How I Became Fluent in English WITHOUT a Teacher

at 15 I spelled please as P L I S and of course spoke zero English by 30 I was a certified C2 level teacher without ever leaving Brazil my home country by now I must have helped thousands of people speak English more fluently as a teacher but here's my confession i never had a teacher myself so in today's episode I'm breaking down my journey from zero to C2 level my journey proves you don't need an English teacher to become fluent but my story also shows why you should probably get a teacher anyway are you ready

so sit down relax because now it's story time hey there how's it going thiago here and welcome to another episode of the podcast in case you're new here this podcast was created with the intention of helping intermediate and advanced learners of English communicate with more confidence more accuracy more clarity and more awareness if this sounds like something you want for yourself and your English go ahead and subscribe to this channel and if you are listening on Spotify or Apple podcasts just follow the show because that way you won't miss a single new episode so about

a year ago I posted the very first episode of the podcast here on the channel and in that episode I share in detail my whole story of how I went from zero A1 level up to C2 by the way if you want to watch my story in detail I really recommend you check out that episode in case you haven't seen it yet i'm going to leave the link in the description of the video for you to check it out later but for now just stick here with me stick with me because I'm going to briefly

brush on some of my highlights as an English learner but also talking a little bit about the need of a teacher should you get a teacher yes or not so let's talk a little bit about that well let's start from the beginning the ordinary world let's say I was just another teenager another Brazilian teenager and I was just another statistic now um I shared in that first episode that about 95% of Brazilians don't know any English and only 1% is actually really fluent these statistics are from the British Council by the way now maybe that

study is a little bit older by now maybe nowadays with the advent of the internet and channels like mine teaching English on a daily basis here on a weekly basis and access to the internet to courses maybe these figures now in Brazil have improved a little bit i would like to believe maybe instead of 1% maybe two 3% of Brazilians nowadays could consider themselves truly fluent in English even so it's fair to say that in a country of almost 300 million people the fact that just a tiny minority of that population speaks English fluently that

should tell you something so there I was a 15 another statistic all right now one thing that I had back then that it was abundant was time time i had abundant free time and flexibility as a teenager when I started learning English by myself this is one precious resource that I know that maybe for many of you out there watching this now you don't have anymore free time and it was interesting because at 15 years old for some reason I realized that if I wanted more opportunities in my life I needed to master the English

language i needed to learn this language that's how my desire arose but as I was thinking about my story with English learning a little bit deeply I realized that as a teenager I was always very introspective as a matter of fact I am a very introspective person even nowadays believe it or not but as a teenager I used to love being alone just with myself and my thoughts i used to think a lot nowadays I realize that combining my introspection as a teenager with the luxury of time of free time that I had allowed me

to figure it out on my own from a relatively young age you know in many ways I feel fortunate for having realized the importance of English in my life early on relatively early at 15 most people only realize how important English is in their lives later once they are already grown-ups in the workplace they see the necessity of knowing English at work but by now they are already in their 20s well into their 30s and then they start taking English learning more seriously so I know that in that sense I was very fortunate for having

realized this relatively young at 15 but here's the thing I had a lot of free time back then to do that like I just said that extremely enormous amount of free time I had with my introspective nature allow me to come to that epiphany early on but I know that for many people that is not the case most people realize the importance of knowing English later in life then I applied the self-study approach i started studying English with old course books and grammar books that I borrowed from a friend of mine i didn't have a

teacher back then i couldn't afford a teacher so self-discipline was my mentor so I committed to studying English with those books one hour per day including weekends and I did that for at least a couple years now you have to keep in mind that I was able to dedicate one hour a day every single day including weekends to my English studies because I had no family obligations back then no work deadlines no children needing attention it was just me and my borrowed textbooks you see where I'm going with this also in the beginning of my

journey I had to manage without speaking practice because I didn't have any conversation partners or any opportunity to practice English speaking so it was just me and the books also because of that because of that lack of support in my immediate environment I know that that made me spend a lot of hours figuring things out that maybe a teacher could have taught me in just a few minutes let me give an example connected speech i learned about English connected speech by myself guys i figured out these patterns over a series of months if not years

consuming English content regularly back then you know watching lots of DVDs with the subtitles in English listening closely pausing rewinding listening and repeating and then little by little I started to notice those patterns that native speakers always apply when they speak fast English and then little by little I started to put together all these patterns it took me a long time to figure that thing out by myself a good teacher would have probably explained all those patterns to me in a few weeks in a month of classes maybe you see now this is actually one

