10 Simple Steps to Becoming FLUENT in English

students who become fluent in English are doing more than just studying let's find out what they are doing and get you on the road to English [Music] fluency students who become fluent in English are doing more than just studying whether it's studying with books word lists audio files videos whatever yes they're studying but they know certain things and they're doing certain things in addition to studying and these are very small things small nuggets of knowledge but once you know them it's going to change the way you study and help you become a lot more fluent

in English my name is Keith um from the YouTube channel English speak success and the website the Keith speaking Academy helping you to develop your speaking skills in a fun and professional way so you can become a more confident speaker of English in this video I'm going to tell you 10 things that fluent speakers of English and I mean students not native speakers things that they know and they do that mean they study in a different way and once you know these things it's really going to help you become more fluent as you study let's

jump straight into it number one be intentional I mean when you're reading or listening to English do you know why you're doing it see many students just turn on a video and they start watching oh I'm listening to English but why are they listening to learn certain vocabulary on a topic in which case probably subtitles would be a good idea are they listening just to repeat some words and improve their pronunciation um are they focusing on listening for the general meaning in which case turn off your subtitles or are you just listening kind of as

background music to get the melody and the sound of English to relax there's different reasons why you're listening or practicing any skill and you need to know what your goal is why are you doing it be intentional don't just listen know why you know when I was learning Mandarin I listened to Mandarin Chinese um for a month more than a month without understanding a word I just I had my earphones and my cassette all right yeah my C set it was last century literally 1999 and I would just listen I had no idea what they

were saying but I just got the sound and the melody my goal was to get the sound and The Melody of Chinese and it revolutionized my listening skills and my pronunciation in the long term it's the same with speaking right when you're speaking English what's your goal to practice fluency or practice accuracy cuz if you're practicing fluency don't worry about mistakes but if you're practicing accuracy don't make mistakes get it right but you can speak more slowly so be intentional it's really important when you're listening speaking or reading know what your goal is why are

you doing it I could probably write right I could probably make a whole video about that just being intentional maybe I will do that in the future this is point number one be intentional number two processing language takes time you can't just study a word and use it straight away some of my students on the goal course they come to me and say Keith I I've just learned these new phrases I'm trying to use them today in a conversation in the breakout rooms and I can't I can't use them properly and I say I know

because processing language takes time when you learn a word it comes into your head it takes time to settle and to be there and it will be influenced by you're listening you're reading you're speaking and over time it settles and you can use it better but it takes time so yes learn words practice them but review and come back and give the words and language time to settle right what you need to change is your expectation don't expect to use it perfectly straight away it's a bit like cooking I don't know if you've ever made

my wife makes these um Bowser these steam dumplings you get the flour and the water and the yeast and you make the dough right you have the do like your vocabulary but then you leave it covered for about 2 hours to rise and then you can use it if you try and use it straight away it's all doughy it doesn't work it's like language and vocabulary it needs time to settle the same thing so be aware processing language Takes Time study practice but just just change your expectation it will take time to use fluently number

three expose yourself to more English the chances are you are not listening enough and reading enough in English very very few students read enough and listen enough the ones who do become fluent think about it think about learning your own native mother tongue the hours and hours of watching TV as a kid the days and days of listening to your parents talk to you the years of listening to teachers educate you all in your mother tongue all of that time that exposure helps you become fluent and it's the same in English you need lots of

exposure listening and reading watching films remember I talked about processing to help the vocabulary and the language settle in your brain and become you it takes time and it's influenced by exposure to English listening and reading and watching so if you're a student just using your coursebook is not enough when you get to that intermediate level under above you need to be reading novels watching films listening to podcasts authentic material in the language expose yourself to more English and then you have a chance to become fluent number four notice what I mean by notice is

really be curious and look at things and notice things there's a famous polyglot um Steve calman and I've done a few videos with him you can check them out up here part of his methodology is noticing and I I couldn't agree more it's when you read and listen notice the language don't only read and understand but notice notice the collocations O that's interesting notice the grammar oh interested in not interested on um notice the patterns of language notice the word stress the intonation be curious about all of these things and and notice them so you're

not only passively reading you're actively noticing things about the language and to help you absorb that sometimes it's a good idea just to repeat if you read and go oh interested in English interested in it is the preposition interested in interested in I'm interested in English and just do some simple repetition whether it's the grammar the collocation or the pronunciation right be curious notice and do a little repetition and this wow it's one of the most powerful ways you can improve your English and I think that's why it's the the Cornerstone of Steve's methodology notice

number five learning is messy so accept it messy I mean untidy right when we begin learning a language you began learning English at the beginning you're learning words and maybe you're building the words and sentences and you're getting better and we think well learning is is a linear line you know you start with the present tense then you learn the the past tense and then the future tense and then the present perfect and it goes on but actually learning is not a straight line remember processing takes time for the language to settle and so actually

what happens is some days you feel great and you learn lots of words and you can speak fluently and then the next day you forget all the words words and you can't you just can't speak it's messy it's normal accepted actually learning a language is more like the stock market it goes up and down up and down up and down up and down but the trend is going up that's the important thing once you know that you can accept it but just you know learning is messy accept it make it fun of course make sure

your learning is fun because if you're enjoying your learning you're going to be more motivated and your learning is deeper we know that from research so enjoy your learning you know becoming fluent it's a marathon and if you're not enjoying it you're going to give up at the moment you know I'm learning French well I'm relearning French I'm brushing up on my French that I learned years ago and I make it fun I've joined a course every week we have these groups that we go in online and chat to each other um I take the

topic of the week for example media I go to chat GPT and in French I ask for a list of 10 essential words for that topic with some sentences then I take those and I put it into a a voice voice software there are some free ones I use play. HT and in a French voice I get the audio of those sentences then I listen to those and I practice speaking them then I go into the class and use them and it's great it's so much fun it's awesome and on top of that I'm looking

for podcasts where I like the voice I'm interested in the topic read things you're interested in watch things you're interested in just enjoy the learning because it is a marathon and if you're not enjoying yourself you're you're going to give up so if you want to become fluent make your learning fun number seven is create a habit this can be a reading habit a study habit a speaking habit whatever it is create the Habit by saying or choosing the time a day and a place where you're always going to do the activity maybe it's every

