What REALLY Stops You From Speaking English Fluently

Well, hello there. I am Drew Badger, the Founder of EnglishAnyone.com, and today I'm trying

something a little bit different. I'm shooting this live on Facebook, and also this will

be released a bit later on YouTube. I've had this idea for a while, and I'll see if it

works. Again, I kind of just want to always try new things, and this is what I encourage

people to do as well. I'm recording this on another camera plus this one right here, so

hello. Part of the reason I'm doing this as a Facebook Live, and not YouTube is because

I have so many more subscribers on YouTube, and whenever I have a lot of any kind of live

video, or something like this, I always get, it's almost too many comments to speak with

people, and try to remember what I'm talking about.

Hopefully, this will be interesting for you, and if you want to join me... Rita says hello,

nice to see you there. I will be seeing some chats here, and I will also go, and respond

to comments I get on the YouTube version of this when I put it up, but if you like the

idea, maybe I will do more. Hopefully, my hand doesn't get a little bit too tired. You'll

see my eyes also going back and forth between the two cameras, and also, just talking about

what's drawn up here. Hopefully, you enjoy this. If you're new, especially if you've

not seen me doing these live videos before, or if you just enjoy what I do anyway, do

post a comment down below. Let me know where you're from, and as I'm going through what

I'm going to be talking about today, Kareem says hello. Nice to see you there.

Again, I just wanted to try something new, and I'm just saying this kind of welcome bit

as I'm getting people on here, [Sadaya 00:01:40] says hello as well. Anyway, let's get into

the show. People can go back, and watch the the replay of this if they're not able to

see it right now. This is again the front of the live video. Do I ever try live on Instagram?

Marcella says. No, I do not. I've not tried live on Instagram. I'm sure there are lots

of different things I could do like live on various, even just going live on YouTube,

which I have done before, but really I just get hundreds and hundreds of people all coming

in asking me questions at the same time. If you would like to be some of the people

who are joining me on a live video like this one if I decide to do this again, then find

me on Facebook. Go to facebook.com/englishanyone and hopefully, you can join me, and get to

comment. [Fam 00:02:32] nice to see you there, so [inaudible 00:02:34] North Hampton, UK.

All right, well there's a couple of people here, and hopefully we enjoy this. Again,

we'll see how it goes. Again, with these two cameras here, they should be kind of interesting,

but I want to talk about something, there's kind of three different things that people

need in order to get fluent, and I want to talk about two of them in this video.

The first one is kind of how you learn, and if you've followed me for a while you know

that I do things in a way that's quite different from what most people do, and I focus a lot

on how you think. I want to talk about that a lot in this video, or I guess these videos

since I'm doing both of these together. I need to get some kind of tripod, or something

for this, so I can hold it here. I want to show exactly what I'm doing here on Facebook,

so people can see. Hopefully, I don't cover up both videos with this, but as you can see

here, I have a picture of a boat. Now, I'm not the best artist, so hopefully, you understand

what this is, but this is just a regular boat right here. It's a sail boat. It's pretty

big boat I guess for a, with the little sail there.

We've got this green section here. This is the dock. The dock of this. A place where

the boat is tied up. I haven't drawn the little lines here. I'm going to draw those in a moment.

Then we have the water right here. The boat is basically floating right here next to it,

and for the purposes of this, I'll go through this, and then, be checking a comments now

and then. If people have questions I'll ask a lot more in a moment, but first I want to

just give an overview of why I've drawn this, and why it's important for you out there,

because this video was really about why you can know so much, but still not get anywhere.

If you have a problem with that, you know a lot of English, but you're still not communicating

the way you want to, hopefully, this video makes it very clear, and I just wanted to

kind of show it in a different way to make sure that makes sense.

Anyway, let's begin. I've got my red marker here, and I'm going to draw these kind of

usual little lines here that are tied up. If you've ever worked on a boat, or ever seen

where people are, maybe they're working on a boat, something like that. You've got these

lines that are tied up over here. I forget actually the name of these. I worked on of

boat for... I even lived on a boat for a couple of months in Alaska, but I forget the name

of these little like mooring, I think they're called mooring cleats, I think. If I remember

that correctly, but when you think about the boat being tied up like this, when you want

to move a regular boat, you just untie the little handles, or whatever the little lines

on here, forgive me if I'm not saying this correctly.

