#413 Years of Study, But No Progress? Here's How to Level up from Intermediate to ADVANCED English — 5 Things You Should Stop Doing and 1 Method You Should Apply
35:21 Share

So let me ask you an honest question. Do you see yourself making real progress towards real-life fluency in English? I'm talking about speaking with confidence without translating in your head. Are you getting there? Well, if you're watching or listening to this lesson, I'm sure that is because you have succeeded in going from a basic level to intermediate, but

How long have you been at intermediate? Are you sure that you know what to do to get to an advanced level? So in today's lesson, we're going to tell you exactly what are the things that you need to stop doing that are wasting your time and we'll teach you the method that actually works and that'll help you level up your English to advanced real-life fluency in English.

- Ah yeah, real lifers, global citizens. This is Izzy from RealLife English, where it is our mission to guide you beyond the classroom, to speak English confidently and naturally, to connect to the world, and to actually use your English as a doorway to the life of your dreams. All right, Ksenia, so I thought that for this episode, we could really pick your brain to understand how to solve the issue of getting stuck. And is this something that you've ever noticed?

with your students? Yeah, I actually did. But wait a second, what are you gonna do? Pick my brain? What does it mean? Could you define it, please? So when you pick somebody's brain, you're going to ask that person questions because they understand a lot about a certain topic and you want to understand too, you want to gain more knowledge about it. So you're asking questions, you picked their brain. So have you ever had students with this issue?

I did, I did. So actually that's, I guess, one of the most common issues that some of my private students came to me with, right? They were asking to help them break that plateau. You know, they felt stuck at the intermediate level. Yeah, that is so common. I think most of my students that I had in the past when I used to do private classes,

they were all somehow, someway just stuck and intermediate. They were in this plateau. By the way, the word plateau is exactly this flat line that you can see in a graph. So, you know, a graph, they can see the evolution of something. So if progress stops, if you stop going upwards in a graph, then you get a plateau. It's just a flat line. And that's pretty much what's happening.

to most students including mine in the past so i think in all these years of teaching i've got to learn a thing or two about uh this issue and uh i bet that you too so i thought that we could talk about it and i could really pick your brain about it today okay shoot

Ah yeah! So guys, by the end of this lesson, you have learned five things that you want to stop doing. Things that are preventing you from going from intermediate to advanced. We're also going to give you a live demonstration of the actual method you need to use. And at the end, we'll also give you some extra tips to make things really easy for you. By the way, if you want to learn with more lessons like this to help you achieve your fluency goals with the real life stories and examples,

hit the subscribe button and the bell down below so you don't miss any of our new lessons. Now, Ksenia, I want to get started with the first thing that students normally do, that learners normally do, that is not really helping them achieve an advanced level. And this thing is attending classes at a typical language school. So this is the typical classroom experience that most people know.

And to investigate this, I spoke with a friend, a friend of ours that you and I have, and I'll tell you who that person is later. But this person spent five years

attending classes at a language school, at an English school, and they never got to develop, she never got to develop her fluency. Now, she told me that their method was pretty straightforward. You know, she'd go to class twice a week and then do homework once a week. She told me that she was a good student, you know, but she wasn't seeing the results. Now, why do you think this is a method that doesn't work? It is so widespread, right? But it doesn't really work. Why is that?

It is. And by saying it is widespread, you mean that it's pretty common. Almost every country has their own popular or less popular offline schools with selling courses and students enroll. And like you said, they don't get to see the results very often. So what's happening in those traditional schools is that

Very often, unfortunately, hopefully it's been changing, that it's a traditional teacher-centered model. So the whole focus is on the teacher lecturing, giving the information, and students passively receiving it. That's the first issue with that. We know that

We're learning English for communication. We're learning that language to use it in real conversations. And that's not what's happening in the classrooms, right? The problem here, what I see is as soon as you leave the classroom,

you also forget about English. So English becomes something isolated, something that is associated only with the environment of the classroom and with those textbooks, like you said. - As a school subject. - As a school subject, exactly. So you don't get to live in your English. It's not related to your day-to-day activities. You haven't made it a part of your life. So it's only that subject that is associated with this environment of the classroom.

