58: One Hour of English fluency tips you MUST know to get fluent

Welcome to this special English lesson where we dive into the four essential skills you need to master: Listening, Reading, Writing, and Pronunciation. This comprehensive lesson is packed with strategies, tips, and examples to help you improve step by step. Each skill is crucial for fluency, and by mastering them, you’ll boost your confidence in speaking, understanding, reading, and writing in English.

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Here’s what we’ll cover:


- Listening Skills Learn how to improve your listening comprehension and why comprehensible input is essential for language acquisition. ✅ Find resources slightly above your level for steady improvement. ✅ Listen to podcasts, news, and interviews you can mostly understand. ✅ Challenge yourself gradually with more advanced materials. ✅ Acquiring grammar comes from hearing it repeatedly in context.
- Reading Skills Discover the difference between intensive and extensive reading and how to combine them for maximum benefit. ✅ Intensive reading: Focus on new words, phrases, and grammar structures. ✅ Extensive reading: Read for pleasure and overall understanding without stopping. ✅ Find books that interest you, are comprehensible, and relevant to your goals. ✅ Use graded readers and audiobooks to enhance your learning. ✅ Highlight unfamiliar vocabulary, then review and internalize it using digital tools.
- Writing Skills Practical tips to improve your writing and integrate it into your learning routine. ✅ Keep a daily diary to practice conversational English. ✅ Copy text from articles or books to internalize sentence structures. ✅ Read widely to absorb natural writing styles. ✅ Get feedback on your writing through apps or teachers. ✅ Use tools like grammar apps to refine your grammar and sentence construction. ✅ Search for phrases online to ensure your writing is accurate and idiomatic. 
- Pronunciation Skills Master English sounds, stress, intonation, and linking for fluency and confidence. ✅ Learn how to produce specific sounds, such as the V and F sounds. ✅ Practice, record yourself, and get feedback to refine your pronunciation. ✅ Focus on stress and intonation to sound natural in conversations. ✅ Work on retractions and linking, such as “I could’ve done it.” ✅ Repeat sounds and phrases regularly to build muscle memory. 
By the end of this lesson, you’ll have practical tools to improve your English fluency. Take notes, check the description for a summary and resources, and most importantly, take action. Which skill do you want to work on first? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to share this lesson with a friend who’s learning English. Let’s continue your journey to fluency together.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to this incredibly important and special English lesson where
we're going to go through in depth the four essential
skills you need to master in English. These are pronunciation, reading, writing,
and listening. This is a special lesson because I brought

(00:22):
together these four skills and my best tips, strategies and
examples so that you can improve your English step by step.
Each one of these skills is crucial to master in English,
and it's going to help you write more fluently, speak fluently,

(00:42):
read with better understanding, and to be able to understand
better when you hear people talking in English. The key
is this, go through this entire lesson and either take notes,
write the notes down, or go to the description to
get the summary. And then so important is that you

(01:05):
take action, that you take what I talk about in
this lesson and apply it to your everyday learning. So
get ready to take this English lesson because it could
transform the way you learn English and therefore transform your
path to English fluency. Let's start with listening. Here is

(01:31):
a question that I received on the last podcast episode.
Now listen to this carefully and see if this is
something that you've been wondering about too. Okay, Hi, I
find your podcasts are useful and valuable and really keen
on them. However, there's one thing that I always wonder.

(01:51):
I mean, you speak pretty slowly and there's not many
advanced vocabulary in your podcasts. I could mostly understand your content. Therefore,
will they help me to improve my listening? Or have
I to listen to a difficult audio? So this person
is asking if my podcasts are useful for her because

(02:14):
you can understand nearly everything or mostly understand the content
and doesn't feel like there are many advanced vocabulary items
in there. So I'm going to talk about this today
because I think it's something that a lot of people
think about and wonder if listening to podcasts made for

(02:35):
English learners is valuable. Firstly, let's talk about the pace
of my podcast. When I am giving a podcast, whether
this is for English learners or on my other channel,
which talks about marketing, I tend to talk in a
presentation style, and if you think about Ted Talks and

(02:59):
the way that people speaking of Ted talk, it's fairly
similar to that. I try to keep it a little
bit more natural in the podcast, but it's still a presentation.
And when you are presenting things, you don't just talk
like you're having a conversation. It's a different type of
way of speaking. However, on my YouTube channel, I'm sure

(03:21):
you have watched some of the conversations that my wife
and I have had where we just discussed various topics,
and those ones are different because we're having a conversation,
and the way you speak in a conversation is different
to the way you speak when given a presentation. And secondly,
when it comes to advanced vocabulary, when I talk about

(03:43):
how to learn English, most people already have learned the
words and phrases needed to think about and talk about
and listen to that topic, because if you are an
English learner, then you will have researched and listened to
podcasts about how to learn English, how best to learn English. Therefore,

(04:06):
you've had the repetition of the phrases and vocabulary, and
you're probably more familiar with this type of topic than
if I started talking about vocabulary about ping pong, for example,
And if I talked in a very similar way but
talked about ping pong, which I don't know if I
could make a podcast on that, but let's say I did,

(04:28):
then you wouldn't be able to understand as much because
it's more of a specialized topic. So those are my
initial thoughts about this. But I do want to talk
about this further because it brings up a really important
point when we're talking about what to listen to when
learning English? What type of things should you listen to

(04:50):
when learning English? Okay? And before I go into that,
I just want to say, Hi, my name is Jack
from to Fluency. If you are new you here, Welcome
to you, and feel free to subscribe to whichever podcast
app you're using or if your YouTube, click that subscribe
button and the notification bell, and then also take a

(05:14):
look at the description for some resources that will help
you learn English, including my book which is free to download,
the Five Step Plan for English Fluency. Now to help
me talk about input and the type of input you need.
The person that I think is so important here and

(05:34):
somebody that I have followed for a long time, is
Dr Stephen Krashen, and he talks a lot about comprehensible input.
Comprehensible input which basically means input that you can understand. Okay.
So I found this article which summarizes this quite well,
and it's saying comprehensible input in English is English language

