Prática de Shadowing: How Fluent is Fluent Enough in English? - Aprenda a falar inglês com vídeo
Criando lição...
1
Perhaps it's been years since you started on your English journey.
2
Maybe three years, five years, ten even.
3
And no matter how much progress you make, there's a question that keeps coming back.
4
Will I ever be fluent?
5
When will I be fluent?
6
Hey ladies, welcome back.
7
A big warm welcome to you if you are joining for the first time
8
and even warmer welcome if you are a regular listener.
9
This is the Confident English podcast.
10
I'm Emma, the founder of Hey Lady, an online community that brings women together from all around the world to practice speaking English.
11
Each week here on the podcast, we break down the barriers that keep you from speaking English with confidence,
12
whether that's at work, whether it's while travelling, or in everyday life.
13
If you've been learning English for a long time but still feel like fluency is always just out of reach,
14
well, you are in exactly the right place.
15
So, let's get right into the episode.
16
Today's episode was inspired by a message I received from Priya.
17
Hi Emma, I'm working in Canada now for four years.
18
My English is much better than before.
19
I can do my work.
20
I can understand my colleagues.
21
Sometimes I even make a joke and people laugh.
22
But I still don't know if I'm actually, you know, fluent.
23
I still make mistakes.
24
I still don't have all of the words that I need.
25
Most of my colleagues, they all speak English as the native speakers.
26
And I feel like I'm never going to reach that level.
27
So I want to ask how long does it take until you're fluent?
28
When can I say I am fluent?
29
Priya, thank you so much for writing to me about this.
30
I want you to hear something really clearly.
31
Because what you just described, doing your job, connecting with your colleagues,
32
making people laugh, that's not almost fluent.
33
It's not just getting there.
34
That is fluency.
35
And in today's episode, I want to explain why.
36
Here's the thing about the word fluent.
37
Nobody agrees on what it means.
38
You can ask 10 people to define it and you will get 10 different answers.
39
Some people say that it means speaking without any mistakes.
40
Others will say it means you're thinking in English without translating it.
41
Some say that it means you sound like a native speaker.
42
Others will say it means speaking without fear.
43
Maybe you've heard something else.
44
If you have, let me know in the comments.
45
If you're watching on YouTube, let me know in the comments.
46
I'd love to read your insights on that.
47
The language industry doesn't help us here.
48
Apps promise to make you fluent.
49
Schools sell courses that are the roadmap to fluency.
50
And any certificate that you get will show your level,
51
A1, B2, C1, as if fluency is a number that you'll reach at some point and then you can stop.
52
So it's no surprise then that women like Priya and maybe like you look at all of that and think,
53
well, I'm not C1 or I'm not C2, so I'm not there yet.
54
I'm still working on it.
55
But here's what I know after working with thousands of women
56
and helping them on their journey to create the life that they want in English.
57
Fluency is not a level, it's a feeling.
58
At Hey Lady, we talk about fluency in a very specific way.
59
Fluency is your ability to say what you mean, clearly enough to be understood,
60
using the English that you already have.
61
And I'll say that again, using the English that you already have.
62
Not the English that you will have one day, not the English of a native speaker,
63
the English that is already inside of you right now.
64
So by that definition, a woman who can have a real conversation about her work with her colleagues,
65
even if she makes some grammatical mistakes, she can be fluent in that conversation.
66
A woman who can connect with her neighbor and talk about her children or share her opinion on something that matters,
67
she is fluent in that conversation.
68
Now, Priya, who can do her job,
69
She can understand her colleagues and she can even make people laugh every now and again in her second language.
70
Well, she can be fluent in her workplace and probably in other areas of her daily life.
71
Making mistakes doesn't cancel fluency.
72
Searching for a word doesn't cancel fluency.
73
And the occasional, how do you say, well, that doesn't cancel fluency either.
74
Because here is something important.
75
Native speakers make mistakes too.
76
They search for words.
77
They say, um, and you know, and what's that word?
78
They say those things every single day.
79
So if in your mind fluency means mastering all of English,
80
never making a mistake, never doubting yourself, well the standard that you're measuring yourself against, it doesn't exist.
81
Not even for the native speakers that you're measuring yourself against.
