When I was watching their videos, my jaw was literally on the floor.

It's been a long time since I've recorded a video, and I figured this time I'll just do it on my computer.

Hey guys, I've been told that these make me look professorial, so it's the right wig to wear.

Isn't she a native speaker?

So it made me think really hard.

How are they able to reach to that level?

And many of us have been learning English for like over a decade.

Still barely able to speak.

What the heck is going on?

So a long time ago, I studied over 10 YouTubers just like these two that I just showed you, trying to figure out what they actually share in common, hoping that if we can do the same, maybe we can also reach to that level.

Hopefully.

So what do they share in common?

Well, the number one common trait is material selection.

They do actually vary a bit from person to person.

For example, some enjoy reading books.

I became very passionate about studying spirituality and philosophy and started devouring thought-provoking books and literature.

Some are into YouTube videos, some like watching American TV shows.

I just watch a lot of TV and movies in English.

Some learned English before the internet became a thing.

Newsweek or something like that, like a magazine from America or maybe from another English-speaking country.

But with all this being said, they do share something in common.

All of these materials that they selected, they suit their personal interests and needs.

Vicky, for example, enjoys philosophical and spiritual books.

Stacey, Maria, Carla, they all mentioned they enjoy watching American TV shows.

Judy, on the other hand, enjoys watching YouTube videos.

So they all love what they consume.

And all of these materials actually cater for native speakers so that they are authentic.

They are not textbook materials made for second language learners.

And no one even mentions textbooks.

And some of them emphasize the importance of comprehensibility.

You don't have to understand the entire thing.

If you're just reading and you don't know one word, it doesn't really matter.

Common trait number two is a sufficient amount of input.

Stacey, for example, according to her, watched pretty much all Disney movies, read a lot of children's books, the whole series of Twilight, Harry Potter, and tons of English novels.

And I read them all in English.

And that was actually really fun.

I couldn't stop reading those.

At first, it was watching lots of American TV shows and just nonstop.

But then it was reading.

Maria, she started to watch TV in English from the age of 13.

And Judy immersed herself in English.

I was watching about like three to four hours every single day in English.

That's a lot of input.

So they've all received a tremendous amount of English input.

Common trait number three, they all prioritize input.

They all emphasize the importance of input instead of output.

YK, for example, suggests that you should practice speaking when you're familiar with the content.

Judy actually said something that's very similar.

After watching one episode or one video, try to explain it to yourself in English by your own words what you have just watched.

And a huge chunk of their videos are focused on input instead of output, with only one exception, Kala.

In her video, Half-Fed, she focuses on talking about how she benefited from chatting with an English boy named Adam.

I talk very, very, very frequently, almost every day at some point, like three, four, five hours of Skype straight.

And that's where I started to talk without even knowing what I was going to say and not preparing my thoughts and just talking, you know, just like this without having to translate what I was going to say.

But their chat is actually consistent.

It's a long term.

It's something that they do very frequently.

So I would like to argue her success actually could be due to the amount of input that Adam provided to her.

So while chatting with Adam, she actually got to hear how native speakers speak English in an authentic way.

So half of her success probably comes from this amount of input that she gets from Adam.

So all of this that is mentioned align with Stephen Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis very well, which basically states language acquisition does not come from output.

So you can't speak all the way to fluency.

Language acquisition actually comes from input.

Stacy actually has a perfect story to illustrate this point.

She acquired a lot of vocabularies that weren't even taught at school by reading picture books.

Snow White or Peter Pan, Little Mermaid and Lion King.

I watched all of those first in English and then in Russian.

Many people ask me, Stacy, how did you watch these cartoons?

You didn't even speak English then and how did you understand it all?

I don't know.

Even though I didn't know lots of those words, I kind of memorized them in a way.

I can't really say how, but when I went to school and then learned those words there,

I somehow knew them beforehand.

If you go over some new vocabulary and I just go,

I know these words and I know where I learned them, but they were just in my head already, like a built-in vocabulary.

However, for input to work, it needs to follow the following principles.

Number one, authentic.

It's gotta be authentic because garbage in, garbage out.

If you consume and study textbook, you're going to sound like a textbook because that's all you know.

That's what you learned.

But if you pick up the language by watching American TV shows, reading novels that's written for native speakers, you're also going to pick up the way that they use the language.

