How I became fluent in English
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Since I moved to the UK many years ago, people have been telling me how good my English is. Here are some things I’ve been hearing over and over again:
- Your English is so good!
- Your English is better than mine (and I’m a native speaker)!
- You don’t have a Polish accent!
- I can’t tell where you’re from!
This is flattering and it does make me feel good about the effort I’ve put into developing my English language skills over the years.
However, whenever I hear people say these things, there’s a little voice screaming inside my head: ‘Thank you but I was already fluent in English before I moved to England!’ and ‘The reason I’m fluent is not because I’ve lived in England for a long time!’.
I don’t want people to assume that I’m only fluent in English because I’ve lived in England for many years. Because living abroad is not what makes you fluent. Or at least, it’s not a requirement for becoming fluent.
I actually became fluent before ever travelling to an English-speaking country. OK – I wasn’t as fluent as I am now. But I was fluent. I’d definitely describe my level as fluent. C2. Proficient. Do you get my point?
I’m not saying this to sound big-headed or anything. I’m saying this because I want you to believe that you too can learn a language without ever leaving your native country.
And I’m going to show you how. I’m going to share with you some of the things I did to get to fluency in English. These things can be replicated in pretty much any language so I’m sure you’ll find them useful regardless of what language you’re learning.
So, without further ado, here are the things I did to become fluent in English.
If you’d rather watch my video about this, here it is! Otherwise, read on!
Very focused vocabulary work
The one, absolutely crucial thing I did when learning English was very focused vocabulary work using magazines.
There was a bookshop in my hometown where you could get international newspapers and magazines. So I used to go there and get Time Magazine and the international edition of Newsweek. Those two issues lasted me for a few months. And here’s why.
I would pick an article and underline all words I didn’t know. I was probably at the intermediate or upper-intermediate level at the time, so there were a lot of words I didn’t understand. I then checked each of them for meaning. First, in an English-Polish dictionary (Polish is my native language), and then in a monolingual one (it’s a type of a dictionary where both the entries and the definitions are in the same language). I then recorded the words (and their translations) in my vocabulary notebook. I’m not saying recording translations is a good approach – I’m just saying that’s something I did at the time (when I was about 15-16) and it worked for me then.
My vocabulary notebook was essentially a very long list of English words and their Polish equivalents. It went on for pages.
I then used highlighters to highlight the words I thought I’d memorised at every revision session. I highlighted them in one colour and then came back to them after a while and highlighted them in another colour when I was certain I knew them well. That was my own kind of spaced repetition system, long before I even knew what spaced repetition was.
I did the same with phrases and expressions, including phrasal verbs and idioms.
This process of going through articles may sound quite tedious and perhaps it was at times. It was because I couldn’t really take any pleasure in reading the article content, as it would take me ages to go through each article. But it was very effective.
Vocabulary is extremely important when learning a foreign language – the more you know, the closer you are to fluency.
Idioms and collocations
This one is related to the vocabulary work I detailed above. Idioms are basically groups of words in a fixed order that have a particular meaning that is different from the meaning of each word on its own. Collocations are combinations of words that go together and sound natural.
When you start learning a foreign language – and even when you’re more advanced – you sometimes combine words in an unnatural way. This is completely normal and it’s part of the learning process. As time goes on, you begin to understand that some words always go in the same groups. For example, in English, you’d say ‘a quick bath’ rather than ‘a speedy bath’. ‘A quick bath’ just sounds more natural.
You can learn collocations by reading a lot in the language you’re learning. The more you see certain groupings of words, the more familiar they become. You then begin to instinctively recognise the ones that sound natural and the ones that don’t.
You can speed up this process, though. I definitely recommend that you proactively learn collocations – make it part of your study routine (rather than just absorbing them through reading).
Going back to what I did back in the day when I was learning English, I basically got a dictionary of English collocations and whenever I came across a new word grouping when going through my Time Magazine and Newsweek articles, I would look it up in the dictionary and then record it in my vocabulary notebook.
Collocations dictionaries exist in many different languages so I’m sure you won’t have a problem finding one in the language you’re learning.
You can do the same with idioms. I got myself an English idioms dictionary and looked up various idioms relating to the words I was learning regularly.
Learning collocations and idioms in this way helped me develop a more natural and colloquial way of speaking, and it definitely helped me in my journey towards fluency.
Simplified novels
Apart from vocabulary work, reading is my favourite way of learning languages. You need to read a lot to familiarise yourself with the structure of the language you’re leaning. And also to see the words you’re learning in action.
When I was learning English, I started with simplified novels. A simplified novel is basically one that’s written in simpler language. For example, you can have a simplified version of Wuthering Heights, which is one of the novels I read in a simplified version when I was learning English.
I’m sure simplified novels exist in many different languages – just google it. If you don’t find anything, you can try children’s books or short stories instead. They’re great because the language they use is often simple enough to follow when you’re an intermediate learner.
I moved on to reading actual novels later on, when my language skills developed enough. If you start reading proper novels too early, you might get frustrated so I definitely recommend starting small.
Speaking to myself
At the time when I was learning English, internet wasn’t really a big thing – crazy, I know! There was no Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, no blogs and no language exchange platforms like Italki. There was no Skype! So, I’m sure you will know what I mean when I tell you it was extremely hard to find an English speaker to talk to. I didn’t know any English speakers in my hometown.
I figured out that I could actually speak to myself. So, whenever I was home alone, that’s what I’d do – speak to myself! One of my favourite things was pretending I was a celebrity being interviewed on television. I’d talk about my life and my work, come up with stories to tell, and so on.
Of course there is a drawback to speaking to yourself – you can’t get any feedback. Nobody can correct your mistakes or give you advice on how to improve.
But don’t be put off by that. Speaking is speaking. Even if you speak to yourself, you’re practising your skills and developing your confidence. Don’t ever feel like you can’t practise your speaking if you don’t know any native speakers of the language you’re learning.
You can, of course, complement this type of practice with a proper language exchange – in person or on Skype, depending on your situation – and get feedback during those sessions.
Another thing I did, apart from pretending to be a celebrity, was what I now call ‘echoing’. It’s a technique whereby you repeat what you hear word for word. For example, when you play a video and pause it to repeat. It’s a great way to process the language you’re hearing and to practise your pronunciation. Echoing will also help you solidify the phrases you repeat in your memory.
Pen friends
If you’re younger than me, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about. But let me explain. When I was learning English, one thing that helped me a lot was having pen friends.
Like I said above, social media didn’t exist at the time. But there was a printed magazine for English language learners that I used to read. There was a section in it where people would place adverts saying they’re looking for people they could correspond with by letters. It’s kind of like the equivalent of social media but on paper – I guess? So they would post their home addresses in the magazine and you could write them a letter, and then they would get back to you. Putting your postal address in an international magazine sounds a bit weird now, doesn’t it?
Anyway, I made a few friends this way. I knew people in Ghana and in Hong Kong, and it was really great to be able to write them letters in English and get letters from them. We would also exchange little gifts like stickers or photographs, which was super fun!
If you’re trying to practise your written language skills, I definitely recommend this. You can, for example, set up an email exchange with somebody. Or just use Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger.
What’s your story?
So this is it – the story of how I became fluent in English! I hope you enjoyed it. It would be great if you could share your story of getting to fluency (in any language) in the comments below.
And, if you’re not fluent yet, I want to invite you to join my community!