And in the worst scenario, you don't even get to having enough speaking practice in those classes. Yeah, definitely. And I said that I was going to reveal who this person is. So this is Anira. We all know Anira. She was in a previous episode. We brought an interview that we had with her. And Anira is really an amazing learner. I think she's decided to apply the real-life way before getting to know the real-life way. So she...

really understands what it takes to get to advanced. But before she started doing that, she was attending classes. She was going to a language school. And what's crazy is that she stopped going to that school at the end of 2020, the year of 2020. And she started learning with a real life in 2021. And in September of 2021, she was already working as a teacher, as an English teacher. So in nine months, she developed English.

you know, enough to start teaching. Amazing. Amazing. And I hope that she managed to apply that method that she was learning at RealLife English with her students, right? Yeah. And today she's working with us, right? Anyway, so the second thing that learners tend to do to go from intermediate to advanced, you know, they rely on is Duolingo. I think most people have tried Duolingo. It's a mobile app that gives you these daily exercises, which are kind of like a game.

And these games are all about choosing the correct word based on an image you're seeing, translating sentences, filling in the blanks with-- you have the missing words and have to fill in the blanks. And these are really short exercises. And at the end of them, the app gives you feedback on correct or incorrect answers.

Do you think Duolingo works? That's the first question I have for you. The short answer is no, it doesn't work. But I know so many students for whom Duolingo is just like their favorite tool because they treat it as a game. Like it's very, it's highly gamified. You don't want to miss a streak. Yes. So you're kind of addicted to this app. But I just want to remind our dear students that Fluency is not

about just learning 7,000 or 12,000 English words, right? It's the ability to use these words like in different combinations and in various contexts, right? To sound natural because just like, you know, I just wanted to share this very quick joke that I came across just recently. It can be applied about to Duolingo and to classroom environment as well. When, you know, those are...

fixed expressions and phrases, even sentences, the whole sentences that you memorize, but they're not applicable to your actual life. So the joke goes like that: it finally happened, someone asked me where the library was in Spanish. I've been training for this since high school.

You know, so there is this, you know, we all remember those textbooks examples, right? Where is the library? How can I get to the superstore? Yeah, or something like that. And if it's not something that you would actually use, it doesn't make sense memorizing that. So Duolingo is a little bit of that. It's a little bit of this gap between what is taught...

And what is actually be then applied by you in your real life situations? Yeah, I think there are such things as fluency skills. You know, it gives you knowledge of the language, Duolingo does, but you don't get to develop your fluency. You don't really flow with the language with it because you're not practicing like you play, which is this concept, this principle of practicing fluency.

In situations that are real, you know, just like a player who plays like a soccer, they would have real games in practice. So you want to do that. Okay, so the next thing is learners tend to focus on passing exams, only passing exams. Like they go to, you know, they...

They use traditional methods and there's a lot of focus on that. So I used to teach at a language school back in the day. And I remember that, you know, and passing tests were a big deal. And there were written and oral tests, you know, spoken tests. So that's good.

But if your only goal is to pass the test, that's not going to really help you be ready at any point at any time to speak English. And there's also a lot of focus on getting a certificate, which is kind of similar problem there. So why is that complicating the lives of learners, would you say?

Yeah, well, you were just describing, I had this funny picture in my head that, you know, you are in a real English conversation and you are looking forward this multiple choice that you've seen so much in your tests, right? So preparing for the tests in English, they don't prepare you for, again, for real communication, right? There would be no multiple choice test in your conversations. And

like a video game right that you'd see like the options like you speak with a character and then you see the options like choose your option for what you want to say that

That doesn't happen to me. I love tests myself. I love them. And occasionally I take some online tests right now to check my knowledge in grammar. And I should say that at some point, they can help you improve your

basic knowledge of grammar, let's say in English, right? When you prepare for a test. And even remember what Ethan mentioned when he was learning Catalan. Yeah, preparing for a test actually helped him improve his level. But again, it's something that would go additionally to your main learning. Yeah, it's not the primary focus. You shouldn't be relying only on this, only on prepping for tests.

Yeah, you want to be ready at all times, not just for a test. Before we move on, I think it's a good time for us to shout out our Learner of the Week.

Okay, so thank you so much for the five-star review. It was sent by Black Alpha, one of our app users, and they write, "This app is so good. The app can make you good at speaking and listening. I've been using this app for a year. Now I can easily speak without any trouble. I really love this app and respect real-life coaches."

