hey what's up Stefanie the English coach here from EnglishFullTime.com
in this video we are gonna talk about how to know when you're fluent in
English and actually you can use this little quiz I guess that I made to test
if you're fluent in other languages as well but basically we're gonna talk
about things that happen to you and to your English when you are fluent so you
can know hey are you fluent or are you not fluent what are you good at what do
you still have to work on okay because if you've studied English for any length
of time that's longer than you know a couple months you know that listening to
English every single day does not make you fluent studying English for years
and different English Institutes does not make you fluent having private
teachers does not make you fluent using English at work does not make you fluent
even having a degree or a certificate or something you know from formal higher
education a university or something like that doesn't make you fluent I could go
on and on none of this stuff makes you fluent right because you and I both know
people that have done this kind of stuff and they still aren't fluent maybe you
are even someone who's done stuff like this and you're not fluent okay so it's
a journey it's a process I'm here to help you with this but I want to explain
some of the things that happen to you when you are fluent in a foreign
language and I'm speaking from experience go ahead and click the link
up here to watch a video where I'm speaking Spanish you can hear how I used
to speak at seven years ago versus how I speak it today okay it's completely
different anyways a lot happened during my journey of learning Spanish to
finally becoming fluent and the thing about fluency that makes it really hard
to detect is that it does not happen overnight right it's not like one day
you're not fluent and the next day oh my gosh you're fluent it happens slowly
over time and you usually don't even realize your improvements as you're
improving you realize them when you look back at where you started and you see
how far you've come okay so let's talk about how to know when you're fluent
there are different things that we're going to talk about speaking
understanding how other people understand you etcetera let's get into
it so you know you're fluent when you understand at least one dialect of
English perfectly you understand everything now granted there's going to
be some things you don't understand I mean there's words in English that I
don't understand if you try to talk to me about mechanics or something like
that it's not that I'm not fluent in English I'm just not familiar with that
kind of technical jargon because I don't ever use it right so when you're fluent
in a language you understand everything except for the things that you're not
really familiar with or maybe once in a while I hear a new idiom and I'm like
how I've never heard that before or I hear a new slang term that the
younger generations are using okay I feel so old saying that but seriously
I'm starting to realize how old I am because I'm hearing slang and I'm just
like oh my gosh kids are saying that these days anyways so you know you're
fluent when you understand English pretty much perfectly one dialect of
English because there are so many different dialects you guys I went to
Ireland and I could barely understand people there so don't feel like you need
to understand every single native speaker that's just not realistic okay
next you know you're fluent when you can speak automatically without translating
in your head you don't even have to think about what you're gonna say or how
you're gonna say it you just speak you don't worry when you're in conversations
like oh my gosh how should i form this sentence what verb tense should I use
you're not even having those thoughts those thoughts are not occurring to you
because you just open your mouth and you speak and you know exactly what to say
and you know you're fluent when you make very few errors and you're able to catch
your own mistakes okay so you pretty much sound like a native speaker you
speak the way that they speak you make minimal errors and when you do make
errors you're able to catch them and if you're not sure if you can catch your
errors just write a page in English or make a video that's two to three minutes
in English and then read what you wrote and watch your video and try to catch
your own mistakes if you can do it cool you're pretty close to fluency okay next
you know you're fluent when you can use a wide range of vocabulary and
expressions and you don't feel like you're repeating yourself I remember
when I was still learning Spanish I would say the same things over and over
another way of expressing it for example I would say ah que interesante
mm que interesante mm que interesante which means how interesting right but I
would say that for everything you would tell me something cool and I'd say oh
how interesting you would tell me something interesting and I would say oh
how interesting you would tell me something normal and I would say oh how
interesting I literally did not know other ways to express my feelings and my
emotions and as you get more and more fluent that becomes easier expressing
your ideas expressing your emotions you do it effortlessly right and you're not
searching for words like how can I say this and you don't have that annoying
feeling on the inside where you're just like man I keep saying the same thing
over and over again I'm so tired of feeling repetitive okay when you're
fluent you don't have that okay next you know you're fluent when you can explain
and talk about a variety of subjects that are conversational and technical I
know a lot of English learners who can explain everything about their job
perfectly in English but then when you want to talk you know about something
totally conversational like hey what'd you do yesterday or what do you eat for
dinner or what are you gonna do later today they just freeze and they're like
you know because that normal everyday vocabulary they just don't have it or
they keep forgetting it or something like that but when you're fluent you can
talk just as easily about casual conversation type stuff as you would
about your work and the technical jargon that you use there now if you can't talk
about what you do at work and you lack that technical jargon then that's one
thing you know you have to improve if you do know the technical jargon of your
work and you can communicate that easily in English but you struggle with regular
conversations then you know that your focus should be on talking with people
everyday in English improving that area okay next you know you're fluent when
you use grammar tenses naturally and easily and there's really no such thing
