How I learn languages - My tips on how to improve your speaking skills in a foreign language

OK .

The number one question that I've been getting from you guys here and on Instagram is , how do you learn languages ?

Do you have any tips ?

Do you have any advice ?

What do you do ?

How do you learn all of these languages ?

And it's all ?

Thanks to this video , which is now at over 1 million views , which is insane .

Thank you so much .

And I know that it's this video that brought you here to my channel mostly .

And even though it's not a language learning channel , I am interested in learning languages and I share my friend journey , my French learning journey and my Spanish language journey and all that stuff and what it's like to be an English major , but you all just want to know how to learn languages .

So here it is .

And I've been waiting so long to make this video because I wanted to give you the best information , the most valuable information and advice out there .

So here it is .

My name is Laura .

Welcome back to my channel .

And this is how I learn languages .

If you're new to my channel , I make videos about minimalism , veganism , traveling , learning and lifestyle design .

So if any of those sound interesting to you , make sure to subscribe to my channel and click the bell icon so that you're notified .

Whenever I post new videos , you can also follow me on Instagram if you want to see more of my daily life and you can join my Facebook group and make sure to stay until the end of this video because I have a very , very special announcement for you guys .

And if you're interested in learning languages , you're interested in hearing this one too .

In this video , I want to focus on speaking because I know that many language learners struggle with that .

I know that speaking is the language scale that is the most difficult to learn and to practice and to master .

Because when you speak a foreign language , there are so many things that you think about .

There is grammar .

If you're making correct sentences or not , there is vocabulary , whether you want to use the perfect word or you just like use whatever comes first to your mind , there is pronunciation and outside of that , there is a bunch of extra linguistic factors that come into play your stress level , your overall confidence and openness to people .

And I know that the vast majority of language learners struggle with that .

And that's why I want to help you with that .

So let me give you tips that help me become fluent and later advanced when I speak foreign languages .

And that helped me build my overall confidence and language awareness and resulted in me having no blocks whatsoever when I speak foreign languages .

In fact , let's start with that when it comes to language barriers or language blocks or fear of speaking in a foreign language , it's very similar to speaking in public .

If you fear speaking in public , chances are you are also afraid of speaking in a foreign language , everyone is different and everyone has a different level of fear or stage fright when it comes to speaking in public .

So it all depends on you and your personality in general .

But I have a few tips that hopefully will help you overcome the fear of speaking in a foreign language .

First .

Remember that people love listening to other people who speak their native language .

Imagine that you're walking down the street and you bump into someone and this person is not from your country .

They are a tourist or a foreigner and they come from a country where people don't speak your language .

But this tourist , this person starts speaking in your native language .

How would you feel ?

Because I think that it would be amazing and you wouldn't even pick attention to their errors .

You wouldn't pay attention to the accent .

You would just enjoy having a conversation with someone who bothered learning your native language .

I know that it happens all the time in countries where English isn't spoken like Poland or Germany or the Czech Republic or Sweden .

People love that about other people .

They love finding out that someone speaks their native language .

And you should remember that because if you're afraid of speaking to other people in their native language , you might not have so many other experiences by just staying in your zone of fear .

It's not even comfort zone .

It's just like being in your fear bubble .

So remember that people love hearing their native language , especially when someone from a completely different country speaks their language .

Remember that native speakers are not there to judge you , they are not there to point fingers at you and tell you that you are bad at speaking a foreign language .

They are not going to do that because they are going to enjoy it so much .

So always when you approach new people and you want to speak their language , assume that they will be happy because they probably will and they will enjoy talking to you .

And lastly when it comes to the language barrier , I think the biggest fear that we have is when we compare ourselves to other learners of this language and we feel like we are not as advanced or as fluent as them .

It may make you feel like you are not progressing quickly enough or there are so many other people who already speak this language and you're far behind .

Look , there's no point in comparing yourself to other learners of this language because you don't know their language learning abilities , you don't know their life situation , their talents , their previous learning experiences , you have no idea what they went through and you comparing yourself to them is not going to help you build your confidence and progress with your speaking skills .

So just remember that you are on , this is a journey alone .

And the only person that you should compare yourself to is your past self .

And everybody else may walk on this earth speaking your target language better than you or worse than you .

But it doesn't matter , it doesn't matter .

The only thing that matters is that you make progress and you don't pay attention to whatever everybody else is doing .

Ok , please remember that .

Put some blinders on and you'll be fine .

And also as I said before , you need to build your confidence and you need to become more comfortable when speaking foreign languages .

And for that , you can apply the same rules that you would apply if you were learning how to improve your overall charisma and become a more charismatic public speaker .

And I can recommend you one channel that will help you with that .

It's called charisma on command .

And if you want to work with me on that , you can check out my website .

