Do you want to take your English

to that final level of fluency,

but you feel stuck at your current level?

Maybe you're not making the kind of progress

that you would like to be making in English

or maybe you still feel insecure about your English,

but you don't know exactly what to do about it.

I'm gonna give you eight tips

that I know will transform your English.

I want you to ask yourself,

How many of these things are you doing?

And if you're not doing them,

I want you to start doing them,

and I promise you, if you do them,

you're going to see excellent success

in your English learning journey.

Over the many years that I've spent teaching English

and especially advanced English

to people who want to be truly fluent,

some of the common things they tell me is,

"Lisa, I know a lot of vocabulary,

but when it's time for me to speak,

those words don't come to my mind."

Or, "Why do I keep making the same grammar mistakes

even though I know the rules?"

For every tip, I will teach you an English proverb

that corresponds to that tip.

I want you to feel inspired by this video

and these proverbs that I will teach you

are very inspirational

and they correspond to the topic that I'm talking about.

Okay, let's get started.

Here is my first tip,

but I will start with the proverb.

"A goal without a plan is only a dream."

Or sometimes people say,

"A goal without a plan is only a wish."

So, you know my first tip, don't you?

You must have a plan.

You must know where you want to go specifically,

and you must know how you're going to get there.

Keep a schedule.

You must tell yourself,

"This is what I'm going to do today,

and this is what I'm going to do this week and this month,

and this is how much I'm going to practice."

Have a goal. Have a big goal.

Tell yourself, "When I reach that level,

I will be able to..." and then finish that sentence.

What will you be able to do

when you reach the level of fluency that you want to reach?

Will you feel more confident at your work?

Is your goal professional or personal?

And then make it more specific.

Exactly what will you achieve professionally?

Will you feel more confident in a job interview,

or will you be able to communicate with your clients

or with your coworkers more effectively?

And then, how will you get there, step by step?

Remember, "A goal without a plan is only a wish."

Tip number two: You must not be afraid of making mistakes.

Making mistakes is part of the journey.

Do you remember my conversation with Steve Kaufmann?

He's a polyglot. He speaks many different languages,

and he talked about making mistakes.

Let's listen to that video.

Another one of your quotes that I really like

is, "If you're unwilling to make mistakes,

you will continue to make mistakes."

Can you talk about that?

- Absolutely.

Making mistakes, forgetting, is all part of learning.

In fact, it's good for you.

It's good to forget, relearn, forget, relearn.

- And the proverb that I would like to teach you

that corresponds to this tip is,

"Fortune favors the bold."

Do you know what bold means?

If someone is bold, they take risks,

they are courageous, they are brave.

Do you take risks when you're speaking English?

If you are afraid to take risks,

if you are overly concerned about making mistakes,

your brain is going to freeze.

You're gonna feel blocked.

People who are not afraid to make mistakes learn faster.

"Fortune favors the bold." and fortune means luck;

good things happening in your life.

And to favor means to prefer;

to work to someone's advantage.

So, "Fortune favors the bold,"

that means people who do well in life,

people who succeed in life, who have fortune,

are people who are bold and who take risks.

Let's listen to how some other people used the proverb,

"Fortune favors the bold."

- Fortune favors the bold.

- Fortune favors the bold.

- The next proverb is,

"Don't bite off more than you can chew."

Have you heard that proverb before?

Do you have a similar one in your language?

If you bite off more than you can chew,

that means you take a really big bite,

but you can't chew all of the food.

And that means don't try to do too much.

You may not be ready. It may be too much for you.

Some people feel like they need to learn everything at once.

They get discouraged because it's impossible.

Their brain can't handle it.

So often, I see that with students.

When I used to teach one-on-one accent reduction lessons,

I often saw that. Some of my students

wanted me to tell them

all of the different mistakes they were making

in just one lesson.

They said, "But how about my vowels?

But how about my consonants?

And what about the melody and the rhythm?"