But, when you want to move forward you just untie these lines, and then, you slowly begin

to move forward, and you can turn on your engine, or use your sail, or do whatever you

want to do and you're finally moving forward, but it's a little bit different when you're

doing something like trying to get fluent. Move over here for a second if I'm not covering

that up. Yeah, it looks like I'm going to cover that up a little bit. What's happening

here, you can think about these different lines here for learning English as just kind

of the basic things you need in order to start learning the language, so this could be something

just like the language itself, so we got nouns, and verbs, and adjectives, other things like

that. As you start to learn more, you can cut this

line here, you can remove this line, and so, your boat can slowly begin to move forward.

Now, we can do other things like that. We've got your listening. Here we've got pronunciation

over here, and these are just, again, other things that are required in order for you

to move your boat forward. Now again, this means we're talking kind of generally. This

is basically you here, but thinking about your ability to speak fluently, if that makes

sense. Now, here's the tricky part. All of this stuff up here above the water makes sense,

so when you want to move forward, so if you think about becoming a strong speaker, you

have to learn all of these basic things about the language to communicate.

I don't want to talk really at all about kind of the way I teach, because this video was

more important for what's actually stopping people from getting fluent. It's not so much

about how you learn, but understanding these basic things. Once you've removed all of these,

you should be able to move forward. That's the basic idea of how you should be learning,

but here's the problem. Now, a lot of people, and this is partly because of how they learned,

but kind of they have their own ideas about how they should get fluent, or how long it's

going to take, what's really happening, what's really stopping people from getting fluent

is that, it's not just these lines that you have here connected to the mooring cleats.

You've also got all these anchors down here if you could imagine almost like tied to a

giant rock. What happens is people are, again, learning

all these different things. You've got nouns, and verbs, and adjectives, and phrases, and

all the other things that you're learning, but when you finally start learning all those,

and you know a lot of them, but you're still not moving anywhere, you have to look at this

stuff down here, and these are all the hidden things that you don't even realize are stopping

you. I call these really just the limiting beliefs that you have about learning. It's

really simple to understand these. All you have to think about is, I can't speak. I know

it could be, I can't speak or I can't learn. It doesn't really matter what it is, but I

can't speak, and then, because. What I wanted to do with the chat right now

is just for anybody that's struggling out there, and again, I'll do the same thing for

the comments on YouTube when people are watching there, but I want you to tell me why you think

you can't speak, and we're going to go through some of these, and try to cut these lines

in the same way that we learn these over here. If you're watching this video right now, and

you're still understanding a lot, but not becoming a great speaker, it's usually because

there's something down here that's blocking you, and for a lot of people it could be because

you're not living in an English speaking country, or it could be because you don't have enough

time to learn, or it could be because, I don't know, you just don't think you're the kind

of person who can learn. I'm actually curious to see. I'll go back,

and look at some of these comments right here as I return to that, but let me know in the

chat right now, those of you watching this, if you have anything that you're struggling

with, even if you don't, it's okay. There are only a few people watching right now,

but I'll go back, and just kind of talk about a few of these things, but the basic idea

here is that if you can find what these things are, and it's usually just, I can't speak,

or I can't learn, or I can't do something because, and that's really the thing that's

stopping you down here, because in every case I've found when I'm talking to people who

were trying to learn, and I've talked with people all over the world, I get mails from

students every day, all over the world, lots of comments from people as well on YouTube,

or Facebook, or wherever. And, everybody has, I can find a person who

is getting fluent who has a particular problem, and someone who is not getting fluent that

has that same problem, or situation. As an example, I might find someone who lives in

