How to Become a Fluent English Speaker FREE Download
Hi, I’m Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com
do you need to feel more motivated to speak
English?
Let’s talk about it.
Have you ever felt really excited to learn
English?
You were really pumped up.
You had a lot of great plans for the things
that you were going to do to improve your
English, and then after a few weeks you slowed
down and you felt a lot less motivation to
keep going.
Maybe you started to feel disappointed in
yourself.
Why can’t I keep studying?
Am I lazy?
I thought that I wanted to be a fluent English
speaker, but I just can’t keep my motivation.
Today I’d like to share some top tips to help
you stay motivated.
These tips apply to learning English, but
they also apply to really any area in life.
This lesson is a gold mine, so feel free to
watch this any time that your motivation needs
a boost in life.
To help you accomplish your goal, I want to
give you this free Maintaining Motivation
PDF worksheet that you can download.
There’s a link up here and also in the description
where you can download that.
All of the tips that we talk about today will
be included in that PDF, as well as a lot
of helpful links to help you get started and
create a personal motivation plan today.
Let’s get started with the first tip.
The first tip is a doozy.
That means that it’s long and involved, but
it is essential.
So put on your seatbelt and let’s get started.
My first tip to maintaining motivation is
to create a clear goal, long term and short
term.
Let’s talk about what is a goal.
Well, a goal is not, I want to be a fluent
English speaker.
But Vanessa, that’s what I want.
I want to be a fluent English speaker.
Nope.
You need to define.
Remember I said clear goal.
You need to define what is a fluent English
speaker to you.
You need to define that first.
Doesn’t mean that you make no mistakes.
Doesn’t mean that you can talk about every
topic comfortably.
Doesn’t mean that every native speaker can
easily understand you and you can understand
them.
Well, when you define your goal of fluency
clearly it’s going to help you to succeed
and reach that goal much better.
Well, let’s say that you decide your goal
is to talk about every topic comfortably in
English.
I’m going to be using this as a sample during
this lesson.
Well, once you have this goal, this is your
goal in the end, we need to talk about a long
term goal and a short term goal for this.
Well, what is a long term goal?
A long term goal could be 10 years in the
future, but for me, I personally have trouble
thinking about what my life will be like 10
years in the future, so let’s be a little
more realistic and let’s make your long term
English goal one year.
And then a short term goal, let’s say that
your short term goal is what you’re going
to accomplish in one week.
So you’re going to have short term goals and
then you’re going to have a long term goal
that’s going to be one year from now.
For example, your long term goal might be
in one year, I want to talk with a group of
native English speakers about any topic comfortably
for two hours.
This is a beautiful goal.
It’s so clear.
It gives you a timeframe in one year.
It gives you the exact thing that you want
to do, talk with a group of native English
speakers.
And for how long?
For two hours about any topic.
Oh, this is a beautiful goal.
What about a short term goal?
How can you reach that long term goal with
a short term goal?
Your short term goal might be, each week I
want to comfortably talk about a new topic.
Great.
That’s 52 new topics in one year.
That is a lot of topics.
Usually in daily conversation we talk about
the same things often again and again.
So if you can comfortably talk about 52 topics
after one year you are on the way to success.
In the free Maintaining Motivation worksheet,
I’ll share a link with over 200 conversation
topics and several questions for each topic.
Some are simple like, tell me about your family.
Were your parents strict?
Did you help with household chores when you
were a kid?
And some questions are more difficult.
Why are people vegetarians?
How would the world be different if no one
ate meat?
You can find a link to all of these questions
that will help you to expand your vocabulary
and expand your confidence talking about a
variety of topics in a link in the Maintaining
Motivation worksheet.
The next step in creating a clear goal is
to find out your why.
This means why do you want to have a two hour
conversation with a group of native English
speakers?
Maybe for you, you’ve always had a dream of
living in New York for a month or watching
English TV shows and movies, or maybe talking
with your international coworkers.
Everyone has a why.
Your why might be really simple.
It’s my lifelong dream to improve my English
skills and to speak with people around the
world.
That’s really simple, so don’t worry if your
why is really simple like this.
It might be more complex depending on your
situation, but a main part of the Maintaining
Motivation worksheet is trying to figure out
your why.
I want to tell you a little something between
you and me.
Accomplishing your goal is tough.
It won’t just fall out of the sky and land
on your lap.
You’re going to need to work hard.
It’s my job to give you the tools to succeed,
but you’re the one who’s going to have to
take those tools and use them.
We can imagine that you are going through
the thick jungle on the other side of the
jungle is your goal.
How are you going to get through that jungle?
Well, I’m giving you today a big machete.
That’s a big knife to cut through the jungle
and to reach your goal, but who’s the one
who’s having to cut through the jungle?
That’s you.
You’re going to have to do the hard work,
but everyone is capable of reaching that goal.
For some people it’s going to be a little
bit harder.
For some people it’s going to be a little
bit easier, but you are capable of doing it.
Especially if you follow these tips in today’s
lesson.
After you’ve written your short term and longterm
goals, it’s finally time to move on to tip
number two.
Tip number two for maintaining motivation
is to track your progress, preferably with
someone else.
I hear from a lot of my students that they
feel like they’re not improving, that they’ve
reached a plateau.
I feel like when you’re first learning something,
especially English, you see your progress
because you knew nothing and now you know
something.
But after you’re already an intermediate English
learner, it’s a little bit harder to see your
progress, but part of maintaining your motivation
is tracking your progress.
So how can you do that?
Let’s go back to my sample long term goal
where you’re talking with a group of native
English speakers about a variety of topics
for two hours.
And every week for the previous year, you’ve
been practicing speaking with a new topic,
talking about different vocabulary with that
topic.
