So if you feel like you've been
learning English for a while now but you feel like you're not improving as
much as you used to when you first started, then today's lesson is for you.
You'll first watch a clip with subtitles and then I'm going to teach you the most important
vocabulary in the clip while giving you practical tips on what you can do to advance your English.
And then finally you'll have the chance to watch a clip again without subtitles and see a summary of
the words and tips that we studied in this lesson. Oh! And there's a surprise quiz at the end
that will help you identify if you are ready to move towards becoming an advanced learner.
But before we get into any of that if you are new here I wanted to quickly let you know
that every week we help you to understand fast speaking natives, to be understood
by anyone and to connect to the world! Just like Allah, who says that our lessons
are helping him improve his accent. We look forward to joining you on your journey
to English fluency too. The first step is hitting that Subscribe Button and the Bell down
below, so that you don't miss any new lessons. So in this part Ollie is
sharing his frustration after starting to learn Portuguese. He says
he feels like he's stuck in a rut. Now this means that learning the
language has become monotonous and he feels bored with it, probably because
of that he can't see any improvements. This is such a common situation when learning
a foreign language, that's why I feel that classifying the levels of English just as
beginner, intermediate and advanced isn't a very good representation of the reality.
You don't simply jump from one to another overnight. It's a process and there
are differences within the levels you are at because sometimes one skill like
reading or writing is more developed than others. Still when you get to an intermediate level it
becomes really difficult to see exactly where you're making progress. Improvements become
harder and harder to see as you don't feel the small wins like you did before you may feel
discouraged and demotivated to keep studying. This situation can even make you
feel like you're not good enough. However even if it is small as long as you're
consistent the progress is there. You probably already sound more fluent and you don't have to
think a lot about the words you're going to use. You don't pause that much and your listening
is better. Your reading maybe is even faster. So how can you find the motivation to
keep going? Alright, so my first tip is to "Keep a record of your learning."
The easiest way to do this is by creating a folder on a cloud service like Google Drive
or OneDrive and use it as a digital portfolio. Actually my favorite tool for this
nowadays is Notion, it's really powerful and I highly recommend you check it out, but
I won't talk too much about it in this video. But give us a like down below if you would
like me to do a video on my favorite tools for language learning and productivity. So in a service like one of these that I
mentioned, you can upload things that you write, audio you record yourself speaking English,
exercises you did in class or even nice feedback that you received on your language abilities.
Or you could even upload some notes of a successful situation where you used your
English. You can separate your files by date and make a note on your calendar
to revisit from time to time. Maybe once every quarter or semester.
By revisiting your old work you'll be able to see how much you've progressed, maybe
this sounds like a lot for you. If that's the case a simpler alternative would be to record
yourself talking about some advanced topic. Do it once per month and compare it to your
past ones. A lot of times when we're studying we don't realize the progress that we're making,
so this tip is a good way that you can start observing your progress, which will help to light
the fire inside and motivate you to continue. Did you notice the expression he
used to emphasize how bored he was? If you are bored to tears it's like saying
that something is so uninteresting that it could even make you cry. When you throw
in the towel you give up doing something. Learning a new language demands consistency and
over time that can indeed become too repetitive. That's when you fall into the danger of
getting trapped in your comfort zone, so to avoid falling into that trap the second tip
is to "Constantly slightly increase the challenge" The foreign language I speak most
here in Barcelona is Catalan. However a couple years ago I noticed this
feeling that I was stuck in a rut, I wasn't making progress even though
I used the language every single day. So at the beginning of 2019 I decided it
was time to take it to the next level. What I did to break out of the comfort zone was
to sign up for the C1 Level Test in Catalan. Now I had never studied the grammar
in this language before so getting a good teacher and studying every day for the
exam over four months forced me to discover where the holes were in my learning and fix them.
For me this was the trick to breaking out of the intermediate plateau and into advanced, giving me
more confidence in my abilities in this language. Of course everyone has to find what will work
for them to step outside of their comfort zone to where the magic happens.
Have you had any similar experiences? I would love to hear about it.
Share it down in the comments below. The key here is to do something that's just a
little bit more difficult than what you were doing before. For people who work out it's
the same principle of progressive overload, that is when they gradually increase the weight or
number of repetitions in their training routine. Of course it's not so obvious when
it comes to learning a language what it means to increase the weight.
