YOU KNOW YOU'RE FLUENT IN ENGLISH WHEN... (fluency quiz! test your English!!)

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 again because I didn't know 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 great day and I will see you in the next video bye