of the reasons why I created my pronunciation course the sounds of English i took all the knowledge that I acquired on my own about katic speech about English pronunciation and I packaged it into a course that has a logical sequence has a beginning a middle and an end and now it's available to you at a very low price I would add you see so now you have the benefit of accessing that knowledge that for me took me months and years to get with a course that I put together you see so this was definitely a

downside of not having a teacher around a good teacher around the journey took years my journey to get where I am today with my English speaking and English level took years of consistent daily practice and I know that for many adults this is a luxury that you simply don't have then I started working my first job at 18 years old at a drugstore in my hometown now even as I started working I was still young single and I could dedicate my evenings and weekends to language learning i lived with my parents back then so most

of the necessities of the house my parents covered it wasn't me even though I was already working at 18 so all I had was time for myself my only responsibility back then was to myself so I kept studying on my own even when I started working at 18 and then I finally became an English teacher at 21 years old and I never stopped i've been a teacher now for almost 20 years then I achieved my Cambridge advanced certificate my C1 certificate in 2008 and then years later in 2017 to be exact I got my Cambridge

proficiency certificate the C2 level by the way I actually have it right here look this is my Cambridge C2 level certificate by the way to those of you haters and trolls out there who think that my level of English is not a C2 level here it is here's my Cambridge proficiency certificate now this is the highest level a non-native speaker of English can achieve in terms of proficiency it doesn't mean that once you have this you're done you should still keep studying and keep the cont with the language but this is definitely the highest uh

checkpoint or the highest victory you can get to as a non-native learner of English speaker of English and to those of you who still doubt my level of English here's a an invitation to you try this exam if you think your English is so good if you are a non-native speaker of English and you think your English is so good try out the Cambridge C2 certificate do the test do the exam see how you fare and then let me know later how you do it so this journey of mine to go from A1 level zero

English up to C2 level took me well over 10 years it was a long journey to get there basically from my 15 up to my mid20s even to early 30s looking back I realized how fortunate I was to have had that time all that free time available to me to actually make it happen yes I had to work hard to get to this level i had to be proactive enough to do it but I also recognized that I had a lot of free time i had abundant free time to make it happen and here's also

something that I realized in my journey i also realized that I was fortunate enough to manage to always get jobs in which English was involved my whole working career my whole working life has been in English i've been working at language schools since I was 21 for example I started teaching English at 21 and I never stopped but even before that at 18 I got my job at the drugstore that job didn't necessarily require English speaking but because of the location of the drugstore many tourists would come in and then I would always help those

customers by speaking in English with them that was already uh good practice for me for my speaking skills indirectly speaking but then after that job at 19 I got a job at a call center and that job at the call center involved speaking with Americans on the phone 6 hours a day six days a week and I stayed there for a year now can you imagine what that experience of speaking to Americans on the phone 6 hours a day six days a week for a year and 19 years old can you imagine what that experience

did for my English speaking pronunciation and listening skills it helped me tremendously and I was still young enough to absorb a lot of that but again I realized that that is not the case for many people having that opportunity to work with something so intensely like that that involves uh English speaking and listening so intensely then I started teaching at 21 at language schools and I never stopped and this is also a bonus I believe because working at language schools allow me to work with other teachers other experienced teachers back then when I was more

of a green teacher like 20 years ago i was more inexperienced i still had to fix some things about my English skills i had the the privilege of working alongside other English teachers native and non-native who were more experienced teachers than me who knew better English than me back then and they would give me feedback about my language skills sometimes I would mispronounce something a fellow teacher would just correct me or provide me with a tip here or guide me towards uh preparing for an exam maybe by taking a look at my writing skills before

I set the C2 Cambridge exam so I had the luxury as well of working in an environment that not only required me to speak English every day with my students but also I was surrounded by English teachers and it was an environment that it was mainly focused on language acquisition why do I say this because even to those of you out there listening to this even to those of you who work at a multinational company nowadays and that use English every day for work native speakers in those companies usually don't care about correcting you and

I know because I've had that experience myself i have worked in companies with native speakers i've had students who work at multinational companies and who work directly with Americans or Brits or other countries they don't really care about correcting your English what they care about is running their business so if they can understand you in a meeting even with all the mistakes even with all the inaccuracies it's fine they understand your message let's focus on doing the business so the corporate world I don't believe is a welcoming or encouraging environment for language acquisition yes you

get good practice but you're not going to get to the highest level of proficiency you can get to if you just rely on the job you have in my case I was fortunate enough to not only work in English but to be surrounded by a place that was all about language acquisition it was all about English learning and I had professionals from that area working alongside me now I'm not saying that my journey was easy of course it wasn't easy to those of you who know my story or you know if you want a refresher