Japan where I live, and they're able to get fluent, but I also find somebody else in Japan

who does not get fluent. Does that make sense? When you're looking at the different things

that are stopping you from becoming a confident speaker, these are the things really down

here that are much more important than actually learning these nouns, and verbs, and adjectives,

and things like that. Does that make sense? I sent out a mail to my newsletter subscribers

recently, and I was giving an example, because I had met a student, and again, I meet people

almost every day, just living out here in Japan. I go out, if I'm, especially with my

family, I will be talking with somebody, and somebody with their kids will introduce themselves

to me, and they will say, "Oh, like you want to speak English." Or, "Can you practice with

my children?" Or, something like that. I always get excited when I get to speak with people

like this, but what's interesting is that you're going to meet lots of different people

from all over the place that are still in that same situation. We've got people in Japan

that I meet, some of them are really good speakers and some of them are not, and again,

it's not about where you live in the same way that you can go to some city, any city

in any country in the world, you're going to find rich people, and you're going to find

poor people. And, it doesn't matter where you live. It's

not like there's a certain city you need to live in, in order to become wealthy. It's

the same thing that you don't need to live in a certain place in order to become fluent,

so this is one of the beliefs that people have about fluency that keeps them moving

basically just here on the dock. If you learn all of these nouns, and verbs, and adjectives,

even if you have great pronunciation, or your listening is really good, you could potentially

have all these things, but if you believe, "Ah, I'm in a, I'm not in an English speaking

country, so I can't get fluent." You're going to be stuck right here, but not even wondering

why you're not moving. Does this make sense? This is really important.

Let me go back, and look at some of these comments here. Let's see. Oh, Sadaya says,

"I can't speak, but my, oh I can't speak my writing is bad." That's an interesting question,

or I guess an interesting comment. Some people, I mean, with your writing it's a little bit

easier for being able to speak. It's almost like a child that's learning the language

for the first time. My daughter is not a good writer at all. She can kind of write the alphabet

a little bit, but the important thing is that she knows how to speak, and so, you can learn

to develop any of these skills, but it begins by, again, first knowing that you've got the

skill things that you have up here, but you also have the beliefs about what's possible,

and these are the things that are, or they really can stop you from making improvement.

I remember initially I failed to learn three different languages before I even came to

Japan. In elementary school I failed to learn Latin, I hated that. Then I failed to learn

French in high school, and then, I failed to learn Spanish in college. When I thought,

"Okay, I'm coming to Japan." Finally, I get to come out here. Now, I'm living in a Japanese,

being in a country with a bunch of people living and speaking Japanese that it should

be easy, but it just wasn't the case. I still struggled to learn Japanese even when I came

out here initially. Let me go back through some of these, let's see. Rita says, "It could

be lack of confidence, or because of a bad educational system." Yeah, that's, again,

another one of these things down here. Again, it's a belief about something usually

like some of them can be true in the sense that you might have a school which is teaching

you the traditional way. Again, I don't want to talk so much about how to learn in this

video. This is really just understanding these two different ideas, and hopefully, this makes

it clear, but yes, you do sometimes have problems with the education system, and it can really

cause just a lot of just difficulties in being able to learn, because mostly what the kind

of traditional lessons are doing is they're teaching you a lot of this up here, but they

make it really confusing, and difficult, which actually creates more problems.

So, this is probably my biggest frustration with traditional language learning lessons

where they're teaching you these things up here, and they're doing it in such a bad way

that you never become a great speaker, and so, you think, "Well, language learning is

difficult. It takes a long time, and only some people are able to do it." It's a really

frustrating thing that develops a lot of these beliefs. What you have to realize is when

you might have gone to maybe some kind of school where you're learning English, I'm

sure most of the people watching these videos that I make, they learned English the traditional

way in schools, and now, they're having to teach themselves, but I don't want you to

take those same beliefs that you had. If maybe you learned that English is difficult,

or it takes a long time, or only a few smart kids can do it in my class, don't keep those

beliefs as you learn by yourself. Right now you have the ability to change the way you

think. You can change your beliefs down here, so that you can finally get moving, and finally

go where you want to go. All right, let's see if we got some more comments here. Sometimes

the speaker's afraid of making mistakes when talking with others, so that's another thing.

Again, another belief that people will care so much about any mistakes you might make

when you're speaking. Now, sometimes people do, but sometimes people don't, and for me,

when I'm speaking Japanese, sometimes even in conversations today, I will still make

mistakes. It happens sometimes. But, if you think about the way natives communicate

also, natives make mistakes in conversations all the time, or they don't quite know what

they want to say, and because most people are not professional speakers, and they don't

get trained to just speak clearly, and continuously all the time, a lot of times people have trouble

expressing themselves. It's not something that's like only for non-native speakers,

or people who are learning English, or some other language that people would have a problem

with that, it's really something that anybody can experience. Again, if you think about,

"The mistakes I make are stopping me from speaking." What you have to realize is that,

kind of to remove this, to finally cut this line right here, is there a way of thinking,

or a story I could tell myself, or a way of changing that belief such that it's not true?

