Schools Are Killing Your English Fluency | Gabriel Wyner from Fluent Forever

Learning a new language is an adventure. It is  such an exciting and mind-opening experience.  

But the way they are taught traditionally  in most schools can be inefficient,  

frustrating, and even intimidating. - I want people not wasting their time i think  

a lot of people spend a long time spinning their  wheels with language learning, and like language  

learning is so important, especially when we're  talking about learning English in today's economy.  

And the idea of people spending, you know, hours  or years trying to memorize translations or trying  

to not use based repetition, or trying to not use  pronunciation early on like, that that hurts me.

And so, I guess my main ask is don't do that,  like, learn about what will save you time,  

the hours you spend in the beginning or even now  like even if you're halfway through, if you spend  

two, three, four, hours trying to learn how to do  this more efficiently it will save you hundreds of  

hours in the long term. And so, take the time,  take the time to figure things out. Figure out  

how your brain works, what actually makes you  feel like you're learning at a rapid rate. If  

it doesn't feel like you're learning you're probably not. And then go run after that. 

Today Gabriel, from Fluent Forever,  will share what you really need to  

know about fluency, language learning, and  the importance of setting the right goals. 

Gabe, welcome to the show - Thank you for having me.

So I'm so happy to have Gabriel on the  show because here at RealLife English  

we bring the world’s most influential online  teachers and experts so you can rediscover  

the adventure of English learning. Just like Lucy who says that our  

lessons have shown her that learning  a language can be fun and meaningful! 

Subscribe now so every week you can join  our lessons that will help you understand  

fast-spoken English, be understood  by anyone, and connect to the world. 

To start off, let me ask you a question: What does  FLUENCY mean to you? Pause the video for a second  

and write in the comments down below: "I'll be fluent when I ..." 

This is a tricky question because the  definition of FLUENCY is so broad. Each  

person may have a different idea of what that  means. Let's take a look at what Gabriel,  

who has learned eight languages and built a  successful business out of it says about that. 

We tend to use these these labels that don't mean  a lot. The word fluency like it's, you know, part  

of my company name, it's part of my book name,  and yet I hate that word like, it doesn't mean  

anything, it means I feel good, and you can have  a person who feels good in a coffee shop who is

by the european scale B1, on the CEFR scale,  and feels good and feels fluent and there's  

nothing... You can't tell that person, "Well,  I'm sorry you're feeling too good about this  

you should feel worse about what you know." Like  that person is fluent in coffee shop Spanish  

and that's legitimate. Whereas you can have other  people who will never feel comfortable, they will  

keep learning words and they will eventually hit  a level that is beyond the average native speaker,  

and they will still say, "I am not fluent" because  like this is I feel like, what is that is that the  

Dunning-Kruger curve? The idea the more you know  that the less confident you get? - Right, yeah. I  

mean, that is a real thing and you have certainlyM  the longer I spend in Japanese the more I

feel like, "Oh my God, this is endless, like, this  is just, there's so much to learn." And so will I  

ever feel fluent fluent in Japanese? Like probably  will not feel fully comfortable in that thing, but  

at a point that I can do like live translation for  someone, which is a brutal thing to do, if I can  

do that, if I can like really watch anime series  comfortably and feel good about them, if I can  

read manga like, at that point, I will say, "Okay,  Gabe, like chill like, you're probably fluent."

- Time for the next language. - Yeah, I mean, I think the european scale is  

a nice one, I think the CEFR scale that goes you  know, A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 is a valuable scale.  

And I think C1 is a reasonable place to put the  line where if you if you have a C1 certification  

I think you can pretty reasonably say to anyone,  "Hey, like, I'm fluent in this thing" and  

not be unreasonable, but that said like I showed  up to Austria with aCc1 certification in German  

and I went to like a normal like a  farmer's market and I died, like,  

it was just brutal like they were speaking to  me in dialect and I had someone gave me a like  

a two-minute speech on how to take care of a basil  plant and the only word I picked up was "water."

And this is with the C1 certification, so like  is that fluency? Well, like, I could handle a  

whole graduate degree in German, so I think  reasonably so but did it feel like fluency?  

Like hell no, that was so, it was awful. - Popping you down in Scotland maybe in in  

the Highlands or something and trying  to have a similar conversation about  

processing whiskey or something like  that - maybe you could be equally lost. 

