Transcription
If you're new here, I'm originally from Russia, but the last two years I've been living in Mexico. I come from a simple Russian family, and we never traveled abroad together.
There are so many people on YouTube who show by example that you can learn English by yourself and you can become advanced in English by yourself, even if you don't have an opportunity to travel to an English-speaking country. I've realized recently that oftentimes we create hurdles for ourselves when in reality we have this vast field of opportunities. And right now, because of the internet and YouTube, we have so much more opportunities. So, in this video, I want to share five simple habits that help me improve my English and become a fluent speaker.
Start my day with listening to something in English. When I was a college student in Russia, I had to wake up super early every single morning and catch a train to go to college. While I was on the train, I had an hour to kill. Yeah, it was pretty intense. So, what I would do is I would listen to something in English. I would either listen to a podcast in English, or I would watch a YouTube video in English.
If you really think about it, this simple habit didn't take any of my time because I use this principle of habit stacking. I tied my new habit of English learning, of listening to something in English, to something I already did on a regular basis. I knew that I had to go to college five times a week, so it was a lot easier for me to, you know, tie this habit of listening to something in English to my commute because I knew it was happening, you know, because I had to go to college, I had to attend all my classes. And now this habit is so ingrained into my routine that every time I call an Uber, I'm not a college student anymore, so I don't have to go to class every single morning. But every time I call an Uber, maybe I have to go to the gym, for example, I always want to listen to something in English. I want to listen to a podcast, guys, or I want to watch a YouTube video because for me, when I'm going somewhere, that's the time when I can listen to something in English and work on my listening skills.
Revise my vocabulary cards every day. I started creating online flashcards for the first time in 2020, and since then, I've been a huge fan of the space repetition technology. It has helped me a lot. It really helped me when I was in college and I had to learn Chinese because the Chinese language was my major. Believe it or not, I feel like right now my Chinese is definitely a lot worse because I don't practice it regularly. Because right now, all my time is dedicated to Spanish, obviously Spanish and English. But because my English is already pretty good, I can actually use English to learn Spanish, and that's exactly what I did when I was in college. I used English to learn Chinese. And obviously, I had to somehow memorize new words. And to be honest, at the very beginning, I actually used paper flashcards. I just bought a stack of Post-its, and I would actually like write every single word and its translation. But then I realized that for me personally, it was not very effective because I wanted to add a picture, and I'm not very good at painting or drawing, so I didn't actually want to do it myself. And that's how I came across SRS, space repetition system, and I'm using this technology, this system, even right now.
The approach I'm using right now is I dedicate one day per week for adding all of the new flashcards because I don't have enough time to do it every single day because I have a job, I have to work, I have to go to the gym, you know, take care of my physical and mental health, and sometimes I don't have enough time to do that, like to create all of the new flashcards. So that's why I prefer to do it on the weekend, and then during the week, I revise all the flashcards. Usually, it's like 20 to 50 flashcards every single day, unless I skip a day. Obviously, you shouldn't be skipping any days because otherwise, you will have a huge pile of flashcards waiting to be revised.
This simple habit of reviewing all of my vocabulary really helps me when I have to speak English, when I have to record YouTube videos, or when I decide to journal in English, when I actually have to, you know, use all my knowledge and all the words and expressions I know. And if you're looking for an app that will help you create and memorize flashcards, make sure to give Duo cards a try. This app uses this effective space repetition method that I love and talk about all the time. With Duo cards, you can save new words from your phone or just by using their Chrome extension and learn languages by watching movies and videos. You can save your own phrases by using their integrated translator or study the words from the sets of cards available on their app. These sets are created by their community, reviewed by Duo cards, and sorted by popularity. And if you're a team feature, you can create your own sets for your students to use. When you're watching a movie or reading an article, you can just tap on this word and see its translation and then save it as a new flashcard. The Duo cards app is available for download in the App Store and Google Play. You can, of course, always use it on your computer or use their Chrome extension. The app has already been downloaded more than 2 million times and has users from over 180 different countries. So if you want to give Duo cards a try and learn new words, make sure to click the link in the description.
Journal about my life. We all know that journaling can have a lot of positive effects on mental health, and I'm definitely a person who struggles with anxiety from time to time, so journaling is something that I have to do consistently. And now, actually recording this video for you guys, I realized that I haven't journaled in quite a while. I really need to get back into my journaling routine. But a few years ago, I was journaling every single day because it was helping me improve my English. First of all, because I was only journaling in English. But at the same time, it had this huge therapeutic effect. I could express my thoughts and feelings without any fear or judgment, and this helped me release all of my pent-up emotions and gain a sense of relief.