(05:59):
that you can understand. Language inputs are things that you
hear like podcasts, the radio conversations, as well as things
that you read like books, article, English blog articles, etc.
And question specifies that you can't just read or listen
to anything and improve your language. You have to read

(06:20):
or listen to things you can understand. Language acquisition happens best,
he says, when the input is just slightly more advanced
than your own level. So for this episode we'll focus
on listening, but you can apply this to reading as well.
And the key point here is that you need to

(06:41):
find resources things to listen to that you can understand.
You have to find things that you can understand, but
also find things that challenge you a little bit as well.
And I think this works really well because when you
understand something you can enjoy it. You can get the

(07:02):
repetition of sentences so that you acquire the language. Now,
acquiring a language and learning a language is seen to
be different because you can learn grammar rules okay, you
can learn sentence structure and pac a test to say okay,

(07:24):
I now know how to form the present perfect using
different pronouns, etc. And objects and to do different types
of verbs, and then you can pac a test to
say you've done that. But acquiring this is where you
reach a stage and I've talked about this in my

(07:45):
last episode where it just feels natural to you, where
it just feels natural to you, Okay, where you say
and use the present perfect in a natural way because
it just feels right. You don't have to think about
the rules when you're speaking, and getting lots of input

(08:09):
helps you with this because you're going to listen to
the present perfect again and again and again. You're going
to read it again and again and again if you
read books as well, and by doing this you're going
to acquire the grammar in a natural way. You're going
to learn this in a natural way, but only if

(08:30):
you can understand what you're listening to. If you don't
understand what you're listening to, then you're not going to
acquire the language with the same efficiency. It's not going
to be as good. And by listening to things you understand,
you're also going to understand the context. Because learning grammar

(08:51):
is not just about sentence structure and conjugating verbs. It's
also about knowing when to use that grammar. So if
you keep hearing people talk about how many times have
been to a foreign country, how many times they've been
to this, etc. Then what you're going to do is

(09:12):
you're going to understand when you can use this and
say things like, oh, I've been to Italy twice or
I've been to the US once, and you'll be able
to use the right structure and use the present perfect
in the right situation. So that's one reason why getting
lots of comprehensible, understandable input is important. And by the

(09:37):
repetition that you get, you're going to acquire the language
and just really truly understand grammar and when to use
it correctly. However, if you just constantly listen to things
that you can understand, then you're not going to learn
new things. And I think that whenever you listen to

(09:57):
one of my podcasts, let's say that you understand eighty
percent of what I'm saying, then you're going to learn
new things because you can understand the majority of what
I say, and then you can more or less guess
the new vocabulary. Or if you're listening on YouTube, watching
on YouTube, you can turn on subtitles and see the

(10:20):
words and phrases I'm using and look them up. But
the key here is that you need to have that
base of understanding something and then you can learn new
things from context. You can understand a new word or
an adjective, for example, because I'm using it in a
certain way and you understand what I'm saying. Therefore, for

(10:45):
most people listening to this, I think my podcasts and
other English learning podcasts are great for comprehensible input. Don't
always think that you have to learn new vocabulary, that
you have to listen so that you can learn more
advanced vocabulary. Because there are certain words and phrases that

(11:05):
we use again and again and again, okay, and we
have these high frequency phrases and words and idioms that
people use on a constant basis. So it's better that
you master those phrases, especially when it comes to what
you normally talk about. So if you need English to

(11:26):
give presentations about financial things, then you can learn English
for finance because those are the words and phrases you're
going to use again and again. But you're also going
to have to learn the basic phrases for small talk, conversation, negotiation,
talking about your past, talking about what you like. The

(11:49):
usual topics that you learn as a learner, and by
listening to things that you already understand, you're going to
get that comprehensible input, which is a repetition you needed
to acquire a language, not just know the grammar, but
acquire it so that you can speak naturally and understand
people when they talk. So before I talk about the

(12:10):
resources you can use, I just want to go back
to this question again where they're saying, is this useful?
Will it help me improve my listening? Or do I
have to listen to difficult audio. I think the best
thing to do is to get lots of comprehensible input,
listen to things you understand, and constantly increase the level
of what you listen to. So challenge yourself at times.

(12:34):
I know I have done this when I was really
focused on learning Spanish. What I did was I started
by listening to the news, and I followed the news.
Therefore I could understand the news stories, especially international news stories,
and I learned new vocabulary because I already knew what

(12:56):
the story was about. So there are different things that
you can do to constantly improve what you're listening to
and the level that you're listening to. And I think
the key here is to go slowly, to go slowly, Okay,
to really just build up your comprehensible skills so that

(13:17):
you can improve your comprehension and the way that you
can listen to people when they speak. So here are
some resources that you can use. And firstly, know the
difference between resources made for English learners and also resources
that aren't made for English learners, and you might want

(13:38):
to focus more on one or the other depending on
your level. So I think some great things to listen
to and to read as well. Firstly, the news if
you're interested in it. If you're interested in the news
like politics, global topics, etc. And you already know what's
going on in the world at the moment, then reading

(14:01):
the news and listening to the news in English is
a great stepping stone to moving on to different types
of things. But also I think other things that are
great englishly in podcasts like this one, presentation style talks
like ted Talks. Personally, this is just my opinion. I'm

(14:22):
not a big fan of Ted Talks, but that type
of style. Are great interviews where you can go on
YouTube and just watch interviews on topics that you like.
Because usually with interviews the more of a presentation style
where people are presenting what they believe and they're asking

(14:43):
questions and they're talking about a topic that you're interested in.
And then also graded readers. These are books that have
been adapted for different levels, so you can say, Okay,
I'm an intermediate s and listener. I'll find books graded

(15:03):
readers that are for intermediate learners, and then you can think,
okay and be one. Let's try be one point two
or B two on topics that I already know and understand,
and then find things that are comprehensible, things that you
can understand, and then build up your knowledge and you're
listening over time. Because another thing is sometimes when you're listening,