82
It's actually a really disempowering way to build the relationship that you want to have with English.
83
Just to illustrate my point, I want you to think about money for a moment.
84
Have you ever noticed that no matter how much money someone has, it's quite common to feel like it's not enough?
85
You know, you imagine a number in your head, like if I had that much, then I'd feel secure, I'd feel comfortable.
86
But then you reach that number and, well, the number moves higher again.
87
And fluency works in a really similar way.
88
When you were a beginner, you probably looked at intermediate speakers and imagined that they must feel fluent.
89
They know so many words.
90
They seem so comfortable and impressive.
91
But then you become intermediate and then you look around and you look at people who can speak faster than you.
92
You look at advanced speakers and you think, well, when I reach that level, I'll feel fluent.
93
And the goalposts keep moving.
94
Maybe you haven't heard that expression before.
95
The goalposts keep moving.
96
It's an idiom that describes a situation where just as you're about to succeed,
97
the rules or the requirements change and that makes it difficult or maybe even impossible to achieve the goal.
98
And yes, it comes from sports like soccer
99
or football where it would be so frustrating if the goalposts kept moving every time you kick the ball towards them.
100
Makes it very difficult to score a goal, right?
101
And sometimes fluency can feel like that.
102
The truth is fluency has no finish line.
103
The goalposts just keep moving.
104
There will always be more vocabulary to learn,
105
new expressions, new topics, new situations that you haven't experienced before.
106
Even in your own language, you're still learning every day.
107
You encounter a new word that you don't know, or you have to deal with a situation you've never managed before.
108
This doesn't mean that you're not fluent in your own language, right?
109
And the same is true for English.
110
You don't need to know all of English to feel fluent in the life that you're actually living.
111
So how do you know when you're fluent enough?
112
Well, the question that I'd ask is, what do you actually want to do in English?
113
Not in general, but specifically.
114
Do you want to lead a meeting at work or negotiate a particular outcome?
115
Maybe you just want to chat with your colleagues and to be able to relax at after work drinks.
116
Maybe you want to connect with the people in your community, your neighbours or your kids' teachers or the people that you see every day.
117
You might want to travel
118
and explore the world independently to be able to ask for what you need to meet people on your travels
119
and to understand what is happening around you.
120
Perhaps you want to be able to express your real personality, your humour, your opinions and the things that make you, you.
121
These are all really specific goals.
122
And you may already feel fluent in some of these areas, even if you don't feel fluent in others yet.
123
And that's not a problem.
124
That's how fluency grows.
125
It's not one big jump from not fluent to fluent.
126
It's one conversation at a time, in one area of life at a time.
127
and you're expanding slowly into all those other areas that really matter most to you.
128
Now, I'm telling you this because I think that you may already be more fluent than you think.
129
You're just measuring yourself against a goal that was never really the right goal to begin with.
130
so Priya if you're still listening and I hope
131
that you are this is for you but I also think
132
that lots of the other women who are listening right now are probably in a similar place
133
or they can relate so I want you to take a moment and think about just how far you've already come
134
You started with nothing, a new language, new sounds, new rules, and you kept going.
135
Like how far along you are right now has already taken so much courage,
136
so much patience, and it took showing up again and again and again, even when it felt hard.
137
Maybe, like Priya, you're already using English at work.
138
Maybe you're having conversations with your neighbours or you're travelling
139
or you fluently can say what you think about the topics that you care about, the things that are familiar to you.
140
There are areas of your life that are already happening in English,
141
areas that weren't happening in English before and that is extraordinary.
142
So the next time that you think about fluency and maybe you ask yourself, when am I going to be fluent?
143
Take a breath and ask yourself a different question.
144
Where do I already feel fluent?
145
Where has English started to feel like it's mine.
146
And give yourself credit for that, really.
147
And then ask the more exciting question.
148
Where do I want to feel fluent next?
149
And that's a question that only you can answer.
150
And the moment that you do, you're no longer waiting for fluency to arrive, but you're in control of where it goes next.
151
That feeling of speaking freely about the things that actually matter in your life,
152
that is exactly what Hey Lady was built around.
153
We don't follow a rigid curriculum.