Thank you. And thank you so much. Oh yeah, this is awesome. Yeah, you can really develop your speaking skills and your listening skills on the real life app. And not only that easy, actually what you can do on our app today, we're all talking about this plateau and how to break out from, uh,

intermediate into advanced level of English, right? And that's exactly what separates advanced speakers of English from intermediate speakers of English that they always have the right word when they need it, just at the tip of their tongues because they have this ample vocabulary. How to do that? Just using our spaced repetition system, our flashcards on the RealLife English app,

Each episode comes with a set of flashcards that we prepare covering 30 plus most important vocabulary and you can learn them by getting access to a free lesson on the app. The link will be in the description below. So just like go and activate your free lesson today. Okay. So moving on to the next issue that I see with learners is that there's this obsession with studying grammar and learning

One thing that I see a lot is many learners, they turn to YouTube to watch tutorials, you know, lessons on their own. And that's a good thing. It shows proactivity. Many people start watching these lessons on YouTube. Then later they discover an app. A lot of learners do that. They go to YouTube.

There's a lot of productivity in there. But when they go to YouTube, they actually spend a lot of time watching videos like these. And for all of you guys who are only listening to us, what we are showing right now on screen is a teacher in front of a whiteboard that is full of grammatical structures, sentences, jargon. Now, this seems pretty harmless, right? Like you're studying grammar. What's the problem with that? Many teachers say that's really important.

But do you think there's any reason why this could be considered ineffective for taking you to advanced English? Okay, there is nothing wrong with studying grammar. Moreover, if you aim for an advanced level, you should learn grammar. It's just like, you know, you should do it the right way. I love teaching grammar, but just like you shared with your students, we seek further

those grammar structures, those interesting cases, the use of modal verbs, conditionals within the video. So it shouldn't be solely drilling the rule and doing this exercise multiple times, just like using present perfect continuous in dozens of sentences.

When you are in a conversation, if you are thinking about, okay, how should I structure this sentence? It creates this sense of perfectionism. And that really hinders you from being fluent, from feeling natural and confident. Because all you're thinking about is this grammar, how to build a sentence. That's not what you want, right? In real fluency.

Mm-hmm. Use a nice word there. It hinders. Preventing you being an obstacle to your confidence, right?

I do think that this is an issue of mindset. It's not a problem to study grammar, but when studying grammar makes you get into the mindset of that perfectionism, that's a problem, right? So you study it, but when it's time to speak, forget about it. Be natural. Don't worry about making mistakes. So Izzy, you shared today about your own experience with your students, right? I also wanted to share what I've seen. So I used to teach IT students and what I've seen a lot there is that

People get overly confident with their current level. So they don't want to leave that comfort of upper intermediate.

And they don't see how they can't break through right to the next level, to the advanced level. So they have no issues understanding like videos or during the meetings. Yeah, they understand perfectly. They also don't have so much trouble expressing their thoughts or getting their messages across, but they're

They tend to use the same vocabulary over and over again. That makes their speech a little bit dull. They were lacking this real flexibility, this real fluency to make jokes in English, to express their bright personalities, to, you know, add those... spice up their language, right? That's what I've noticed a lot. And that's exactly what you can do by using the right method.

what we're gonna show today right exactly so this is a good segue actually Xenia for us to talk about this like what is the right method that you guys need to apply that you all of you guys listening watching this right now that you need to apply for going from intermediate to advanced because we talked about five things that people tend to do and I even think that some of those things if they're slightly adjusted they could be really beneficial but

For example, attending classes, like going to a language school. I think if time were spent differently there, there could be a lot of progress. I remember with my own students, because I have taught at a school, but I've also had private students. So with my private students, I would pick a TED Talk. Then we would watch that TED Talk together. We would dissect it, you know, all the vocabulary, the pronunciation you could hear, the context, the meaning of everything. And then for homework,

they would obsess over it and keep watching it and learn even more, take note of all the words. And while we did it, we would also discuss it. So it was really a full complete lesson that I'd have on my students. So teachers could be doing the same in these schools, but most of the times they're not. And what's great about this is that this is also how real life English, how we teach students, learners, how to go from intermediate to advanced by activating your English.

Now, Ksenia, this superpower that we have in our methodology, the real-life way, activate it, activate your English. What is that? Could you give our learners, our viewers listening to you a brief explanation of it? So you're talking here about this deliberate practice, right? So there is time of passive input when you are consuming, when you're watching videos, listening to the podcast, listening to the music, right? So this is something you do passively.

