3 Tips to Get Fluent in English — Even if You're Busy!

so you probably know that if you want to  become fluent in English it is essential to  

have the habit of practicing your English  every day but with all the things we have  

to do in life sometimes it can be difficult to  remain consistent with studying something like  

English while this is something that happens  to all of us there is one really simple way to  

develop consistency with your practice even if you  think that you don't have time to study English  

so in today's video I am going to introduce you  to this idea of systems and give you some tips  

that are going to help you make your English  practice so much more consistent so that you  

can finally reach all of your goals in English  even if your time is really limited so let's go

so before I introduce you to this topic of systems  which is going to be immensely helpful it's really  

important that first we discuss why it is just so  difficult for us as human beings to maintain good  

habits if you're anything like me your life is  surrounded by all sorts of different distractions  

you can easily spend hours watching series on  Netflix or watching videos on your favorite social  

media platform now between doing something that  takes more effort like sitting down and cracking  

open your English grammar book or doing something  that's fun and easy let's say watching a funny  

video on Tick Tock our natural tendency always  seems to be to go towards doing the thing that is  

easier or that is more comfortable right now not  knowing why you started studying your first place  

makes it really difficult to practice consistently  that's why it's so important to have a clear goal  

a clear goal can set you in the right direction  without a clear goal it's like you're trying to  

throw darts without a dartboard but here's where  things get interesting it's not enough just to  

set goals you also need systems so goals are a  one-time event but systems are how you get there  

it's a bit like the difference between a journey  and a destination so to give you a couple examples  

if you want to lose weight then the amount you  want to lose is your goal but your system is  

eating healthy and exercising right or maybe  something that's more relevant to you if you  

wanted to get a band 9 on the IELTS exam then  that's your goal but the system is actually  

sitting down and studying so when you change your  focus to systems it helps you to actually enjoy  

the process instead of being too focused in on the  result that you're hoping to achieve or the goal  

for example if you say I want to be fluent in  English that's the end result that you want to  

have or the goal but now ask yourself what do  I need to do to achieve this goal or in other  

words how am I going to practice every day  in order to become fluent that's the system  

in his best-selling book Atomic habits behavior  science expert James Clear explains that we need  

to spend less time obsessing over our goals and  spend more time at designing the systems that are  

going to help us on the way to achieve them in  other words he tells us focus more on how we're  

going to achieve our goals rather than on what  we want to achieve so one quote that I love from  

James says we think we need to change our results  but the results are not the problem what we really  

need to change are the systems that cause those  results so this brings us to tip number one  

forget about goals focus on systems instead okay  so what this means for you as an English learner  

is that you need to stop focusing so much on  learning English just so you can achieve something  

else like getting a better job or passing a test  instead shifting your focus to the reality that  

you're probably going to be spending your entire  life really learning English so you really should  

make it a fun valuable and meaningful part of  your life it's going to be an endless cycle of  

improvement and refinement so you might as well  enjoy the journey now this isn't to say that goals  

can't be useful Milestones along the way however  what systems help us to really do is shift from  

just having a short-term focus into having a  long-term focus in other words realizing that no  

one becomes fluent overnight or in three months or  even in a year if you're really wanting to master  

language it can take years upon years upon years  so what systems help us to do is to put the focus  

on the little things that we need to do every  day in order to have immense long-term benefits  

so just to give you an example say that you make  it your Habit to learn three new words every day  

that's not really that much and it might just  seem like it's too small of an objective to have  

however if you were able to do this successfully  if you can successfully build this goal of  

spending just a few minutes every day practicing  and memorizing three new words then over two years  

you will have added over 2 000 new words to your  vocabulary so you can see it really builds up over  

time and just imagine if in two years you know  two thousand more words than you know today you're  

going to understand almost all the words that  you encounter when you're watching a series or  

reading a book and you're also going to be able to  speak English so much more eloquently than you can  

now now I'm sure that you clicked on this video  because you probably just don't have a lot of time  

to dedicate to learning English and I totally  feel you I usually feel like I'm running from  

one thing to the next that's why the next tip is  just so important for busy people like you and me  

but before we move on to that I want to let  you know that if you enjoy videos like this  

that not only help you to improve your English  but also to improve your life well we bring you  

a new one every single week so make sure that  you don't miss a single one because we're going  

to help you go from being a lost and insecure  English learner to being a confident successful  

English speaker hit that subscribe button and the  bell down below so YouTube can let you know every  

time we publish the new one and that brings  us to tip number two develop micro habits  

all right so take a quick listen to this podcast  clip where we explain exactly what micro habits  

are the micro habits come in this ideal micro  habits to solve that because what science says  

these days about habit building is that first  you must standardize The Habit before you want  

to optimize it so people normally go big with  habits they think read for an hour or I'm going to  

try this diet and it's already a very extreme diet  and they don't do they don't practice the actions  

that are more related to the starting point of the  getting started all right and the reason that this  

works is because of something called compounding  effects so what this means is that for example if  

you were to get one percent better every day at  something you would have grown 37 times over the  