You're going to sound more like them, native-like or authentic or whatever you would like to call it.

Number two, comprehensible.

Comprehensible is important because if it's not comprehensible, it's just going to be a memorizing process.

You know this word and you know what it means.

That's it.

But if it's a comprehensible, very likely the word, the structure will be acquired through the context.

So you will know how a word or a structure is actually used in what context.

So in the future where you actually need to use this word or structure, you know how to use it because that's how you learn it.

Number three, intriguing.

You gotta enjoy what you consume.

You gotta love what you do.

Because if you do, you want to come back for more and more.

And we all know that when it comes to second language acquisition, consistency is key.

If you don't love what you do, you're not going to come back for more.

And there will be no way you will improve if you don't do it, right?

So intriguing ensures you'll want to come back for more and more.

You are willing to learn out of pure joy.

You learn not because you have to or you're aware beforehand of the external advantages you'll get out of it, but mostly because you love it so much.

Because with it, you can savor the life to the fullest.

As I said earlier, with English,

I can better explore my curiosity and creativity.

And that adds so much color into my life.

Not only that, I get to meet and connect with more people in a more intimate level and talk about more deep, hilarious, and interesting things.

So that's how I get to stay inspired to keep up with English, which is essential when it comes to English improvement.

And lastly, sufficient amount of input.

So the amount of input that you need to receive to reach to that level, it needs to be huge.

A lot of it, a lot of it.

And a lot of us only consume very limited amount of English input.

When I was still studying at school, we have like two textbooks every single year.

Combine everything together, the exposure that I get in a year is probably less than maybe 10,000 English words.

Yeah, that's very little compared to all of those successful learners that they received in a single year.

Another thing that I noticed watching their videos is passion.

So when they talk about and sharing their learning experiences, you can actually feel they enjoy what they do.

Like Stacy's love of Twilight, Maria's obsession with American TV shows, and Vicky's passion for philosophical and spiritual books.

They all love what they do.

They all enjoy what they consume.

And I think this is really important.

Vicky put it in a really beautiful way.

I think the progress becomes the fastest if you forget about even making the progress and focus entirely on the work itself, however frustrating it feels at times.

Work on it like that day by day.

And there will come a day when you will find yourself having improved so much and you'll go like,

Whoa, did I just say that?

Whoa, did I just write that?

So yeah, there's going to be a lot of struggles and frustration, but learn to enjoy and embrace the process and have fun with it.

Your English will never be perfect and it doesn't have to be.

And that's the best part because that lifts so much burden off of you.

When you enjoy the process and stop caring so much about the result, it's actually when you improve the most.

I couldn't agree more because it's only when you love what you do, you will keep on doing it consistently.

And it's only when you are consistent, there is a chance you will get sufficient amount of a comprehensible, authentic and intriguing input.

If you're not consistent, you're not going to do this long term and you will not have this chance to reach to that level.

You'll probably give up here or there.

So you have to be consistent.

If you want to be consistent, you definitely would like to enjoy what you do.

Imagine you don't enjoy what you do and you have to spend four hours on it every day.

That's like spending four hours being unhappy every day.

That's a torture.

Nobody would like to do it.

Nobody will be able to hang on it for long.

Find your passion in English learning.

I've been saying a lot of nice things about comprehensible input, but in fact, I have a lot of problems with it.

I actually think it might be the reason why your English gets stuck.

Truth be told, a large number of, probably the majority of practitioners of comprehensible input theory are yet to see any results that's close to those successful learners we just talked about.

Not even close.

Probably a lot of them have already given up.

So something has gone wrong.

What is it?

That's a very important question.

And hopefully we can find this out in the next video.

And I'll see you guys in the next one.

Bye.

I'm super excited.

My language course is now open for enrollment.

It doesn't teach grammar, vocabulary, whatever.

That shit didn't work then.

It's not gonna work now.

The reason why you get stuck with your language learning is not because you aren't working hard enough.

It's actually because you're working way too hard the wrong way.

Forcing your brain to do things it doesn't like to do.

Memorizing vocabulary, grammar, whatever.

Of course you get stuck.

Stop doing that.

Learn how your brain processes language.

Remember things.

Master skills.

Learn in the way that your brain operates and enjoys.

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