What's stopping you from being fluent?
I mean, what's actually holding you back from speaking
and writing as fluently as you want to?
It may not seem like it,
but there are definitely ways that you can overcome this.
And today, I'm going to share some useful tips to help you do just that.
Five of our RealLife supporters who are English
learners like you have shared video testimonials
of some of the biggest challenges they face on the journey to fluency.
So stick around, because it's very likely
that you face the same struggles of learning English.
By the way, if you haven't already done so, join our global community
of over 400,000 learners
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Hi, everyone. I'm Esra from Turkey.
I have been learning English for over ten years.
Learning English can sometimes feel overwhelming, there's so much to learn.
And sometimes I feel it is almost impossible
to reach a point of being completely fluent.
It is difficult
to remember all the words or their other meanings.
Even if you learn.
If you do not study, if you do not repeat or speak it.
It is easy to forget
So we should spend lots of time.
It is exhausting.
OK, so the lesson here is that everything sucks sometimes.
In other words, nothing is perfect all the time.
For many English learners, English fluency can seem like this enormous mountain
in front of you, and just looking at it fills you with fear, you are like
"How am I ever going to conquer this mountain?
How am I ever going to reach the top?
This seems impossible."
And you might climb a little bit and things are ok
and then things start to get scary and you think, OK, I should turn back.
This is probably not for me.
I'm not fit enough.
I'm not a mountain climber.
I don't know how to do this. I don't have the best equipment.
This is what it can feel like at times.
As an English learner, we feel like we want to give up because
how am I ever going to achieve this?
How am I ever going to learn all the grammar rules?
Maybe I'm just not a good speaker.
One of the mistakes I notice people make, including myself, is that we think that
once we get that job, or we pass that English exam
or we sign up for that course, everything's going to be perfect.
We're going to be confident everything will flow and fall into place.
But this is not the case.
The reality is that most of the time, once you achieve one goal,
there are so many more steps to get to where you're going.
So the idea is not to think of learning English
as the scary mountain of challenges that you'll never be able to overcome.
And that you should just deal
with the challenges and accept that it's always going to suck.
No. Instead, what helps us to understand that these challenges are temporary
and that they're just roadblocks on your path to success.
Many successful people, including language learners, say that this is exactly
what helps them through
those difficult moments on their way to achieving their goals.
The mindset that they have
is that they accept the difficult moments as part of the process.
Hello, my name is Mary and I'm learning
English with RealLife English circle for three years.
One of my biggest fear of
speaking English is the thought that I
won't be able to support real conversation.
What happens if I don't remember the word
or maybe I misunderstand something,
or maybe I mispronounce something
and I can be rude or offend somebody?
For these reasons, I prefer most of the time
to stay in my comfort zone,
and don't speak.
So the lesson here is how to eliminate fear.
Well, the truth is, you can and you shouldn't want to.
If we didn't have any fear, we'd almost likely die.
Fear protects us, but it shouldn't control us.
So picture going shark cage diving.
You're in the middle of the ocean, and the only thing between you
and the razor sharp teeth of a shark is a cage around you.
So this cage protects you from being the sharks lunch.
So while the cage is a positive thing in situations like shark cage diving,
in social situations, like when you're speaking English,
you're trying to engage with other people.
The cage can be a negative thing.
That cage is holding you back from meeting new friends, from networking
with people in your industry, from living a free and happy life.
The key to getting out is courage, and you can use it
in the middle of the ocean or at the party.
The key is always in your position.
So choose to be courageous.
It takes courage to stand up against the criticism
and self-doubt that often stands in the way of fluency
and even success in general, and how you get to that place
of comfortably using that key whenever you want
is by doing little acts of courage every day.
Baby Steps.
A great example of an activity that requires this kind of courage
is practicing your English with a speaking partner,
even though you're feeling shy or doubting your English ability.
Now, if your desire to speak English and connect with others
is greater than your fear, then you're
absolutely going to love our RealLife English app.
At RealLife, we'd come up with a solution that will allow you to practice
your English any time, anywhere at the press of a button for free.
You'll also have access to real life conversations with our podcast.
We will talk about how to best learn English, movies, culture,
and so much more.
We even recently published an inspiring podcast episode,
where Thiago and Humbert talk about how they faced similar challenges
and fears on their language learning journeys.
The best part is that you can practice along
with new transcripts and flashcards every single week.
So what are you waiting for?
Download it right now for free by
clicking up here or down in the description below,
or simply search for RealLife in your favorite app store.
Hello, this is Steffy, I am an intermediate level student
and I've been learning English for different years so far.
