3 habits that ＊finally＊ made me fluent

Hey guys, welcome back to Easy English with Kat. I am a native English speaker, but I've also learned three foreign languages. I speak German, Portuguese, and Polish. And after learning three foreign languages, I really know what does and does not work for learning a language. So, today I'm going to share with you the three essential habits that I have used to lead to fluency. Now, these are things that are really simple and easy that you can integrate into your daily life without taking up too much time. A lot of things say that they have the perfect solution, just this one all be all answer to fluency. And of course, there are a lot of things that help, but it is hard to find something that is simple and not so time consuming. I'm going to share with you my three essential habits to lead to fluency. The first habit is all about gaining muscle memory. Now, a lot of people think fluency all comes down to knowledge, studying more grammar, learning more vocabulary, more phrases, just stacking them more upon more. And of course, you need vocabulary, you need grammar, you need to understand the basics of the language in order to speak it. Of course, that is true. But fluency actually comes down to being able to communicate effectively. And I have seen people that actually have a very basic level, but are quite fluent as opposed to someone who has a very advanced level, but actually cannot communicate effectively. You have to train more than just memorization and knowledge. Muscle memory is essential. What I mean by muscle memory is training the pronunciation in your mouth. Now, I know that sounds a little funny, but speaking another language is an oral exercise. You are using all the muscles in your mouth, your jaw, your tongue, your lips, and it is completely different than your native language. This is often overlooked and people don't think about pronunciation as something they have to practice. They think it sort of comes after. You learn the basics, you learn how to speak the language, you become fluent, and then later on you can focus on pronunciation. But it is actually quite the opposite. It has a lot to do with your confidence, how you feel about communicating with others. If you're always worried that you're going to say the word incorrectly, you're not going to be confident. You're not going to communicate well. And oftentimes you are saying the word incorrectly and other people cannot understand you simply because they cannot understand what it is that you are saying. So, focusing on pronunciation super early on is truly essential. And for me, I just dedicate about five minutes a day. I dedicate that to language shadowing, doing pronunciation workouts, exercises. Now, you can look these up and you can just find them anywhere. Look up the language pronunciation exercise and you can find something. If you're an English learner, I have my own seven-day workout link below that you can use. And this just guides you through everything. And it works at every level, so you can use that. But the key here is just spending five minutes a day really honing in those skills, practicing the muscle memory in your mouth and really locking in your pronunciation. Habit number two is keeping a language diary. Now, this is something I did not do the first time I was learning a language. And I honestly wish I had. I think it would have made this part of the process go so much faster. When you're at the point where you know enough words and phrases to start communicating, but you can't quite think in the language, and it's hard for you to get your thoughts together in another language, this is a hard point. You're bridging that gap between taking in information, taking in words and phrases and grammar, and then actually creating output. Input and output are different. And creating output is much more difficult. The idea of a language diary is that you write three to five sentences a day. And I keep a literal notebook diary that I write in every night. And what you are writing in here is anything and everything. It's about your thoughts, your emotions, about your day, what's been on your mind, what you're thinking about. It's sentences, things that you would actually think and try to say in this language. Now, we are taught textbook language, which is very different from spoken language. And there's often a huge gap. You learn all these things in the textbook, but then in real life, nobody actually speaks like this. And you also haven't trained how to actually speak what you are thinking in that language. The language diary is all about just spending a minute, a couple minutes a day creating output with things you would actually say. There is also a piece of this that is all about gaining confidence. When you are practicing writing and thinking in the language on your own every day, then when you are actually in real situations or real conversations, you have way more confidence creating output and speaking. So it really helps to bridge that gap. And once again, it's only about five minutes a day. So if you add this in, you are really going to be able to increase your output creation and also increase your confidence as well. And like I said before, you're practicing creating output using real words and phrases, situations, your thoughts, your emotions, not random things that you are going to run into in a textbook and then never actually use. So this is a really effective way of getting a sort of real life practice, but all on your own in peace and quiet and in a very short amount of time. Now, habit number three, I like to call going ghost on your native language. Now, real fluency happens when you stop treating the new language like a translation exercise and actually start treating it like the new language you live in. You've probably also heard me call this in other videos, creating your own immersion. Their job is to make it so that you are living in the language. You're actually experiencing the language. Now, you always hear people say, OK, you need to move to the place to learn the language. Oh, if you live there, you're going to learn the language. Some people do. Some people don't. I've known many people that live in foreign countries and only know the word for thank you and nothing else. So it's not all that true. But of course, it helps if you are living in the place. So the trick here is to create that same effect. But in your daily life, you don't necessarily have to go there. So the goal is to create little pieces of your day where it is just the new standard that the new language lives there. Now, some examples of this are changing your phone language in the settings to the language you are learning, changing your laptop settings. Right. So then no matter if you're on your phone, your laptop, you are interacting with it in the language you are learning. That can be extremely effective. You just get so used to it, you don't even notice that all of the words that you are seeing on your phone are in the other language. That really helps lock it in. Another way you can do that is if you have a commute to school, to work. You say during this commute, I am only in this language. So you're listening to music in that language. You are listening to a podcast in that language. You are talking to a friend in that language. It doesn't matter what you do, just no matter what it is in that language. I have always liked to say, OK, if I'm going grocery shopping or cooking, it's in that language. Grocery shopping, I create my list of ingredients in the foreign language. And then when I'm there, I'm thinking through it in the foreign language, checking them off. Right. So you're kind of testing yourself. Do I know the word for cucumber? When I'm cooking, I'll find a recipe in that language. I love to get cookbooks in the language you're learning. So then you can just flip through and find your recipe. And then as you're cooking, you're interacting with the language, right? So there are a million things you can do. But the idea is that throughout your day, you're adding as many touch points as possible. You need to start living in the language. Just bring it in to something you are already doing. If you are already cooking, OK, just cook in that language. If you're already listening to music, listen to music in that language. If you're watching a movie, watch it in that language. Just no extra time, no extra studying hours. Just bring the language into your life. And I promise that is going to make the biggest difference. That is the difference between people who just memorize textbooks, people who just memorize words and phrases and grammar charts versus actually becoming fluent, actually speaking the language, actually living in the language. Now, these are my three essentials when learning the language. To recap really quickly, the first one is mouth mechanics, really focusing on your pronunciation and doing that from the start. Don't wait to jump on pronunciation. You need to start with it. Number two is keeping a language diary, writing three to five sentences in it every day. And I like to do this in the evenings, but it doesn't matter when. Just keeping that language diary and really focusing on expressing your thoughts, feelings, emotions, just real life language. And habit number three is living in the language, creating your own immersion and finding ways to bring the language into your daily life, doing things you are already doing, just doing them in that language. Now, those are my top three essentials. And I can promise you that if you start to do those three things, adding in only a few extra minutes a day, your fluency is going to jump like crazy. And if you need that English pronunciation workout, it's linked below, so be sure to check that out. Thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. If you like this video, please like and subscribe. It really helps my channel and I really appreciate it. I'll catch you in the next video. Bye.