If I were to give them all of that information

in the first lesson or the second lesson,

their brain would be overwhelmed,

and they would become discouraged.

So, instead, I needed to be systematic.

I would teach them a few things at each lesson,

and then they would need to practice those things

over and over again,

and after that, they would learn another topic

and another topic,

and eventually, they would master all of the topics.

But trying to do everything at once is simply not effective.

And in my online course,

"The American Accent Course",

I systematically teach each of the sounds one by one

and then, you practice the sounds in sentences

and in different expressions, different contexts,

and then each time, you learn more and more.

We start with the vowel sounds first,

and then we practice

the difficult American consonant sounds,

and after that is part three,

where we practice rhythm and intonation.

And then part four is the advanced part,

where we learn how Americans really talk,

and how they use contractions,

and how fast speech sounds.

But, if I were to introduce part four in the beginning,

it might be overwhelming because people need a foundation.

It needs to be systematic.

So, if you would like to speak

with a good, clear American accent,

make sure you get my online course,

"The American Accent Course".

It contains seven hours of video,

plus some downloadable PDFs

and different quizzes along the way.

And you can get the course on my website

at accurateenglish.com.

So, when you make a decision

that you want to improve your English,

don't start working on everything at the same time.

Don't bite off more than you can chew.

Don't try to do too much at once.

Let's listen to the way some people used the expression,

"Don't bite off more than you can chew."

- I'm gonna help you narrow it down to one goal

because like I've been saying,

I don't want you to feel overwhelmed.

I don't want you to bite off more than you can chew.

- Your time is already limited.

So, if you want to accomplish something,

you can't bite off more than you can chew.

Stick to one project at a time.

- The worst thing that can happen

is that you bite off more than you can chew.

- My next tip is extremely important

and there's no way you can improve without this tip.

You must practice regularly.

And the proverb that goes along with this tip,

"Practice makes perfect."

The biggest reason that you're not happy

about your English level

is that you're not practicing enough.

You only have head knowledge.

And head knowledge means it's passive knowledge.

You understand a lot of English

because you're watching English TV, or YouTube, or films,

but you're not able to speak the same way.

So often, I get the question,

"Lisa, how do I feel more confident

about my ability to speak English?"

And I respond, "How much are you practicing?"

And often, they admit

they're really not practicing very much at all.

If you want to memorize new vocabulary,

you have to use those words over and over again.

If you have no one to speak with,

remember, you can always speak with yourself.

You can talk to yourself in English

or you can write in English.

But you must make that knowledge active and not passive.

And here's another proverb

that's related to practice and hard work.

I like this one.

"There's no elevator to success.

You must take the stairs."

And what does that mean?

That means there is no shortcut,

you must do the work.

My next tip is you must practice efficiently;

you must practice well.

So, you must know how to practice.

And here is a proverb that goes along with this tip.

"Tell me and I'll forget.

Show me and I may remember.

Involve me and I'll understand."

And that means you must be involved

in the process of learning.

You must use the language.

It's not enough to just know the rules.

And be creative with the way you're learning the language.

You can keep a journal in English.

You can record your voice every day.

You can talk to the voice recorder.

Talk about how your day is going,

or talk about something you heard on the news

and give your opinion in English.

Write down your thoughts. Be creative.

There are so many creative ways to practice.

You must be fully involved in the learning process.

You must use the language regularly.

That's how you practice.

My next tip is have realistic expectations

and be patient.

And the proverb is, "Rome wasn't built in a day."

And that means important work takes time to complete.

So, be patient with your progress.

Sometimes, progress is like this.

Nothing is happening,

nothing is happening,

you're studying, you don't see any progress,

and suddenly, there's a jump and you're at a new level.

It's almost like it happens overnight.

And then, you're at that level for a while

and then once again,

you make another sudden jump.

And that's my experience of learning languages,

and I see that with my students as well.

Sometimes, they would come back to the class

and their English was suddenly much better.

It's like, "What happened?"

Well, those weeks of practice before