(15:27):
if you're not used to listening to things in English
but you know the language, then it can all just
happen too fast. You're thinking in your head and you're
missing things. So it's about reaching that stage where you're
just listening and understanding to what people are saying, and
then you move on to the next level. And then

(15:49):
just to talk about the other part with advanced vocabulary again,
this I think it's so important to think more about.
Frequently used phrase is that you need to know instead
of advanced vocabulary. Both are important, but I think the
frequently used phrases this is more important, and being sure

(16:12):
that you can quickly understand someone when they use that phrase.
And again, focus on the type of English that you're learning.
Think about what am I using my English for right now,
or what am I going to use my English for
in the future, and then focus on those words and phrases.
Find audio, find books, find podcasts that focus on those

(16:36):
types of topics, and then just acquire language and vocabulary
over time. There'll be some words and phrases in here.
I'm sure that nearly everyone listening to will have found
something new. For example, before I said, quite frankly, maybe
that's something new to you, and you can look that

(16:57):
up and repeat this again and then you can learn it.
So just in Samari, this podcast is made for English learners.
I speak with a presentation style which some people find slow,
for example, but I've listened to podcasts that aren't made
for English learners. For example, someone like Sam Harris. Listen

(17:18):
to one of Sam Harris's podcast episodes and you'll notice
that he speaks much more slowly than I do, but
he's not making podcasts for English learners. That's his style
of presentation, and I like that style of presentation, although
sometimes I do speed it up. And then secondly, comprehensible input,

(17:39):
in my opinion, is so important, and it's important to
find things that you can understand so that you can
get the repetition of phrases, so that you can really
just improve your comprehension, and that you can just acquire
the language instead of learning the language. But you still
want to find something that is going to challenge you

(17:59):
so that you can learn new words and phrases so
nothing is lost. It's better to listen to something that's
too easy than too hard, in my opinion, because that's
the way that you're going to enjoy things. It's going
to happen naturally. You're not stressed about understanding things. Instead
you're just getting some great input and repetition and all this,

(18:21):
all of this, all these phrases that you're going to
just aquire and truly understand by listening to things a lot.
But at the same time, do challenge yourself from time
to time. Do you think, okay, let's try to listen
to this podcast episode that I didn't understand six months ago?
Can I understand it now? Can I understand this TV
show that went over my head a few months ago?

(18:46):
Do challenge yourself and think about listen to a variety
of different things and different accents that you can understand
different people. But I would love to know your thoughts.
What kind of things do you like listening to? Do
you enjoy listening to things some podcasts or some resources
make you feel stressed because you can't understand them? And

(19:07):
what else do you like listening to? Let me know
in the comment section if there is one on the
app you're using. So that is how to improve you're
listening in English. I hope you found those tips useful.
Before we go on to speaking and writing, let's now

(19:28):
go through reading. This is an important area because in
everyday life we're going to read in English and this
method is going to be really useful and it's going
to break down the difference between extensive and intensive reading
and also look at how to improve this skill. Let's

(19:49):
go into it now. Before we talk about intensive and
extensive reading in the books, etc. I do want to say,
if you want to get a free book, then go
to fluency dot com. There will be a link in
the podcast description and you can download that for free.
It's going to give you a plan of action so

(20:10):
that you can actually move forward with your language learning.
And also, if you enjoy this episode, then please share
it with your friends and if you are feeling very generous,
leave a review below. Okay, so let's start with intensive
versus extensive reading and why this is important because there

(20:31):
are two types of reading when it comes to language learning.
Intensive is where you read to learn new words and phrases,
and you analyze the text and the grammar. So you pause,
you stop if you don't know a word and look

(20:51):
this up, or you pause you stop when you want
to have a look and think about a sentence, so
you're really focusing on the words and the phrases and
the grammar and not the book in general. Now, extensive reading,
this is spelled exte nsive. Extensive reading is when you

(21:14):
read for fun and you are reading just to enjoy
the story or the book in general, so you don't
stop to look up new words and phrases. Instead, you
just continue reading like you would in your own language.
So that is a difference. Intensive is when you're focusing

(21:34):
on the words and phrases. You're focusing on learning structures
and grammar. Extensive is when you're just reading a book
and you don't stop, so you're trying to get the
general meaning of the story or the book in general.
Now you might be thinking which method is best, which
one should I focus on. Well, it depends on a

(21:56):
few factors, and soon you're going to learn how you
can do both at the same time. But first, let's
discuss which books in English are best for you, which
books you should buy or read to help you learn English. Now,
my answer to this is very simple. There is no

(22:16):
one book that is perfect for everyone. So there's no
book that is going to be perfect for everyone. A
book that suits you, a book that is perfect for
you probably won't be perfect for another learner listening to
this podcast. So with that in mind, I recommend that

(22:37):
you find books that first, and there are three categories here. First,
books that interest you, books that interest you. Don't waste
your time reading something that you find boring. If you
find it boring, put that book down and find a
different book. There's no reason to read something that doesn't

(23:00):
interest you. Because we have access these days to books
from all over the world, we can loan them, we
can read them online, we can buy them. We have
access digitally to so many different books. And we can
also think about this in ways of this could be
an article online, or it could be a magazine. So

(23:23):
read things that interest you. And the main reason for
this is that firstly, it's more fun because why read
something that you find boring? But secondly, if you find
it interesting, then you're likely going to use the language
that the book uses in everyday life. You want to

(23:43):
talk about this book. It's on a subject that interests you.
And if a subject interests you, then you're likely to
talk about it. Now. Number two, find a book that
you can understand. Find a book that you can understand.
There is nothing more frustrating than reading something that is
too difficult. So this means that you should find something

(24:05):
a book that isn't going to be too complicated. And
this is going into the area of something called comprehensible input.
This is where you get inputs. You listen to things,
you watch things, and you read things that you can comprehend,
that you can understand, because if something is going to

(24:27):
be too difficult, you're going to be frustrated by reading it.
And also it's difficult to learn new words and phrases
when there are so many new words and phrases to learn,
or when you're not understanding what is going on in
the story. Now, a quick tip for that is a
graded reader. A graded reader, now these are books that

