My name is Thomas Galgani, and I used to teach Russian to U.S. military linguists.

I personally learned the language as an adult and was eventually recruited to help instruct.

In this video, I'm going to go over 10 actionable tips to help improve your fluency in your foreign language of study.

These aren't just things that I did in the early stages of learning Russian.

A lot of them I still practice, by the way, but they're also what we would ask of students.

It's very important to determine what it means to speak fluently.

Starting now, always send voice messages in place of written texts.

Hopefully, you have at least one speaker of your target language who doesn't mind you texting them.

But even if you don't, these can be just voice memos to yourself, like I'm doing right now.

You also have these to review and practice.

We'll get into more of that later.

And you might be thinking, well, come on, man, I don't text that much.

How is that going to make a big difference?

Trust me, even if it's just a few of these throughout the day or little moments, it adds up a lot over time.

And even if it's somebody that you're going to be texting in English or whatever your native language is, think to yourself, can I communicate this in my target language?

If you can, you can even say it to yourself, record it in your notes, just really get in the habit of every basic day-to-day communication that you have to do.

Ask yourself, can I communicate this in the target language?

And then just go with it.

Don't worry about making mistakes with these.

Just get the reps in.

Because a lot of times what happens is people will pause so long and they worry about what they're going to say, and then it ends up being wrong anyways.

The reality is you just have to get more practice and just get in the habit of just letting it fly.

Don't worry about being self-conscious.

Try to not be self-conscious.

The more you get in the habit of just letting it fly, the better it's going to come.

Next, I want you to practice telling a real life story.

This has to be a story that you are personally affected by.

I'd like you to write it out the way that you would say it.

This isn't a writing exercise.

You want to write it out so that you can kind of analyze it and perfect it.

Have it be checked by a speaker and really take your time.

Make sure that you master this part.

It's impossible to master a whole language, but you can master sections of it.

Really take a step back and have multiple variations to your story.

Three to four different variations, ways of saying things.

I would say one story per month.

Master that.

If you're really getting advanced and you want to be more technical about it, you can start off with one story in the past tense and then check off each tense.

Then one in the present tense, perhaps something that you do habitually every weekend, for example, and then in the future tense, for example, what are your plans for the next set of holidays?

Just think about it.

If you did 12 throughout the year, one per month, that's a lot of different stories that you have in your back pocket that you're going to have mastered.

Get those variations down.

Really take your time to master this section.

Reactions, stresses, intonations, and reactions.

To start, whenever you write, always make sure that you're writing the correct stresses in words, at the very least, to ensure that you know where they're supposed to be.

We'll take two words in Russian to start, for example, that are both spelled the exact same way.

Besat and beset.

Besat is to write, and if you take the same word with the same exact spelling, but a different stress, beset, then that means to urinate.

So you can tell using the correct stresses influence how well you're going to be understood, how accurate things are with your fluency.

And when I talk about intonations and reactions, that also has to do with how well are you playing off of other people with the intonation.

If you have a question, is it supposed to rise at the end?

Or if it's a statement, make sure that it's dropping.

Sometimes these things can vary depending on the language that you're speaking.

So study these and really pay close attention with how people are reacting to other phrases.

If you take an English expression, for example, when somebody is reacting to something that's surprising, they say, oh, no way.

Well, that's not a literal expression.

They're not saying, no way, that's impossible.

That's a reaction.

So master those little things.

We're kind of getting into the area of accuracy here.

But if you really kind of learn these a lot better, then you'll be more fluent.

Tip number four is to keep a daily vlog.

Vlog with a V.

We don't have to get crazy.

We're talking just two to three sentences a day.

And it can be about anything that's going on in your life or that's on your mind.

It could be, you know, that you just had a coffee break like I just had where you're in your kitchen and you just say something about it.

If you happen to be going through something, if something happens that makes you sad or happy, capitalize on that.

Capitalize on the emotion.

A lot of times during our language learning journey, you know, people will have something happen to them in their lives.

And that makes them kind of want to slow down on the language learning side.

But I always say that's when you want to dive in because neuroplasticity is great at any age, but the brain only remembers things or learns new things when it has to.

So if you can attach those memorable times, anything like embarrassment, anger, happiness, or excitement to these new grammatical structures, new words that you're learning, it's going to stick a lot better.

This is good coffee.

The next step is to record and compare snippets.

These could be short expressions that are just a few words.

And you want to take a recording of yourself saying something and then have a recording of the same thing from a native speaker.

Then listen to both of them and see how they're different.