154
Instead, we use an approach that we like to call member-led and coach-supported.
155
So each month, our English coaches inspire all of our members with fresh conversation topics, something interesting and worth discussing.
156
And they provide lessons and practice materials that will help you to prepare for your conversations.
157
So that when you arrive, you feel ready to speak and prepared to have a successful conversation.
158
alongside other women who've prepared in the same way.
159
Our members often tell us how wonderful it is that they end up talking about really interesting subjects,
160
subjects that they've never really had the chance to talk about before, perhaps not even in their native language,
161
not with their friends or their partners or their families.
162
And so they're covering new territory,
163
learning new vocabulary, new ways to express ideas and their thoughts in English.
164
And beyond our monthly topic,
165
lots of members in our community share their specific interests and create their own conversation sessions together.
166
Your fluency grows in the direction that you choose.
167
And the whole community, our whole platform is built to help you get there.
168
If you want to know what this feels like, then I'm inviting you to come and try your first conversation with us.
169
The link to join is down in the description.
170
You can get started today for free.
171
Come in, join us for a conversation or two and see what it feels like.
172
Now, before we go, I want to hear from you.
173
In what area of your life do you already feel a little fluent in?
174
Tell me in the comments.
175
I love reading your responses.
176
And I'm curious to know if there are little pockets of conversations that you feel comfortable speaking about.
177
Thank you so much for spending some time with me here today on the Confident English Podcast.
178
Remember that fluency is not a level that you reach.
179
It's a feeling that you build one conversation at a time.
180
See you in the next episode.
Sobre Esta Lição
Nesta lição, você terá a oportunidade de explorar o conceito de fluência em inglês. Com base em uma discussão provocativa sobre o que realmente significa ser fluente, você irá praticar a escuta e a fala, aprimorando suas habilidades de conversação. Através de atividades de shadow speech, você aprenderá a como expressar suas ideias com mais confiança e clareza. A fluência não é apenas sobre falar sem erros; é sobre se comunicar de maneira eficaz e confortável em diversas situações. Você poderá aplicar essas práticas em sua vida cotidiana, seja no trabalho, ao viajar ou em interações sociais.
Vocabulário e Frases-Chave
- Fluência - O estado de ser fluente em uma língua.
- Mistakes - Erros comuns que todos cometem ao aprender.
- Colleagues - Colegas de trabalho, importantes na prática da conversação.
- Think in English - Pensar em inglês sem traduzir.
- Native speaker - Falante nativo, referência comum para fluência.
- Confidence - A confiança necessária para se comunicar em inglês.
- Understand - Entender, uma habilidade essencial para a fluência.
Dicas de Prática
Para melhorar sua pronúncia em inglês e aumentar sua confiança na fala, tente as seguintes dicas de prática com shadowing:
- Escute o vídeo em um ritmo pausado e repita as falas imediatamente após o falante. Isso ajudará a internalizar a entonação e o ritmo naturais do discurso.
- Preste atenção à pronúncia das palavras e tente imitá-las da mesma forma. Use o shadowspeaks para se concentrar em como as palavras são ligadas em conversas naturais.
- Se possível, grave-se enquanto pratica. Ouvir sua própria voz pode dar insights valiosos sobre áreas que você pode querer melhorar.
- Faça anotações sobre qualquer palavra ou frase que você ache difícil. Busque o significado e pratique essas palavras em diferentes contextos.
- Realize sessões de prática de conversação em inglês com amigos ou colegas. As discussões em grupo são uma ótima maneira de aplicar o que você aprendeu.
Esta lição é uma ótima oportunidade para aprender inglês com YouTube. Não esqueça de ser paciente consigo mesmo e lembre-se de que cada pequeno passo conta no caminho para a fluência!
O que é a Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing é uma técnica de aprendizado de idiomas com base científica, originalmente desenvolvida para o treinamento de intérpretes profissionais. O método é simples, mas poderoso: você ouve áudio em inglês nativo e repete imediatamente em voz alta — como uma sombra seguindo o falante com 1-2 segundos de atraso. Pesquisas mostram melhora significativa na precisão da pronúncia, entonação, ritmo, sons conectados, compreensão auditiva e fluência na fala.