or you can watch the first episode of my podcast here where I go in more detail about my experience it wasn't easy but I also recognized that I was fortunate in many situations in many events and not everybody might have the same opportunities I did so yes I started learning English at 15 years old a teenager and most of the fluency and proficiency I have nowadays was acquired on my own through my own initiatives yes I had tons of help and support along the way but I never had a teacher to achieve that i never

had a person teaching me for months or years on end so yes it is possible for you to become fluent in English without an English teacher but let me flip this conversation now and tell you a little bit about my current perspective because you know the way I think nowadays at almost 40 is totally different from the way I used to think when I was 15 so what is my new perspective nowadays as an adult well today my life looks completely different i have a family i have children who need my attention i have work

responsibilities and countless other commitments in my life if I were starting my English journey today at the age I have today with the circumstances I have today guess what i wouldn't choose the same path I chose when I was 15 i would still study on my own of course but you know what i would probably get a teacher nowadays given my current life circumstances so what I want to propose in this episode is something more balanced because teachers are incredibly valuable yes like I said it is possible for you to become fluent in English without

a teacher but that doesn't mean that teachers are worthless they are incredibly valuable for example teachers can help you accelerate the learning process having a good teacher can save you years of trial and error i just talked about my pronunciation course i took many months or even about a year as I remember correctly to figure out the connected speech patterns of the English language now all this knowledge is available to you through my course for example so a good teacher can save you years of trial and error i want to propose in this episode that

you adopt more of a balance between self-study and professional guidance from a teacher i still believe that self-study is perhaps more important than just having a teacher i would say that 60 or 70% of the process is about your self-study how you manage studying by yourself and practicing by yourself through your own initiatives but having professional guidance from a teacher can expedite the process tremendously and also remember that investing in professional guidance from a teacher makes even more sense when time is your scarcest resource let's talk a little bit about the time versus money equation

here when you're young usually you are rich in time you have plenty of time but you are poor in money you have very little or no money if that's you right now self-study makes a lot of sense especially nowadays with YouTube and the internet and free resources online but when you're older and as you get older you become rich in experience and even possibly money you might not be incredibly rich nowadays as an adult but you have money nowadays you have a job you have a career you earn money for sure you earn much more

than you did when you were like 17 18 so you are richer in experience richer in money but probably poorer in time now you don't have as much free time as maybe you used to have when you were in your teens or even 20s so for you the teacher approach makes more sense getting a teacher to make you accountable in your learning makes more sense as a teenager I traded time for money because I had plenty of the former and none of the latter as an adult with responsibilities that equation flips investing money in good

teaching saves your most precious resource time let me list some of the benefits here that you can get by working with a teacher first of all personalized feedback this saves you months if not years of uncertainty how is my English doing what is my English level i don't know i have no idea i can't tell you how many comments I get here on my channel under my videos of people asking about their level things like Chiago if I could understand 90% of what you said in this video what does it mean what is my level

i can't tell you how many comments I get like this here on the channel thousands so having a teacher can take out the guesswork you have a better grasp a better idea and sense of what your current level is and most importantly what you have to do to move up to the next level also a good teacher can provide you with structured learning that eliminates wasted effort instead of spending years trying to figure stuff out on your own in a couple years or in a few months you can make significant progress if you are working

closely with a teacher also a teacher gives you accountability provides you with accountability that keeps you consistent despite your busy schedules now um I actually have a student like this i have a private student who told me this flat out when we started having classes together she said "Chad I need to pay for classes i need to have this moment where I am with you here having the class because I know that just on my own I can't do it i'm already too busy as it is and I don't have the the mental energy capacity

or even time to just study by myself i need this moment here so paying for the classes having the classes helps her remain accountable with her English studies now who should say she's wrong in thinking that way also a good teacher provides you with targeted practice that addresses your specific needs a good teacher knows exactly what your blind spots are and provides you with plenty of practice opportunities in classes in sessions in content for you to fix those mistakes and a good teacher doesn't do the work for you they make your work infinitely more efficient

so here's my closing statement for this episode first I shared a little bit of my story of how I was able to become fluent in English on my own most of the time without needing a teacher but then in the middle of the episode I flipped the script a little bit and also talked about the importance of having a teacher especially if time is not a luxury for you anymore so here's my closing statement listen balance balancing look my journey proves you don't necessarily need a teacher to become fluent in English with enough time dedication

and resourcefulness self-study can work but that doesn't mean it's the right choice for everyone if you're young with minimum responsibilities and maximum free time perhaps my teenage approach of self-study could work for you but if you are a busy adult who is juggling work family and countless other commitments investing in a teacher in a formal course isn't just helpful it's the smarter more efficient path the older I get the more I understand that time is our most precious resource while I'm proud of my self-taught journey I recognize that had I worked with a teacher I

