talking, especially when you are talking about, let's say a high level or a high stakes. Meeting the person talking, addressing the other people present is holding or having the floor. And that was something that that is a nugget of language that I learned from that show and has stuck with me all these years. It's actually quite a formal expression. The register of it is definitely not appropriate for everyday chitchat. But that was actually one of the things that made this show interesting because since it is based on a play from 16th century England, a lot of the language used in that show, tended to be quite literary. And that makes it interesting. It is one of those ways in which you can add sophistication to your language. You can add some really nice expressions to your linguistic repertoire. And that's one of them from the show. I know a lot of people who want to expand their vocabulary beyond the basic, just regular everyday language. One way you could do that is by reading novels because when you read, well, novels or any kind of book, you expand your vocabulary. You meet all of these different words and expressions that people don't often say in just daily conversation. But also, I guess that's a great idea to watching a specific genre. If you're watching something that sci-fi or something like Romeo and Juliet that takes place several hundred years ago in that kind of ancient time, then that's going to be a way to expose yourself to vocabulary and to expressions that all native speakers know. However, we don't very often use, right? But from time to time, they do come up and we do use them. And so they are expressions. They are vocabulary that you do need to know if you want to hit that high level of fluency because they will show their heads sometimes. So yeah, that's a great idea to go to those specific genre pieces like Romeo and Juliet. Absolutely. Yes. And some shows definitely lend themselves better, you know, to that. Let's say that type of activity, you know, linguistic mining, you can you you can call it. I'm curious, like at that point, to me, I think if you were, you know, just a B1, B2 intermediate level English learner, and then you were to jump in to a more specific period animation. Like that, it might be a little bit too difficult, like at this point when you started watching Romeo and Juliet, where did you think your level was at? And did you find that it was overwhelming or were you at the level at the point in your English journey where you could understand most of it. And it was just some specific words and phrases that were new to you. Like what was it like starting off with a rather difficult series like that? So interestingly, Romeo and Juliet is something that I actually ended up watching after I had been watching other shows for about a year before I stumbled upon that one. I feel that I was definitely ready. And I never really felt that it was overwhelming. In fact, I'll say this. Remember that also in 2008, I started this pronunciation and accent training for myself. And something else that the shows were invaluable in was in confirming everything that I had been learning or that I learned about sounds, phonology, articulation, all of it. And so what ended up happening was that my ears got so attuned to the sounds of English that I was able to understand everything that I was hearing. And the language that would have been considered more refined or sophisticated, I was able to hear it phonetically, but I didn't know what the words meant. And so what I also did was that as the years went by and I encountered all of this language, I was keeping record of it. I was writing it down on paper, good old, you know, pencil and paper. The old fashioned way. Exactly, but you know what, looking back, I owe a great deal of what I'm able to recall to this day, to that practice. Basically, the more senses you involve in learning, the better your recall is going to be. And I believe anecdotally speaking that that worked for me. And so I wasn't just sitting down and passively consuming, I was very active, you know, with all the language, you know, that I was practicing all of this immersion that I was creating for myself. And so I think I went into these other shows, you know, quite ready to, you know, let's say, you know, get into deeper waters. And so what would you do, like if you're, if you're watching the show and you come across some expression, like to hold the floor and you can hear it, okay, you know that they said to hold the floor or whatever the line was. And, okay, you hear it, but you don't understand it. You don't know the meaning. You wrote it down in your know pad. But how would you realize, oh, this is an expression that I should learn and I should figure out what it means. Would you go to the dictionary in that situation. Maybe you had like Spanish translations of the subtitles available that you could consult with. Like, what would you do when you found a good expression to learn? How would you actually start to use it in your own English? So sometimes I would write down example sentences. I didn't know that all the time. Basically, for me, something was worth committed to memory. If it was a recurring, you know, lexical item. I think this is something that you actually touched on recently in one of the episodes for the podcast that if a word is important, it will recur so often that eventually you will be forced to, you know, have to find out what the meaning is, what the use of it is and all of that stuff. And that happened, you know, with most of these expressions for me. The first thing else that I did is that sometimes when I was able to, you know, have it ready to, to use it. I would sometimes try out some of the expressions that I was learning at this conversation club that I used to go to way back in the day. I was all happening around the same time or within the same time period of those two or three years starting in 2008 all the way through through 2012 give or take. But I had that like, you know, real life lab to test those expressions and to the better. of my recollection every time that I use one of those, it was used correctly. The intended effect was accomplished. I mean, people understood and it was certainly, let's say, like a cut above the rest. Yeah, well, it makes sense, right? You're learning from a real context, a real situation where that expression is going to be used. And then if that situation comes up in a conversation that you're having, and then you can use that expression, it's going to be a natural fit, which is why I think this method is so much better than just learning expressions from a book, right? Because you don't have that context that you need. