What I learnt after reaching C2 in English

hello everyone I just realized that I'm really excited about recording a video today so hopefully that will show that I'm very happy today but anyway so what I wanted to talk about in this video is my experience are reaching c2 level in English the point of this video is not to show off because I really don't care about showing off like that's just not my thing but rather I want to try and give you a realistic idea or what it is like to actually reach c2 level in the language or let's say a really high level of proficiency in the language before I actually start the video I just want to give a bit of context about my English so I started learning English when I was 11 back in France but it wasn't really serious for me English up until I turned 17 I think because that's when I really started getting interested in English and then when I was 18 up to 21 I did a degree in English and since I'm 21 I've been living in the UK so it's been seven years now so it's quite a long time and I just wanted to discuss ideas of how people think it might feel like to be very proficient in a language and I will tell you how it actually is in my opinion obviously for sure other people's experiences will be different but anyway let's get started so the first point I wanted to raise is that you will never sound native and I know people get quite triggered when I say this but it is the truth you will never sound native it is possible that you might get super super super close or maybe you'll manage to fool a few people but just because you managed to fool a few people doesn't make you native and if you don't like this statements let's add maybe say that it's extremely unlikely that most of you will sound native to native speakers I know personally I can always tell when someone is not a native speaker I have in mind Luke Allen Perriello who has a very good level of French its French is honestly its accent is really really clear really good excellent but if I really pay attention I can definitely tell is not a native speaker something native is not just about the accent as well it's also about the words you choose and that's really hard to have the same word choice as a native speaker because that requires a lot of exposure to the language and in my opinion and based on the readings and research I've done on bilingualism because this is what I studied for my master's in linguistics if you start learning a language after you're seven maybe eleven thirteen I think which is usually the the critical period hypothesis which is if I exaggerate and simplify it a lot the age at which you would stop sounding native or be considered like a native speakers by other people essentially but sounding native is not just about the accent and I think that's a misconception something native is much more than that it's also about word choice when you're phrasing things some things for native speakers will just sound unnatural even if the grammar is perfect there's also the cultural knowledge of the culture you know it can be just cultural references you know it can be history can be a pop culture I mean lots and lots of things that native speakers or most of them anyway will know but that you won't know because you haven't been exposed to the culture the same way you have your own native culture and these are just examples there's other things that would make you some non-native something else I wanted to add about this statement which is you will never sound native is that a lot of people tell me that when I say that it's incredibly demotivating and negative but actually it's not I myself accepted the fact that I will never sound native and I think once you integrate that in your mind you just will stop trying to be perfect because something native is an immutable goal for a large majority of people and there's no point to pursue a goal which to be honest is not that useful and in fact I think it's an advantage of not sounding native or coming across as a non-native speaker which is that people will be way more forgiving when you make mistakes maybe you will use the wrong word maybe what you say was come come across as a little bit more abrupt than what native speakers would say but if people know you're not a native speaker there will be way more giving however if you did some native potentially then people will just assume you're being rude and that could cause a few problems I think so I do like to think of it like that way that if people know I'm not a native speaker then I can get away with many more things that then someone that there's some native or that is perceived as a native speaker of the language the second thing I wanted to talk about is the fact that reaching a high proficiency in the language takes years maybe decades I don't know I'm still I still feel like I'm learning English and I'm not so much saying that you know I learn I learned a word every day because you know anyone even native speakers can learn new words but what I mean is that being really fluent and really competent in the language is not even all about pronunciation and vocabulary ah it's also about being able to use language appropriately depending on the context so in some context you will have to be formal and use the right type of vocab or sentence structures etc while in other context if you send it to formal so for example with friends you will come across as weird so the idea is that it takes a long time to really use language in a smooth way and this is exactly why my eyes roll when people say things like you can learn a language in a year or in 6 months or whatever because there is no way you can be a competent speaker of a language in only a year maybe two years I think that's quite difficult possible but that would require a lot of exposure to the language and a lot of study most likely I mean it is possible to be critical about what I just said because you know it depends on the proficiency you actually want you know some people just want to be able to have a chat in the language but here because