Stuck with Your English Level? Why You Might Need to Take a Step Back to Move Forward

all right we are live this is jack from tofluency.com now welcome to this english lesson where we're going to talk about why sometimes it's important to take a step back before moving forward okay so this is a an idiom to take a step back which means to move backwards when you're talking about it literally but when we're talking about this as an idiom it means to stop doing what you're doing take a step back move backwards and think about what you should do next and this is important in life and also in learning english so i'm going to go through this concept talk about this a little bit talk about my life and when i like to do this and then also relate this to learning english now if you're new here welcome to you subscribe to the channel check out my podcast the other lessons that i've done and also let me set this up download this book it's called the five-step plan for english fluency and luckily for you it is free to download so you just need to click the link in the description and you can download that book so yeah today that's what we're going to talk about uh taking a step back to ensure that you are doing the right things so we've got a lot of people joining live today um hit that like button as well if you are here or if you're watching the replay and be sure to engage in the chat with me there will be a time at the end where you can ask questions about learning english but for now try and keep the messages on topic okay on topic all right let's have a look at a couple of things first so let's bring up my presentation here is something that i say all the time okay just read this on the screen and then i'll read it to you it says consistency is key consistency is key and again this is true in life and when it comes to learning english because a lot of people think okay i want to learn english or learn a new skill and what they'll do is do an intensive program a good example for english learning is when people go to the uk or to the us or to malta or australia and take an english course in an english-speaking country and they'll do this for two weeks and they'll have lots of lessons every day study hard lots of hours when they come back after that trip they just go back to their normal life and they don't they don't get anything out of it they'll learn a few things but they won't really retain that knowledge and they won't make progress after they come back because again consistency is key in order to make progress with something that is as complex and as big as learning english then you need to be consistent on a daily basis so i talk about this a lot consistency is key consistency is so important when it comes to reaching a high level of english however there is an uh however statement here however doing the wrong things consistently is wrong doing the wrong things consistently is wrong let's talk about learning the guitar so if i'm going to learn the guitar i need to practice every day or three times a week consistently over a year or two years in order to get to a level i want to reach but if i do the wrong things if i'm not doing the right things if i'm not learning guitar in the right way and i'm getting into bad habits then i'm not going to reach the level i want to reach and this is basically talking about how it's important to do the right things consistently consistent consistency is key but you have to do the right things and another way to think about it is this all right do you know what this is called do you know what this is called i'm going to put it in the chat box this is called amaze now if you're watching the replay you can also see the live chat after the fact so you can see the the live chat here too but this is called a maze okay and these are quite fun to do you can take your pen and use the paper and try to start at one end and then get to the other end but if you start a maze and if you go the wrong way you need to go back to the beginning and start again because you can't just keep i'm going to turn my screen on now if you hit a wall in that maze then you have to retrace your steps step back go to the start and then take a different direction and i think this is important when it comes to life too and learning english that if you've started a task but you are stuck you're hitting the wall which is another idiom to hit a wall means that you can't continue progressing or you're stuck which means you can't get past that wall then it's important to okay let's go back let's take a little break and let's think about a different direction let's think about trying to do something else it's important here as well so here's the statement i want to get through take a step back and think about what works so to take a step back and think about what works this is something i'm doing in my life when it comes to fitness as well because um i won't go into the details and tell you everything about it but basically i've been doing training over the last few years specific training programs and what i realized is i wasn't really progressing anymore and i was working harder but i was starting to get injured i started to get bad results so what i did was i took a step back did some research and now i'm on different programs which are really helping and i've seen some great initial success from it i'm not working as hard in terms of being out of breath in terms of my intensity when i'm training but i'm getting better results so what i did was i took a step back i'll show you this again i took a step back and i researched i thought about what i want what works and what was going to work for me and i want you to do this with your english i've mentioned i've mentioned this in a few lessons in the past where i say consistency is key