But basically , you can just explore the world of public speaking and language speaking at the same time and you can discover your weaknesses , your strong points and work with what you have .

So this is one of the techniques that I used in the past .

And I strongly recommend it .

The second thing that I know many people struggle with is overthinking things .

And I know that because I've worked as a language mentor for many years now .

And this is something that many , many language learners do a lot .

You want to say something precisely and exactly how you would say it in your native language .

But you are intermediate and you don't know how to say it because you just don't know how to say it .

You know what I mean ?

When you start learning languages , you want to be precise and name things as they are , but you don't have the vocabulary or the grammar to do that .

And one of the techniques is to say it simpler .

Look , if you say it in a simpler way , I know that it's not going to be as perfect as you wanted it to be .

But you have to work with what you have .

And if you don't have enough vocabulary or grammar to help you with that , you should work with what you have and you should say something in simpler terms and use simpler cab and use simpler grammar .

And it's going to help you a lot with your speaking skills because usually when we speak a foreign language , we are mostly here instead of here and we should use our resources and we should speak in a way that is going to be the most efficient that will convey the message quickly and in a way that people will understand .

So instead of being here and trying to say something , the exact way you want to say it and not speaking for two minutes , you should just say whatever and be very comfortable about it and use simpler vocabulary and use simpler grammar is going to help you trust me .

And also when it comes to overthinking the thing that we overthink the most I think is our mistakes and the errors that we make .

And look , I'm gonna be honest , I'm the queen of overthinking my own mistakes .

But I also have to remember that people will probably not remember the errors that I make because they will remember the errors that they make .

That puts things into perspective .

You will make mistakes .

Let's stop here .

Let's accept that you will make mistakes , you'll make errors and I'll make mistakes and I'll make errors and everybody who learns any language will make mistakes will make errors and that makes us all human .

And this is something that will happen after you've accepted that you will see that it's just a matter of remembering the correct version like learning from your mistakes and moving on .

So thinking about the mistake that you made two weeks ago when you were talking to someone , move on , remember the correct version , say the correct version next time you speak to someone and move on because native speakers will probably enjoy whatever you said and they will probably not remember it .

And also native speakers make mistakes in their native language too .

There are no perfect speakers even if it's their native language .

So be cool with that and accept that .

And trust me , it takes a long time to arrive at this place .

But the sooner you start to accept the fact that you're going to make mistakes and that's not a bad thing .

It's part of the journey .

It will help you in the long run .

So overthinking has to go .

And the most important aspect of improving your speaking skills is that practice makes perfect .

If you don't speak , you won't improve .

If you don't practice speaking in a foreign language , you won't improve , you won't make any progress .

The first thing that I can recommend is having a language mentor or a teacher that is going to help you .

You can work with me or with any other language mentor .

I also have language mentors that help me .

And the reason why I choose to have language mentors and why I recommend them to you guys is that they are going to help you progress faster and improve your speaking skills faster than you would on your own because they will see your strengths and your weaknesses way before you can chances are , if they are good at what they do , they will have the professional knowledge and the set of skills that will enable them to help you improve your speaking skills in a way that you should do it .

So they will not waste time on anything that is not going to work for you .

They will know exactly what to do to help you .

So find a good language mentor , a language coach or a language teacher and they will help you so much .

Also , you have to speak as much as you can .

So find a language partner , find an exchange buddy and talk in your native language with them and they will talk in their native language , which is your target language with you .

And that will be a very , very good experience for both of you .

And you will get to practice your target language , which is amazing , find websites and apps that will help you with that .

And if you have a language partner , you will make progress so much faster .

And the biggest tip , I still have some more .

But the biggest tip that I have is talk to yourself , talk to yourself , practice many speeches on everyday topics such as work , eating habits , your hobbies , whatever is interesting to you and practice talking about it to yourself because you will be talking to yourself .

Nobody else is going to hear you .

It will be a safe environment and a safe space for you to practice speaking .

And I cannot recommend it enough because this is something that I've been doing all my life and I still do it .

I do it every day .

And this is the single thing that helped me progress the most .

So if you want to practice speaking , talk to yourself , you can also read out loud in a foreign language .

So remember to choose something that is on your level , something that is not going to be overwhelming for you and read texts out loud .

They can be articles or books but read them out loud because there is a double win in that .

The first one is that you're going to read something .

So it's also going to help you with your reading comprehension skills .

And the second thing is that you will hear yourself while you're speaking .

So not only are you speaking , but you're also hearing what you're saying and you're getting used to your voice , you're getting used to how certain sounds sound when you make them .

And it's an incredibly powerful technique and an exercise that you can do every single day .

If you want to get even better , you can practice talking to yourself in front of a mirror or you can film yourself or record yourself .

But this is something that I would suggest if you're pretty confident already when it comes to speaking .

