By Robby
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Video Transcript Below:
Hi guys! Hello everybody who obviously watching this video on my blog or my Youtube channel.
Currently I’m having my afternoon tea it isn’t clearly see it’s double strength two tea bags in a big job and as strong as hell that I love it it’s green tea and it leaves this bitter aftertaste we know about and a lot, you know? Cheers!
Now yeah, get down to business and the business of today is to respond to an email that was sent in a twenty two hours ago. I didn’t get around to answering it earlier on and then I reckoned why not make a video about it because the question is quite a valid one. And I haven’t actually address this particular question, arm, from this specific angle, you know?
Over the years have been making videos pretty much about every single aspect of English fluency improvement that they raised that you can possibly think of however sometimes I get these questions and this one is about how many hours a day I should spend practicing my english basically. And then I went to my blog and I tried to find out whether I posted a video about how frequently or how often or how long your practice sessions could be and turns out that I haven’t actually posted a video about that, You know? So I reckon why don’t I record a video addressing that specific questions.
So basically this person says that the biggest challenge for them is to improve fluency in speaking and writing so that’s the first part of the question, right?
So to address this question just let me remind you that speaking and writing are two different skill sets, right? You cannot bundle them up in one big thing. You cannot perceive your spoken and written english is one thing which you can work on at the same time. Those are two specific aspects. In order to become one in speaking you gotta do a lot of spoken practice whereas if you want to become good at writing in English you have to write in. I mean you are what you do, You know.
So let’s move on. What should improve my level quickly, how many hours they should have spent on it at least. So obviously the more the better. Right? Ideally you would create a full immersion environment, Right? And you may wanna check out this video (https://englishharmony.com/total-english-immersion) where I’m talking about it. How to create your own immersion environment. Basically you get rid of everything that’s got to do with your native language and you do everything in English, Right? And that’s the best way to propel you to the next level very fast, You know?
However, they remind that it’s all about active practicing just because you would be taken in a lot of passive content in english such as reading or your visual contents you know. TV shows, programs, videos whatnot it doesn’t mean that you can be able to speak, it’s or the opposite actually. If you don’t speak at all only consume content you will be very good at understanding. Basically your comprehension skills are going to develop. However, you won’t be able to talk with other people you know simple as that. so on top of creating this full immersion environment, you’ve got to make sure that you practice a lot, speak. You know? With your mouth. Basically, obviously, how else would you speak? But yeah, then some of you might think that this sounds where they go speak with your mouth? However, I need to emphasize it because so many people just still don’t get it. You know? They don’t get that the simple fact that you’ve gotta be using your mouth and that’s the only way you can expect to improve. You know?
Yeah going back to the main question how many hours a day you should be spending on it. Well, there is no set figure. You know. I couldn’t come out and say listen you gotta be spending at least one hour or at least two hours or at least three hours. It varies, it varies from one day to another, it varies between different people.You know? Because we all have different lifestyles. You might be more busy than I am. You know? It all depends on how many minutes of spoken english practice you can squeeze into your day you know.
My mouth is getting dry. Excuse me. Ah! now I’m going to [cough] excuse me guys . This doesn’t happen often. Right? And then clearly I could have edited it out but I’m just going to live here. Because all I’m, all about being uh, being uh, natural here. Right? So you get to see the way I am and I’m not trying to mask anything and, You know? If I make a mistake or two I leave here in these videos so that you can clearly see that embracing mistakes is the only way forward.
Anyway it’s basically about using every spare minute that you can in order to practice your English. right ? So I would say you should be looking at doing it all day long. But obviously you’re not going to be doing it for 16 hours. I mean the spoken english practice but you have to kind of capture those times throughout the day. You wake up right in the morning. This is something that I’ve been touching upon many times before. You know? You just take a shower or whatever is your morning routine you, you close your kitchen to fry eggs or whatever. You talk with yourself. Obviously there’s someone around, you wouldn’t do that unless they’re really comfortable with. You’re doing it but obviously we have to play better see what’s your situation is you know and then fit it into your schedule.
So whenever you’re on your roll, do speak in English. Surely there are times of the day when you’re on your own. Whether you’re driving to work or go walking somewhere. You know? And that spoken English practice doesn’t have to be really loud. All that you need to do is just make sure that your, your lips are moving and you can talk with yourself in slight voice that’s all. That matters. You know?
So to get your mouth exercise and to arm wire those speech patterns, I don’t brain but in your mouth as well that’s of the utmost importance.
So if you were to practice your spoken English for a hour a day and if that means like doing 10 minutes in the morning and then 20 minutes during your lunch break, for example if you don’t take a lunch break with anyone else, if you just go somewhere on your own. For instance, me buy and so go to my car. You know? Lunch break to take a nap. I’m a fan of these power naps you know but you may as well just with your car and recap your day. You know? What has happened during that particular day up until that moment. You know? What you have done in the morning and how day has been so far and stuff. And then you can actually plan the rest of your day. You know?
Planning is actually one of the greatest topic that you can constantly talk about. You know? What’s going to happen? What you have to do? What you’ve done so far? Did you do it right? Did you do it wrong? You know?
So there are so many aspects of your daily schedule and the things that you have to be doing today or tomorrow. There’s so many aspects that you can be focusing on that it’s, it’s pretty much impossible to run out of stuff to discuss with yourself. You know?