but also be sure that what you're doing is working because if you're consistent consistently doing the wrong things then you're not going to make the progress you want to make so that's such an important concept to think about here that you need to be consistently doing the right things and sometimes you need to take a step back so while i've got you here because this is a live lesson i want to know what are you what are you doing right now to improve your english so let me know in the chat box let me know three or four four things that you're doing right now that you're working on with your english what methods are you using let me know in the chat box if you're watching the replay let me know in the comment section because i want to know what people are doing in order to improve i have thoughts my channel is all about using the right methods to help you improve okay and we're going to talk about those methods soon and also just talk about why people hit a wall hit that um sticking point they get stuck they're not progressing anymore when they're learning english but i'd love to know what kind of methods that you use so some comments is just starting to come in now and i'll say hi to people in the chat so christina's here saron aditya nazar um lolly lolly from france who's a member here great to have you back lolly um so hassan says i watch everything in english okay which is great fantastic we can talk about that method in more detail too we can talk about that method in more detail because there are ways to make that more effective but everyone else let me know what you're doing right now to improve your english there uh of things like um going to language schools doing verb patterns all that kind of stuff taking youtube lessons so claudia says reading english listening and writing watching movies and reading books listening to a lot of things in english says saron which is great so a lot of people are saying basically here input the input side watch videos i like and i learn new vocabulary from that talk to friends in english listen to podcasts i read books rebecca is here from peru good to have you um so a lot of people are saying you're watching english videos i write about how my day was so what people are saying here is is input which just means like you are reading listening watching you're absorbing english which is great now what you can do here is take a step back and think about whether how you're doing this is correct okay how you are watching listening and reading is correct because i talk about the input hypothesis method which is by doctor crashing and it's basically talking about how the type of input that you have is important to because you want to have comprehensible input stuff listen to stuff read stuff that you can more or less comprehend and then you can learn new vocabulary from that but it's important to get that type of input and i say that because let's say you have an a2 level of english but you're listening to regular english and you don't understand anything that isn't the most efficient way so you can take a step back and say okay let's get some audio books let's uh read some books that are made for the a2 or the b1 level where you're reading things that are more comprehensible which means you can understand what's happening so that's one way to take a step back and think okay should i be listening to this podcast what could i listen to instead what would be more effective let's see so uh natasha no sorry someone says i haven't seen you in a while where have you been yeah i've been making some podcasts recently got a new podcast coming soon but how to really improve our vocabulary with books in your opinion go to my channel and research the reading method to fluency reading method let's see i practiced listening and reading writing speaking on the other day i am late i enjoy your videos thanks alexis so if you're just joining we're talking about how consistency is key but sometimes you need to take that step back in order to think about what if if what you're doing is working right now okay i'll just i'll just go back over there a couple of key points again go back here so again take a step back and think about what works because doing the wrong things consistently is wrong and this is what leads to cycles of learning what i call a cycle of learning where you start learning english you feel very enthusiastic about it but in three to six weeks you feel down about your your english because you don't feel like you're progressing you feel like you're working hard but it's not working and a lot of the time it's not about working harder it's about changing what you do and working smarter and then once you have a very effective learning plan that's when you can do more of it because that's when you're going to get more results because doing more of the wrong things is not going to help you okay so in my latest podcast episode and if you haven't listened to it it's here on youtube i talked about how it's important as well to do the hard things because a lot of the time the hard things are the things that are going to push us forward now again it's not about listening to things that you can't understand but it's mainly talking about things that where you really have to focus and do stuff that gets gets you out of your comfort zone because a lot of people do the input they get the input they listen they watch etc because it's it's a little easier to do but other things doing the hard things are more important if you want to make that progress so things like i talk about the lrc method and instead of me going through these methods again go to my channel home page and watch the the featured video so go check that out but it's all about doing things that you know are going to move you forward now going