- 100%. And so I think fluency is so context  dependent and so goal dependent that I think  

it ends up being a really wobbly word. The  direction that I've been trying to head  

is actually away from fluency in terms of like how  we frame the company and frame goals for people  

who are using our app, and is more leading towards  personalized fluency, which is to say what do you  

wish to be fluent in? Do you wish to be fluent in  going to the coffee shop? We can do that for you.  

Do you wish to be fluent in like, I don't want  to learn cantonese I want to be fluent in dim sum  

that's what I actually want from  cantonese, I have no interest in  

that language except that I do want to  be able to walk into a dim sum restaurant  

and have an actual conversation with the  waiter about like what's good food here,  

and that's like very achievable cantonese, is  going to be a brutally difficult language for  

me to learn, that's another Japanese basically  in terms of difficulty, but just dim sum like  

that should be a three month project. And so, and  that counts like that should count as fluency for  

me if I can have a comfortable conversation.  And so, I feel like comfortable conversation  

is something I want to learn about that seems  like a more meaningful label for me than am I  

fluent? - Because it's so much more specific. - It's, yeah, you were talking about goals  

and that's much that's much better that  you're reflecting a lot about what do I  

need the language for? And aligning your  goals like that because so many, I mean,  

most of our audience they're English learners  so like so many English learners they just say,  

"I want to be fluent in English", but they never  actually reflect like what does that mean? And I  

think for most people that probably means like  speaking it in some sense like they speak their  

native language, speaking it effortlessly, but you  don't need to know what you don't maybe need to  

know about how to talk about gardening in English  if you're not actually interested in gardening.  

You need to like be focused on you know  what are the things you really want to know. 

So many great insights from Gabriel's answer!  I know it can be challenging to digest  

everything so feel free to go back  and listen to it again. However,  

I have also prepared a few quiz questions to help  you with the comprehension of the ideas he shared.

That's right! It's what’s called the  Dunning-Kruger Effect. As we can see, when  

we first start learning, often we’re overconfident  in our abilities. But the more we learn, the more  

we realize there is to know in order to achieve  mastery. This is why people who we see as experts  

are often still quite humble. It is because  they realize they can always learn more! 

If you are enjoying Gabe's  insights on language learning,  

he also explained why you shouldn't  learn two languages at the same time,  

where his motivation to learn another  language comes from, and so much more. 

You can listen to the full interview for FREE  and follow along with an interactive transcript,  

by downloading the RealLife App! But, wait, that's not all of it.  

With the RealLife English App, you can also  speak in English anytime, anywhere with someone  

in another part of the world! It's like traveling  without leaving your home and Gabe himself gives  

a good reason on why you should do this. - There's enough fascination with how  

people think that maybe that's something that I  want and so, like, I'm starting to also realize  

even if these with these Japanese lessons like  interacting with my tutor is something I enjoy, I  

like that person not just the things that I can  get out of them in terms of language content.  

And if that's interesting with that person  well what about other people? So I think my  

motivations are changing over time, I think it  absolutely is the case that the perspectives  

coming out of Japan are wildly different  from the perspectives I see coming out of  

you know, random people I meet in Chicago. I think  watching my own perspectives land on my tutor in  

this particular case, and seeing points where  his world view gets expanded that feels good,  

and then also similarly watching like my  worldview get expanded that also feels good.

As we've seen, this is true! And it's  called situational fluency. Check it out.

There's certain situation fluency. So like  I said, with Japanese, I could talk to you 

all day about video games and instruments in  Japanese. But if you were to suddenly want to  

talk to me about politics, or something that's  outside of what I've worked on, I couldn't be 

able to do that. So in one situation, I  might seem totally fluent. And in another,  

I probably won't. And that's okay with  me, because I'm doing what I need to do  

in that language. And that's enough for me. Like  I don't need to know the entire Japanese language.  

Like even Japanese speakers don't  know the entire Japanese language.  

So I don't worry about that too much. For me, what fluent is, is situational fluency,  

I suppose. So if I'm able to do what I need to do  in the language, or get through situations that I  

don't understand in the language, like, I'm able  to say, Oh, I don't understand this, I'm not able  

to talk about it, or I'm not interested in talking  about that, or, I don't know how to talk about  

this. So let's work on it. Like, if I can navigate  that in the language, then that's enough for me.