as a difficult tense right when tenses are difficult for you that's because
you're either a beginner or you're at an intermediate stage of learning where you
have not become familiarized with all the tenses and
have not been exposed to them enough to know when and how to use them because
grammar is actually something we internalize when you're first learning
it when your teacher is first teaching you they break it down into every little
structure and they explain every scenario in situation and time and tense
how it's used etc etc but eventually you internalize that and you get to a point
where stuff just sounds right you're like I don't even remember what this
grammar tenses called I just know how to say it and that's that okay
so that happens when you are fluent things just sound right you know it's
right because it sounds right you might not even remember the grammar tense and
you start making the same mistakes that native speakers make this happens to me
in Spanish I got so fluent that I started misspelling words the same way
native Spanish speakers misspelled words I would confuse the B and the V for
example which if you're a Spanish speaker you know that that's a very
common mistake it's crazy because I used to have a flawless spelling in Spanish
but that's when I was at a more intermediate level and I still had all
the rules totally ingrained in my mind and I
remembered everything you could ask me anything about grammar and I knew the
answer but I couldn't speak the language so now that I've internalized the
language I literally go through the same things that native speakers go through
and this is gonna happen to you too this is another thing when you get so fluent
in English there will be certain things that you will struggle to express in
your native language because you just realize there's no translation you
learned it in English you understand it in English and then when someone from
your family says hey explain this thing to me you're like oh I want to tell you
how it is or what it is but it just doesn't make sense unless I say it in
English you have internalized the language then you realize that languages
are just different codes of expressing ideas and some things literally can't be
translated or they're very difficult to translate this actually happened to me
the other day when one of my friends asked me about mate mate is a typical
tea in Argentina it's a specific drink okay that people have there and they
wanted to know all the details like how do you prepare this tea how do you drink
it how do you share it because you know you pass it around and you share it
with multiple people that might sound disgusting if you're a germaphobe but people do
this all the time and it's very normal anyways I was trying to explain it and
my brain would not think in English I could not explain this whole ritual in
English it was so hard it was actually exhausting and I was just like oh my
gosh I wish I could explain this in Spanish because it's just so hard to say
in English okay so that is gonna happen to you when you get super fluent in
English you're gonna struggle to express things in your native language because
certain things just don't translate well now another thing that happens when
you're fluent in English is that English words and grammar and sentence
structures start to affect your native language okay you may even mess up in
your native language this happens to me sometimes frequently I've even said
things like yeah I shut it off the water instead of saying I shut the water off
that is a sentence structure that comes from Spanish and that's how I would say
in Spanish so sometimes those grammatical structures slip into my
English and I just mess up it's a really crazy phenomenon but it happens it's
quite common okay next you know you're fluent in English when native and
non-native English speakers are impressed with your English they go wow
you speak really well they're shocked by your pronunciation they're shocked by
how natural you sound and they congratulate you on it because they're
really impressed so that happens when you're fluent in English and if it has
happened to you already congratulations that's awesome
next you know you're fluent in English when you understand jokes understanding
humor in a foreign language is one of the most difficult things because you
don't just have to understand the language and the grammar you have to
understand the culture you have to understand yeah the culture that's it
basically you have to understand why it's funny you have to read between the
lines let's just say that so anyhow you know you're fluent in English when you
can watch comedians and understand what they say now some jokes might still go
over your head okay but for the most part you're surprised like wow I totally
understood that I got that and you can laugh at it and understand the humor the
same way a native speaker would next you know you're fluent in English when
don't get stuck when you're speaking and if you do get stuck you're quickly able
to get around whatever is making you stuck and think of a new way to say
whatever you're going to say I get stuck when I speak English sometimes I'm like
oh man am I even making sense right now am I saying this way I want to say it
and I realize that maybe I'm not making the most sense so I look for a new way
to say whatever I'm gonna say and when you're fluent in English you do the same
thing you don't get stuck first of all on basic stuff
but then if you do get stuck with a bigger idea that you're trying to
express you just look for a new way to say it and you do the best that you can
next you know you're fluent when you can speak coherently for any length of time
whether that is 30 seconds 2 minutes or whether you're giving an entire speech
in front of an auditorium of a bunch of people what I have found
after doing hours and hours and hours of lessons with English learners and
talking with a non-native English speakers is that when you're at an
intermediate level a lot of times you tend to talk in circles you end up it's
like the more you talk the less sense you make so my tip for you here I don't
just want to leave you with this problem is make shorter sentences and pause more
between your sentences and don't try to talk for too long if you're not sure if
you're making sense and if you start saying the same thing over and over
again to try to make it make sense but you're just rambling kind of like what
I'm doing right now then just stop okay take a break let the other person speak
in the conversation and let there be a natural flow of ideas from one person to
the other next you know you're fluent when you are not afraid of speaking with