I'm talking about you know high fluency in the language I don't think this is realistic again I'm sure someone is gonna tell me in the comment section well I know this guy in two years is what he was a native speaker in the language I mean sure that is technically possible I you know I can't say that's not possible but it's not realistic target and think to have in mind because this is a huge might not see there's not a lot of people that would go for two years in full immersion in the country to learn the language because that's practically not very doable possible but not very doable for most people the third thing and I cannot say the third thing certainly so here you go I'm not perfect so anyway the third point is that you need to step out on your comfort zone I talk about this all the time but it's so so important and the comfort zone will mean different things for different people but essentially what it means is that if you stay in your comfort zone you will always be doing things that you already know so for example if you are only reading books that are too easy for you or that are just at the right level but don't have any challenge you know there's nothing new you can learn from doing this activity if you're watching I don't know if that's realistic but if you're watching the same show on and on and on like you will be so familiar with it that eventually you will not be learning very much more new things so it's important I think to really try new things and be uncomfortable so by uncomfortable I'm not saying be in a very uncomfortable position but just you know intellectually and comfortable so I can give you some examples I made a list so for me it was to read news regularly in English it was to read books in subjects in English that I wasn't familiar with such as science psychology why not also talk to lots of native speakers have friends who are native speakers as well as non-native speakers because that allows me to understand non-native accents are more efficiently more easily and I think I can now I also moved to England I took two degrees in England I also made this channel I got a job in England etc etc and all these experiences are contributed to me improving my language skills one way or another you know studying at university allowed me to be able to use English in a academic context having a job helped me to write emails in an informal way you know and the list goes on but you I think get the idea and I think this has been really important for me too my level of English it's to just create new situations for me where I could actually improve my language skills and make my English proficiency grow if I may say number four even if you're perfectly fluent in the language you'll sometimes think that you're not good enough and I cannot tell you how many times I've managed to convince myself that my English was not good enough I sometimes have these thoughts which are like my pronunciation is bad or how can i still make this grammatical mistake in English or I should have proof read this better they're gonna think I'm a bad speaker of English and all these negative thoughts I'm not I'm an exception I have them all the time it did get better over time because I didn't manage to work on it and just accept that my imperfections or part of me you know in English I'm never gonna get rid of them I'm always gonna make mistakes I'm always going to have that French accent I mean even though I tried to you know soften it I will still have this accent and I will still have lots of issues with my English I don't think they're issues they're just natural they're just normal you know it would be unrealistic for me to pursue perfection in English and I actually think it's part of my identity to have an accent and in fact in my experience that actually starts up a lot of conversations people always going to be like oh well you're from what does your accent come from and I even make it a joke I'm not oh yes like what do you think I'm from and actually creates a lot of funny interactions but that's just the story I've decided to tell which is that English you know my flows in English or something that's all positive that actually I create you know interesting conversations you could also decide to tell yourself that your English is the worst and that you should use stupid or whatever but then it's your choice you know you want to feel great about your English or bad about it or any other language of course I decided that I would feel positive about my English I do still have negative thoughts about it but I accept it you know I often see how I could improve my English when I own when I edit my videos I see that I mispronounced something or I made a grammatical mistake even though I try to prepare my video but you know I often improvise so I'm bound to make mistakes I also sometimes make spelling mistakes when I write in English lots of things like that but I decided that first of all it makes me interesting one way or another and also if I can get my message across I think that's the main thing so yeah I think that's an important thing to work on and this one is more like personal development thing rather than purely linguistic thing it's all about the mindset I think anyway that's it for this video I hope you didn't mind my rambling on I usually have some kind of script but I decided to just improvise yeah I just prefer to improvise I also hope that you got value out of this video that would make me very happy and I will see you next week and bye [Music] [Music]

Channel: Kevin Abroad

Views: 16,110

Keywords: C2 proficiency, reaching C2 in english, how to reach C2 level, experience of reaching C2 level, C1 C2 English level, sound like a native speaker, have perfect english, polyglot experience of learning languages, english c2 listening, english c2 speaking, english c2 vocabulary, polyglot speaking languages, The Real Truth About Native Speaker Level: Is C2 Good Enough?, Kevin abroad

Id: dpt8CMhp0_s

Length: 12min 5sec (725 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 18 2020