It's a question I get asked a lot of times, and also to share some tips from

my personal experience on speaking a foreign language or second language,

on how to communicate well and be understood in a foreign language when

you're living abroad. If you don't know anything about me, and this is the first

video of mine that you're watching,

I am originally from Brazil, I was born and raised there and I lived in Brazil

for 23 years. Then I moved to the UK and I've been living here for the last

nearly six years now.

Nowadays, I can say that I sometimes, well most of the time, I feel more confident

speaking in English than I do in Portuguese, and I think that's quite an

achievement for someone who wasn't brought up in an english-speaking

country and learned english as a second language. So I thought this video may be

interesting or useful to anyone out there who's learning English now and who

is struggling to become fluent or to know what to do to better their English.

My english is far from being perfect and I make mistakes all the time, but

I consider myself capable enough of holding a conversation, and I do all

my YouTube videos in English, which is good practice as well. So I'll just get

started with how I started to learn English. When you go to school in Brazil

and you get to a certain age,

English becomes part of the curriculum and it's one of the mandatory languages

to learn, and so I started learning in school. But the curriculum in school is

very limited and you really don't learn an awful amount of English in school.

So if you want to be able to speak English properly,

as a general rule, you have to enroll in a private English school. And that's what

most people do in Brazil and most of my friends did and when I was growing up.

I was about 13 when I started studying English, or 14. Around about that age, 13 to 14.

And I was going twice a week to a private English school.

It wasn't something that was forced by my parents. My mum always liked English.

She did do private English lessons when she was much younger, so it was something

that she was keen for us all to know and to learn from a young age.

And we were just generally interested in the English world,

in the English-speaking world and the culture. American culture, British culture,

which were the two biggest cultures that we were exposed to in Brazil, growing up.

We had lessons, and we started with Basic, Beginners and stuff, and carried on

progressing to Intermediate, then Advanced and then we got our degrees.

What happened to me was that, I very quickly realised I had a passion

for languages, and that I actually really enjoyed learning English. And so,

very quickly I progressed and developed my English because I was practicing so much

and enjoying it so much. I wasn't just learning in the English school,

I was going home, and I was watching things in English, and I was listening to music

in English and trying to understand the lyrics and translate it. And that kind of

helped a lot with my fluency and it helped just to solidify the concepts that

I'd learned from the books in my English school, and I'd come home

and it wasn't something that I was forced to do, it was something that I wanted to do.

So I would watch things in English and try to understand what they were saying.

I loved my dictionary, I walked around everywhere with my Portuguese to English Dictionary

translating words that I'd come across and that I didn't know.

So, then when I was 14 to 15, my sister and I went abroad.

We went to Disneyland, and that was our first experience in an English-speaking country.

And I just thought it was amazing that I was able to understand certain things.

I wasn't fluent at all at that point.

I just had a very basic knowledge of English, but I just got so

intrigued and interested in all of it. A year later, I made my first trip to London.

I came to stay with a friend. I was 15 at the time.

Yeah, I think so, 15 going on 16, and I absolutely loved it.

I fell in love with the British culture then and I just did not want to do

anything else, I just wanted to learn English.

I was staying with a group of friends who only spoke English, which kind of

forced me to speak English as well and to kind of get out of my comfort zone,

which was the best thing for me.

So after I came back from abroad I did the placement test to see where my level

of English was after having spent that time abroad, because that does boost up

your English level quite a lot, and I had jumped quite a lot of levels.

So I went from being the start of Intermediate, to going straight to Advanced

and I skipped the whole of the Intermediate course because I had

already built up so much for vocabulary and learned so much just by being abroad.

So that really really helped me.

I finished the Advanced level and I didn't stop there. I carried on studying because

I didn't want to lose my fluency and if any of you out there are learning

English abroad, you know how easy it is to quickly lose your fluency

if you've been abroad, if you studied abroad or did an interchange programme.

And then suddenly you're back home and no one speaks English on a daily basis.

It's really hard to keep up with the language if you're not constantly talking.

So I enrolled - my English school at the time offered what they called

a conversation course, which was basically, you finish the class, you finish the course.

There's no more grammar or anything to learn, you've learned everything that we offer.

But now we offer you the chance to keep coming back

twice a week with a group of people who are still interested in keeping that

English alive and we will just have conversations, basically. There will be

topics to be discussed every week, we'll have hand-outs and things,

and I'm sure you still be learning. So I did that and that was brilliant.

I loved that and I recommend that anyone who has finished their whole English course

and is wondering what to do.

Go and find a conversation course. You might think that you're putting money

down the drain, but you're not, because you're keeping that whole investment

that you made in your English course, alive.

You're basically saving your fluency in English,

because you're practicing twice a week at least and you get to speak English that you wouldn't

get to speak otherwise. And you also have a teacher there to answer any questions.

That was basically what happened to me.

It's not groundbreaking, I didn't do anything different to what anyone does

but I think I just already had a predisposition to languages, and the fact

that I went abroad really helped build up my confidence in speaking English.