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me that you would be able to be understood and to communicate what you want to communicate. Using the expressions you learned because you have that rich context to draw on. So that's great. Absolutely. I learned the word. I don't remember what show I learned it from. But I learned the word repository from an anime show. And I used it once during a conversation club meetup. And the person that I said this to who was an American, she was totally taken aback in the sense that she was a repository. Well, she knew what the word meant. But the point is that she was absolutely not expecting that she would hear that from a nine-eighth speaker. We'll get to the other shows that you watched here in a moment. And I'm sure we could go on and on about the different details of them. But really, I wanted to focus for a little bit of time on more like your routine. So I think from my perspective, and I've been using some anime that's dubbed into the Korean language recently for studying Korean because that's the language that I study. So I have a little bit of a similar experience to you here. And it's cool to hear your stories because I'm looking forward to applying some of these to my life. Unfortunately, in my situation, a lot of the anime's from Japan aren't actually dubbed into Korean. Korean people prefer to watch with subtitles. There are some dubs, but not as many. So I think guys who are learning English, you guys who are learning English, you're lucky because you'll have all of these titles to draw on. I think a lot of them are dubbed into English, but for me, I kind of have to suffer through. And maybe I don't have access to them. But okay, so I wanted to get into your study routine. From my perspective, I think one of the great things about anime's is usually the episodes are pretty short. They're like a 30 minute episode. So you don't have to commit a ton of time to watching something. It's not like an hour long Netflix drama. So you could watch as many or as little as you want to. Often a lot of these series go on for years and years. So they'll have hundreds of episodes available. And you can really go on and on and on and follow these characters and follow the stories for again for years. So I'm wondering when when you are watching them, how many hours were you spending a day and were you just ripping through all of the episodes like binge watching the series and trying to finish the series as quick as possible or were you going back and watching them again and again and again. And I know some real hardcore language learners also they like to maybe put the audio from the show like onto their phone or onto their MP3 player and then listen to the audio. I've done that as well. I've taken some some dubbed audio and then put it just onto my phone. So once I've seen the show, I don't need to watch the show again. I know the story. I know what happens. I can just listen to the audio. So I've even done that myself. I'm wondering like, what was your routine like when you were studying with these animations? It looked something like this. It was a mix of extensive listening and intensive listening. A lot of the time I basically just binge shows. There are hundreds of series out there that are only 12 episodes long. Those are perfect for that type of extensive listening where you really just want to spend as much time as you can listening and getting used to the feeling of the language. The more intensive listening happened with the longer shows. The shows that go on for years such as Naruto and Bleach. What's nice about longer shows is that the language recycles itself every so often. You end up hearing the same type of words and expressions repeated often enough that eventually they will stick with you. You will retain them in your memory. It's not spaced repetition, but I think it comes pretty close to it. On average, I must have probably, I must have been spending on average to the best of my recollection, two hours a day watching, consuming, sometimes more attentively, sometimes less attentively. Sometimes like I said, it was all about just that constant stream of language, just cycling through my brain to get used to the feeling of it. I think that there's a lot to be said for input or a lot of input before you start producing the language. I can say anecdotally that it's a sound approach. And for the intensive moments, there were some shows that I did watch twice. There is one that it was quite memorable. And I think the reason why I watched it twice was because I actually compared the English and the Japanese dubs. And I liked the English dub way better. It's one of those rare instances where a foreign language dub surpassed the original one. I listened to the voice of the main character in both languages and it just did not. It didn't feel punchy in Japanese. It was the whole other thing in English. Interesting. Well, tell us the name of the show and then our Japanese listeners can maybe compare because it would be interesting to hear their opinion as well. Like I wonder what they would have to say about that. This one came out, I want to say in 2007, it was called Welcome to the A&HK. It's the Broadcasting Corporation, I think, in Japan. Yeah, it's kind of like the, it's like the version of PBS here in the US or the version of the BBC in the UK. Right, the public Broadcasting Corporation. Exactly. Yes. And so, Jesus, I'm curious. Now that you've gone through this process of watching a lot of different series and you feel like you've broken through and hit that advanced level. If you were to go back now and let's imagine you have knowledge that you have now of how you learned English and how you were successful with it, but you actually didn't do that. Okay, so let's imagine that you are back at that intermediate level. Knowing what you know now, if you were to go back and learn English again, would you do it exactly the same way? Is there anything that you would change about your approach? I know. I think it's