As an example, I've told this story on my YouTube channel before about people who play

video games, and they are speed running these games. Now, speed running just means you try

to go through the video game as fast as possible, and you might not do everything, but the point

is to get from the start to the end very quickly, and what you notice in these games, and this

is just one example of this, but people will intentionally get hit by an enemy, because

sometimes when a character gets hit in a video game, they bounce back a little bit, but if

they kind of turn themselves, they can get hit, and actually bounce themselves forward

to something else, so this is just a very simple idea of a time when a mistake is actually

beneficial, and for most times when you're communicating, it's much better to just go

in, and communicate, say what you want to say, even if you're not going to express it

perfectly, and because you do that you actually improve.

You learn a lot from the situation, and you don't focus on the mistake so much as continuing

to just express your ideas, and hopefully share more about the thing you're talking

about rather than the individual mistake you might make. I've been talking with people.

Often, it's their confidence much more than the way they speak that just makes me relax

as a person listening to them, especially Japanese speakers here, the people I speak

with. If they are really feeling nervous about speaking, even if they're Japanese, or even

if their English is good, I notice that a lot more, but the people who don't speak quite

as well, but they feel more confident, that's something that I'm really impressed by, so

think about that. Again, if you have a belief that, "I can't

speak because I make mistakes." Think about the opposite. How is that not true? And, that's

going to help you cut this line, and move another step closer to really just, again,

if you can cut all of these different things, if you can change the various beliefs that

you have that stop you from getting fluent, these will be the things that finally get

you moving. Does that make sense? Let me know. If you're watching this on Facebook right

now, click the little like button, or the little heart button, so just let me know that

you understand what I'm saying, and this makes sense. If you have questions you can post

them down below. Let's see. [Ayu 00:18:57] says, " [inaudible

00:18:58] nothing stopping me except myself. I need a credibility to make my self confidence

in speaking English." Ayu, let me know what you mean by that. What do you mean you need

credibility to make self confidence in speaking? Now, I often tell people... Man, it is hot

in here. I can't have the air conditioning on in this studio, because it makes too much

noise. Anyway, hopefully, I'm working hard for you guys out there, for you all, for you

guys, anyway. If you think you need to wait for something, you're not confident enough

to do something, usually it's just your own ideas about, you're feeling nervous about

sharing something you know, or something you want to say, but the truth is you have value

even in a conversation if you're just listening to people.

If you're nervous about getting into a conversation, because you need to know enough about a certain

topic, or you don't have, you're talking about Ayu here like credentials, or some kind of

knowledge, or something like that. Get into the conversation even just by listening, because

that's valuable to the other person, and as you get into more conversations, I did the

same thing when I was starting to learn more Japanese, and I would stand in conversations,

and really just try to listen, and I didn't even understand everything that people were

saying, but people usually tried to communicate well, and slowly I became more confident about

speaking. Again, usually it's by taking that step that's going to make you much more confident

about speaking, and that will hopefully take you to the next level in your communication

skills as well. Let's see, "I can understand, but I can't

speak very well." Says, [Daleida 00:20:41] and let me know if I'm not pronouncing anyone's

name correctly here, but the basic idea here, if you say you can understand people, or you

can understand, but you can't speak very well. It's usually an imbalance of practice. It's

really easy to practice your listening, because you don't need anyone there to do anything,

and you don't need to practice speaking yourself in order to develop that skill, but I'll make

a video, actually, I've made a video on YouTube about why you understand, but can't speak.

You can find that on YouTube as well, and that was talking a lot more about the way

people learn that can be really frustrating, and actually stop people from communicating.

But, again, this idea here about when you think about why you can't speak very well,

this idea here even is like incredibly important when you see here, if you say, "I can't speak."