Because once you hear your own voice , we know this feeling when we hear our voice taped , when you hear your voice and it's in a foreign language it's horrible .

It is horrible .

It freaks you out .

And if you want to get better , you can of course , like analyze the way that you speak .

But if you're not really confident , you shouldn't really film or record yourself if you are , however you can do that and it will help you see what facial expressions you make , how you behave the way you breathe and everything that comes into play when it comes to speaking in general and you will see what you look like when you speak this foreign language .

And I highly recommend it because when I made this video , this 1 million views video , why I speak and understand eight languages , I saw myself speaking and I heard myself speaking these languages and I was like , oh my goodness , but I was pretty confident already .

So that wasn't a big deal .

But if you're confident and you want to get even more practice and analyze how you speak even more , you can film and record yourself and go ahead and have fun .

And also when it comes to accent , this is something that is controversial .

There are people who say that you should acquire the accent that is as similar to the accent of native speakers .

So it's as native like as possible .

But there are also people who don't want to acquire the accent , they just want to be fluent , they want to speak correctly , they want to pronounce the words and the sentences correctly , but they don't care about the accent .

So I'm not going to talk about working on your accent here because this is a completely different topic and it's not going to help you improve your speaking skills .

Of course , if you want to work on your accent , then by all means work on your accent .

But when it comes to speaking a foreign language in general , you don't have to have , have the perfect accent or the native accent in order to speak fluently and confidently .

So accents , they are cool .

We should work on them if we want to , but they are not going to help you with your speaking skills .

This is cherry on top of everything that you've already learned and practiced .

So make sure that you're speaking comfortably and confidently and that your pronunciation is on point .

But when it comes to accents , take it easy .

And if you want to practice your accent , there are language mentors and dialect coaches that are going to help you with that .

So these were my tips on how we can improve your speaking skills .

But of course , there's so much more to learning languages than just speaking .

And if you're interested in more tips that I have , you can check out my Patreon account .

You can now become a patron of my channel and I made a separate video on Patreon and how it works and what you will get by being my patron on different levels .

But if you , you are interested in learning more on how I learn languages and how I help people learn languages .

You can check out my mini course called How To Learn languages .

When you make a pledge of $50 this is the first course that I made .

And I talk about everything that I know about learning languages and I divided it into separate videos .

You will know how to learn grammar better .

You will know how to increase your vocabulary range .

You will know how to learn functional language and you will learn how to improve your pronunciation as well .

So there is going to be a little bit on accents there but not too much because pronunciation is not only about accents , but you will learn how to improve your pronunciation if you're learning any language .

And there are three more videos on language skills .

So in this video , you already know how to improve your speaking skills .

And I will give you more tips on how to improve your reading skills , your listening skills and your writing skills .

So there are eight videos in total .

In this mini course , I share everything that I do when I learn languages and everything that I help other people do .

So everything that I do with my clients and everything that I do with my students .

When I teach them how to learn languages .

In this course , you will get to revise your knowledge of everything that you already know about learning languages , but you will also learn so much more and this course will help you learn any language .

So they are just general tips and general advice on how I learn languages .

And you can apply it to your own language learning journey .

As I said , it's available now on Patreon and you can get it by pledging $50 and you can do it just once .

So you don't have to pay me $50 every single month .

You can make this pledge just once and after the first completed payment period , you will get your course and it will be yours forever .

And then in your Patreon account , you can go to a lower pledge or you can stop supporting me whatsoever .

I will be happy if you just make one pledge and get your course if you need it .

And I hope it's going to help you learn languages faster and better and in a way that is completely and uniquely yours .

Of course , on this channel , I'll still make videos on how I learn French and how I learn Spanish and how I learn other languages .

And there are still going to be videos on how I learn languages , but they will be about my journey , my experiences and my progress .

So if you want to learn everything that I know about learning languages , you can check out my Patreon and also you can check out my website and learn more about how I learn languages .

And also if you want to with me one on one or if you're learning English and you want to learn the advanced grammar of English , you should check out my advanced grammar university , which is my course on advanced English grammar and it's available on my Patreon and on my website as well .

And you can still watch my channel for free if you want to , I'm still going to make videos here .

It's just that I have gotten so many questions on how I learn languages and it's literally my job .

I'm a language mentor .

So if you want to learn from me , now , you can do that and you can stay here and watch more videos or you can subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and you can click the bell because I make new videos every week and you can follow me on Instagram if you want to get more of behind the scenes of everything that I do .

And you can also join my free Facebook group and check out my Patreon and everything that you've learned in this video .

I hope your speaking skills will only get better because now you've watched the video and you will apply everything that I shared in this video to your own language journey .

Right .

Right .

OK .

Bye .

Thank you so much for watching .