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Is it possible to become fluent in a new language as an adult?

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Is it possible to become fluent in a new language as an adult?

What's the best way to do so?

There's this myth that once you hit a certain age,

it's not possible for you to learn a new language anymore.

Or at least it's going to be a lot more difficult than if you started when you were younger.

But today, I want to talk about how that's kind of wrong.

As a child, you might be able to pick up more naturally on a certain language,

but it still takes effort for you to learn.

And it also takes a lot of practice.

And as an adult, we can still become fluent in new languages,

but the way that we learn is very important.

So in this video, I'm going to be sharing how adults can navigate this process of learning a new foreign language.

And I'm going to be using this book as a reference.

This is Fluent Forever by Gabriel Weiner.

There are some things in this book that I think are very useful,

some things that I do not necessarily agree with.

and I'll also be sharing my own experience as a Chinese language learner.

I started learning when I was in college

and now I would consider myself to be fluent

so I'm going to be sharing some of my own personal tips as well.

Starting from this book there is something at the very beginning

that I think this author does really well and something that I think is really important

and he talks about how a lot of language learners especially adults when we first start learning a language,

a lot of people do it backwards.

You might start memorizing lists of words,

you might start going through really complicated grammar and trying to understand everything at once,

but what you should really do is focus on pronunciation first.

Trying to understand the sounds and the rhythm

and the flow of the language and getting those basics down is really going to help you later on.

But if you start with reading and writing,

it's actually really unnatural for our brains.

If you think about how you learned your first language,

you learned from listening, from practicing, from speaking.

So when you learn another language,

actually the process is very similar.

You should listen more, you should pay attention to pronunciation,

and focus on getting those sounds right.

And then you can go into more vocabulary and sentence structures and grammar points.

If you do skip the step of pronunciation and go straight into memorization and grammar and all that stuff.

First of all, it's going to be really overwhelming.

You're going to give up really easily because you're going to feel like it's too hard.

But also it's going to cause issues for you later on.

You might find it hard to understand native speakers.

You might find it hard to speak naturally.

Maybe other people won't understand you as well.

So pronunciation is really really important.

But once you have these sounds and you're familiar with the pronunciation,

you do have to have a little bit of memorization.

You do have all this vocabulary and sentence structures that you have to become familiar with.

So what is the best way of doing so?

Well according to this book the author really goes on for a long time about different ways of memorization

and I think there are some really good points that he makes

and I'm going to explain all of those

but I will say I think there is a bit too much of an emphasis on memorization and also translating,

which I don't really think is going to help you in the long run.

If you're constantly translating these words,

constantly translating the sentences, it's going to slow you down in real life

and it's going to be harder to really reach fluency.

But anyways, what does this book say about memorization?

How do how do we reach our vocabulary goals?

I'm sure a lot of people who have tried to learn

another language have this common experience of writing down the word in your native language

and then writing down your target language a million times over on the same page of paper.

And I've also done this before when I was learning Chinese.

I would rewrite the same character over and over until the whole page was completely filled.

And while I think that can work sometimes,

I don't think it's the most efficient way.

And the author agrees with me on this point.

The author talks a lot about spaced repetition systems and building connections to words that actually help you with remembering.

So what this author recommends is basically the use of flashcards,

specifically electronic flash cards so that this computer or your phone can do the algorithm for you.

Because what you want to do is when you first learn a word you have your flash card,

you go over it, you say it a few times,

and then you move on to the next one.

But you can't just never look at that word again.

You have to review, you have to practice.

So maybe the next day the word will come up again and you'll review it again,

you'll go over it again,

and maybe two days later the word shows up again.

Oh then you can make make this link, this connection, and review.

And then maybe it shows up again in another five days,

and then a week, and then in two weeks.

So the timing is spaced out.

You're not reviewing the same thing every single day.

But this process of active recall and remembering

and trying to refresh your memory on the word

that you've learned in the past really helps you build your connection to the word,

and it helps you memorize it for the long term.

And these SRS systems are actually really efficient because it's connected to science.