365 days in the year and if on the other side of  things imagine you were to get one percent worse  

at something every single day one a year you'll  be pretty close to zero in that thing and that's  

probably why we have the expression English if you  you don't use it you lose it so this is all to say  

that the small changes may seem insignificant in  the day-to-day but when you start to think long  

term they can make a really tremendous impacts on  your life this is exactly how investors are able  

to get rich or if we think of a more practical  example we could go back to weight loss so if  

you were to change nothing else other than eating  just 100 calories which is a tiny amount less each  

day you would be able to lose 4.5 kilos in a year  so basically the advice here is to focus more on  

what are the small easy incremental changes that  you can make in your everyday that will ultimately  

lead you to long-term success instead of focusing  on trying to make big changes that you'll probably  

just give up on after a few weeks now studying or  practicing your English really is not that hard  

what is really hard is just pushing ourselves to  sit down and do it our brains don't mind hard work  

what they mind is just the idea of having to do  something difficult that's why most people will  

not be very successful if they try to sit down  and study for one hour every single day instead  

of something that's much more effective is called  the five minute rule when you think about sitting  

down and having to study for an English exam  or study in the conjugations it sounds pretty  

challenging it doesn't sound very gratifying does  it but when you think about having to just sit  

down and listen to a podcast in English for five  minutes and maybe note down the new vocabulary  

here that sounds a lot easier doesn't it the  crazy thing is that for most of us if we put on a  

podcast with the intention to just listen for five  minutes we'll probably listen for more than that  

getting started really is the biggest effort for  us but once we get started then those five minutes  

might turn into 10 minutes 15 minutes maybe even  30 minutes or more now your objective here should  

not be tricking your brain into studying for an  hour by telling it you're only going to study for  

five minutes rather what the objective here is is  to build a healthy habit of studying consistently  

if those five minutes turn into 15 or 30 minutes  that's awesome but if they don't then you should  

still feel good if you only do five minutes about  checking off your English studying for the day so  

I want to propose and challenge you to adding a  new micro Habit to your life and that is having  

a conversation every single day for just four  minutes now that might sound a little bit crazy  

who is going to want to speak with me for just  four minutes well on the real life English app  

you can do exactly that anytime anywhere you can  just press a button and have a fun and dynamic  

four to eight minute conversation with another  English speaker from another part of the world  

and remember how earlier I discussed the micro  habit of learning just if you want new English  

words every single day well a really great and  fun way to do this is with the real life English  

podcast which you can listen to on the app for  free with a full transcript and very soon we are  

going to be adding a vocabulary flash cards which  are going to help you to practice these words and  

never forget them so what are you waiting for  download the real life English app for free in  

your favorite app store right now or simply click  up here or down the description below to find it  

and finally tip number three consistency is key  so hands down the best way to be consistent when  

it comes to learning a language like English is  to develop a bilingual lifestyle now what do I  

mean by this remember earlier I said that you  should not just learn English but actually make  

it an important meaningful part of your life now  there's so many different fun ways that you can  

do this and a lot of them are really low impact  so it could be small things like changing your  

device's language to English so that can mean your  phone your social media accounts your computer  

Etc and that way you'll learn little words by  actually using these different things I actually  

remember still in Portuguese the word which is  a chat because when I was learning Portuguese I  

changed my Facebook's language to Portuguese and  there are lots of other things I've talked about  

today developing a habit of listening to podcasts  be that podcast for English Learners or native  

podcasts that are just about topics that you're  interested in and the great thing about this is  

it's really a bilingual like lifestyle so it's  something that you can do in other parts of your  

life so you can listen to it you know while you're  in line at the supermarket or while you're driving  

to work in the morning or while you're running  and of course if you're watching TV series try  

to always watch them in English with or without  English subtitles listen to your favorite songs  

and actually look up the lyrics all of these  can be great different ways to just have Micro  

exposures with the language and they're probably  things that you're doing anyway so it's super  

easy change to make and with all these things  remember that five minutes a day is much better  

than two hours twice a week so with all of  these you're really required to have a shift  

in your mentality so thinking long term instead of  thinking so much about your goals you start to see  

that success really comes from doing little things  every day rather than doing tremendous big efforts  

in a short amount of time we all want to believe  that there's some magic pill out there that we're  

going to take and suddenly it's going to help us  to achieve our goal of being fluent or of being  

super in shape but you know whatever our goal is  it always requires putting in the daily effort  

be that going to the gym him or for us studying  vocabulary every day and creating a lifestyle  

that really supports that I promise you that if  you commit to the process you will see progress  

there's another really great quote from this  book Atomic habits and from James clear that I  

love and it says you do not rise to the level of  your goals you fall to the level of your systems  

so today we've been talking all about building  new habits and I want to hear from you after  

watching this what new English habit do you  want to do for your English practice share  

it down below and also be sure to check out what  other Learners said it might also just give you  

a great idea for something you can add to your  own English lifestyle so today we've discussed  

why contrary to popular belief focusing too  much on goals is counterproductive now this  

is not to say that goals are not important goals  are the first step in fact with all of my coaching  

students I used to have them do on the very first  day of class think about why they're learning the  

language and I would actually have them even  write this down and put it somewhere they would  

see every single day because this is an immense  motivator however once we've done this then it's  

really great to spend some time on designing  planning and optimizing our systems that's  

how you plan on achieving this goal now if you  do this then learning English is just going to  

become an effortless habit for you and you will  naturally become a confident English speaker as  

a result of these good habits and learning so in  this episode Casey and Izzy are discussing how  

to implement good habits in your life for this  first part you will listen to Three extracts  

and you need to choose the best option A B or C to  answer the questions are you ready after listening  

to each section we'll give you the option of  playing it again if you feel it's necessary  

so this is how most of us live our lives including  me and it's really important for us to understand