might have achieved in two years what took me perhaps five or more to achieve so yes you can learn English without a teacher but that doesn't mean you should choose the path that respects your current life circumstances not just your budget sometimes the wisest investment isn't saving money it's saving time i hope you enjoyed this conversation today before we close this episode let's jump into the learner's corner for the learner's corner i have here an a message from Milena from Brazil let's listen hi Thiago my name is Milena i'm 27 years old i'm from Brazil

the first time that I study English I was a teenager i enrolled in a formal English course but I didn't like the methodology the teachers so I ended up quitting a few months later and two years and a half ago I started studying again but this time just by myself and I'm not studying for the purpose of getting a better job or college i'm just studying because I love the American culture you know I always was a curious kid i became a a curious adult so I'm always trying to learn new things and I'm a

huge fan of the the language the culture so yeah I I started studying again this this time just for the sake of learning and your YouTube channel has helped me so much enhanced my pronunciation my listening my grammar skills a lot grammar is a thing that I think that I should focus a little bit more but I I found myself making some ending mispronunciations so I would love to hear from you what tips you have for me uh and just keep doing your great work and that's it for now bye very nice Melena thank you

so much for your message i have to say that your English sounds great you have great fluency great pronunciation and great job for achieving the level you have today already your English is excellent you know uh you touched on a couple of things here that I think are interesting to mention first of all the fact that you tried a formal course in the past and you didn't like the teacher nor the methodology and then you quit that is definitely a downside of looking for uh formal courses and teachers the the truth is I think that

in every area guys okay not just English teaching the truth is that it is hard to find good teachers or good professionals so uh that can be a challenge like you know finding uh the right teacher to work with you finding the right course that works with you uh it doesn't mean that these resources are inefficient it's just that you know there are lots of bad professionals out there just like in any area uh the great thing about YouTube and the internet nowadays is that because of the internet uh we have access to maybe teachers

and educators that we would never have access to without the internet like for example you just mentioned that my channel here my videos have been helping you a lot with your English that's great it makes me very happy to to know that but you see uh that is only possible because nowadays we have platforms like YouTube and the internet that available if we didn't have that maybe you would have never heard of me you know and you would have never learned anything from me how crazy is that right so uh this is for everybody actually

do take advantage of the fact that we have technology and the internet nowadays um another thing that you mentioned that I found interesting Melena was the need to focus on grammar uh I absolutely agree with that you know um I think that uh people they don't give as much importance to studying grammar as they should you know I think that for some people uh especially they start learning young just exposure is enough for them to you know internalize the language very well but if you started learning English older I really recommend you take some of

your time to study the grammar to study the structures Now remember guys the problem is not studying grammar the problem is only studying grammar that's the problem so what I'm advocating for here is just you know a few minutes of your week to a certain grammar topic that you struggle with the most or that you've never heard of so make sure you you set aside time for that now as far as recommendations go uh for you Meena maybe uh you could consider something more structured I think you have already done a wonderful job of uh

learning the language by yourself most of the time by following content online and things of that nature but for example if you still struggle with some of the grammar and even some of the pronunciation maybe investing in private classes with a teacher a course that deals with what you're looking for or a structured program could be the next step for you i don't know if you know about my pronunciation course i don't know if you've bought it yet but getting my pronunciation course could be a good starting point to help you with your pronunciation uh

and also looking for maybe a private teacher yeah remember investing money in a solution like that is never a waste of money it's an investment in yourself all right uh but overall I would say good job for the level you have acquired until now and um keep learning keep studying and keep following the channel here it helps my work here on YouTube yeah to have engaged followers like herself if you guys want to do it just like me you can send me an auto message by going to speakpipe.com/englishwithchiago or you can send me an email

at [email protected] thank you so much for listening to me today don't forget to learn more about my pronunciation course but you can also check out my conversation club and my private community these are all paid resources that can help you take your English to the next level all the links are here in the description of the video also in the pin comment below in the show notes if you are on Spotify or Apple podcast if you are on Spotify or Apple Podcast leave me a fivestar review because it helps my show on those platforms a

lot and if you are consuming it here on YouTube like this video leave a comment letting me know what you thought about this topic today about this episode um share this video with a friend who could benefit from this message and who's also learning English and uh the more you engage with the videos here the better it is for the channel as a whole all right I'm Chiago i'm signing off thank you so much and I'll be talking to you very soon in the upcoming episode bye-bye