Nothing times people ask me um what could I possibly talk about? I have got nothing to discuss with myself. And I say nonsense if you think about it there’s always something going on in your mind most likely we, we think about what has happened so far, You know? In the recent past and then we find the future you may as well just voice it all out.
So, going back again, the original question how many, how many hours? even an hour a day? If it’s scattered throughout your day. Because like I said 10 minutes in the morning, and it’s 10 minutes here, and 10 minutes there. You come home at night and then surely there’s, there is some time that you have just to yourself. You know? And even if there is not you, you make it your objective to free up some time to do the spoken english practice. You know? And obviously if you have a lot of opportunities during the day to talk to other people, it all counts as valid time spent practicing your spoken english. However I will emphasize it again doing it on your own just with yourself when there is nobody else around has its great advantage. You know? There’s nobody to judge you, you can give your fluency free reign you can talk. However you want make as many mistakes as you want. And during that process you will improve even more. You know? And obviously you have the conscious of the things you make. Note of some of them, look up how you would say things correctly later on and then improve that way.
I’m not saying that you have to ignore your mistakes or whatever. I’m that that’s not the point. The point is you have to have some time when you can just speak all by yourself without anyone else is listening. And it’s during those times if you will notice it that you actually improve. But most you know, so one hour a day, good. Two hours you can, you can go three hours of the most practicing that’s even better obviously. The more the better. And there would be some time that would realize that you’ve been talking too much kind of it does happen. You know? And that you actually have to kind of stop and shut up and not say anything. And, and it has happened to me that I kind of get a little bit overwhelmed so that’s when I have to actually stop. You know? But it’s not to say that it will happen every day. It would happen from time to time. You may want to read this article whether I have actually talked about it. Right?
But to sum it all up and I will take another sitting with my green tea guys. Cheers! strongly recommended. You know? Green tea all these antioxidants and everything when it’s good for your body with their mind and good for your inner performance as well also. Because it’s all related to each other. Right?
So if you can do a couple of hours a day it’s brilliant. That’s, that’s so much I would probably do during the day. When I commute to work, when I drive back home. You know? That’s about two hours of commute at least and doing those commute time I just talked myself in the car that’s two hours right there. And then whenever I’m going for a walk with my dog that’s another thirty minutes or an honor. Yeah, forty minutes or so.
So plus all these little moments when I would be just going somewhere and then talking to myself that’s about three two and a half or even four hours a day may be. You know.
But just like I said it is all scattered throughout the day. It’s not even necessary to worry about actual figure. It could be one hours, could be two, could be three or could be four. You know? For as long as you, you do it the whole time and create the immersion environment whereby you are actually forced to be using the english language all the time. That’s when you will notice a very fast and considerable improvement to your english. Right? And speaking of how’s improve your level quickly. It’s all about situations. If you have a specific interview to go for, specifically occasion to prepare for, you have to give a speech or there’s a meeting coming up or whatever you can improve your spoken english fluency for that particular occasion very fast within a few days, we answer you. If you have to prepare for an event you just have to kind of think about what might be discussed during that event or come up with some conversation scenarios, insert some relevant phrases, memorize them. You know? Not obviously memorize the whole thing, but the key phrases that you might be using during that meeting or interview of whatever the events might be. You know? And then you can actually improve for that specific occasion very quickly. So the amount of days, You know? However, if we talk about the general the overall ability to speak and write well to do it real fast like it’s impossible. You know? You cannot expect to improve your overall ability to speak just like native speaker about any given topic within a very, very, very short space of time. Let’s say two or three or four weeks. You know? it’s not going to happen. It will take months at least. You know? But like I said for specific occasions and also ah your, your daily routine in general.
When you go to work if you think about it, it can be all boiled down to specific situations. You meet the same people, you encounter in general the same situations, so the vocabulary use and phraseology use right as you say phraseology not vocabulary. Because phraseology is what makes you point right. If you focus on individual words it’s not going to happen. You know? So um that phraseology used in your daily life it’s still quite limited if you think about it. You know? So even when it comes to your general ability to talk to people at work or in the college whatever your case may be. You know? Even that could be improved relatively fast within a matter of a month or two. You know? And those who is purchasing a computer system that experience it firsthand. You know ? Just, just read some of the customers feedback on the sales page where you can buy things from a system and you realize that people have not grown really fast. But what I’m trying to say is that if you want to be able to speak up no bragging. You know.
I don’t want to sell my bragging. But if you want to be able to speak like me. You know? It will take two years. You know? But, but then again it’s all about setting the right expectations. You cannot expect to speak just like a native speaker within a matter of weeks and months. You know. It’s a lifelong process and I have been doing this for more than a decade. You know. I have been living in Ireland now for almost 15 years and I have been a fluent speaker for about 10 years or so and improving everyday. You know. And I will keep working on it. You can never stop. It’s not as if you would reach your goal of becoming a fluent speaker and then just stop right there. No, it requires constant practice and improvement and it’s a lifelong process.
So, I hope that I answered your question obviously I was running for perhaps too long. You know? So long to your liking but, hey! that’s me. And a lot of my Youtube subscribers and blog followers like that. So I hope that you enjoyed it so the friend who asked this question. So thanks for watching this video.
Catch you soon again!
Bye – bye!
https://englishharmony.com/total-english-immersion
P.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out the English Harmony System HERE!
