How I ACCIDENTALLY became FLUENT in English

hi there in today's video I want to tell you how I accidentally became fluent in English and I want to tell you my story on how I got from speaking no English to now being able to work in English to Converse in my day-to-day in English and also have this YouTube channel in English without any problems and I guess over the years I collected some good tips that retrospectively I can tell you really were key in helping me get fluent in English and I want to share with you in this video but first let us start with my story so I am German I grew up speaking German and my first English lesson really was when I started High School round about at 10 years old and English is a mandatory subject in Germany so anyone at some point in school uh learns English and in my case I learned English for eight years at school 4 hours a week of English for8 years right it's a lot of time I guess I learned a lot of content over all of these years however once was done with school I wasn't fluent and you would think maybe that after learning so many hours of English and my English was really really good to be honest the opposite was the case I was able to speak English okay I was uh able to Converse in English I was able to read English but I was nowhere near fluent like often I came into a situation when I wanted to express myself and say something and I had all of these rules of grammar in my head and these words but I just couldn't find the right ones to put them together and I felt like I understood English well but like I couldn't really express it the same way as I could understand it okay so but what happened from finishing High School to now where I do not have any problem anymore expressing myself to be honest with you I never really studied English again after high school I didn't do any like course or any such thing in English that in a structured way made me fluent all that I'm telling you now is retrospectively me looking back and saying wow okay I think this really helped me a lot so let me walk you through to start off with what is the main difference that happened after high school is that I started applying the inputs that I had learned in a meaningful way it started with my University degree so I decided to choose a degree that was um partially in English so it was partially in German partially in English um so I was required to learn some subjects like mathematics for instance in English so that exposed me already to A Whole New World where I had to all of a sudden interact with English on a level that really mattered before I only was writing English tests in English and every other thing that I did in my life was in German naturally now I started writing tests at University in English and I also interacted with International students because the university I studied at also had um a lot of international students that didn't speak German I started meeting people with who the only way to communicate was in English so I was forced by my environment to use English if I wanted to get around and make for instance meaningful conversation so I really got confident in speaking and that was the first step however the downside on this is most of the international students were not first language English therefore I became like confident speaking however nobody ever corrected me so I just made some mistakes that I just kept on making and making and no one bothered but then in my next step I did an internship in South Africa and in case you don't know South Africa has 12 official languages one of which is English and it also serves as the administrative language basically almost everything in the day-to-day life happens in English so this was the first time that I was really in a completely English-speaking environment by myself I couldn't speak any German I was just there interacting in English only so then I went back to Germany I met my boyfriend who's also first language English and we speak English with each other every single day also him I asked to correct me so every day I still get feedback on things that I do wrong in English last but not least I'm working in English I'm working in software development which is by nature very International environment so the main language that we use there is English I really became fluent through outputting English in a meaningful way in a way that helped me to participate daily life that was actually required of of me to be an active part of the surroundings that I'm in and I think this is the key here of course you need to learn inputs of course you need to have like some sort of Base foundation in order to start speaking I mean you can't just start speaking if you don't know anything right however you need to put it out in a meaningful way and I know that it might not be as accessible for all of you guys to have a native English speaking environment around you but I think we live in the digital age and we can basically fake this en environment ourselves and now I want to give you some tips how you can get fluent from the comfort of your own home okay so what we want to do is create a fake native language speaking environment so what we need for this is we need to be able to speak with a native we need to be able to maybe write and get our writing corrected by a native to learn how to write properly and we need to be exposed to native English conversation native English speech these are the three components that we need to assemble let's start with the speaking so there are essentially two options that I identified online at least where we once have I talkie it's a platform that I really like um I'm a really big fan I'm mentioning it in almost all of my language learning videos this is not sponsored but hey I talkie if you see this and you find this video cool sponsor me spons me nonetheless uh it talk is a platform where you can schedule one-on-one language classes with language teachers from all over the world in so many different languages also in English and it allows you to really learn English efficiently and tailored to your very own needs the downside here is that it's a bit more costly than other options so if you're in a bit of a budget there are other options namely Tandem and hello talk which essentially are also platforms where you can engage with native speakers however it's based on a quit proquo basis basically so you find somebody who wants to learn your native language um who is a native English speaker uh and then you can converse you can text you can exchange text messages and you can also meet up for video calls I personally have used both Tandem and it talkie I can recommend both uh depends on your needs what is better for you and then we have an additional platform that is called busu which is a language learning app here you also have a community option where you can engage with native speakers however as far as I know at least last when I used it uh it was only possible to sort of send in voice notes or text messages into a feed and then native speakers would correct you for instance so that is very good because it is also relatively price effective and it is not time sensitive meaning that if you are in a completely different time zone you can also just text your text or send in your voice note and then get a reply while you're sleeping for instance I also like Buu I've used it it is a free app with paid features so you can't do everything for free but there's some things that you can do for fre free just check it out I'll put all of the links into the info box and then number four try and immerse yourself through listening to native English podcasts for example so what I like to do is while I'm cooking or while I'm working out while I'm doing something where I don't need my full brain's Focus for I'm listening to a podcast in a foreign language and depending on your level now you can choose whether it's just a normal podcast of a topic that you're interested in English or whether it's a language Learners podcast so directed to people that are beginners in the language if you require something that is a bit more basic I hope that this was helpful to you let me know in the comments how uh you like this video and if you have any further tips let us know in the comments always appreciate it language learning tips are always appreciated here so keep well and see you very soon bye

Channel: Rica Doe

Views: 37,588

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Id: PsKfXVTe5O4

Length: 8min 21sec (501 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2024