How I learnt Spanish My Journey to Fluency

hello everyone

welcome back to english with lucy i’ve

got a slightly different video for you

today it’s something i’ve had a lot of

questions about

recently and i’m going to talk to you

about how

i became fluent in a second language

so many of you will already know but i’m

sure

many of you don’t know i am fluent in

spanish

if you would like to hear me speak

spanish then you can click

up here and i filmed a video

speaking in spanish talking about the

different

funny mistakes that i made whilst i was

learning the language

now the reason i am telling you this

story in

english rather than in spanish is

because i think it will be a really good

opportunity for you guys to practice

your listening

and i also want you to feel more

motivated with your

language learning journey now i will

warn you

i was very lucky in my situation so

i don’t want you to think oh god lucy’s

fluent because

she had this this and this and she’s so

lucky and the situation was perfect

no i want to just show you and inspire

you and and kind of demonstrate that you

can

get to a really good level of fluency in

a language that is not

your mother tongue ah and i have one

thing to say before we get started

you can sign up for a free audio book

and 30 day free trial on

audible.com the link is in the

description box

videos like these are subtitled and will

be really really helpful for you if you

want to improve your listening and

understanding and pronunciation in

english

but if you want to take it a step

further try an audio book it’s something

that can be

really really helpful and i’ve had

fabulous feedback from all the

lucifers that have tried it already so

here it is my journey to fluency in

spanish now please note that

fluency to me does not mean 100 accuracy

fluency to me means that you can speak

without thinking

it is almost as easy as your native

tongue um

i dream in spanish i have had

relationships in spanish i can make

jokes in spanish

so really i consider myself to be fluent

you might not agree with that i do know

that there are some issues with my

pronunciation

like i can do it but sometimes don’t put

it into the words so sometimes i confuse

beard with my beard so please bear with

right so let’s start the journey as it

were

i grew up in a really really small

village in

the county of bedfordshire in england

and languages were never

a big thing at my school so typically

english children will have to study

french at school

from the age of 10 and then i think you

are allowed to give it up

at the age of 14 or 13 14.