Well, how can you track your progress?
The best way is to speak with someone else
once a week, even if it’s just 30 minutes.
This is great.
If you speak with another English learner,
you can plan in advance.
We’re going to talk about our vacation experiences,
and during the week you’re practicing vacation
vocabulary.
You’re thinking about how you’re going to
describe your vacation and then you talk about
it together for 30 minutes.
During that conversation and at the end of
that conversation you can track your progress.
Could I express myself?
Did I use the vocabulary expressions that
I learned in the previous week?
Did I feel more comfortable talking than the
previous week?
These are great questions that you can ask
yourself to track your progress.
In school you had tests and exams to track
your progress, but let’s be honest, after
every test, I forgot pretty much everything
I learned and maybe it was the same for you.
Now this is real life.
You don’t want to forget what you learned
right after you studied it, so by practicing
with someone else, you’re giving yourself
a deadline.
Kind of like that test.
I know that on Saturday I’m going to need
to know how to talk about my vacation because
I’m going to be talking with this other person.
And you’re testing yourself.
Can I accurately talk about this topic that
I’ve prepared?
Another way to track your progress, besides
speaking with someone, which I recommend first,
but another tip is to use an app system like
Anki to track your vocabulary progress.
This uses kind of a virtual digital flashcard
system and you can learn new words.
You can test yourself on those words, preferably
before you speak with someone else at the
end of the week.
As you learn new words, try to do all of this
in English.
The definitions in English, your sentences
in English, so that you’re going to be immersed
and surrounded by it.
Let’s go on to tip number three for how to
maintain motivation.
My tip number three is to be kind to yourself.
What will you do when you lose motivation?
I say this a lot, but be kind to yourself.
It is realistic that sometime between today
and one year from now, life will happen.
Things will come up that will get in the way
of your plan.
Maybe you’ll move to a new house.
Maybe you’ll go on vacation for the holidays
and forget some of your plan.
Maybe you’ll have a new baby like me or maybe
you’ll get a new job, something that’s going
to interrupt your routine and your plan.
The most important thing to do is just to
acknowledge that this is realistic.
At some point, you will feel unmotivated or
less motivated and you can plan for how you
will react.
That’s important.
Will you feel disappointed and give up?
Or will you give yourself a hug and say, it’s
all right.
I need to give myself a little break for this
period of time while I adjust to some new
things going on in my life.
And then after two weeks I’ll get back on
track.
This kind of sounds like you’re planning for
failure, but in my mind it’s just realistic,
so make sure that when things come up you
take a deep breath and realize this is very
normal.
Plan for how you’re going to react in those
situations.
Be kind to yourself.
Tip number four for maintaining a motivation
is to reward yourself.
I had a friend in college who would give herself
one M&M after every 30 minutes of studying.
Or maybe you want to get a special bonus at
work.
A bonus means one time extra money, usually
that happens at the end of the year.
So you work really hard to get this reward.
Rewards can be related to your goal such as,
after one month I’m going to go to a British
pub in my city and I’m going to practice speaking
English, or it could be unrelated to your
goals such as I’m going to give myself one
M&M like my friend did.
A reward can also be to simply cross off something
on your list.
If you decided that today I’m going to watch
one video about family and I’m going to write
some new expressions in my notebook that I
heard from that video.
When you finish that, cross it off on your
to do list.
It feels so good.
For me, that’s the biggest reward is simply
crossing something off when I have decided
to do.
I can go back at the end of the day and see
that I’ve accomplished what I wanted to accomplish
and it’s directly related to my goal.
I want to do these things and I can see I
did it.
So a reward could be something as simple as
that.
Let’s go on to the final tip for maintaining
motivation.
My fifth tip is to follow some motivational
speakers.
To succeed, you need to surround yourself
by successful people, right?
This isn’t always realistic in daily life
because maybe your friends and family have
different goals than you have, but with the
internet, anything is possible.
If your goal is to speak better English, speak
more confidently, speak fluently, I recommend
following other people who have already done
this.
You can type the word polyglot into YouTube
and see lots of cool people who are learning
multiple languages.
They usually give good advice about how they’re
learning languages and it’s also great for
motivation.
Or you can follow some motivational speakers
who aren’t related to English.
You can type motivation Ted Talk into YouTube.
And there are a lot of different Ted Talks
that focus on how to stay motivated, the topic
of motivation, and that will help you to be
surrounded by people who are successfully
motivated at what they want to do.
In the free Maintaining Motivation worksheet,
I’ll include links to some of my favorite
polyglot videos and Ted Talk motivation videos
to help you get started.
Let’s review how you can stay motivated.
I’d like you to speak out loud, exercise your
speaking muscles, and remember what we’ve
talked about today.
So please read these out loud with me and
it will help you to get started on this journey.
Number one, I will create a clear goal for
the long term and for the short term.
Number two, I will track my progress, ideally
with another person.
Number three, I will be kind to myself when
changes happen.
Number four, I will reward myself for successfully
following my plan.
Number five, I will follow motivational speakers
and surround myself with success.
And now I have a question for you.
How do you maintain your motivation?
I hope that my free Maintaining Motivation
worksheet will help you to keep motivated,
to create a clear plan, to track your progress,
to figure out what you can do to reach your
goals.
You can download it in the description below
this video or right up here.
It’s my free gift to you.
Thank you so much for learning English with
me, and I’ll see you again next Friday for
a new lesson here on my YouTube channel.
Bye.
The next step is to download my free worksheet,
Maintain Motivation to Reach your English
Goals.
You’ll be on the right path to accomplishing
your goals and improving your English.
Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel
for more free lessons.
Thanks so much.
Bye.