10 STEPS TO FLUENCY IN ENGLISH | Canguro English

[Music] hello and welcome to kangaroo English I'm Christian and today I am going to give you 10 lessons that will take you all the way to fluency now I could give you 10 lessons that I just invented myself or I could give you 10 lessons to try and sell you my course on my book or I could give you 10 lessons from an organization that has been making people fluent for 70 years the F s I the FSI is part of the US State Department and their job is to teach languages to government employees so they can go and work in embassies and consulates and other jobs outside of the United States they give more than a million hours of training to more than 2,000 students in 60 different languages but so what there are other organizations much bigger like EF or Cambridge University who have tens of thousands more students the FSI is different they have no brand to promote and nothing to sell but they're different for a more important reason they cannot fail they are directly accountable for producing students who can go overseas and perform complex tasks in their language they're not interested in certificates or levels they are only interested in producing students who can get things done if you're only interested in how you can learn English in just 10 minutes a day or discovering some secret to fluency or knowing how to pass that English exam then this video isn't for you but if you really want to know how to learn English so you can communicate and get things done then keep watching lesson one is that adults can learn a language just as well as children in fact adults can learn to do all of the things that native speakers can do with language now most of the people watching this video are over the age of 25 and most of you probably feel that it's too late that children have some special ability to learn languages that you don't have but know this the average age of the students at FSI is 41 now I'm really sorry about the interruption no it's just that I really wanted to tell them about this American study thanks but you don't just have to believe the FSI about this in 2015 a group of American researchers published this paper they analyzed 42 empirical studies from the past 50 years and they found no evidence of a younger learner advantage sorry about the interruption please continue Thanks are not going to have the same pronunciation and grammar and vocabulary as native speakers but that's not important the objective is not to be like a native speaker the objective is to be able to do things in the language to get things done [Music] lesson two is the unfortunate fact that some people are just better at learning languages than others and there are actually some really reliable ways to test this which I'll talk about in a future class now maybe this seems a bit depressing but there is actually something you can do about it motivation self-discipline and the power of concentration are three key things that are in your control [Music] lesson number three there is no one right way to learn or teach a language finally you get to hear it from somebody else apart from me now it's obvious that some ways of learning a language work with some people and fail with others the trick is simply to find what works for you but there is one generalization that FSI makes and that is when you are at that upper intermediate level when you're feeling stuck and starting to plateau a change of pace is essential mix it up try new things keep it interesting common sense really [Music] I can summarize lesson 4 in two words hard work students at FSI study in small groups for four to five hours a day with an additional three hours of self-study and they do this for months and years can this amount of time be reduced no the FS I have been trying to make their courses shorter for 70 years and it doesn't work you need hard work and patience now some other interesting things from lesson 4 is that immersion experiences are essential and finally there is no substitute for simply using the language lesson 5 knowing how language works can help you to learn a new language and that's because of the process of language transfer so if you understand how nouns and adjectives and conditionals work in your language then you can transfer them across to your new language but depending on your native language sometimes these concepts don't exactly correspond and that's why it's much more difficult for example for an Arabic native speaker to learn English then an Italian native speaker but that's perfectly normal now if you don't have some of those basic concepts in your native language it's probably a good idea to spend a little bit of time studying them [Music] lesson six you need to know how to study how to learn if you have some formal experience with studying then that's going to give you a really big advantage knowing how to study and how to learn is not something that comes naturally it's something that you acquire it's a skill now let me tell you something incredible that proves this point if you grew up speaking two languages from birth if you are natively bilingual this does not give you any advantage when you're learning a third language because you didn't learn either of those languages through study you have no experience with studying a language which is really important the FS I also discovered that general life experience and having something to say is really important and helpful in the classroom [Music] lesson 7 pattern practice is really important pattern practice is just a fancy way of saying repetition because repetition makes things automatic so they are there instantly when you need them now I'm not talking about the kind of mindless memorization and regurgitation of Lists I'm talking about a mindful and focused repetition of vocabulary or structures so for example you might decide to spend the next 30 minutes only speaking in the third conditional or write a story only using the passive voice and as FSI says this pattern practice is much more important than most teachers and students realize [Music] lesson eight you want to push yourself but not too far there's a lot of research at the moment about the natural sequence of acquisition this idea that we learn things in languages in a specific order for example on your first day of English class you don't learn about the past perfect but it's not a good idea to just ignore these advanced structures what you want to do is make yourself aware of them raise your consciousness so that you'll be ready to learn them faster lesson 9 what happens inside the classroom is everything the classroom environment has to be collaborative and supportive and responsive with good authentic materials at FSI when they asked the students what contributed most to their success they said the teachers a good language teacher doesn't just follow a system of methodologies and behaviors they make decisions about when to support the learners and when to let them be independent [Music] lesson 10 conversation is really hard and that's why it's so frustrating to me that so many teachers and students spend so little time on the hardest thing conversations hard because it involves unpredictable changes in topic having to listen and also speak having to take turns and all of this is happening sometimes in a very noisy environment another way to say this would be perhaps stop studying and start communicating in the conclusion of their paper they summarize their very simple philosophy for language learning in our half century of language education at FSI we have moved from teaching the textbook to helping the learner to learn you see learning a language isn't about the technical stuff at all it's about people it's about you so next time you feel like you need that app or that website or that course or that certificate to succeed at learning a language just remember these ten very simple lessons and realize that you can't buy fluency fluency comes from practice and language is a democracy it belongs to the people I'm Christian this is kangaroo English I'll see you in class [Music]

Channel: Canguro English

Views: 138,569

Keywords: top 10 fluency tips, canguro english, kangaroo english, canguru english, 10 STEPS TO FLUENCY IN ENGLISH, how to become fluent and confident in English, learn how to become fluent and confident in English, become fluent and confident in English, how to fluent english, how to learn fluent english, how to get fluent in english, how to become fluent in english speaking, how to talk fluent english, how to sound fluent in english, how to become fluent english speaker

Id: pv_W8yoJONM

Length: 14min 46sec (886 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 06 2018