just, yeah, really helpful for our listeners who are really in that same boat. I think a lot of our listeners are at the intermediate level and they want to break through and they're doing the right thing, right? They're spending time with English right now, but to hear it from somebody who's gone through the process could be super, super helpful. So what would you recommend? What would your course of action be if you had to go back and learn English again? Let's say that we're starting from the intermediate level. I would probably follow the exact same trajectory with one important difference. I would definitely make use of the spaced repetition system, perhaps on key, for instance. These tools have gained immense popularity in maybe last 10 years or so. It would certainly be a more effective way to review and recycle language that you really want to commit to memory. That would be the one thing that would change. Other than that, I think I would definitely do it all over again. Okay, awesome. And do you have any regrets about learning with anime at all? The only thing I'm curious about was if you noticed like any cultural things that were like made your English awkward or something because these are taking place in Japan, right? These series are made by Japanese people for a Japanese audience, but you're using it to learn a different language and apply that language in a different culture. So were there any like awkward things that you noticed, maybe in the translation or any cultural differences that set you back at all with your English learning? Because it's not just about learning the grammar and the vocabulary it's about learning the culture and the different nuances to the culture as well. So did you have any issues with that at all? When a show is dubbed, it is also to an extent localized, meaning that there's a translation not just of language, but also of cultural norms and shorthands that are not present in the consumer audience that is going to be watching the finished product. Perhaps just to give you one example. In general, I believe that there is this notion that there is a greater sense of politeness and social hierarchy in Japanese culture that doesn't really translate well into Western context. I'm thinking specifically of North America, the US, Canada, Mexico to an extent. Maybe that would be the one thing where I would say that perhaps if you were watching or consuming something that was produced in those cultures, you probably wouldn't see such a, let's say, extensive use of honorifics or different ways to sound more polite. That is certainly much more bound to a specific context. They're more culturally bound aspects, non-linguistic, like parallel linguistic kind of things. Potentially, that could have been a mismatch there. But nothing major really beyond that. Yeah, I wonder, maybe you've had the same experience. I did, I'm not sure, but living in Korea now, Korea is a bowing culture. So you bow when you greet someone, this is really common to do here. It's a part of my daily habits as a person living in Korea. But then when I go back home to visit Canada, I find myself sometimes bowing in Canada where it's not the norm and it's not like a huge cultural mistake or anything, but it's just one of those things that you get ingrained into your daily routine and your daily lifestyle. And then when you go to a different culture, it's hard to snap out of that habit immediately. So I don't know if you maybe gained some of those parallel linguistic habits or customs from watching the animations, but probably, probably not, probably it's okay, right? Yes. And perhaps one thing that, let's say, complemented or, you know, let's say kind of balanced, the scales here was that I went through a phase with an anime. Eventually, my interest in it began to peter out. And I ended up going for other, you know, for other types of content. In 2013 and 2014, I was really into a documentary series and TV series, you know, live action stuff, especially these stories about survival. Like, you know, I shouldn't be alive or I survived. I binged, you know, those types of shows as well. Like the Discovery Channel kind of. Exactly. Yes. Absolutely. Okay. Cool. So maybe some balance is a good approach, right? Like, go in, go all in for a little while, but not forever and kind of switch things up and follow your interest. Maybe that's the, the biggest takeaway that I could gain from, from what you've said here and also to encourage our listeners as well is like follow your interest. If you're interested in animation, watch animation, if you're interested in watching survival documentaries, then watch survival documentaries. But I guess you shouldn't force yourself to learn with something if it doesn't hold your interest, right? You're just going to lose your motivation and probably end up quitting. Exactly. Yes. And I really believe, you know, that that level of interest, you know, correlates. It's, it's like a directly proportional to, you know, how much effort you're going to put into, you know, really making the most out of the time that you are investing. Think of time is something that you are investing, not wasting. And yeah, absolutely, you know, follow that. And you will make good use of your time. Perfect. Okay. Wise words. Hey, Zeus will wrap things up here pretty soon because we're getting a little bit long with our episode. But I have to let you share the other titles because you said there were four specific titles we talked about, maybe two or three of them, but maybe there's one more that we didn't mention. I think maybe it was bleach. Maybe you mentioned it. Yes. Was that the fourth one? Yes. I have mentioned all four shows here, you know, like, scattered, you know, throughout the conversation, just to bring them all together. And any of the order that I believe, I'm pretty sure that I watched them, Naruto was the first bleach was second, then came welcome to the NHK. And finally, Romeo and Juliet. And there were hundreds of others, you know, in between those. But those are really the ones that, you know, are quite memorable in my mind, thanks to the language and thanks to the voice actors as well. Let me just leave it with one last thing because I think some of this, some of the audience here, I'm sure, were growing up back in the 90s when the power rangers were a thing. At least the