Monday Wednesday and Friday 8 o'l in the morning for an hour I'm going to practice speaking and you do that and you do it again again and again and once you've got the Habit it's going to carry on don't worry if sometimes you miss it you know be kind to yourself it doesn't matter sometimes learning goes in Cycles you do really well you have the habit for three months and then you drop out for a month it's fine pick up the Habit again start and Carry On on that cycle so important by the way all

of these this is number seven right we've got 10 things you should know about becoming fluent if you want the PDF of all of these with the explanation um you can download that through the link below just click on it and you can get it for free and uh help you on your journey to becoming fluent right now now let's go and have a look at number eight number eight repetition again this is something students don't do enough a key part of language learning is repeating and that can be simply listening to an audio and

repeating a word repeating a word repeating a phrase um you can be repeating and noticing the intonation noticing the word stress and just repeating you can do it anytime you can try shadowing where you listen to a short audio and repeat at the same time even when you're just watching a film you may hear something I go oh that's interesting and just repeat it right sometimes I'm watching French films and I'll be like ohash and just repeating the words and it's such an important part of activating the language so you've got the language that is

settling in your brain and you need to be activating and speaking it out repeating and repeating such an important part of language learning in fact I based one of my courses just on repeating the fluent grammar course for ielt speaking it's all about repeating noticing aspects of pronunciation and repeating it's a key part of Lang anguage learning you're probably not doing enough go and do some more here's the next Point number nine create the right mindset in language learning as in sport it's hugely important I talked about learning a language becoming fluent is like a

marathon when you run a marathon you can't just run you need the right mindset when you're training when you're running when you're competing you're thinking I can do this I'm going to do this there will be problems that's okay I will continue things like that so the mindset for learning a language I have an acronym which is as you may have heard of ASAP as soon as possible as right stands for accept where you are step by step embra Embrace mistakes and positive you can do this so first of all accept where you are whether

you are a beginner intermediate whether you know something or not accept where you are I do tell students don't think about my English is weak my English is poor no there are things you know and there are things you don't yet know but you will know them in the future accept where you are second step by step don't try and learn everything in two weeks step by step do things one step at a time thirdly Embrace mistakes there will be challenges you will make mistakes actually that's great mistakes are a sign of experimenting and trying

and pushing and that's what you need when you're learning a language Embrace Embraces to hug your mistakes finally positive think I can I can do this as with running a marathon if you think oh I can't do it you probably can't if you think you can you probably can never a wiser word spoken so remember asep accept where you are step by step embrace your mistakes be positive and number 10 is use emotion do you remember when you at school and you had to learn the grammar of English and the vocabulary and the teacher would

show you something like this present tense I eat fast food negative I don't eat fast food uh another negative I never eat fast food and it's so boring it's because often teachers forget to tell us that learning English or or a language is about communicating ideas and communicating emotion your feeling whether you're happy sad angry that emotion should be in your voice so next time you're learning some boring grammar make it fun do you remember make it fun so instead of this you could say I eat fast food very proud or maybe you're guilty oh

yeah I I eat I eat fast food sorry I don't eat fast food I do not eat fast food I don't eat fast food are you crazy you can change the intonation I never eat fast food how dare you you can get angry the great thing about practicing on your own at home is nobody can hear you you can exaggerate the emotion right you can make it loud soft angry funny I eat fast food whatever right it makes it interesting makes your learning fun but more importantly when you're communicating with people you sound more interesting

you're becoming more fluent because you're using emotion and also of course by using motion you're going to go from bookish English sounding like a book to real English and that's what you need to become fluent to do well in your I out speaking to communicate with people around the world right so there you have it 10 things that can help you become more fluent which one do you like leave me a comment below to let me know so now that you know the 10 things that students who become fluent speakers know what are you going

to do about it I suggest you start putting it into practice choose one or two of these things and tomorrow or today start implementing it in fact download the PDF and just mark off one or two you want to practice and start doing and over time come back to the PDF and Implement others start doing it right and as you're implementing it well I hope that my my videos on YouTube can support you and help you become more fluent if you are enjoying these videos and you can understand me and you're learning more then you're

probably already on your way to becoming a more fluent speaker if you want to continue and you want to speed up the transformation and do it in a fun way you might want to think about joining my gold course I out speaking gold course it's for students preparing for IELTS but there are lots of students who are not preparing IELTS just because the focus is to develop your speaking skills in a fun and professional way on the course you've got live lessons we have two live lessons a month a bit like the ones on YouTube

but even better we have two Zoom meetings where you can interact with me and ask me questions with other students we have breakout rooms where you can practice speaking to other students around the world in small groups of two or three students um we've got quizzes we've got novels songs recorded videos you can practice with there's so much and the great thing is you pay once and you get access to everything for a lifetime forever it doesn't get any better well actually it does get better because you can also get if you're a YouTube fan

click on the link below you can get a discount of that course so if you're thinking you want to take the next step to transforming your English to become more fluent come and join me on the goal course whatever you decide I'm always going to be here to help you and be by your side on your journey to becoming a more fluent and confident speaker thank you so much for watching me today it's been great fun I've really enjoyed it and uh I look forward to seeing you maybe in the course maybe also in the

next video take care my friend bye-bye [Music]