(24:50):
have been adapted for learners like you. So you can say, okay,
I have a lower intermediate level or a higher intermediate level,
and you can find books that have been written specifically
for your level. Now, if you want to learn more
about this, just search for graded readers and I'll leave

(25:12):
these tips in the description if you want to know
how to spell this. And what's important to know is
that basic English is good. So basic English is good.
This is how you are going to learn new words
and phrases in a more natural way. So so far
we have said that you should find books that interest you,

(25:32):
things that you enjoy, and books that you understand. Now,
the third tip is to find books that are specific
to how you use English now or how you want
to use English. So books that are specific to how
you use English now or how you want to use
English in the future. For example, here is a very

(25:55):
specific example. If you're going to take the ILX exam,
read ils, sample papers or iolts, reading model answers because
that is what you need to focus on. Or if
you need to learn business English, then find books that
are related to business. If you want to be able
to have good everyday English where you can use small

(26:20):
talk and have conversations, then read books that have conversations
in them. This is just getting a little bit more
focused so that you are really maximizing the type of
book that you're going to read. And what I recommend
you do as well is go to a website that
allows you to have a look inside a book. For example,

(26:42):
when I'm looking at a book, I go to Amazon
dot com and it says take a look inside a
kindle An ebook and I start reading a few pages.
If it looks good, if it's interesting me, if it's comprehensible, etc.
Then I'll buy the book. But if not, then I'll
move on find a different one and get that one instead.

(27:06):
So feel free to go on Amazon or whichever website
you use to get audiobooks and ebooks and just start
reading a book and see if it's right for you.
Now I mentioned audiobooks there, I think it's also smart
as well to find books that have audiobooks, because what
you can do is a few things. You can read

(27:28):
the story first and then listen to it afterwards, or
you can even read and listen at the same time. Now,
you might not like audiobooks, so it might not apply
to you, but a lot of people want that audiobook
so that they are able to listen and while they're reading,
or listen to an audiobook after they have read the story. Okay,

(27:49):
so let's now say that you have your perfect book
and you understand the difference between intensive and extensive reading.
What's next, So how best read a book? This is
what I think is a really good way to make
sure you're getting extensive and intensive reading at the same time.

(28:11):
And it also cuts down on it reduces the frustration.
So this is a method that will include both both
intensive and extensive reading. And there are three steps here.
It is firstly, read extensively, so read the book without stopping,
but highlight vocabulary and grammar that you don't understand or

(28:35):
any phrases that you want to learn, so you don't
stop when you're reading. But either on your ebook reader
or on a piece of paper a paper book, you
highlight words and phrases that you don't understand, or words
and phrases that you want to learn. You keep reading
for a chapter or a certain number of pages, and

(28:57):
again you don't stop to look anything up yet. But
once you have read a chapter, or once you come
to a stage where you think, okay, I'm going to
go back now and have a look at these words,
you can go back, look at the highlighted words and phrases,
and then use a dictionary or whatever tool you want

(29:17):
to use to understand what these words and phrases mean.
So again step one, you read extensively, but highlight vocabulary
and grammar. You read for a certain amount of time,
and then you stop, go back and look up these
words and phrases that you don't understand. So this allows
you to read for fun but also to learn something

(29:42):
new at the same time, and you're not stopping every
time you don't understand something. Instead, you're reading and understanding
what is happening in the story or in the non
fiction book. And if you find a book that's comprehensible
that's not too difficult for your level, then this should
be relatively easy to do. So you're reading for pleasure,

(30:05):
you're highlighting language as you go, and then once you
reach a really good point, you can go back and
look up the words that you have highlighted. Now, this
method doesn't stop there, because there is a way that
you can remember the vocabulary and grammar that you've just learned,
and a way for you to internalize this. Now, this

(30:27):
is my favorite method, and I've talked about this before
with the LRRC method, but it's more specific. This one
to words that you have written down or read. And
this is what I recommend you do because it's going
to help you learn new words and phrases, vocabulary, grammar,

(30:47):
and just English in general. There are three steps of this. Firstly,
you take the sentences that you have highlighted and copy them.
Now you can do this with an ebook. There a
way to do it if you go to the description.
I have a link where I give a guide on this,
but you can copy and paste them from your kindle

(31:09):
or your ebook. Then you paste them into spaced repetition
software and create digital flash cards. Okay, so you take
the sentences, put them into software so that you can
create digital flash cards, and then you repeat the sentences
over a few weeks so that you internalize the words

(31:33):
and phrases and therefore the vocabulary and the grammar that
you have learned. This is a very simple thing to do,
and it only requires a few minutes of your time
every day, but it will do amazing things for your English. Now,
once you have done this, once you have gone through
each chapter, take in the words and phrases, put them

(31:56):
into software, learned them, a repeter them over the long term.
Go back in about a month and read the book again,
and you'll be amazed at how much you have learned
and how much more you understand. This time, you won't
need to stop. You'll be able to fully focus on

(32:17):
extensive reading because what you've done is you have taken
the words and phrases that you didn't understand or the
ones that you wanted to learn. You have repeated these
using software. So it's a very efficient way to do it.
And then you go back and you see these words
and phrases and you just know what they mean. Now,

(32:38):
this method, this whole method might sound quite complex, but
it's very simple once you learn how to do it.
So again, what you need to do is find books
that are perfect for you read extensively so that you
can enjoy the book but while you read the book,
highlight words and phrases. Then go back after a chapter

(33:02):
or two chapters and look up what these words and
phrases mean. Then take those highlights the highlighted sentences, put
them into software, repeat them over the long term. Then
go back and read the book again. This is how
you can use one book to learn so much English

(33:23):
but also have fun reading at the same time. Now,
the next part is really important and it's often overlooked
by many students, and its English pronunciation. Now, this will
greatly improve your fluency and also your confidence when speaking

(33:45):
in English. So again, take your time, listen to this
section twice if you have to, and let's talk about
how to improve this skill. I believe that most English
learners aren't doing enough nowhere near enough to improve their pronunciation,