original. That was me. Yeah. Some of you might remember that the in the mighty morphing seasons, the black ranger, Zach was replaced by Adam. That was the character's name, but the actor's name is Johnny Young Bosch. And he voiced the main character in bleach. The name of the character was Ichigo Kurosaki. And Johnny Young Bosch's performance was just absolutely phenomenal. The man had a way to really convey emotion in his lines, to create his intonation, his cadence, all of that. He really had what you can call a hero's voice. And I learned a lot, you know, from him, not just about language, but also about, you know, delivery, intonation, all of those things, you know, that are part of, you know, speaking a language and also having good speaking habits. You know, it's just striking me, Jesus now that that you mentioned that I'm comparing maybe the situation of producing an animated series versus producing a sitcom. Maybe like, let's compare it with friends, you know, maybe that one of the biggest sitcoms of all time for English learners, English learners from around the world study English with friends, even though it's a series that's like 30 years old now, it's actually quite dated, but it still remains so popular. And yeah, I think it still can be quite funny as well. So in a series like friends, the actors are speaking on the spot. And of course, they're focused on delivering their lines well and speaking clearly. However, that's not their soul focus, right? They have to be funny with their expressions and their movements. And the microphones that they're using to record the sounds aren't like really close to their mouths are these like special microphones that you use for recording audio in a TV set. So you don't get that super, super ultra clear close audio quality. However, with an animation, the voice actor is really just focused on delivering the vocal aspect of their performance. So they're recording in a special like recording studio with a high quality mic. They're going to be very close to the microphone. And they're going to put all of their effort into speaking clearly and enunciating and pronouncing everything just perfectly, right? So from an English learners perspective, you're going to get, of course, it's dramatic. It's emphasized and maybe over exaggerated. However, it's going to be super clear and all of those nuances and emotional qualities of English are going to come through so much better than they would with just a regular sitcom, for example. So yeah, that's another aspect that maybe we should take into consideration. Yes. And you touched on that actually when we first talked, you know, two years ago, but it bears repeating. A voice actor is, well, not all of them, but the voice actors that I used to admire, they were masters of their craft. And it really showed. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Right? They're not just any job lows off the street. They're like very trained professionals. So yeah, you get to hear from the best of the best when you're watching this kind of content. And I stand by that opinion to this day. Jesus, you got me fired up again. I love chatting with you because you always are so motivating. And like I said, you're just kind of the gold star standard for really the perfect English learner. You went through the process. You did all the work. You put in the time and the effort and the results speak for themselves. So yeah, thanks so much for coming back onto QLips and sharing your perspective. If our listeners have any questions for you, if they want to get in contact with you, or maybe find you on the internet, do you have anything that you would like to share with us, like a website or social media or anything like that? I still have my YouTube channel and my Instagram page. I've been inactive for a while, but I actually just had like a stroke of inspiration over the weekend. I put out my first real and short of 2026. It's a 45 second clip. Most of the time, what I do is that I will be explaining something about English, but in Spanish. I feel that that's the audience that I can speak to the most eloquently. But I think that you can still benefit from it. I'm still kind of conflicted over whether I should make it always bilingual or pivot to English only. I haven't made up my mind there. All right. Well, we'll put the links to your your socials in the description for this episode. Also, you're active from time to time on our Discord community as well. So, listeners, if you have any specific questions or comments that you'd want to direct to Jesus, then maybe join us over on the Discord. I'm sure we'll have a little conversation about this episode over there. But yeah, I think we'll leave things here for now, Jesus. Thank you so much for joining us again. Absolutely, Andrew. The pleasure is all mine. I'm very thankful, grateful for having given the opportunity again. Yeah, it was awesome. We'll have you back on again in the future and we'll talk some more. Absolutely. There's always more to talk about. For sure. Thank you, Jesus. All right. Take care, Andrew. All right. Bye-bye. Thanks again to Jesus for coming on to QLUPS. I really enjoyed that conversation. I hope you did as well. If you'd like to connect with Jesus, I've put his links in the description for this episode, so you can just follow them to check out his YouTube and his Instagram. Plus, come on over to our Discord community because he hangs out there from time to time too, and that would be a great place to get in touch with him. Speaking of our Discord community, it's free for anyone to join. You can do that just by following the link, which is also in the description for this episode. And we'll be having a conversation about this episode over on the Discord. So if you've got anything that you would like to add or any questions you would like to ask, that is a good place to do it. It's also a great place to be active with your English. Instead of just doing some passive listening, you can make sentences and post and interact with others. And we've got a great community over there on Discord, which of course is free to join as well if I didn't mention that yet. So see you over on the Discord. Thanks for making it all the way to the end of this episode. I know it was a long one, but yeah, great job. And take care. We'll see you in the next one. Until then, bye.