So for starters I had a very very strong American accent because my teachers

in Brazil, they all had American accents and then when I came to the UK, I fell in love

with the British accent and somehow my brain was able to completely change

my accent from being American to British. And my husband being British,

at the time when we were going out, we were still boyfriend and girlfriend.

He is Welsh, and my brain just sucked in his Welsh accent, and now I have

kind of like a Welsh accent, mixed in with a Brazilian accent and whatever accents

I've have absorbed throughout the years. But mostly Welsh, I think.

I pick up accents very quickly, even in Portuguese.

It's quite funny, actually. Because if I'm talking to someone - a Brazilian person

with a different accent to mine, my accent morphs into their accent.

I really have no control over it - it just happens. So that happened in English as well.

The more I spent time with British people,

the more my accent got better, and I just kept on speaking.

Now that that part is over, let's get on to my top tips for speaking English

and making yourself understood in a foreign language when you're living abroad.

My first tip, and I think this is the most important tip when you're

struggling to make yourself understood in a foreign language is: make it easy

for people to understand you. Pronounce your words, open your mouth

and say the words. Don't mumble, don't speak quietly,

because people will find it difficult to understand you, especially with the accent and all.

If you're talking about: 'Do you want a cup of tea?' It might seem silly,

but that can save a lot frustration when you're trying to

communicate and people can't understand what you're saying.

Gesticulate with your hands, use your mouth, use your facial expressions.

And along the same lines,

try to pronounce things from your native language in a way that people can understand.

For example, Brazilian football players are very very popular abroad.

And that's a topic of conversation whenever people find that I'm from Brazil.

And one football player that you may know very well is, Ronaldo.

Now, being from Brazil

I wouldn't say 'Ronaldo' if I was talking to a Brazilian person.

I would say 'Ronaldo', because that's how we say it in Portuguese.

But, if I say that to someone who speaks English only, or who only heard his name in the English media

being referred to as 'Ronaldo', that's going to cause a little bit of miscommunication.

So instead of making that conversation easier, you're making it harder, if you know what I mean,

by pronouncing it the way that you would in Portuguese.

So if you know how people in English-speaking countries

speak certain words from your native language, then make it easier for them. Why not?

It doesn't really matter, you're not making a mistake. The important thing is that

you know that you know the way it's supposed to be said,

but in that particular context, it's much easier for you to make it easier for yourself

and for the person that you're speaking to.

My second tip is: don't obsess over your mistakes.

They really don't matter that much, and if you told me that

when I was learning English as a teenager,

I wouldn't have followed your advice, but I hope some of you will.

As a teenager I worried far too much about my mistakes and about

what other people thought of what I was saying wrong, and that prevented me from

starting conversations because I didn't want to make mistakes, especially in English.

The first time I came to the UK

I would not start a conversation, I would wait until someone would start

a conversation with me, because I was too worried of saying things the wrong way.

But soon enough I realised by talking to people

how little they care about your mistakes. If you're trying your best,

and you're speaking most of it correctly, or if you're getting the general gist

of the conversation correctly,

people really don't care that much. Even native speakers of English make mistakes.

And that's something that you'll learn. That your grammar will be much better than

a lot of native speakers. Obviously there are a lot of people in English-speaking

countries that have amazing grammar and things like that, but you'll be surprised

how good your Grammar and your knowledge of the English language is, coming from

learning English as a foreign language. So don't obsess over your mistakes.

If you feel like you've made a mistake, don't stop a conversation to correct yourself.

Just carry on speaking and keep the conversation flowing,

and that will make you more confident.

You know in your mind that you made a mistake,

but you'll correct it next time. Don't worry that person is not gonna judge you

on that mistake, it's just going to make life a little bit easier if you're trying to

communicate in a foreign language.

Tip number three is: practice, practice, practice. Whenever you can, wherever you can.

If you have a friend abroad that you talk to online,

talk to them on skype, talk to them on Facetime, but actually talk to them.

Writing is good, but you will only get your fluency by practicing your speaking.

And if you've learned English as a second language, you know the very important

parts of English, such as writing, reading listening and speaking.

And speaking is, by far

I think the hardest one for people to achieve fluency in.

if you know anyone in town that speaks English as a first language, go and speak to them

and just practice as much as you can.

But if you can't do that,

practice on your own, even in your house. I used to do that all the time in my bedroom.

I used to have conversations with myself, and you can call me crazy, but that

really really helped me because I kind of practiced the way that I wanted to say

certain things and the way that the sounds come out of my mouth. because a

lot of sounds we don't have in our native languages if you're speaking a

foreign language for example in English we have the th sound which is a the

employees we don't have that sounds so that's the sound that you have to learn

and I remember sitting in my bedroom with a list of words that start with th

and literally seeing them all out loud and practicing that th sound

I remember watching friends on the TV with subtitles on in Portuguese and

trying to copy what they were saying and the dialogues and you know the

intonation and just practicing just literally being interested in the

language and practicing as much as I can and that leads me on to tip number 4

rehearse monologues and conversations in the privacy of your home before you go

and speak to other people and what I mean by that is you know the general