Practice English Speaking&Listening with: How FLUENT in English do you want to be? A1-A2-B1-B2-C1-C2??

I was about to go outside, right?

But I tried to sit down out there and it's just too windy. It's just too much noise

so, I was worried this microphone was gonna pick that all up so, I had to come inside and

Sit down on the couch here, guys. How you going?

I wanted to chat to you today about how deep you should go when learning English.

So, I... this came up,

I recently put up a video saying that I was interested in learning Italian, Spanish and French

As well as Portuguese at the same time. Now, looking back, that was probably very, very

ambitious in fact

over-ambitious and

It really ties in with

how deep I want to go in those languages, so

For a long time I've been watching guys on YouTube who are polyglots, right?

You guys have probably seen those polyglots who

Like to learn a lot of different languages and they tend to learn them for a year or two

Intensively, and then they move on to the next language,

but something I've always wondered with these guys is how deep they get into each language, to what level they get

in each language

You know, if you were to talk about the different levels A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C 2

At what level can you can you get to in those languages?

when you just spend 1 or 2 years studying that in your own time, and I guess

the biggest thing is that

Every time I saw these guys speaking my assumption was always that they are a native level, right? When you've got no background in

The language that you're hearing someone else speak

It's quite easy to overestimate their abilities in that language

Right? That happens to me sometimes with Portuguese where I'll be speaking with Kel or with other Brazilians and I can speak

Moderately, well, I would consider myself basically

Fluent, very basically in that I can communicate, I can talk to people who don't speak English and I can get my ideas across

Although it's very clunky. I make a lot of errors and it's not as, it's nowhere near as good as my English, right?

But I often have people ask me

How did you get so good at Portuguese it seems like you speak like a native?

When that is so far from the case, so made me realize that a lot of these polyglots

You would imagine, and again I can't tell you, maybe they are freaks who do speak

Every single language as fluently as they speak their mother language

But I really doubt it and I would say that a lot of them tend to

Overplay it, show off a bit and

Whether or not they explicitly tell other people that their levels are very high

They allow other people to think that their levels are very high

in all of the languages that they're learning, right? Or at least more so than they probably think themselves and

So I noticed that at least with French more recently that I spent years learning at school and then I spent another few years recently

Maybe two years ago learning intensely on my own. I got it to a pretty good level, but it quickly

Diminished and I lost the ground that I had

Sort of made in that language really quickly, but I found that it

Speaking has diminished a lot

I can't express my ideas anywhere near as well as I used to be able to, but I can hear and listen to things

Incredibly well and I still understand the majority of what's going on, you know, although I need practice, obviously.

So, what am I talking to you about this today? I was reassessing my sort of plan with learning Italian,

French

Portuguese and Spanish at the same time and there were two things that I sort of came up

I was chatting to a friend, Shana, about this and she's like one; these languages are too similar and you're gonna confuse yourself and

Two; if you're learning so many at once, you may be able to sort of, you know, learn a little bit from each one

But you won't get very far with them

So, made me sit down and think what do I really want out of the languages that I'm learning?

Do I want the same thing from all of the languages that I'm learning and

When will I be happy and what level in each of these languages

Am I aiming for and I had to sit down and I was thinking ok,

Portuguese is the primary language for me. My wife speaks Portuguese, our son who is going to be born in three or so months

will hopefully be learning Portuguese from birth

Hopefully, will be learning Portuguese from birth, and I want to be able to speak to him as effortlessly as possible

I'm never going to be native

But I want to aim

To be as good as possible

So, straight off the bat. It's obvious that I need to spend the majority of my time

focusing on Portuguese and not

Focusing on the other languages that may be useful in other realms, other areas of my life at some point in the future,

but current, you know, currently they're not anywhere near as useful as

Portuguese is which I'm speaking on a daily basis, so I want to get a very, very, very, very good level of

Portuguese, alright? So

aside from that so, that's sort of shifted me to now focusing effectively 80% of my time on

Portuguese, and I dabble a little bit with the others thinking that you know

I'll just expose myself to Italian and Spanish a little bit over time

And when I have more time and when my Portuguese is at a much higher level, maybe I'll focus on them more heavily

What was I going to get on to with Portuguese? But yeah, I really

reassessed it, it's so funny, I speak with Kel every day in Portuguese and

For probably five six hours a day

But it's always the same stuff, right? So, I've really noticed recently when I catch up with other friends who are Brazilians

Especially with a group of them

Every time I do that, it's a bloody strong

reality check

Every time I feel like I'm gaining a lot of ability in Portuguese

I can speak with Kel

Naturally about the things we're always talking about which tend to be the same things, which is why I'm getting good at saying

The phrases that I'm using all the time, but whenever there's a group of them

it's like the difficulty level goes from what I'm used to, to hardcore mode and

I get a reality check and realized that my Portuguese is horrible

Compared to what

I thought it was when I was just speaking one-on-one with Kel and so, that you could go either way