That idea saying you can't speak it's just not true. Now, usually you can speak a little

bit or you can say a few words, and phrases, or sentences, or something like that, but

the point is when you say, "I can't speak." It's actually not true, and saying that to

yourself, it actually stops your mind from wanting to communicate. In my case, and this

is, I'll just share with you right now the biggest secret about fluency. A lot of learners

believe this is, and again, it's about what people believe, not so much about the actual

skills, and again, it's not like, I'll talk kind of later maybe in another video about

how people learn. But, it's this idea of the language, things

that you need, and then the beliefs you have about learning that actually let you go where

you want to go. You have to make sure you're controlling both of these things, you're learning

the parts of the language, improving your skills, but you also watch your beliefs as

well. Here's the number one truth, the number one secret about fluency. Now, what usually

happens, a lot of learners, and let me know if this is you in the comments down below,

but people will start learning the language, maybe they're kind of like in school, and

they're just like learning, and learning, and learning, and learning, and learning for

years, and they're hoping that they reach fluency at some point.

Now, hopefully that comes in over there, make sure I didn't like draw that too high, or

whatever. That's pretty good. Basically, we'll kind of draw it down here too, so they start

here, they're learning, and learning, and learning, and learning, and learning, and

they're hoping that they reach fluency at some point, but what's really happening is

that you don't actually reach fluency after learning for a bunch of years. What you really

do is you develop fluency kind of one word at a time. Depending on how you learn, if

you're in a classroom, and you're learning to translate something. If I'm going to teach

you a word in Japanese, so if you know English, and I'm trying to teach you Japanese the traditional

way, I would say, here's a piece of paper, and then, I would say [Japanese 00:23:45]

so that's the Japanese word for paper. Now, if I teach it to you that way, I'm not

helping you learn that word fluently, but the way I teach it to my own daughter, I would

just say [Japanese 00:23:57] and show her an actual piece of paper, so no translation

is required, and this is actually what helps you become a fluent speaker each step of the

way, so what's really happening, the way natives get fluent is they're getting fluent word

by word, or phrase by phrase. Does that make sense? This is incredibly important, and it's

something that students, because they don't learn this way, they really think, "Okay,

if I keep learning, I'm going to keep learning, and learning, and learning, and hopefully

I'm gonna reach fluency after all that." This is why people will study for years, and years,

and years, but never actually become fluent speakers. Does this make sense?

Let me know in the comments if this is, click that like button if you understand what I'm

saying, if this is resonating, if this makes sense with you, if you have kind of been part

of that, this kind of way of learning where you hope, you're kind of hoping that you finally

become fluent after you know enough. Now, especially when I talk with learners, and

one of the comments they'll say to me is, "I don't know enough yet to have conversations."

Again, this is one of those ideas that I'm limiting myself. It's a limiting belief that

I don't know enough, so I can't speak, but remember when you look at little kids, like

my daughter Arya who's four years old now, and I have a second daughter, Noel, who is

only about eight months old now. She's not speaking yet, but she kind of understands

what we're saying, and she'll say [inaudible 00:25:27] something like that.

But, the idea here is that Noel and Arya, they get fluent word by word, so they learn

to use each individual word fluently, and that's why when you put them all together

they become fluent. Does that make sense? What people are doing in a traditional classroom

is they are not learning each thing fluently. They're just learning more information, and

this is why people will, they'll just be in a classroom for years, and studying, and studying,

and studying, and wondering why they're not getting fluent, and that's because fluency

is not something you reach after studying a bunch of time. It's something you make,

you learn to speak each individual thing fluently. Does that make sense?

Really, I believe, and I this is such an important thing, and when I discovered this for myself

for learning Japanese, it changed everything for me, and hopefully there's, however many

people end up watching this video it's such an important idea, but it will change your

life if you think about how to learn. Now, I already spend lots of videos talking about

how exactly to learn, and the different way you should be learning to achieve this, but

the basic idea is that you get fluent word by word. If someone says to you, "Hello."

And, you automatically respond back to them with, "Hello." You're saying hello fluently.

Does that make sense? It's not about you having to study it a bunch. It's just do you react?

Do you respond automatically without hesitating, and thinking, and translating? When you're

doing that, you're communicating fluently. Fluent, it does not mean that you know a bunch

of words, and we know that's true because children can communicate without hesitating

even though they have a limited vocabulary. Does all this make sense? I keep asking this

over, and over again, but it's so important. I really want to make sure everybody understands

this, because it's really the most important thing about getting fluent, and it goes back

to the same idea about the beliefs that you have about how you learn. Let me look at a

couple more these responses over here, so I can understand, but I can't speak well.