(34:06):
and that if they did, then they would speak with
more accuracy, fluency, and confidence. And that is why in
this lesson, I'm going to outline what you can do
in a very practical way on your own to improve

(34:28):
your English pronunciation and the way that you speak English.
So be sure to listen to this lesson or watch
this lesson on YouTube until the end, because I'm going
to highlight and give you the exact step by step
plan so that you can become a more confident speaker

(34:49):
by working on this area of English. But before we
get into all of that, my name is Jack from
to Fluency. Be sure to check out the description because
I'll have some great resources for you, including my book,
The Five Step Plan for English Fluency. All right, let's
get started. Like I said at the beginning of this lesson,

(35:13):
most learners don't focus enough attention and study time to
work in on the way they speak English, working on
their pronunciation. And this is true as well for most
language courses, most language schools. And I think this is
the case because most people need to do this on

(35:36):
their own and really focus on it. And it's hard
for a teacher with thirty students or even six students
to work individually with each student to make sure that
they're saying the right vowel sounds, the right consonant sounds,
using word stress and intonation. But there are so many

(35:57):
benefits when you work on your English nunciation because what
you're going to do if you improve this area. Firstly,
you'll speak more accurately because you'll be using the right
vowel sounds, the right consonant sounds, and people will be
able to understand you better. But you're also going to

(36:17):
speak more fluently because you won't need to focus on
how to speak. Instead, you can just speak naturally and
use the right sounds in a natural way without thinking
about what you need to do with your mouth, what
you need to do in order to make those sounds.

(36:38):
So it's going to allow you to speak more accurately
but also more fluently, and this will lead to confidence,
and it will also lead to you speaking where you
just flow. Everything just flows, which means it just happens naturally.

(36:58):
It's effortless. You don't need to put lots of effort
into this. So today we're going to look at how
you can do this, the step by step process in
which that you can dramatically improve the way you speak.
And then I'll also give you some very practical tips

(37:18):
at the end so that you can take action and
get started with all of this. But first I want
to talk about golf. Golf, the sport of golf, the
one where you have your clubs and a ball and
you swing the golf clubs so that the ball goes

(37:38):
in the hole. And the reason I'm talking about this
is because it's going to help you think about the
way to improve your pronunciation by using this analogy. Okay,
so let's say that you start playing golf. The first
thing you need to do after buying your clubs is

(38:01):
to learn how to swing a club. Learn how to
swing a club, so learn how to hit the ball
properly with your golf club. And you need to think
about and learn all about your hand position. Where do
your hands go on the club, how do you stand,

(38:21):
what's the correct stance? Do you lean forward or your
legs narrow or are they wide? Then you need to
think about what you need to do with your hands
and your elbows and your shoulders and your hips when
you bring the club above you. And then you need

(38:41):
to think about and learn what you need to do
next to then hit the ball and follow through so
that the ball goes straight. And most people here will
watch YouTube videos so that they can learn how to
swing a golf club properly, or they'll buy a book,
or they will take private lessons. And this part is

(39:03):
important for later, so you might learn from YouTube or
by having a private teacher who's going to say, do
this with your hands stand like this, lean back, head straight,
back straight. Okay, what you need to do next is this,
et cetera. So once you learn how to swing your

(39:23):
golf club, the next thing you do is you practice
this skill. You're not playing a game of golf instead,
you are practicing how to swing the golf club properly.
So you are practicing this skill. You have learned how
to do it, and now it's time to try it.

(39:45):
So you swing your golf club and you hit the ball.
The next thing you get is feedback, feedback, and you
can do this in a few ways. You can give
yourself feedback in terms of what happens to the ball.
If you hit the ball well, then that's good feedback.

(40:05):
If the ball trickles, which means goes slowly along the ground,
then you know you need to make some changes. But
you can also get feedback by having a teacher, a
golf instructor, watching you and telling you what you need
to do to change. So they might say, okay, next time,

(40:29):
keep your elbows straight, or next time, keep your head down,
or next time, keep your back straight. And then the
other way to get feedback is to record yourself swinging
a golf club and then comparing your swing to the
way you are learning, which might be a YouTube video,

(40:53):
and then you can look at what you need to
do and what changes you need to make so that
you get better at this skill. And this is a
constant loop. It's a cycle. You learn what to do,
you practice, you get feedback, and you make changes. So
with the feedback you're learning more and more. With the practice,

(41:17):
you're trying it, you're trying the skill, and then with
the feedback you're making changes. And then there are two
more steps here. The next step is to get repetition
when you can do the things correctly. So let's say
that you are correctly holding the club and you're using
your hands in the right way. Getting repetition gives you

(41:38):
muscle memory and it makes it effortless. And I'm sure
you've heard other people say repetition is the key to everything.
By repeating something, you learn how to do it effortlessly
and you gain that muscle memory. But playing golf would
be boring if you didn't play golf. So you have

(41:59):
a game of golf, you go round a golf course.
This is fun. This is why people practice golf, but
it's also a way to do two more things, which
is to perform under pressure. To perform under pressure, to
be able to hit the right swing or use the

(42:19):
right swing when you're playing a game, and also learn
more about where you need to improve. So maybe you
need to improve your putting, you need to improve your drives,
or maybe your short game. But the game of golf
is where you are enjoying yourself. You're having fun, but

(42:41):
you're also learning how to perform under pressure and learning
what you need to do to improve some more. Now,
this podcast isn't about golf, but this analogy really helps
because learning English pronunciation and being able to speak English

(43:01):
is exactly the same as what I have just described.
Where you learn how to do something, you practice it,
you get feedback, you get repetition, and then you use
it in a more natural way you perform under pressure.
Let's take two sounds in English as an example. These

(43:24):
two sounds are minimal pairs, the V sound and the
F sound. They are two similar sounds, but there's a
big difference here. And to be able to make these
sounds correctly, you need to know what to do with
your mouth. In order to get this right, you need

