Good morning, I'm Dr. Julian Northbrook, from doingenglish.com.
Another day, another question, if I can get it on the screen. How can I improve my spoken
English if I don't live in an English speaking country? And the quick and dirty answer is,
in exactly the same way as you would, if you did live in an English speaking country.
Now this is a great example of one of those questions that essentially boils down to,
I believe I can't get good at English because, insert nonsense reason here,
but really it's more to do with you having weird beliefs than anything grounded in actual reality.
Living in an English speaking country is neither necessary, meaning you can get just as good,
not living in an English speaking country nor sufficient, meaning just being there in and of
itself, is not enough to magically propel you to the highest levels of mastery in the language.
Yes, if you live in an English speaking country that will afford you more opportunities because
of the environment, but opportunities are only opportunities and they're only,
really can be useful to you, if you actually take those opportunities,
use those opportunities and you combine that with the right kind of study and learning.
Because people who basically try to just chat their way to fluency, generally speaking,
actually end up with more problems than people who don't live in English speaking countries, because
what they're essentially doing is taking their crap English, recycling it again and again,
spinning their wheels as they go. And they develop a level of fluency, but a level of fluency in very
chaotic, messy, unnatural English, they form a lot of bad habits that are then very hard to fix. And
the thing you've got to realize is ultimately shit English said fast is still shit English.
Now, I said it's not necessary neither sufficient. The proof of this particular
pudding can be found in my Master English Fast Accelerator Group coaching course.
Every month I enroll 15 new people on the course, and since I started
this particular coaching course, two and a half years ago now, every single month,
and these percentages have been so stable, that it's actually mind-blowingly unreal.
But every single month, 50% of the people who joined the course are living in their
home country and saying "But I can't get good at English, because I don't live in an English
speaking country" then the other 50% of the people on the course are living in the UK, Australia, New
Zealand and Canada, the U S, i.e. English speaking countries, and they are saying, "But I live in an
English speaking country, why don't I improve". Many of those clients HAVE been there for a year,
two years, five years, 17 years in the case of one of my one-on-one coaching clients,
and have hit that plateau where they don't get any worse, but they don't get any better.
The reason for this is because they're not actually actively doing anything to try and
improve in the language. This is an analogy, but I think it's a really good one. Several years ago,
I listened to an interview by a guy called Stan Billue. You may never have heard of him,
but once upon a time in the US, he was considered to be the best telephone salesman in the country.
He eventually became a trainer, training other telephone salesman to do that job.
One of the things that he talks about is he says, when he's training people,
he asks them how many years experience do you have? And they'd all say things like,
I've got 10 years experience in this job. And he says, "Actually no, that's not true". They don't
have 10 years experience at all, they've got one year's experience. What they've then done
is, they've repeated that one year's worth of experience, again and again.
Nothing is changing, nothing is improving, because they're basically just recycling,
like I talked about with people in English speaking countries, what they've already got, not
trying to make that any better and spinning their wheels as they go. And this is exactly the same.
Even if you live in an English speaking country, you're going to have to sit down
and put daily, focused, intensive time into the study, and the acquisition and the growing
of your English. And you're still going to have to layer upon that,
doing lots of things in English. And you can do that just the same,
if you're in your home country, it doesn't really make that much difference.
Yes, the opportunities available to you might be different, but it really doesn't matter what you
do in English. It's a myth that you have to speak to people all the time to get good at English.
Watching TV can be just as good, as long as you have got the balance and study
of usage just right. Not only this, but I mean, at the moment we're in lockdown
and it doesn't matter whether you live in an English speaking country or not,
you ain't going out there talking to people anyway, everything's happening online.
Zoom meetings have now become the norm, they can happen from anywhere in the world.
There are courses online that you can take, there are any number of things that you can do
in English, regardless of where you are, that is going to be just as good as anything else.
But again, the key is this balance of focused, intensive, daily study,
of the right kind of materials for your situation, using a method that works,
working of course, on your mindset as well, because if you believe you can't,
you won't, and then layering upon that, as much relaxed usage of English as you possibly can.
Right? That's all I've got to say on this. If you want to know more about this balance,
the ins and outs, the nuts and bolts, as it were, head over to
doingenglish.com/free training and study the free one hour training that I've put together.
It's going to teach you the five key changes, part of which is this balance of focus, study
and usage, and that you need to make, to see the fastest improvement in English as a
higher level, that is intermediate to advanced learner of English.
And it doesn't make a difference whether you're in an English speaking country or not. Right,
this is me Dr.Julian Northbrook, signing out from another video. See you soon, guys. Bye-bye.