so really you only have to do three

years of language this is in state

school not private school it’s different

um i started off in a state school and

then i went to a private school for four

years and then i went back to state

and i had been studying french and i

hated it i loved the french language but

i found it really really hard to learn i

was in a class of

40 children and french kind of had the

reputation of being like

the most boring class ever so i kind of

went along with that and then when i

moved to my next

school suddenly they told me i had to

learn

two languages so i would continue with

french and then i could choose

spanish or german i’d asked everyone and

i asked which one’s the easiest and they

told me

spanish was so i joined this class it

was about 25

girls because it was a girls school i

was at the very bottom

of the bottom class because they’d had a

couple of years

you know spanish experience and i had

never i’d never even been to spain at

this point

so i sat there in all of the classes

really bored

really unenthusiastic i didn’t want to

learn spanish i couldn’t

wait to give it up i could not wait to

stop spanish and i knew

that at the age of 16 i would be able to

i went to every class i sat there

was like hola

gato perro pero

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and um and yeah to my

surprise i suddenly found myself

understanding

things and whilst some of the other

students were struggling

with the grammar it really made sense to

but i didn’t want it to make sense so i

sat there bored

but then i couldn’t stop thinking

outside of spanish class

cool that present tense really it makes

sense

oh i’m a poet and i didn’t even realize

anyway um so i decided well

maybe i could get quite a good grade in

the end of your exam

if i actually study something so i

started

really putting the work in and then i

found the class to be a bit slow so i

asked to be moved up to the top level

and they let me

and in the end i got the highest grade

possible in in my exam

age 16. but i really put the work in and

i remember i

always used to have a bath every night

well i still do but

i remember very very clearly having a

bath and just speaking to myself in

spanish in the bath

and i would love to hear what i was

saying back then

but then i decided to carry it on to a

level and

a level is the last two years of school

of high school

and you have to get your a levels to

then go to university

i did three a levels i did biology

chemistry

and spanish so from then on

i decided that i loved spanish

and i didn’t just love spanish i also

decided that

spanish men were incredibly good looking

and sexy sexy

really they were really attractive so i

started

i started putting in a lot of effort i

was really lucky at my

at my high school i moved to a state

school and i was really lucky because

nobody wanted to study languages so i

think there were 200 people

in my year one person studied german

two people studied french and three

people studied spanish

no one did but it was great for me

because i had a really really small

class

with an amazing teacher she was called

miss flores and she was irish even

though her surname was flores

and just she was so inspirational and

pushed me hard in a good way

and so after one year of studying

spanish i then decided

i want to take this to the next level so

after one more year of studying spanish

i mean i wouldn’t have been at even a b1

level it was very

very little the amount we were doing but

i decided

i want to take this to the next level i

was working at a pub and i

was saving up all my money and i managed

to buy

flights and a spanish course in

seville now i don’t really know why i

picked seville i think it’s because my

first spanish teacher had said that she

was

she’d been to seville and it was nice so

i thought oh i’d go i’ll go to seville

then i had no idea that seville

has a very thick andalucian accent

so i got there with my you know standard

schoolgirl spanish

and i didn’t understand a bloody word

but anyway i did a week at a

school called click international it’s

in the international house chain of

schools it was really really good if you

want to do an

intensive spanish course i would

definitely do it there

and and i stayed with a host family

and i met lots of spanish people

and eventually i met a couple of spanish

guys

that i then became friends with so it

was a bit crazy

i was 17 running around seville um

going on mopeds and staying out far too

late

making it to class because i wanted to

learn my spanish so i went first time in

august which was very very hot

i saved up all my money again after the

trip in august and i went in october

for another week and then i went again

in april so i was still 17 at this point

and a guy that i have been friends with

for a while

i met him again out there and

basically we fell in love we fell pretty

hard in love actually we were together

for four years

i won’t say his name because i’d like to

respect his privacy

but um but yes i felt very much in love

with the spanish man

and luckily this man didn’t speak such

good english

so our whole relationship was in spanish

and we used to what

sap together all day long i would go out

there and see him as often as i could

i became so close with his family and we

ended up

living together in london we lived

together in seville

we lived together in london again and

and that really was a driving force in

journey to fluency and i would say after

about a year of being with him

i felt completely fluent i felt

that spanish was just my natural

language because we were living together

i would go to work and speak in english

but my home life was always in spanish

so that was a really big motivation but

you might be thinking

great lucy so happy for you that you

managed to find a spanish boyfriend but

how can i apply this to my language

learning

well i’ve got some tips for you the

first tip is

copying mouth movements so when my

ex-boyfriend would speak

i would always watch his mouth and the

shapes that it made

and i started to realize that the sounds

and the shapes were different so in

english we would say the letter d

but in spanish they would say the so it

would be like a flatter

a flatter shape and i noticed this

watching him

because he’s from the south of spain he

would say instead of

estoy he would say

instead of saying things like he would

say

so i started really really copying the

sounds he made

rather than just the words another thing

i experienced was complete

immersion so i was thrown into spain

at the deep end i mean i had to

communicate because he was someone i

wanted to communicate with so when

you’re looking to learn a foreign

language

really make sure that the motivation’s

there you know i want to pass my exam

so that i can never study english again

is not going to make you fluent

you really have to think why do i want

to learn this language

and then work towards that mine was

i want to be able to communicate

fluently and comfortably and express

myself to my boyfriend

so that was my motivation and oh my god

i worked hard towards that goal now

another thing which

you guys can also do is never let

anything slip and when i say never let

anything slip it means

don’t think oh god i don’t know that

word tomorrow i’ll search it because you

won’t

i’ve got a video about learning

vocabulary which you can see

right here but basically every time i

heard my ex-boyfriend

say a phrase or an expression that i

didn’t understand i would stop him

and ask him to explain it to me and if

he couldn’t i would write it down and i

would search it later and i was

meticulous with that you aren’t just

going to

pick up all of the words and phrases

because some of them are idiomatic they

don’t make sense

i remember having a really hard time

with the word

bayer like

and i was like what does that mean and i

remember that he couldn’t explain it to

me and i just

went on a quest on a on a road to

discovery i needed to find out what

buyer meant and when i should use it

and i did in the end so yeah you go me

another thing i did was i wasn’t afraid

to ask people

to repeat things and i actually found

that people were really kind to me and

when i asked them to repeat things or i

didn’t understand a joke

they would slow down and explain it to

me and if they were rude about it

i didn’t want them in my life anyway so

another thing i did was i always watched

spanish youtubers i loved hola soy

herman

and i also loved out on play i just find

him so funny

he does like prank videos and he just

basically makes fun of people and he is

very very funny

and i also loved el rubios who is a

gamer i just would have them all in the

background and always listening to their

chitta chatter

i also watched the spanish news every

single morning that really helped me as

well

and i read harry potter in spanish

because i love the harry potter books in

english

so it was really interesting to read it

in spanish

and that’s just something that you have

to remember you need to be

interested you need to have a motivation

so for me

reading a book about economics and

spanish

would not motivate me at all to learn

the language and i probably wouldn’t

finish it

probably wouldn’t start it actually yeah

so choose things that are really

relevant to you

if you like photography but you also

want to learn a language

find somebody doing photography

tutorials

in english and there we have it you’ve

made your own lesson for yourself

now i want to talk to you about a couple

of things that i love and i

wouldn’t have without speaking a second

language fluently

and the first one is i have two

personalities

honestly everybody says it in english

i’m quite i

i’m not really i’m not really very

vulgar

around in english i’m more professional

and i think i’m more

more uh i’m slightly more polite

especially the way i speak

but in spanish because i kind of

learned my spanish from somebody who

said swear words

and used you know lots of slang phrases

and had a thick accent

well it kind of developed my spanish

personality as well

so i mean it’s not forced at all it’s

just the way i naturally am but it’s

great to have you know kind of

two sides to me as well the second thing

is two sets of humors and this is great

because

english jokes do not translate into

spanish and spanish jokes do not

translate into english

so in english i make people laugh using

puns

and play on words and things like that

and in spanish i have to think of other

things so

we in spanish we tell more anecdotes we

people to make people laugh about our

experiences and things like that that’s

just my interpretation

but it’s great to have different funny

stories that i can tell to different

groups of people

that just don’t translate also being

fluent in a second language has

really opened up my mind um

it’s made me much more confident

nowadays if i hear somebody speaking on

a train

in spanish i’ll immediately go up to

them and say ah pedophilia

than me it is and i’ll ask them oh my

god where are you from and

that’s something i would not do you know

otherwise and just

the final thing is that i really really

enjoy

speaking spanish and if you can get to a

level where you

enjoy speaking that language everything

is just going to fly

you are going to have so much fun so yes

guys

this was quite a long video i hope that

it’s motivated you and inspired you

a little bit yes i had a boyfriend who

spoke the language that i was wanting to

learn

but you don’t have to do that it might

not be possible and you

certainly shouldn’t look for one just to

learn english

i was very lucky but take little bits of

information from my story

and apply it to your own story which

might be starting it might have already

started you might be close to finishing

and just do the best that you can do

with your situation and your time

that’s it for today’s video don’t forget

to sign up for your audiobook at

audible.com the link is in the

description

and don’t forget to connect with me on

all of my social media

i’ve got my instagram and my facebook

and i will see you soon

for another lesson

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you