Many years ago, my spoken English was pretty bad.

I had a lot of trouble expressing myself in English.

But then, I found a way to improve my spoken English and I managed to become fluent while living in Thailand. The methods I use can be done at home from anywhere in the world and in this video, I'm going to tell you how you can do the same. First, let me tell you the most important secret: To speak English well, you need to build unconscious knowledge in English.

Let me repeat that.

If you want to speak English fluently, you need a high level of unconscious knowledge in English. So what is it?

Well, unconscious knowledge is the ability to do something without conscious thought.

It's the ability to perform a task automatically.

For example, riding a bicycle, playing a musical instrument, and speaking your native language.

Unconscious knowledge is automatic.

To use the knowledge, you don't have to think about it.

You don't have to focus your attention on it.

That's why you can ride a bicycle and talk to someone at the same time.

You don't have to focus on the movement of your legs.

They move automatically on their own.

It's also why musicians can sing and play the instrument at the same time.

With enough practice, the skill becomes automatic and so the hands and fingers can now move automatically. Now think about how you speak your first language.

When you talk in your native language, do you think about grammar rules?

Do you think about syntax or sentence structure?

No, you don't think about any of that, right?

But for some reason, every sentence that comes out of your mouth is grammatically correct.

Even though you're not thinking about grammar, everything you say makes sense grammatically.

Why is that?

Well, it's because you have a high level of unconscious knowledge in your native language. So if you want to speak English well, you need to increase your unconscious knowledge in English.

If you do that, speaking English will feel natural and automatic, much like speaking your first language. So how do you acquire unconscious knowledge?

Unfortunately, this is very difficult to do.

The problem is that this type of knowledge cannot be taught.

It cannot be acquired through study.

You can improve it by reading grammar books or watching grammar lessons on YouTube.

If you do that, you will acquire a different type of knowledge called conscious knowledge.

This type of knowledge is not automatic.

To use the knowledge, you have to think about it.

You have to focus your attention on it.

This means that when you speak English, you have to think about grammar.

You have to decide what tense to use and all that stuff.

And that doesn't work because when you're talking to someone, you don't have time to think about grammar.

If the other person says something to you or asks you a question, you have to respond immediately. Sadly, many people love studying grammar.

They love watching lessons about tenses, prepositions, adjectives, and so on.

They believe that it will make them speak better.

What they don't realize is that the knowledge they gain through study is conscious, non-automatic knowledge, which is not very useful in spoken English. The thing is, speaking a language involves two parts of the brain: the conscious part and the unconscious, automatic part.

When you speak your first language, the conscious part focuses on the information that you want to communicate while the unconscious part focuses on the grammar.

This coordination allows you to speak fluently.

If you want to say something, you can just say it, and the unconscious part will make sure that your speech follows the grammar rules.

The process is automatic.

It's amazing, actually. But what happens when a grammar nerd, you know, someone who studies a lot of grammar, what happens when they try to speak English?

Well, here's what happens.

The conscious part now has to focus on the information and the grammar at the same time.

It has to focus on two things simultaneously, which is impossible to do.

This is why many students speak poorly despite knowing all the grammar rules. So don't learn English through study.

Instead, you have to learn English the same way you learn your first language.

We call this way of learning unconscious learning.

What is unconscious learning?

Does it mean learning while you sleep?

Actually no.

In this context, the word unconscious means unaware.

So unconscious learning means you are unaware that you're learning something.

The learning takes place outside of your awareness.

One example of this way of learning is listening to a conversation in English.

When you listen to a conversation, your goal is not to learn English but to understand the conversation, right?

But as you listen, as you focus on the information, the unconscious part of your brain is learning English behind the scenes.

You may not be aware of it, but your brain is learning things like grammar, vocabulary, and many other things.

This is how you learn your first language.

You didn't learn through study.

You learned by listening to people talking over and over.

And you didn't try to memorize or understand any rules.

You just focused on the information and let your brain learn the language in the background. So remember, when you learn English unconsciously, you get unconscious, automatic knowledge.

When you learn English consciously by studying grammar, you get conscious, non-automatic knowledge. Now, there are two methods you can use to build unconscious knowledge.

These are the only two methods I use to become fluent in English.

The first one is listening, of course.

The second one is input-driven speaking practice.