Journaling in a foreign language can also help you see your improvement, like your personal improvement in this foreign language because when you journal consistently, you can go back to your old entries, you can see your old entries and be like, "Oh my God, I can't imagine that's what I was worried about, for example, or that's how I was writing at that time in English. Now I can do it a lot better." And for example, oh, maybe you find a mistake in your old entries, so it's a great way to see your progress because oftentimes, when we don't record our progress, it's kind of like, you know, when you, for example, let's say you have siblings, right? You grow up with your siblings, and you don't even notice your siblings grow up. Obviously, we all grow up, but you don't notice it. But for example, let's say your distance and that only comes and visits you guys like once a year. Every time she comes, she says, "Oh my God, you guys are so tall now, you look completely different." But for you, it's the same. So it's the same principle with language learning. A lot of students feel like they're not improving when in fact they are. We just need to have this good, maybe system of tracking our progress, and it can help some of you guys a lot.
I wanted to show you guys all the journals that I brought here to Mexico with me. So, so these are the journals I brought with me from Russia. And this little guy is actually almost full. I'm gonna put this journal right here for now. And yeah, if I open it up, honestly, it has so many memories and everything. And it's crazy, like I have entries here, the oldest one is January 2nd, 2022. So it's crazy, and it's all in English. It's all my thoughts from January 2022 in English. It's been almost two years now, which is crazy. And the second guy right here is a little bit thicker, as you can see, and it's actually more of a planner. So if you're like into planning and bullet journaling, you might enjoy this kind of thing a lot because as you can see, it looks like this. So it's kind of already organized for you, like I didn't create all of this, for example, here. So it can help you like organize your life, and obviously, if you do it in English, you'll be also improving your English skills along the way.
Work on my accent weekly. I still remember this day pretty clearly because at the end of 2019, I had a conversation with my English University professor, and she told me that I should start working on my accent in English a little bit more because by that time, my English was already pretty good. The only problem was that I had a very clear Russian accent. Maybe not like these, but, you know, pretty bad. It's so weird for me to speak like this right now because it sounds so foreign. And so, obviously, I had to choose one accent and stick to it, and I decided to choose the American accent, like the standard American pronunciation. I watched a lot of YouTube videos, and like I got a lot of books that really helped me nail down specific sounds I had problems with. For a lot of Russian speakers, the main problem is with the sounds "l" and "r". Like for me, I could understand the difference. I was always saying, "I live in Russia," or "Oh, I'm gonna leave now." Like, everything was the same. So obviously, it took a lot of practice. It took a lot of work, but it was all worth it.
Of course, right now, I know that I still sound a little bit foreign, right? I don't sound 100% American, which is absolutely okay. But I know that if I want to, I can get there. I just feel like I'm getting there slowly. Like I don't have this goal of, "Oh my God, I want to be indistinguishable from an American." No, for me, it's sort of fine to have like a little bit of an accent when I speak English. The most important thing for me is developing my fluency, and that's something I'm focusing on right now. If you're curious, guys, here is a little part from my old YouTube video, so you can compare the way I speak English now to the way I spoke English before. So we're gonna start with a standard American English accent. I decided to start with this accent because this is probably the accent you're learning if you want to speak in American English, and this is probably the accent you're taught in schools or in college. Again, if you are taught American English speak.
Even if I feel shy, I'm a very shy person, and I always tell people that I'm an introvert. I feel like maybe you guys don't think this way because you think, "Oh, I'm creating all those YouTube videos for many people to watch." But in reality, right now, I'm alone. I'm alone in my room. There's no one. I'm just talking to my camera. And I feel like that's the reality of being a YouTuber. I honestly believe that a lot of YouTubers are introverted, maybe even most YouTubers are introverted. It really depends. But obviously, I can only talk about myself, and I know that I'm more of an introverted person. And I feel extremely shy when I have to make new connections, when I have to speak a foreign language in front of new people. So a few years ago, it was very hard for me to make myself go out there and start talking to new people. But to be completely honest, now I know that it's a skill. It's a skill, and it can be trained if you want to. And at that time, my goal was to improve my speaking skills, and I had to go out there. I had to talk to new people. And the way I did it was with speaking clubs.
First, I attended the speaking club in my university. Of course, I was only talking to to Russian people. I was only talking to the students who were at my university. But for me, it was fine as long as I was speaking English. Then I decided to go to a different, like, a bigger speaking club. And yes, from time to time, we had foreigners there, which was difficult and scary, but it was my goal. And then I realized that I was ready to join, like, an online speaking club and talk to people from a lot of different countries. So that's what I did. Of course, I also practiced a lot with my teacher, and I had a lot of different teachers throughout my whole journey. And I feel like speaking to a native speaker, especially with a teacher, is extremely beneficial. It's nice when someone can give you feedback. It's nice when someone can tell you exactly what to work on and what to improve. And you know that you might feel embarrassed and shy, but you have to remember that the only way to achieve greatness is by embracing discomfort and stepping outside your comfort zone. That's where the magic happens. And I couldn't agree more with this quote.
If you need a resource to learn new vocabulary in a foreign language, in English, or any other language you're learning, you absolutely have to check out Duo cards. Again, the link will be down in the description. If you like this video, don't forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel, and I'll see you guys in my next video.