Right? You could use that to be a bit

Demotivated and not feel good about yourself, but I use that to be like, alright,

I'm going to push harder, I'm gonna try and learn even more. I'm gonna try getting even deeper into

this language and

That's why I sort of wanted to make this video today. I wanted to ask you guys when you're learning English

How deep do you want to go? What level do you want to get to? And

What is your plan for getting to that level? Because I found with myself with learning Portuguese and French and Italian and Spanish

quite often

It's pretty easy to think you're doing a lot

When you're playing around with duolingo, when you're watching YouTube, when you're reading a book, you know, but you're not really

actively

studying

Right? So, it's easy to get distracted and it's easy to think you're doing a lot when you may not really be doing a lot

And it's the same. Maybe you're in Australia. Maybe you're living in Melbourne. You're from China. You're from Japan

you're from France you from Brazil and

You go out and you can sort of kind of talk with people, your levels sort of basic fluency, right?

But you know that every time you're in a group you find it incredibly difficult or every time you watch movies

You get a bit lost because there's still a lot of vocab you don't know

What is your plan to learn that stuff, right? To learn that

Vocabulary, to learn those expressions, to be able to understand when multiple people are speaking all at once in a group

what is your plan to get from where you currently are to get to the point where you can understand those people and,

I guess more importantly, is that your goal, right? Because for me in

languages like

French, Italian and Spanish, it would be cool. It'll be amazing to speak them close to natively,

but I'm pretty aware of the the chances of that happening are incredibly, incredibly small

Right? So, I have to sort of decide, ok

I have to give myself a reality check and say I'm just gonna study those languages to try and get a bit of exposure

Because I just want the ability to sort of be able to communicate if I'm on holiday

Right? So, I know, I don't want to go too deep in those languages because it would mean sacrificing

How deep I can go in Portuguese and that is my primary goal, right?

So, if you're learning English, I want you to be thinking about how deep do you want to go?

Do you want to get to the point where you speak like a native speaker? You know, if that, if that is the

Highest goal possible, whether or not the average person can do it, if you imagine that is the extreme and

say at the bottom of that the

The basic ability is being able to ask for directions, you know, basic, basic, basic fluency, communicate when you're on holiday

Where between those two extremes do you want to go?

Firstly, how deep do you want to go in the language? And

Secondly, how are you going to get there?

Ok?

So, that's basically why I wanted to do this video today

To chat you about that and get you thinking about these things in English because maybe you don't

Want to get to a point where you sound

Like a native speaker when you're speaking English, right? Maybe that's not your interest at all

Maybe your basic,

your basic fluency in that language is all that you're after, you just want to be able to travel and

communicate with people even if you can't understand conversations about

Astrophysics with ten people talking in a group. Maybe that's not what you want, right?

And so, if that's not what you want, you shouldn't give yourself a hard time for not achieving that, right?

But if it is something that you want, you should also, you know,

pull your thumb out, pull your finger out, get off your ass and

work out a plan of how to

Approach that goal, that sort of destination, whether or not you'll ever get there

You need to be aiming for it and at least moving in that direction as quickly and as efficiently

As possible. Ok, so that's probably enough from me rabbiting on today,

But it's what I'm thinking about with Portuguese at the moment. I want to get deep in the language

I want to reach as higher level of fluency,

Of proficiency as I can as soon as I can so it means doing more, more, more, more more

Every day listening to podcasts, watching movies with subtitles on without subtitles

multiple times

Going to parties with brazilians, speaking for eight hours. I did that last weekend

We had four people come over to have dinner with us, have lunch with us. They stayed from 12 until 8 or 9 p.m

And we just spoke Portuguese the whole time

I was so exhausted after that, but it was such a good experience

And every time I noticed how much my Portuguese jumps up a little bit, right? It's it's that

Those little gains where you've learned a bunch of vocab. You've done a lot of exercise, right?

And so yeah, I don't know where I was going with that point

But that happened to me recently and that's kind of what's motivated me and shown me how much I still have to learn

It's made me want to work out a plan to get to that

That goal

And it's also made me see that I want to get to that goal

Ok? And how I need to treat the other languages that I'm also interested in learning

In the future. Ok. Anyway, thank you so much for joining me, guys!

I am Pete from the Aussie English podcast

if you're interested in learning Australian English or advanced English check out the podcast and if you would like to get access to my

50-plus

courses, English courses, advanced English courses, pronunciation, connected speech, expressions

And just conten,t right? I like to talk about Australia, about biology, about all kinds of things, history and culture

Go to theAussieEnglishclassroom.com and you can try it for a small fee for the first month

Get in there, guys

You've got nothing to lose and your English will skyrocket after a very short period of time of working your ass off

I'll see you in there!