So if you learn one word today and then you never review it again,

you never think about it again,

your brain is naturally going to forget that because there's not that much space up there.

If it thinks that you don't need this word,

it has no connection to you,

it's going to naturally push it out of your mind.

So we can battle this through spaced repetition systems.

The more that you review over periods of time,

actually the less likely it is that you're going to forget it because you're thinking about it,

you're using it.

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And I also really like something else that the author mentions,

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which is this connection to words.

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If while you're learning these words,

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you can connect it to a personal memory

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or you can make up your own kind of crazy idea for this certain word,

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then it's going to help you remember what the word actually is.

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So for example, when I was learning Chinese,

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I really struggled with all the characters.

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I mean, it's a completely new thing for me,

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and I'm sure if you don't speak Chinese and you look at the characters here,

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you might also be confused and you might think it's going to be impossible to memorize so many characters.

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I felt the same way.

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What I would do is I would look at a character,

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and if you break down Chinese characters,

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they actually have things called radicals inside of them.

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So all of these strokes actually mean something

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and you can break them down and try to understand what each character is actually built up upon.

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For example in Chinese if you say 家,

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so the top part of this character actually means roof

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and then the bottom part of the character when I was taught my teacher told me it actually means a pig, right?

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It could mean something like a pig.

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So I would make up this story about a pig living in my house.

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And then later on on the exams,

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it was a lot easier for me to think of how this word was written.

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I just imagined a little pig and then a little roof on the top.

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And making these really weird stories actually helps you build a connection and it helps with memorization.

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And like I said, this book really talks a lot about memorization.

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And while I think that can be really meaningful

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and some of the methods are really insightful and I've never really thought too much about before,

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I don't think that purely memorizing all of these words is going to make you fluent.

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Just because you know 5,000 words in your target language,

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it doesn't mean that you're going to be able to hold a conversation.

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It doesn't mean that you can understand native speakers.

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It doesn't mean that you can really deeply express yourself.

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Just the knowledge of the words doesn't really help you too much.

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You have to know how to put things together.

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You have to understand like common phrases,

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common expressions, and know how native speakers express themselves in different situations.

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And another thing about all of this memorization talk is that it's really boring.

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Like I don't know anyone who really loves memorizing all these words.

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I don't know anyone who loves taking tests and being quizzed on all of these different words.

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Like, it's just not fun.

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And if you only focus on memorization,

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then learning the language that you were interested in in the first place is going to start to feel really dull,

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and you're not going to have that much motivation.

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That's why a lot of people tend to give up after a period of time.

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In the beginning, you feel really interested,

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you feel motivated, you feel like you can do it but then once you start,

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because of all of this memorization,

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because of all of these really bland learning methods, you just give up.

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And that is such a pity,

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because I think learning languages is so fun,

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but it's really about the way that you learn and making sure that you're doing something that is enjoyable.

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So instead of like all of this memorization,

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I think something really important is also listening more.

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It's only through listening to other people's conversations or watching TV shows,

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reality shows, listening to music,

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that you can really start to feel that nuance behind the language.

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You can start to understand how native speakers would express themselves.

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And you can pick up on those phrases and expressions that are going to help you become more fluent.

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And I also think this is great for motivation because in the beginning,

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you might not understand anything.

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But the more that you listen,

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the more that you learn,

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the more that you practice,

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you're going to start to pick up on a lot of stuff.

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You're going to start to understand what people say.

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And once you reach that point,

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it starts to get really exciting.

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At least for me, that's how I felt.

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And one last thing about this book that I think is really worth mentioning,

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although he doesn't go into too much detail,

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he kind of hints at this topic.

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And that is desired difficulty.

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You don't want to be listening or studying things that you can totally understand,

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because then you're not leaving any room for growth.

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And if you listen to something that's really difficult,

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you have no idea what they're saying,

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it's also not going to be that beneficial to you.

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So when you're trying to learn from these materials and learn from these videos and TV shows and such,

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what is recommended is to listen to something you can understand around 80% of.