native speakers now I know that some people are shy by Nature
or they're naturally introverts even native English speakers sometimes don't
want to talk with other native English speakers they get shy when they have to
do a presentation or something like that so that's not exactly what I'm talking
about because that exists and that can exist even in your native language but I
just mean you don't have those thoughts in your head like oh my gosh are they
gonna understand me what are they gonna think are they gonna make fun of me you
don't have those negative thoughts because you know you're fluent in
English and so if you don't feel comfortable speaking with a native
speaker it's probably more related to your personality and you
we don't like doing presentations and stuff like that even in your native
language and it's not about your lack of fluency in English next you know you're
fluent in English when you can comfortably maintain a conversation and
maintaining a conversation means it's shared fifty-fifty between two people or
if there's more people everyone is participating equally in the
conversation and you're able to exchange ideas transition to new topics
pause appropriately share anecdotes tell jokes and you just feel comfortable
you're able to maintain a conversation and there's no like awkward silences
like okay what should we say now should we talk about now sometimes that can
happen even in your native language maybe if you're not very good at making
conversation but for the most part when you're fluent in a language you should
have the same conversation skills that you have in your native language okay
you should at least be at the same level there okay I know this video is long but
we still have a few more so hang in here with me and we'll get through this list
you know you're fluent in English when you feel like yourself okay when you
don't feel like you're being fake when you don't feel like you're a different
person I remember when I first went to Argentina and I had to speak Spanish for
literally like the first two to three years I was so frustrated because I was
like I just don't feel like myself I'm not Stefanie when I being Stefanie
okay what does that mean that means that I can talk with anybody I have no
problem talking with strangers I have no problem presenting I like telling jokes
these are things that make up Who I am it's part of my personality but then
when I would be in Argentina living there and being around native speakers
it was like I was a completely different person and it was so frustrating because
I didn't have the confidence to tell jokes I lacked fluency for the first
couple of years and I was constantly stuck inside my own head thinking like
oh nobody's gonna understand me I couldn't relax I couldn't enjoy the
practicing process of improving the language I just didn't feel like myself
I wasn't able to maintain conversations easily I didn't feel comfortable talking
with strangers finally all of that went away okay and I was able to overcome all
of those issues and again I talk about it in the video that I linked
earlier where I'm speaking Spanish so if you want to learn more about that go watch
that video next you know you're fluent in English when you understand
subtle differences between very similar sentences and you're able to pick up on
people's attitudes behind what they say like they might say one thing but you
know they really mean something else okay when you understand English like
that that's exactly how native English
speakers are able to understand the language and that's a whole different
level basically of fluency okay and finally you know you're fluent in
English when you avoid using direct translations because you know that
direct translations just don't work you don't translate things directly from
your native language into English because you know that native speakers
don't say those things you speak the way a native speaker speaks and you're able
to communicate ideas so you can have an idea in your native language and then
communicate that same idea in English but you do not directly translate it
word-for-word because again you know that is not how native speakers speak so
you communicate the idea the way a native speaker would communicate the
idea okay and I actually forgot one so I have one more you know you're fluent in
English when your pronunciation and your accent do not interfere with your
communication native speakers and non-native speakers are able to
understand you easily okay so that is it for this video I hope you found it
helpful you should be able to go through each one of these points and analyze hey
is this true for me or is this not true that will help you know what you have
accomplished and what you still need to work on so I want to hear in the
comments what you think of this list what are you able to do that I mentioned
and what are you still struggling with okay and did I forget anything is there
any other weird thing or interesting thing that happens the more fluent you
get in English I know a lot of you guys are very advanced you're fluent English
speakers already and so I want to hear from you what your
journey has been like and what changes you noticed along the way because I
don't know about you guys but when I was learning Spanish I could really notice
changes in my brain like the way my brain was processing information and
thinking it was very interesting and so again I'm presenting this video to you
as someone who's looking at this whole journey from the other side I can
confidently say I am a fluent Spanish speaker and these are the things that I
have noticed analyzed and observed about what happens when you are fluent so that
you can have some way to test yourself and know how close you are to this or
how far you are from it okay alright so that is it if you want a guide on
practicing your English with native speakers meeting native English speakers
online interacting with us so you can practice your English improve your
English learn new vocabulary build your confidence etc I have a guide on my
website I'm going to link it here in the description I always share this guide
because it is literally the most popular one on my entire website
EnglishFullTime.com I am here to help you with your confidence your fluency in
English and your professional communication skills your networking
skills your conversation skills I want you to be as confident as fluent and as
successful as possible I do not want English to be a barrier in your life
because I know how frustrating it is to learn and master a foreign language and
then work in that foreign language oh my gosh don't even get me started on that
we'll have to talk about that in another video anyhow that's it you guys have a