How can you get yours as close to the correct form as possible?

Don't worry so much about accents.

I still speak Russian with an American accent.

Just worry about the correct forms and then ask your instructor or, you know, the native speaker that you're in contact with.

Ask them, what is it about what I'm saying that makes it inaccurate?

So worry about more of with like how something sounds as far as being able to be understood.

Being understood is much more important than sounding like a native speaker because a lot of times that's much farther off and you're probably going to have an accent.

Record and compare.

Take your time with these and analyze what are the differences.

As often as possible, study physicalities.

And the last tip we talked about recording and comparing what you say with how it sounds from a native speaker.

And now is your chance to really ask yourself, why does it sound different when a native speaker says this thing?

Physically, what are they doing to make those sounds?

So if you're in person or even virtually talking to somebody through a screen, make sure that you study those things.

Look at their mouth and their tongue.

You don't have to be weird about it, but recognize that they are physically doing things differently.

Our mouths, you know, rest differently.

I'll never forget from a speaking coach, speech coach that I had.

I learned that a native Russian speaker's tongue rests differently than that of a native English speaker, even without talking.

For example, supposedly, I want to look up more research on this, but supposedly the tongue of a native Russian speaker will rest up against the back of the teeth, whereas native English speakers tongues are more flat.

And if you start to think about physically, what are they doing to make those sounds differently?

And we also even, this also even gets into body language when people are communicating, you know, how are they carrying themselves differently than you would when you're trying to speak?

And believe it or not, that will help you be more fluid if you start to pay attention to the physicalities.

When implementing all these tips that I'm sharing with you, it will eventually fall on deaf ears if you have deaf ears.

One of my favorite books on communication is Just Listen by Mark Houlston.

On communication in general, this is an amazing book.

You're definitely going to want to pick this up.

Listen to what other people are saying so that when you respond as eloquently as possible, it matters, it makes sense.

It's not going to matter if it's obvious that you're not listening to what people are saying to you.

This goes for improving your listening skills overall by reading books like Just Listen.

And it also of course matters to improve your listening proficiency in the target language.

So a quick tip as far as that goes is to play the target language in the background as often as possible so that your brain will have more data to pull from as far as how the sounds are made, the flow of the words and the sentence structures.

Even if you're just doing something like doing the dishes or making coffee like I like to do, always have it playing on in the background.

If you go for a walk and you're listening to a podcast or the news, you don't have to understand everything.

A good rule of thumb by the way is to be able to understand about 50% of something.

So gauge your difficulty level, the material based on that.

About 50% is the goal.

And just hearing it as often as possible will make a huge difference in a pretty short amount of time.

Improve your speaking ability in your native language.

Now I say this because I've noticed that the students and people, language learners overall who are usually the most fluent in the target language are often more outgoing and they're more comfortable in their own skin.

So try to eliminate ums, cut down longer than necessary pauses.

And to do this, you can start a podcast, you can start a YouTube channel, practice talking to camera and every interaction that you have with anybody, no matter what the language is, take that as an opportunity to present yourself confidently and to speak with conviction.

That way when you're switching into the target language, you'll already be in the habit of communicating that way.

You could even try joining something like Toastmasters.

I personally haven't tried that but I've heard great things about it and I know it makes people a lot more comfortable speaking in front of people.

Tip number nine to improve your fluency fast is to listen to more music in the target language.

Capitalize on the melodies, use the melodies to your advantage and memorize things.

We'll take English for example, there's a song by the Backstreet Boys, I believe it's called The Call.

I've had it stuck in my head.

There's a line in there, then it goes, I will be late, don't stay up and wait for me.

If we look at that line from an outside perspective, it's actually kind of grammatically complex.

I can't play the song by the way because of copyright but if English was not your first language, that could be kind of confusing.

But knowing the melody, that could make it stick that much faster and also know the pronunciation, the proper pronunciation of things.

So listen to more songs in your target language, memorize more melodies, things that are catchy to you and you'll become more fluent.

Okay, now the 10th and final tip is tongue twisters.

Look up tongue twisters in your target language and this is going to be an amazing exercise for you to improve your speed and pronunciation of these different sounds, phrases.

Again, don't worry about mistakes too much because there's not too much grammatical accuracy with or even a point to these tongue twisters but you will get so much better at pronouncing these different sounds and really exercising the speed so that when you get into saying complete sentences or just basic phrases in the target language, it's going to come that much more easily to you.

If you made it to the end of this video, leave a comment that starts with Backstreet Boys so that I can see you.

And to all of you, thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next video.