(43:45):
to know what to do with your throat and your
teeth and your lips and your tongue in order to
get these sounds correct. So let's just practice this a
little bit. The V sound is where your top teeth
touch your bottom lip behind inside your mouth and you
make the V sound very very and there's a key

(44:14):
part to this. Your throat vibrates. It's a voiced sound,
one where your throat vibrates, so very practice after me,
very very good. Now. The F sound is similar because

(44:35):
your mouth does the same thing, but your throat does
not vibrate. It's an unvoiced sound. So fun. Fun. Let's
say two words that are similar. Now to practice with

(44:56):
V and F very very very very very fairy, very fairy,
very fairy. Now, if you can notice the difference between
those two sounds, that is great. But the key here

(45:17):
now is to think, Okay, how can I master this?
How can I really learn these two sounds in a
way where I can just say them effortlessly. Well, again,
learn what to do, Learn about your teeth and your
lips and the vibration like I just explained. Then practice

(45:40):
practice these sounds. But the key part as well here
is that you need feedback. So after practicing, you need
feedback to know if you're doing it correctly or not.
And this is where I believe most learners should really
put a lot of attention on, and it's this to

(46:02):
record yourself. Record yourself saying these two words, and record
yourself when you practice pronunciation and speaking in general, now
you can have somebody evaluate you. So you can have
somebody evaluate your English and the way you speak, and

(46:23):
I'll talk about more how I can help you with
that soon. But recording yourself is so powerful because when
you record yourself, you can listen to the way you
speak in a much more meaningful way. When you're just
speaking and you're not recording yourself, it's very difficult to

(46:43):
notice any mistakes you make or any changes you need
to make. But when you record yourself, it's more observant.
It's more obvious to notice what you need to do
to change. So learn how to say these sounds as

(47:04):
of this example, practice yourself saying them, and then record
yourself and make changes. Think about the changes you need
to make in order to say these sounds correctly, and
then once you can do that, get repetition. So repeat
the sounds over and over again in a smart way,

(47:27):
so you're not just repeating it a thousand times today,
but you're repeating it a few times today, a few
times tomorrow, once or twice in four days, etc. That's
the type of repetition that is really efficient. Okay, so
so far, what we're doing is we're thinking about the
best way to master the sounds of English and master

(47:50):
English pronunciation. Step one is knowing what to do with
your mouth to make the sounds. Step two is practicing.
Step three is recording yourself. Step four is making changes.
And then this is a loop a cycle. Okay, maybe
I need to do this with my teeth. Let's learn

(48:11):
what to do again. You practice again, you record yourself.
You think that's better, but it's not perfect, so you
make some more changes until you are happy with the
way you say it. And then step five is to
get that repetition so that you build the muscle memory.
You can build muscle memory in your mouth, just like
people build muscle memory playing golf or playing soccer or

(48:34):
working out anything really where it just becomes effortless. And
that's the stage we want to reach now. Practically, if
you want to say, Okay, over the next three months,
I really want to focus on this area, and I
recommend you do. I recommend exploring this area at least,

(48:55):
but then focusing time each week, maybe each day to
to pronunciation. Then I think this is a really good idea. Firstly,
learn the sounds of English, learn the different sounds of English,
the consonant sounds, vowel sounds, etc. The schoa as well,

(49:17):
and use the method that I've talked about in order
to do this. Now, this might take some time. You're
going to get frustrated, sometimes it might be a little
bit boring, but like I've talked about in the past,
try and make it as fen as possible and be
motivated to know that by doing this it's really going

(49:38):
to help the way that you speak English. Now, it
also means working on things like stress and intonation. Stress
and intonation, and I'm going to give a good example
of this in a second. And then finally it's working
on things like retractions and linking. And working on these

(49:58):
areas is not just going to improve the way that
you speak with accuracy and fluency, but it's going to
help your comprehension too, because if you can say these
words and use retractions and use linking things like I
could have done it. I could have done it, which
is a retraction of I could have done it. We're

(50:20):
also linking I could have done it, I could have
done it. Then you'll better understand other people English speakers
when they're using this too. And people use retractions and
linking all the time. It is so common. So in
order to understand people, this will be really useful for you.

(50:42):
So find a course or anything. Really just research this
these areas of the sounds of English stress and intonation,
retractions and linking, and go through the different areas practice,
get feedback, etc. Now I do want to say that
I have a program for this. I'll leave a link
in the description that goes through all these areas, and

(51:05):
then you can also send in your recordings to me
and I will evaluate these recordings for you and tell
you what I think you need to do to improve.
So I've worked with hundreds of students on this area,
and I know the common mistakes that people make and
why they can't execute a certain sound or they can't

(51:30):
use retractions in a natural way. And then, like I say,
make this part of your study plan. So really commit
to this because it's just going to make you become
more confident, more fluent, and more accurate when you speak English.
And then going back to the golf analogy, we talked
about having a game of golf where you perform under

(51:51):
pressure and you learn what you need to do to improve.
This equivalent here is having conversations and Inlish, or talking
to a teacher or having a language exchange partner, where
you put everything together. You have to be able to
use the correct sounds whilst speaking, which is a much

(52:14):
more complex task than just repeating phrases, let's say, and
repeating the sounds of English. That's going to help you
just improve in general. It's fun to have conversations. This
is why people want to learn English. And then also
it's going to give you a good indication of where

(52:34):
you are and what you need to do to improve. Now,
I do want to practice a phrase here because I'm
going to look at retractions and linking, but also stress
and intonation. Okay, so the phrases I could have done it,
like I mentioned before, now could have becomes could a
I could have I could have I could and then

(53:00):
it done it becomes well there it is. It links
together and we also use the glottal stop. Done it
done it, done it, and then all together I could
have done it. I could have done it. Now. I
also want to just highlight some word stress here because

(53:22):
listen to this now, I could have done it. I
could have done it. Now. This is the stress with
the emphasis on I. That's the most important part of
the sentence, because I'm stressing it like that I could
have done it. I could have done it. And then
listen to the intonation here, I could have done it.

