hello everybody my name is Thomas galgani and I used to teach Russian to US military linguists I personally learned the language as an adult and was eventually recruited to help instruct in this video I'm going to go over 10 actionable tips to help improve your fluency in your foreign language of [Applause] [Music] study these aren't just things that I did in the early stages of learning Russian a lot of them I still practice by the way but they're also what we would ask of students first understand that fluency alone is not indicative of how well
someone knows the language or even their overall speaking proficiency there are plenty of other considerations like grammatical and lexical accuracy whereas fluency has to do with the fluidity of language and how well the words are strung together that is why it's not necessarily what you practice but how you practice you'll see what I mean with the tips [Music] starting now always send voice messages in place of written texts hopefully you have at least one speaker of your target language who doesn't mind you texting them but even if you don't these can be just voice memos
to yourself like I'm doing right now you also have these to review and practice we'll get into more of that later and you might be thinking well come on man I don't text that much how is that going to make a big difference trust me even if it's just a few of these throughout the day or little moments it adds up a lot over time and even if it's somebody that you're going to be texting in English or whatever your native language is think to yourself can I communicate this in my target language if you
can you can even say it to yourself record it in your notes just really get in the habit of every basic day-to-day communication that you have to do ask yourself can I communicate this in the target language and then just go with it don't worry about making mistakes with these just get the Reps in because a lot of times what happens is people will pause so long and they they worry about what they're going to say and then it ends up being wrong anyways the reality is you just have to get more practice in and
just get in the habit of just letting it Fly don't worry about being self try to not be self-conscious the more you get in the habit of just letting it fly the better it's it's going to [Music] come next I want you to practice telling a real life story this has to be a story that you are personally affected by I'd like you to write it out the way that you would say it this isn't a writing exercise you want to write it out so that you can kind of analyze it and perfect it have
it be checked by a speaker and really take your time make sure that you master this part it's impossible to master a whole language but you can Master sections of it really take a step back and have multiple variations to your story three to four different variations ways of saying things I would say one story per month master that if you're really getting Advanced and you want to be more technical about it you can start off with one story in the past tense and then check off each tense so then one in the present tense
perhaps something that you do habitually every weekend for example and then in the future tense for example like what are your plans for the next set of holidays just think about it if you did 12 throughout the year you know one per month that's a lot of different stories that you have in your back pocket that's going to be that you're going to have mastered get those variations down really take your time to master this [Music] section reactions stresses intonations and reactions to start whenever you write always make sure that you're writing the correct stresses
in words uh at the very least to ensure that you know where they're supposed to be we'll take two words in Russian to start for example um that are both spelled the exact same way bite and bit bite is to write and if you take the same word with the same exact spelling but a different stress pet then that means to urinate so you can tell using the correct stresses influence how well you're going to be understood how accurate things are with your fluency and when I talk about intonations and reactions that also has to
do with how well are are you playing off of other people with the intonation if you have a question is it supposed to rise at the end or if it's a statement make sure that it's dropping sometimes these things can vary depending on the language that you're speaking so study these and really pay close attention with how people are reacting to other phrases um if you take an English expression for example when somebody is reacting to something that's surprising they say oh no way well that's not a literal expression they're not saying no way that's
impossible it's that's a reaction so Master those little things we're kind of getting into the area of accuracy here but if you really kind of learn these a lot better then you'll be more [Music] fluent tip number four is to keep a daily Vlog Vlog with a V we don't have to get crazy we're talking just two to three sentences a day and it can be about anything that's going on in your life or that's on your mind it could be you know that you just had a coffee break like I just had where you're
in your kitchen and you just say something about it if you happen to be going through something if something happens that makes you sad or happy capitalize on that capitalize on the emotion a lot of times during our language learning Journey you know people will have something happen to them in their lives and that makes them kind of want to slow down on the language learning side but I always say that's when you want to dive in because neuroplasticity is great it any age but the brain only remembers things or learns new things when it
has to so if you can attach those memorable times anything like embarrassment anger happiness or excitement to these new grammatical structures new words that you're learning it's going to stick a lot better this is good coffee the next step is to record and compare Snippets this these could be short Expressions that are just a few words and you want to take a recording of yourself saying something and then have a recording of the same thing from a native speaker then listen to both of them and see how they're different how can you get yours as