back to this we just talked about the cycles of learning and that you start off you have that motivation but then after three to six weeks you feel down about your english you're about studying mainly because people put in the hard work but they don't get the results from it so again how to know if something's working test yourself do a test after three to six weeks test yourself because an issue with learning english is that a lot of it is gradual gradual where you're learning let's just say ten new words a day and the way you say the words is improving by one percent every day and it's very difficult to notice how you improve on a day-to-day basis but a good idea is to record yourself speaking and then six weeks later record yourself speaking again and listen to the two and notice if you've made some changes you can do this with a teacher too where you speak to a teacher and say okay test me and then three to six weeks later have the teacher listen to you again and see if you've made those improvements that's one way to do it another way to test yourself is learning new words test how much you have learned so think about okay how many new words have i learned make a note of it if you use anki this is about just how many new phrases you've learned that you can memorize now or if you're using a notebook how many phrases you you notice in your notebook that you can understand all this kind of stuff is a way for you to know if you are improving but i think on the whole as well sometimes you just know sometimes you just have that feeling and to say oh yeah i know i've improved i can understand more i feel more confident when i speak i'm understanding more when i listen to podcasts all that kind of stuff okay let's go back to the comments a little bit um it's a long process and you have to be patient to progress yeah this is the key this is so important it's that balance between i'm gonna put this in the chat balance between patience and um changing when it isn't working so it's a that balance between being patient but also changing what you're doing if it's not working and you don't it's not always a case of making massive changes maybe again it's it's about changing the podcast the podcast you're listening to or changing the the type of books you're reading changing the method you do or maybe doing a little bit more of one method for some people it's about making huge changes for example maybe stop going to a language school and learning on your own instead which is a big change or stop in learning grammar books and go to more of a natural immersion method sometimes it's big sometimes it's small uh someone says here gd it's like when you start a sport you can't get all the skills after three weeks it's the same for a language same for cooking gardening playing music anything else yeah yeah these skills are big they're complex and to master things like language music sport it takes a long time but two things about that be prepared for the journey be prepared for this this process but also realize that life gets better when you make small improvements so if you improve the way you play the guitar and you can play a new song life is better because now you can play that song if it's sport if you can now throw a ball in a certain way then life is better because now you can do this and before you couldn't do that alexa says i think that reading and listening are the most important ways of learning a language due to the fact that they provide the input the learner needs to speak appropriately yeah that's why so i just think the the lrc method the imitation method is the strongest because it uses all four skills at the same time so when you're reading and listening to a sentence you're getting the input when you're repeating it you're getting that speaking practice and the the fluency practice and accuracy and then you can also write this word down which means you're getting the writing practice that's why i think it's one of the the best best ones the thing is the fact that the words come up in our mind unconsciously to succeed i think we should listen and read yep exactly this is where you want to be and using this method again allows you to just just have these phrases come to you naturally that's what is so great about it is that if you repeat certain sentences and listen to them and read them over and over again and then you see other sentences then you can take the chunks from this sentence with this one and it all happens in a natural way the issue with learning through grammar is that sometimes you can get stuck on this thinking about the grammar rules and trying to form sentences from grammar rules whereas if you learn through the imitation method and lots of input then these grammar rules are learned naturally and you can just speak accurately and fluently without thinking about those grammar rules instead you just know them and you can say them so armando says what happens to me is i do a lot of reading and listening but not much of speaking and writing which is uh quite common it's quite common and this happens a lot but again using this method the lrc method using anki you can practice the writing and the speaking on your own okay i also recommend getting some natural uh speaking practice just in general but yeah those two work really well okay that that's the lesson i wanted to teach today now we're going to get into questions and answers so this is when you can ask me any question you have you want within reason nazar has a question what time is it now in your country it is 1 23 p.m we are early afternoon and it is a beautiful day so after this i might do a little bit of sport outside get some sun love to get some sun sun is the key learn english in the sun i think that's that's another thing is sometimes we get stuck in in