(53:44):
I could have done it. It goes a little bit
high at the end too. So there are different things
that you can do with stress and intonation. With intonation,
there's the falling intonation, the rise in intonation, and then
the rise and fall intonation. But all these things are
inside my program that's a fluency program, or you can

(54:05):
look them up individually or take a different course on pronunciation.
The key, though, is to think about if this is
an area you would benefit from if you spend some
time with it, and then going through that cycle where
you learn how to make the sounds or how to
use intonation or how to use the schwa. Then you

(54:28):
practice it, you get feedback, you make changes, you keep learning,
you keep practicing, you keep making changes. And then you
get the long term repetition so that it just builds
into muscle memory so that you can speak English fluently
and accurately. Now, the final skill is often overlooked, and

(54:51):
I believe that writing is such a great way to
improve English. To practice your writing and to use them
method that I'm going to talk about right now. So
continue learning, take this last section and I'll see you
After this last section. We are going to talk about

(55:12):
writing today and more specifically six tips to help you
improve your writing. Now, before we go into those tips,
it's important to know that writing is one of the
four skills of English, where we have reading, writing, listening,
and speaking. So reading and listening are both input skills,

(55:35):
whereas speaking and writing our output skills. And obviously, when
you're having a conversation with somebody, you're speaking and listening
at the same time, and this is a difficult thing
to do. So when you think I can't speak in English,
it's difficult to have conversations in English. Know that is

(55:55):
normal because what you're having to do is to think
about the grammar, the vogue dicabulary, you're the way you speak,
the sounds of English, and you also have to listen
and understand what the other person is saying. Whereas when
you're reading, you can take your time to understand something
and look up new words and phrases. And if you

(56:17):
want to learn about my reader method, then listen to episode.
I'll put it in the description too. I'm just looking
it up now, episode ten of the to Fluency podcast
if you're listening on iTunes or elsewhere. Now, with writing,
I think it's a great skill to practice for a

(56:39):
few reasons because when it comes to writing, it's an
output skill, but you can take your time. Where when
you're speaking, if you're having a conversation, then you're you're
obviously having to speak to people in a spontaneous way
to adapt to think about what you're saying into to

(57:00):
speak more quickly. Whereas when it comes to writing, think
about just sitting in your office or in your bedroom
or at school wherever it is, at your kitchen table
with a computer or a pencil and pen, and just
taking your time to create sentences, to write paragraphs, to

(57:21):
keep a diary if that's something you want to do,
where you can go into Google, look up new words
and phrases, type in a phrase into Google to see
if it works, and also use different apps, which we're
going to talk about later. So I see writing as
a great skill to help you formalize, which means create

(57:43):
your own sentences without feeling rushed, without having to do
this quickly within a conversation. So think about how you
can implement more writing into your daily schedule and enjoy it.
Don't feel pressure, Yeah, feel like what you can do
is take what you have learned recently and try to

(58:05):
create your own sentences from it. So let's go into
the six tips now, and like I say, be sure
to check out the description for some of the links
I'm going to mention now. The first tip is going
to be quite specific, especially if you're studying for the
IOX exam or if you're using English in a very
specific way, for example, for your job, and this is

(58:28):
to focus on the writing style you need. So focus
on the writing style you need, So think about the
way you're going to write in English if you need
to do this for a specific reason, So if it's
for the iOS exam, focus on that. If you have
to write speeches for work, focus on that. If you

(58:50):
need to write emails at work, focus on that. But
also if you want to learn conversational English. Then you
can write like you're having a conversation. Okay, so just
some ideas for you. You can make a story. You
can create a story if it's a conversation English. You

(59:10):
can also write in like a diary to write your
thoughts about your day. And I think this is a
great thing to do for any learner. I do this
on a daily basis just as a great exercise where
I talk about my day, what I did yesterday, I
talk about my write about my goals, I write about
what I want to do. For example, yesterday I wrote,

(59:33):
let's write some reels or shorts for the next week,
which are the mini videos for Instagram and YouTube. And
I'm saying do three to four this week and get
another podcast done, one that focuses on how to learn English,
which is what I'm doing right now. So this is
something I wrote yesterday, and just doing that on a

(59:54):
daily basis will help you just get into the habit
of writing for English. So Tip one is to focus
on the writing style you need if you are going
to write specifically for something, but then if you're just
wanting to improve your English in a general sense, I
highly recommend doing a daily diary, so it makes you
do it on a daily basis, and then also thinking

(01:00:15):
about ways to write something conversational. And another thing to
do is then to if you watch a YouTube video
of one of mine, for example, like one of our conversations,
then you can write some thoughts about that YouTube video.
Now tip two is to find examples of text and

(01:00:38):
copy them. Now, what I've been talking about so far
with writing is more of a creative role. Where you're
writing in your diary, you're putting your thoughts across, you're
creating a story, that type of thing. But another way
to improve your writing is to imitate other writers. If

(01:01:00):
you followed me for a while, you'll know about my
method that will help you with your general English and
especially you're speaking, where you listen to an audio phrase,
you repeat that phrase, you record it so then you
can listen back to it, and then you compare your

(01:01:21):
version to the original and think about making changes. That's
the speaking method that I've been teaching for a long time.
But we can do this for writing too, where what
you do is you just find any kind of text
and you copy it down. I like to do this,
or I think a good idea if you're thinking about
the text to find is for examples exams, get the

(01:01:45):
ILS model answers. If you're doing it for like emails,
find email templates and just copy them down. And what
I'm saying here is not to copy them for an
exam or copy them for your specific email. But what
I like to see is you put on some relaxing music,
you get a cup of tea or your favorite type

(01:02:06):
of drink, and then you simply read a sentence, copy
the sentence. Read a sentence, copy the sentence, and you
don't focus too much on the language here. You're not
trying to memorize anything. Instead, you're just writing things down
and copying things. And I think this is a great
method to try because you're going to naturally internalize sentence

(01:02:30):
structures and writing styles. And if you do this again
for specific purposes, that's going to be great. But you
can also just do this with any sentences that you
find online. For example, let's say I do a video
on ten key phrases. You can take those phrases, write
them down, copy them down in a notebook, and then

(01:02:50):
if you want to then expand on this and create
your own sentences, then now use the app that we're
going to talk about later. But this is a great
way to internalize sentence structure, word order and also a
powerful way to learn grammar. To Now, another way to
this is the tip three is basically about how you
can improve your writing. Okay, and it's using a different skill.