Every time our brain faces a new challenge it actually creates new brain cells. The
process of responding to a new challenge requires the brain to do some work that it
is not used to do or hasn't done before. How can you apply that to learning English? Well
if you have a favorite TV series and watched it with subtitles go back and watch it without them.
Or maybe you like to read so you could pick up a book that is a little bit above your
level of English, or instead of doing book exercises to revisit your grammar you could
start creating your own exercises. For example by removing all the verbs from a news article
or song and having to conjugate them yourself. You could do crossword puzzles, watch
videos of your favorite subjects, play trivia games, etc. all in English.
Or maybe if you feel like you need a little bit of an extra push, then you can sign up for
a language exam just like I did. For English learners you have the IELTS exam, TOEFL or
Cambridge Certificate in Advanced English. It will help you to focus
and structure your learning. If you're like Ollie or me then when you got to
the intermediate level you probably felt like you could understand most things quite well, right?
Well despite that you feel you can't quite respond as precisely as you do in your first language, and
you end up always using the same words, don't you? This limits your conversations and maybe
they just don't feel that interesting. Just like I once felt you may not be using a
wide enough range of expressions. The range is the extension of your vocabulary, how varied
it is, relying on the same expressions because they're comfortable is perhaps the biggest thing
that stops you from getting to an advanced level. The thing that you can do is to start
learning chunks instead of isolated words. Chunks are expressions that are used in
certain contexts or that often come together. Reading is one of the absolute best ways to
discover wonderful new word chunks that you're not currently employing when you speak. When I read
I like to highlight these chunks on my e-reader and then during my study time I add them to a
spaced repetition software like Anki or Memrise. I'll link our lesson on how to
improve your English reading in the description in case
you want more tips about this. So I said here that deep down I was aware I
had a good level of Spanish. Use "deep down" to refer to things that you feel strongly about
but that you often don't admit to other people. That's probably the case of your
English, because at an intermediate level your English is already good enough
for most situations you need to use it in. You convince yourself that that is it you
don't need to continue studying and putting effort into it. Furthermore this could result
in fossilized mistakes, it is like you're so used to saying things in a certain way and
it becomes harder and harder to correct them. The tip to overcome this and refine
your language is to ask for feedback. As I mentioned for me a huge turning point
was when I got a professional teacher. Actually I used to be really against the idea
of getting a teacher, I thought that I could do it all on my own. However having someone with
experience who could identify my own mistakes and guide me made all of the difference
in breaking out of the intermediate level. If you can swing this it will make
a huge difference for your progress, so I highly recommend that as soon as
possible you find a teacher if you can. Other good options can be a friend that you
trust or a mentor, constantly ask them to give you feedback on your language.
Ask things like: [...] Of course this feedback is only useful if
you actually apply it. Ask yourself "why do you need to have advanced English?" and set
clear action points making sure that they fit your purpose, intention and needs.
Another great way we have for you to gain confidence with your English is
with our Power Learning Mini Course, this will help you to gain the vocabulary
that we natives really use and to improve your pronunciation so that you can speak clearly.
Look what Itzel, who is a student of our Premium Course recently shared in our community about
her experience. She says that now in her meetings in English she feels confident speaking.
So you can get started right now and it's absolutely FREE, just click up here or in
the description box down below to sign up. Now you'll have a chance to check everything
we saw in the lesson. Before doing that though I have one last tip, so even after you have
reached an advanced level of English it is important that you are always learning, so you
don't lose what you've worked so hard to achieve. We say in English that if
you don't use it you lose it. I mentioned sometimes that I have learned
six different languages. Several years back I tried my hand at learning Hebrew, now the first
five months went great I made a lot of progress but my life got busy, I wasn't using
it and I put it on the back burner. Unfortunately I've never come back to
it and I lost most of what I learned. Luckily I have learned from those mistakes with
other languages that I've learned, so don't make this mistake with your English. I recommend that
you make it a fun part of your everyday life. For stress-free ways you can do this
be sure to check out this lesson which you can find linked up here
and down in the description below. I hope that you've enjoyed today's
lesson and you learned some new things. If you did just a reminder Subscribe and
click the bell down below so you don't miss any of our new lessons, but before you go as
promised it's time to complete the final quiz and find out if you are ready to move
towards becoming an advanced learner. If you answered Yes to seven or more you are ready
to start taking your English to the next level. One last thing, don't forget to
connect with me on our Instagram page where you can keep learning with our lives,
quizzes and mini lessons. See you next Friday for another lesson and now it's time to go beyond
the classroom and live your English. Aww yeah!!