And I'm able to read books, to listen podcast.
However, when it's time for me to speak or write,
I can't recall all the new words
I learned, and I tend to use it ever the same.
So I have this feeling that my vocabulary is very poor.
But it isn't.
OK, so here the lesson is
that you can only achieve as far as you believe.
Imagine getting ready to build your dream home.
What is the first thing you need?
Well, you would probably start with a blueprint
or plan of what you imagined your dream home would look like.
So if you're designing your home and you only sketch or draw
a small, simple home
with one bedroom, a roof doors and windows,
then when it comes time to build, that's exactly what you're going to get.
You're limited to that because if all you believed was possible.
But if you open yourself up to designing something incredible and maybe you hire
someone to help you design this home, when it comes time to build,
you're going to have something spectacular.
Now, this design, this blueprint, this plan obviously represents your life.
More specifically, your belief in yourself and what's possible in your life.
There's an awesome quote by Elizabeth Gilbert from the book Big Magic
where she says, "If you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them."
This means that you decide how much or how little you are capable of.
For example, if someone compliments you and they say, Wow,
your English is really good, and your response is, "oh, no, I mean,
I don't know, my grammar is really bad or Oh, no, my English sucks."
So the more you argue those limitations, the more you're conditioning
that disbelief in your subconscious mind and you're basically
shrinking your self-image, your potential
and your ability to visualize yourself.
As a fluent English speaker.
So a really simple fix for this is to shift the dialog.
So instead of saying, "Oh, I suck."
I say to that person, "Thank you, I appreciate that."
Then make a mental note.
Tell yourself that I'm going to continue getting better.
I'm going to continue making that person proud.
I'm going to continue making myself proud because
clearly I'm doing something right.
I've been learning English for a while and I still
have that uncanny feeling
when I have to speak in English, especially when it's an important situation.
I fear that people will judge me if I make mistakes,
that I'm not competent for that position
or that I'm not skilled.
So the lesson here is we all want to be loved
and validated but don't let that control you.
Imagine you speak English in public and someone comes up to you
and says Your English sucks.
Never speak English ever again.
Even though this is just one person's opinion, it can really hurt
when someone says something negative about us,
especially about our abilities if we've been practicing really hard.
If you feel this kind of fear that comes with this need for validation from others,
it helps to remember that your worth, your ability,
your specialness does not depend on other people.
It's almost as if they're
waiting for someone to tap them on the shoulder and say, Hey, you've got it.
But this essentially puts your purpose
and your gifts in the hands of someone else,
and waiting for someone to come along and say
you're enough is a waste of time.
You don't need it.
You define you.
Hi. I've been learning and speaking English since my childhood.
I think I am pretty
okay to speak English, to do all my day to day activities. But what's holding me
back from expressing myself fully in English is perfectionism.
I want everything to be perfect.
The words and phrases I use, the pronunciation of words,
the speech, rhythm, etc..
And because of all this, I sometimes
just don't speak at all.
So this fifth lesson is trying to be perfect.
Is a waste of time difficult
moments are natural, and we all experience them.
Sometimes we're up and sometimes we're down.
We experienced the highs.
We experienced the lows, the ebbs and flows of life.
You've probably heard that perfectionism is bad.
But what is it?
So think of perfectionism.
as a line.
It's going from one end to the other.
And in both ends of this line are the extremes, right?
And both of them can be equally bad for you.
So if you go too far, on lacking
any kind of desire to get things right, that's bad.
If you're trying to be too perfect, this is bad as well.
So why does it get difficult?
Once we reach a particular point of trying to be perfect,
the reason for this is because you're exhausting yourself.
You're using more energy than what you're actually getting out of the situation.
So even though you're staying up late, studying for hours,
you're not really remembering any of the knowledge.
So once you reach a certain point, you've hit a point that you can physically.
It's as much as you can physically take.
And if you keep going, basically what you're doing is
it's like you're exhausting yourself. And you're not.
It's getting harder and harder to actually move forward along this line.
So as a recovering perfectionist, this really resonates with me.
So the tip here is
do not measure your self-worth by your successes or your failures,
but instead tied into how dedicated you are to achieving your goals.
When you can actually say that you care more about making English a natural part
of your daily life and your identity than you do about what other people think.
That is when perfectionism starts to fade away and that line disappears.
So today we covered
five tips that you can use to overcome certain fears
that are holding you back from fluency in English.
Here's a quick recap.
So that's it for today, guys.
I hope you're feeling fearless and ready to take on
any challenge that stands in your way of fluency.
If you would like to continue
learning with us then be sure to check out this lesson next.