(01:03:14):
And the tip is this to read a lot. So
to read a lot because this will be one of
the most vital ways for you to help become familiar
with the way that English is written. And it's also
going to help you spot the mistakes you're making in
the moment. And if you copy passages from what you're reading,
it can also help you overcome mistakes that you're making.

(01:03:37):
And I think Graded Readers is a great place to start.
And again go to episode ten to learn more about reading.
And I'm not going to talk much about this because
you know, as a learner, you'll probably know the power
of reading and how it can help you. But it's
going to help your writing too, because it's going to

(01:03:57):
give you the input you need to then create something.
But like I say, also just copyer. So whenever you
read something, think about copying a few paragraphs, especially ones
that interest you or paragraphs that contain the type of
language that you think is relevant. Tip four is about
practice and getting feedback. So it's important to get feedback

(01:04:21):
on your writing so that you can overcome mistakes. Now
Tip five is going to give you an app that
will help you with this. But here what I want
to get across in Tip four is just to feel
like practicing is a good thing to do and to
implement this into your daily routine or your learning routine.
So after trying the copying tactic where you copy text

(01:04:46):
and you start to feel a little bit more confident,
do some writing exercises and try to find a teacher
or somebody who can correct you. Now, there are ways
to do this for free. There are different apps you
can use for this, and I'll leave some of them
in the description below. But also join the group learn
English with Jack on Facebook. So search for learn English

(01:05:11):
with Jack on Facebook and copy your writing text into
there and ask for people to give you feedback. You
can do this on different forums as well, but there
are apps you can use for this, or you can
pay a teacher who's going to just give you that
extra attention and go through the writing task that you do.

(01:05:33):
And this is especially important if you're doing the Iouts
exam and you need to get that feedback for your exam,
or if you're giving a speech, or if you're writing
an important proposal for your work or writing a project
for your work, where you can get somebody who really
goes in there and corrects things for you. Now, Tip
five is to use apps that are not just going

(01:05:58):
to correct your spelling, but they're also going to correct
your grammar. Now, I'll leave a link in the description
from my favorite one here, and it's an affiliate link.
It's free to use, but if you decide to get
the paid version, then I will get a little commission
if you use my link, So feel free to use
that link. But this is an app with a web

(01:06:21):
browser extension and also an app, and it also integrates
into your email, Facebook, Instagram, different apps that you use
so that when you're writing, let's say you write something
like he has well, let's think of a mistake that

(01:06:42):
is quite common. I enjoy to go to the beach.
It will say not to go, but I enjoy going
to the beach. So it's going to help you with
verb patterns, grammar, prepositions. If you the incorrect proposition it
will tell you, so it's going to help you improve

(01:07:05):
your grammar as you're writing, but it's also going to
give you tips and advice and more examples so that
you can just remember these rules in the future. I
think this is an app that everybody needs, so definitely
check out the description under tip five and use the
link that I leave there now. Tip number six is

(01:07:25):
to take your time and search for new sentences to
learn and practice. Okay, so take your time when when
you're writing, enjoy it, and also search for the sentences
and phrases that you want to use. And a way
to search for a phrase is to use things like
dictionary apps and things like that. But also you can

(01:07:47):
just type things into Google. You can either do this
in a general sense or you can put the quotation
marks over it so it's an exact phrase. So if
you're ensure about something like I just a lesson on
every day versus every day, and I'm just going to
do this, you can hear me type in. If I
type in I learn English every day, there's two words

(01:08:11):
then I get or if I just say I learn
English every day, sorry, yeah, I get ninety four thousand results.
And then if I type in I Learn English every
Day one word it is twenty eight thousand, and in
those cases it shows you that the one with the
more results generally means it's the correct one. But also

(01:08:33):
the app in tip five will help you with that anyway.
And what you can do here is when you type
phrases into Google a lot of the time you can
put ESL on the end and it's going to give
you articles or forum posts that will talk about that phrase,
and it will give you that phrase and it will

(01:08:54):
say write it like this or write it like that.
And this is what I mean by taking your time
so you can look for the correct phrase and websites
that are going to help you with that, so that
when you're writing, you are making sure it's correct as
you write, and then obviously getting feedback or using an
app to help you with that. So those are the

(01:09:15):
six tips. What I recommend you do again is I
think one of the best things you can do is
to keep a daily diary or a journal where you
just put down your thoughts about anything, what you did yesterday,
what you want to do today, what you're grateful for,
what you're happy about, your goals, etc. And that just
gets you into the habit of using every day English

(01:09:40):
in a way that you might talk about to other people.
So you can even just write about what you enjoyed
about the TV show you watched last night, just anything,
your thoughts on anything, but especially things that you like
to talk about in daily conversations, because that's the type
of English you're going to use. And then use the

(01:10:01):
copy method where you can just absorb English and learn
it in a natural way, especially if you want to
learn it for a specific reason. And then use the
app that I mentioned in tip five so that it
gives you instant feedback on the way you're writing and
if you're writing in the correct way. And then get

(01:10:21):
feedback from a teacher if you really want to get
that specialized feedback. Okay, those are the four skills of English.
If you have made it this bar, congratulations because you've
taken this powerful learning advice and you've managed to get
to the end. Now, that doesn't mean you have completed everything. Instead,

(01:10:48):
the key path is to really take what I've talked
about here and apply it, take action. Start using these
methods today, and then be sure to continue learning with
me here on YouTube or Apple podcasts or Spotify, or
cast box. Wherever you're watching or listening, continue taking the lessons.

(01:11:11):
Be sure to check out the description for English learning
resources and share this episode this English lesson with a friend.
Thank you so much for being here, and I will
speak to you next time. Bye for now.