And when it comes time for deliberate practice, you like sit and you maybe write out some words or look it up. Look those words up in the dictionary. You work with a mimicking method. Yeah, so everything you do to actually activate your English. Yeah, you have the curiosity for the vocabulary, the sounds, everything here. And then you intentionally, you deliberately practice all of that.

especially in real life situations, right? So this is what that means to activate your English. And we're going to demonstrate that now with a TED Talk. Why not, right? So we chose a clip, a TED Talk clip for us to watch. It's short. It's just about 40 seconds. And then we're going to dissect it and show you how you can do with all the media that you consume, all the movies, the books, this podcast also, which, as I said, you can do that on a real life app. We support you in doing that.

Because again, we give you all the vocabulary flashcards you need with the advanced words. So it's really helpful. Do you want to do this, Xenia? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Be human. Write like a human. I see this in journalism all the time. I don't understand what happened to our species that when you put a pen in our hand or a keyboard in front of us, we suddenly stiffen up, think we're a Harvard professor or we're Walt Whitman.

And we try to show off in our writing. Like, if I was talking to you in the bar, I'm not going to use SAT words. I'm not going to talk in acronyms. I'm not going to use wordy clauses. I'm going to talk like I'm talking to you now. I'm going to talk like a human. So stop. Stop using those big terms. You think that people think you're smart when you use them? They don't. They just want to throw a shoe at you.

- What I like about this video is it is so emotional. His speech is so emotional. Those again, this is a perfect exercise for mimicking, living this through, like learning and trying to reproduce those emotions. Yeah, and like even repeating, reading the sentences with the same emotion. - So in the beginning of that clip, he says that he doesn't understand what happened to our species. That when we put a pen in our hand or a keyboard in front of us, we suddenly stiffen up.

What do you hear in that sentence that you could learn with? What is the advanced vocab? What could you extract from it, Xenia? So first of all, just to explain a little bit, we are dissecting this whole text in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation, cultural things, and some grammar as well. So in terms of vocab,

There is this interesting word that students may not be familiar with. It's the word species, how he pronounced it, the speaker in this TED Talk. And also there is another variant which you can hear in some other videos, which sounds like species. So there are already like two variants.

variants of pronunciation, which is an interesting fact. Species and species. And what it means, it's a group of organisms having something in common. In this case, he's referring to us, humans. We, human species, right? Like dogs are different species, right? And then you have cats, humans. It may also refer to plants and so on. Right.

Right. Then there is a very nice phrasal verb, stiffen up. He even shows what it means, like stiffen up. He touches his collar. Right. So when you're talking about stiffening up, when it is about the body, it is straightening up. Right. Like stiffen.

checking your posture, right? Or it can be said about the behavior. You may behave in a more formal way. Like imagine you're going to a job interview, so you won't be sitting just like relaxed, you will stiffen up. Yeah, so it has this connotation, this negative connotation of being too tense when it doesn't really need to, but you're stiffening up. So it's unnecessarily tense.

And it's interesting the way he pronounces it too, right? That's a word chunk. It sounds like a single word, stiffen up, stiffen up, but it is a phrasal verb. But what else can you hear there as far as connected speech? What are other instances of connected speech in that phrase? Connected speech here is in front of us, right? What happened to our species, that's when you put a pen in our hand or a keyboard in front of us. So that's the first thing that...

I hear, so in front of us we hear this drop of tea and becomes like in front of us. And this is such a common phrase, you just want to learn it the way it is with the connective speech, in front of us. And then there is a more difficult thing, which even can hinder your comprehension of the whole sentence, because there is this flap T at the end of put.

Put a pen, right? Put a pen. If you don't know this thing that happens in American English, that T before vowel can turn into a flap T, into this D sound, maybe you can't recognize the verb to put, because maybe you practicing into Duolingo, you got used to hearing put a pen, but actually he pronounces like put a pen, put a pen in our hand.

Yeah, and the connected speech continues, right? In the rest of that phrase, like a pen in our hand, pen in our hand. Like, what is that? If you don't know, if you don't know, connect speech, that's just like this alien sound, pen in our hand. So put a pen in our hand is put a pen in our hand.

that when you put a pen in her hand... Okay, so what we hear in this part of the clip, and again, this is very important because for real-life fluency, you wouldn't learn

the language apart from culture. There will always be some cultural things that you won't understand without deliberately checking them up. So for example, if you don't know who is Walt Whitman, it will be difficult for you to understand what he's talking about here. So for you guys, Walt Whitman is one of the most famous American poets.