Okay, yes, so hopefully we're thinking a bit more clearly about that now.

Be specific about what you're thinking about when you say, "I can't speak." Because, what

you really mean, you don't mean, I can speak. You mean, I don't know how to say this one

word, or phrase, or something like that as well as I'd like. If you'd use it like that,

and then, you think, "How can I learn that? How can I become better at speaking? How can

I become better at using certain things?" That's going to open your mind up. It's going

to delete, or remove these limiting beliefs, and let you kind of start sailing, and really

start getting out, and speaking with the world. That's what I want you to do. I want you to

go out, and have great conversations with people all over the place, and if you do that,

if you remove these limiting beliefs here, this stuff becomes really easy.

If you think you can do it, and you start learning about how you can do it, all this

becomes easy. All right. Let's see here. We've got Dan from the Philippines says, "Thanks"

My pleasure. Charlie says, "I'm good in writing English, but not verbal." Yes, and this is

another thing. Usually people are good at one particular skill, they're good at listening,

or they're good at writing, and these are typically because you're learning these skills

in the classroom, so what you practice you become better at, but you have to open your

mind to learning the right way. Trying to learn writing is really learning the traditional

way in school, and so, it makes it a bit more difficult for people to improve.

If you're just using writing that's fine, but if you have to also speak, you have to

change the way that you learn so that you communicate rather than just trying to repeat

the things that you learned in your classrooms. Hopefully, all this makes sense, but this

is again, this stuff over here, you're just really not going to hear that. I don't know

of any classroom that teaches any of this stuff, and it's really so important. I mean,

actually a lot of, pretty much every English classroom, and a lot of actually the videos

you'll find on YouTube are really just teaching you more of this. It's giving you more words,

more phrases, and just more stuff, and you know it's not working because you're not getting

more fluent. I know lots of students, they write me, they

say, "I'm watching all these YouTube videos, and it's not actually helping me learn." It's

because they're focusing on this stuff up here, and all these things that just give

you more information. They're just giving you, they're actually creating more of these

limiting beliefs, because they make you think that fluency is actually difficult when it's

really not. You can actually get fluent instantly, and you're getting fluent about a particular

thing, or you're learning to say a word, or a phrase fluently. That's what it really means,

and so, if you expand that, you keep learning all these individual things up here like this

word, or this phrase, and you start putting these things all together, and that's how

you communicate, and have great conversations. Does that make sense?

All right, I'm getting crazy hot over here, but if you enjoy this video, and you'd like

to learn more about this, I created a program called The 68 Fluency Secrets. It goes into

a lot more detail about this kind of stuff. I asked thousands of my students what can

I do to help them become much more confident speakers? What are the problems they're struggling

with? I got literally thousands of responses from people, but it was actually just 68 different

questions that were asked in different ways. I went back, and answered that in a very simple

audio program, and a lot of that is talking about better ways to learn these things up

here, but I spend also a lot of time talking about reversing the limiting beliefs, so showing

people how things are possible, and it really becomes very simple to get fluent once you

understand both of these pieces. It's not just this information up here, it's

also the beliefs you have about learning. All right, I'm getting crazy tired, but thank

you for all the thumbs up for people that are enjoying this over here. If you do want

to learn more about that program just click on the link in this video. If you're watching

on YouTube, it'll be in the upper right, or in the description, and if you're watching

this on Facebook, it'll just be right in this post as well.

Well, that'll be it for me today. Hopefully, you guys have enjoyed this. If you did, oh

Sherry, nice to see you there watching from Philippines, but anyway, hopefully you guys

enjoy this. If you do, let me know if I should make more of these, and just talk more about

the kind of different, and interesting things that maybe you haven't really thought about

before. Anyway, do like, and share as usual. Let other people know. If you also see them

struggling, maybe they're complaining about learning a lot, but not getting more fluent,

but hopefully, you all enjoy this, and again, I look forward to seeing you in the next one.

Do click on the link in the description, and I will see you in the next video. Bye bye.