our environment so maybe we're we're in our study in our bedroom always studying the same and it you know you're not moving your body sometimes go for a walk and listen to a podcast as long as you can do it safely i have a problem with vocabulary what is the best way to memorize them that method again um i just recommend everyone go to my homepage after this and watch that featured video i make it the featured video because i think it's it's probably the most important video i have because this is going to help you use this method so that you can get the reading and listening and everything else and the imitation to really move your english forward and i recommend trying this out for three to six weeks consistently and then hopefully you realize and it happens to you where this really just transforms your english and it gives you the motivation to invest more time in the method and in your english in general are people asking about memorizing phrasal verbs same same method as well like learn them in context learn them well and learn them through sentences that's how you're going to to memorize them internalize them so we've got enoch from venezuela um alexis are from venezuela too yuki tan is from the united kingdom great to have you here people asking where's the video well go watch that video after this this lesson all you need to do is i'll show you on my phone see if i can do this where you just go to my channel and um search for to fluency i mean you're already on my channel now and if you go to my home page okay it's the playlist here all right so at the moment it's saying this is my video it's live and if you scroll down it's that second video here we go that should focus there so it's that second video it's got a notification second video where it's called number one technique for learning new english words and phrases so go watch that after after this video i think when we're not able to speak in the second language although the amount of words we have we could we can also uh we also can't speak in a native language do you agree with this point yeah there are many times when it's difficult to speak in your own language or it's difficult to find the right words and phrases and it's important to be aware of that to be aware of the fact that we don't always choose the right words and phrases we make mistakes we don't use the right grammar we stutter we say we mispronounce words i mean we all do it in our native language george thank you so much for the the kind donation here um i watch english tv series on a daily basis however i reckon my english isn't going anywhere at all i hope your today's lesson will help me um again thank you so much for that kind donation it's very kind of you yeah this is yeah you can end up doing a lot of input but it's a little bit it's not completely like but it's a little bit like researching how to play soccer or football let's call it football how to play football watching videos on football watching reading books and playing football but not actually practicing it's not exactly the same it's not exactly the same because the input is also training your ability to learn english and understand words and phrases whereas with soccer there's there's no your soccer game doesn't improve by watching videos but it's similar in the sense of you need to practice and use your mouth and use your hand to write or your fingers to type in order to improve that that's that stage so yeah george definitely check out that video that i've been talking about and try that method for five to ten minutes a day um and thanks again for the donation i really appreciate that now daniel says i feel that my level has ups and downs depending if i have the chance to speak with natives or not because they are not in my daily environment how can i maintain a certain level that's a great question and so ups and downs when you feel like things are going well and things are going bad and this this can happen to everyone where one day you're thinking oh i feel great i feel like i'm a a good football player today and then the next day you feel ugh i'm terrible i can't run i can't shoot i can't pass same with english you have a day when you think i just understood everything that person said but then the next day you have a bad day and you don't understand someone you feel down but i think your question's more about that maintenance of your level and if you don't have that ability to speak with people i recommend using the method i've talked about but also finding someone to chat to finding a language exchange getting a teacher just to get that daily not daily but maybe maybe a weekly practice where you're just using your english in a way that makes sense and then on top of that change your environment into english as much as you can enoch says do you think your techniques are useful to learn other languages as well yeah this is how i got to a high level of spanish a few years ago i just followed these methods and that's why i'm passionate about them because i know they work iva is here from munich how cool i visited munich in 2002 i think nearly 20 years ago i had the best time in munich what a great city it was so much fun i visited a friend from university and um um you just had such a good time there it was one of my best vacations one of my best holidays i'd love to go back dario says i'm b2 but i can't give indications when a friend is parking it's quite specific daria yeah when a friend is talking um maybe just learn the phrases you need to learn about that where you can look at okay it's not an easy thing either to explain when someone's parking because there's some technical language and you know it's like steel left steer right watch out for this reverse this way leave more space what you could do is look up parking