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And this way you can also feel engaged,

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you're not going to be too stressed,

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but you also still have to pay attention to try and catch what you missed.

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And one last little personal tip from my own Chinese learning journey is I really recommend you guys to try

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and think as much as you can in your target language.

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For me, I went through a lot of memorization in my Chinese classes.

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I memorized lists of characters,

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and I practiced really stiff textbook conversations,

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and it didn't really feel very natural to me or spontaneous to me at all.

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It didn't really help me that much.

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But the thing that really helped was doing the listening practice.

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As I mentioned, listening to something you can understand around 80% of.

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And also talking to myself,

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especially because I didn't have a language environment.

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I never studied abroad in China.

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I learned Chinese in America.

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And because I didn't have this environment,

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it really required a lot of extra practice.

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So how do you start thinking in your target language?

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And how do you do this if you're a beginner?

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Maybe you have really limited vocabulary,

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you don't know how to say,

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really complex things you only know a few words a few

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expressions that's totally okay it's enough to get started you can kind of try to start narrating your own life

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so maybe you see something like a tree outside of your window

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and then you think of the word for tree in your target language

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and then later on maybe you learn some full sentences some

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expressions you can say oh are you hungry i'm starving i

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want to eat pizza just these little simple things just thinking about it it in your brain

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and using the words that you know is really helpful.

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If you can't think of the whole sentence,

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it's also okay to mix languages in your mind.

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I'm going to be honest,

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there was a point in my college life when I was learning Chinese.

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I was also learning Korean and I'm also a native English speaker

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and sometimes I would go to Korean and then I would go to Chinese

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and then I would go to another English class,

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like a discussion class for example,

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and in one day I just had so many different languages going around in my head.

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I felt like there was so much going on and I really couldn't think straight.

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Like all of the languages were getting mixed together.

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But honestly, I really learned a lot during that time and it really pushed me out of my comfort zone.

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It pushed me to think in different ways and I started thinking more in Chinese.

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And I don't need to translate in my head anymore.

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This is also a question that a lot of people ask me.

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Do you think in English or Or do you think in Chinese?

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I think in both.

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And this is something that really helps you if you want to communicate fluently.

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The translation step is really going to slow you down and it's also going to prevent you from being more natural.

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Because especially English and Chinese, they're so different.

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The logic is different.

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This way of thinking in each language is so different.

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So you can't really rely on translation all the time.

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There are so many things that don't translate.

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There are words in Chinese that don't exist in English.

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So how are you going to translate that?

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You can't.

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The only way is to learn what native speakers really say in that situation.

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So to summarize, if you're trying to learn a new language,

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I really recommend starting with pronunciation.

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Getting used to the sounds,

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the rhythm, and building this solid foundation that's going to really help every other skill in language learning.

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And then you can move on to words and phrases,

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and we talked about spaced repetition systems,

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ways to help you build connections in your mind to these words

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and some things that will help you really remember it more deeply.

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And then you also need to listen more.

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Like throughout this whole process really,

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you need to listen to a lot of stuff.

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It could be anything you feel is interesting,

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just as long as you're listening to natural and smooth conversations.

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And another thing is to practice speaking,

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practice saying it, and talking to yourself.

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If you don't have anyone to practice with, it's okay.

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You can still be fluent in a language.

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Just practice with yourself and then when the time comes that you have to talk to someone else,

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then it'll be a lot easier for you.

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If you're learning a language right now,

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please let me know in the comments what language you're interested in,

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what you're learning, what you're struggling with,

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and something you feel like is helpful for your learning process.

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Anything really, I'd really be interested to know and I think we can learn a lot from each other as well.

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But thank you guys for listening and making it to the end of the video and I'll see you guys next time.

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Bye bye.

TRENDING

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تدريب Shadowing: How to Learn a Language as an Adult | 成年人真的还能把外语学到流利吗？ - تعلم التحدث بالإنجليزية مع YouTube

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تدريب Shadowing: How to Learn a Language as an Adult | 成年人真的还能把外语学到流利吗？ - تعلم التحدث بالإنجليزية مع YouTube

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