close to the correct form as possible don't worry so much about accents I still speak Russian with an American accent just worry about the correct forms and then ask your instructor or you know the native speaker that you're in contact with ask them what is it about what I'm saying that makes it inaccurate so worry about more of with like how something sounds as far as being able to be understood being understood is much more important than sounding like a native speaker because a lot of times that's that's much farther off and you're probably going
to have an accent record and compare take your time with these and analyze what are the differences as often as possible study physicalities and the last tip we talked about recording and comparing what you say with how it sounds from a native speaker and now is your chance to really ask yourself why does it sound different when a native speaker says this thing physically what are they doing to make those sounds so if you're in person or even virtually talking to somebody through a screen make sure that you study those things look at their mouth
and their tongue you don't have to be weird about it but recognize that they're physically doing things differently our mouths uh you know rest differently I'll never forget from a uh speaking coach speech coach that I had I learned that a native Russian speaker's tongue rests differently than that of a native English speaker even without talking for example um supposedly I I want to look up more research on this but supposedly the the tongue of a native Russian speaker will rest up against the the back of the the teeth whereas native English speakers tongues are
more flat and if you start to think about physically what are they doing to make those sounds differently and we also even this also even gets into body language when people are communicating you know how are they carrying themselves differently than you would when you're trying to speak and believe it or not that will help you be more fluid if you start to pay attention to the physicalities when implementing all these tips that I'm sharing with you it will eventually fall in deaf ears if you have deaf ears one of my favorite books on communication
is just listen by Mark goulston on communication in general this is an amazing book you're definitely want to going to want to pick this up listen to what other people are saying so that when you respond as eloquently as possible it matters it makes sense it's not going to matter if it's obvious that you're not listening to what people are saying to you this goes for improving your listening skills overall by reading books like just listen and it also of course matters to improve your listen Proficiency in the target language so a quick tip as
far as that goes is to play the target language in the background as often as possible so that your brain will have more data to pull from as far as how the sounds are made the flow of the words and the sentence structures even if you're just doing something like doing the dishes or making coffee like I like to do um always have it playing on in the background if you go for a walk and you have you're listening to a podcast or the news you don't have to understand everything A good rule of thumb
by the way is to be able to understand about 50% of something so um you know gauge your difficulty level of the material based on that about 50% is is the goal and just hearing it as often as possible will make a huge difference in a pretty short amount of time improve your speaking ability in your native language now I say this because I've noticed that the students and people language Learners overall who are usually the most fluent in the target language are often more outgoing and they're more comfortable in their own skin so try
to eliminate ums cut down longer than necessary pauses and to do this you know you can start a podcast you can start a YouTube channel practice talking to camera and every interaction that you have with anybody no matter what the language is take that as an opportunity to present yourself confidently and to speak with conviction that way when you're switching into the target language you'll already be in the habit of communicating that way you could even try joining something like Toast Masters I personally haven't tried that but I've heard great things about it and I
know it makes people lot more comfortable speaking in front of people tip number nine to improve your fluency fast is to listen to more music in the target language capitalize on The Melodies use use the Melodies to your advantage and memorize things we'll take English for example there's a song by The Back Street Boys I believe it's called the call I've had it stuck in my head there's a line in there then it goes I will be late don't stay up and wait for me if we look at that line from an outside perspective it's
actually kind of grammatically complex I can't play the song by the way because of copyright but if English was not your first language that could be kind of confusing but knowing the melody that could make it stick that much faster and also so know the pronunciation the proper pronunciation of things so listen to more songs in your target language memorize more Melodies things that are catchy to you and you'll become more fluent okay now the 10th and final tip is tongue twisters look up tongue twisters in your target language and this is going to be
an amazing exercise for you to improve your speed and pronunciation of these different sounds phrases again don't worry about mistakes too much um because there's not too much grammatical accuracy with or even a point to these tongue twisters but you will get so much better at pronouncing these different sounds and really exercising the speed so that when you get into saying complete sentences or just basic phrases in the target language it's going to come that much more easily to you if you made it to the end of this video leave a comment that starts with
Backstreet Boys so that I can see you and to all of you thank thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next video [Music]