instructional videos on youtube where people go through how to park properly and then you can learn the the words and phrases from those videos miss bar says i know so many expressions phrases and a bunch of chunks of vocabulary but when i talk to someone in person it just flashes before my mind please tell me something i could do about it i think this sounds like you just need a bit more practice and a few more situations where you're doing this um again know that this happens in native language too and there's not always an easy way to talk about things and express yourself but it does sound like you need to practice a bit more and also just keep learning chunks learn them in context too so that you know when to use the right sentence at the right time a love from brazil good to have you here and always the powerful motivation is to remember your why not jeb is here that you have been here since i started this channel seven years ago so it's good to have you back yeah and uh the the why is important it's the motivation to keep you going you know if if you don't have a motivation to do something you're not going to do it that's for everything if you have zero motivation to do something you're not gonna do it it's true of everything it's true of everything so the motivation to to learn is why and i talk about how you need to take that that motivation really get excited about doing something but then transfer that motivation into habits and daily practice and consistency because uh motivation can come and go you feel motivated one day and then you you're not a month later as someone says how to re-motivate yourself while feeling discouraged i think it's about it's important to go back to your why and also to realize why you are discouraged and people tend to feel discouraged because what they're doing isn't working they're not happy with their progress or what they're doing isn't enjoyable and the enjoyable thing is it's a strange one because even though the sound of like repeating sentences and phrases it doesn't sound so enjoyable but you can make it enjoyable you can make it fun you can enjoy it you can really just give your energy to it but i think the main reason something isn't enjoyable is because what you're doing isn't working for another example is you know for for my sports training when i um doing something that i know that's working even though my body is aching i feel so tired it's still enjoyable because it's fun and i know what i'm doing is is working your video about how to read books correctly is the best thank you i really think that video is important just look up reading method to fluency after this reading method to fluency i think there's a video from 2017 there that uh it's good to have let's see without motivation you can't do very much yeah it's true it's everything like if you have no motivation to earn money then you won't go to work if you have zero motivation to earn money and to to work then you just don't do it if you have zero motivation to go to university you don't go to university there's also just like if you have no motivation to brush your teeth you don't brush your teeth you need to be motivated to do it you know even if that motivation is due to fear but there has to be motivation for you to do everything in life you pronounced the t in motivation didn't hear it yeah sometimes it's that glottality motivation motivation which is very common especially in british english um akalesh talks about shadowing yeah i always play your video and start shadowing shadowing is great especially if you can the key to shadowing is finding um audio that you can easily repeat because if you can't repeat it you tend to just mumble so find stuff that you can easily repeat what's your opinion about the ielts and the toefl exam i haven't really looked into them much over the last five to ten years or five years so um but i know they're becoming more popular and more people need to take them so they're important johan says you helped me a lot by watching your videos thanks a lot it's my pleasure it's my first time joining the live lecture lesson david says how are you doing i'm doing all right actually yeah doing okay at the moment yeah doing well doing well thanks so much for my question keep up we really love you thank you so much okay so i'm going to end that there your homework is to watch the reading method and also the number one technique that i recommend if you just go to my homepage again on my channel you'll see the playlist for those types of things um now i'm gonna make more podcast episodes i've recently signed a contract to distribute my podcast to different platforms like apple podcast spotify google whatever it is on google that's going to be happening within the next three to four weeks i'm very excited about that because i've been wanting to do that for a while and um i'm excited to give you the opportunity to listen to my podcasts that aren't just on youtube so this week i'm gonna record more episodes again if you're new here if you don't have it already get my book the five-step plan for english fluency there is a link in the description so you can um download that and i'll answer one last question before i go nigora says is it correct to pronounce bon appetit in british english some people say bon appet is that right um we say bon appetit or bon appetit bon appetit bon appetit i think most people say bon appetit which we say in english okay again thank you for spending this time with me go

Channel: To Fluency

Views: 22,612

Rating: 4.933166 out of 5

Keywords: learn english, to fluency, english, learning english, speak english, free english lesson, english lesson, speak english fluently

Id: xTxDssA73FE

Length: 38min 5sec (2285 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 22 2021