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 fluency.

(upbeat music)

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 gonna change the way you study

and help you become a lot more fluent in English.

My name is Keith.

I'm from the YouTube channel English Speaking 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 gonna 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 gonna help you become more fluent as you study.

Let's jump straight into it.

(air whooshing)

(air whooshing)

Number one, be intentional.

(air whooshing)

I mean, when you are reading or listening to English,

do you know why you are doing it?

(air whooshing)

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?

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 for a month,

more than a month without understanding a word.

I just I had my earphones and my cassette.

All right, yeah, my cassette,

it was last century, (laughs) 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?

Because 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 are listening,

speaking or reading, know what your goal is.

Why are you doing it?

I could probably write...

Write, 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.

(air whooshing)

(air whooshing)

Number two, processing language takes time.

You can't just study a word

and use it straight away.

Some of my students on the GOLD course,

they come to me and say, "Keith,

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 your listening,

your reading, your 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 baoza, these steam dumplings.

You get the flour and the water and the yeast

and you make the dough, right?

You have the dough like your vocabulary,

but then you leave it covered for about two hours to rise,

and then you can use it.

If you try and use it straight away,

(groans) it's all doughy, it doesn't work.

It's like language and vocabulary.

It needs time to settle,

it's the same thing.

So, be aware, processing language takes time.

Study, practice, but just change your expectation.

It will take time to use fluently.

(air whooshing)

(air whooshing)

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.

(air whooshing)

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 and 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.

(air whooshing)

(air whooshing)

Number four, notice.

What I mean by notice is really be curious

and look at things and notice things.

There's a famous polyglot, Steve Kaufmann,

and I've done a few videos with him,

you can check them out up here.

Part of his methodology is noticing,

and 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,

"Ooh, that's interesting."

Notice the grammar,

"Ooh, interested in not interested on."

Notice the patterns of language.

Notice the word stress, the intonation.

Be curious about all of these things 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 collation

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.

(air whooshing)

(air whooshing)

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 a linear line.

You know, you start with the present tense,

then you learn 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 and you can't, you just can't speak.

It's messy, it's normal, accept it.

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 learning is messy, (laughs) accept it.

(air whooshing)

(air whooshing)

Make it fun.

Of course, make sure your learning is fun

'cause if you are enjoying your learning,

you're gonna 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, 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.

I take the topic of the week,

for example, media.

I go to ChatGPT

and in French I ask for a list of 10 essential words

for that topic with some sentences,

ba-ba-ba-ba.

Then, I take those and I put it into a 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 'cause it is a marathon.

And if you're not enjoying yourself,

you're gonna give up.

So, if you wanna become fluent,

make your learning fun.

(air whooshing)

(air whooshing)

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 a time, a day, and a place

where you're always gonna do the activity.

Maybe it's every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,

8 o'clock in the morning for an hour,

I'm gonna practice speaking.

And you do that and you do it again, again, and again.

And once you've got the habit, it's gonna 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 want the PDF of all of these with the explanation,

you can download that through the link below.

Just click on it and you can get it for free

and help you on your journey to becoming fluent.

Right now, let's go and have a look at number eight.

(air whooshing)

(air whooshing)

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.

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,

and go, "Oh, that's interesting,"

and just repeat it, right?

Sometimes I'm watching French films and I'll be like,

(Keith speaking French)

(Keith speaking French)

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 IELTS Speaking.

It's all about repeating,

noticing aspects of pronunciation and repeating.

It's a key part of language learning.

You're probably not doing enough, go and do some more.

Here's the next point.

(air whooshing)

(air whooshing)

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 are 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 ASEP.

You may have heard of ASAP, as soon as possible,

ASEP, right, stands for Accept where you are,

step by step, 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, embrace is 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.

(air whooshing)

(air whooshing)

And number 10 is use emotion.

Do you remember when you were 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.

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 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 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? (laughs)

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.

(laughs) I eat fast food.

(laughs) 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 emotion,

you're gonna 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 IELTS speaking,

to communicate with people around the world, right?

(air whooshing)

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 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,

IELTS 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.

We've got quizzes, we've got novels,

songs, recorded videos you can practice with.

Oh, 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 off 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 GOLD course.

Whatever you decide,

I'm always gonna 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 I look forward to seeing you maybe in the course,

maybe also in the next video.

Take care, my friend. Bye-bye.

(upbeat music)