He's like very, very influential. And another cultural thing is Harvard professor. Yeah. You might have heard about Harvard University. So you might be curious. Yeah. Leaving your English, you might be curious to check more information about Harvard University, that this is one of the most prestigious universities in the world. And that curiosity is exactly what makes Harvard

advanced speakers of English stand out from people who couldn't reach that advanced fluency because they were just like simply curious to check all these nuances. This is funny. That's exactly what I would do like a lot. Really, like I'd be watching something and then I'd pause and be like, okay, where should I search? Like a dictionary won't give me this. So I'd go to Wikipedia.

And I would spend so much time on Wikipedia and I'd lose track of time. And then by the time I was done, you know, reading the article and in another article that I clicked from the first one, by the time I was done, it was like an hour had passed. It was like, wait, I need to go back and continue watching the clip. But yeah, moving on, he says...

that we do that, you know, like we think we're a professor, a college professor, or what we meant, because we're trying to show off in our writing. What does that mean, to show off in our writing? Oh, what a nice phrasal verb. So to show off is to boast. And there is a slight difference between these two words, to show off and to boast. Both mean to speak proudly about yourself. But when boasting is exactly more about speaking,

It's more about communicating something. Oh, I'm the best, you know? So showing off always, not always, most of the time, it also involves some action. So you're a really great dancer. So you're showing off with all those, you know, smooth moves you're making. Yeah, you're trying to attract attention and impress people. That's showing off. Yeah.

He says that, you know, if you're talking, if you're at a bar, you wouldn't use SAT words. What does that mean? So this is an acronym, right? An abbreviation for Scholastic Assessment Test. And again, this is something you would want to look up in a dictionary. This is like a standardized test that people take.

in the United States, usually for college admission. So there's like this official test they take. And SAT worries why he uses this phrase here because it usually implies using some really advanced vocabulary. Maybe not every person knows what it means. They're somewhat obscure, right? Like really advanced words.

Yeah, again, to try and impress people with your vocabulary, right? That's not necessary. And what else do you see in the next sentences? Great examples of connected speech here. So he says, I'm going to use SAT words. I'm going to talk like I'm talking to you now, right? So I am not going. He uses two variants of reducing, contracting this whole phrase. So first time he uses it, he says it like I'm not going.

gonna right i'm not going i'm not gonna and the next time he uses it he reduces it completely to just i'm gonna i'm gonna talk and what it is i'm gonna is i am going to i'm going to talk like i'm talking to you now right and again there is this flap t right talking the talking to you talking to you yeah and i see some other words there that are interesting you know acronyms

So an acronym, we have an example here in this TED Talk, SAT, that's an acronym. It's when you have the initial letters of a phrase and then you use those initials to actually communicate the same thing. So USA, United States of America, SAT. He also says wordy clauses. So those are two interesting words there. First of all, what is wordy? It's an adjective, right? What does that mean? Explaining these words, I really want to give some tip for our students here. So

You probably know the word "word". If we know what the word is, probably we can guess that "wordy" is just using too many words. You can remember this pattern from like "rainy", "dusty". Yeah, dust. When there is too much dust, it is dusty.

It's the same with this wordy and clauses. A clause is a part of a sentence. So if you have a long sentence, usually it has parts divided by commas. So one part of a sentence is called a clause. This is a great example of how you can extract all this knowledge from a piece of text or a piece of media without necessarily studying. You know, like you're not viewing yourself as

as somebody who's studying, sitting down and reading the textbook, you know, something like that, you are watching a TED Talk. And while you do it, you're activating your English. So you're living your English because you do want to watch this TED Talk. If you don't, if you're not interested, pick another one.

pick a TV series, a movie and apply this method because by doing that you're going to be activating your English. So instead of just passively learning with the media, you're going to be activating, which is the key to success. And let me just give a challenge to our students because we haven't explained a piece of grammar which we can hear in this 40 seconds clip.

So I would just challenge you guys rewatch this clip and find the mixed conditional in this clip, this very short clip. You can write us in the comments or shoot us in the mail explaining if you could find it. All right, Xenia. So I remember when we were preparing things for this lesson, you mentioned some extra tips that you could give that I thought they were really valuable. So beyond what we already shared,

What were those things that you had to say that would make things a lot easier for our learners? Yeah, this is something really important, I believe. Because nowadays, there are so many videos on YouTube that you can learn English with. And you know, one of the...

issues with that, with having too many videos, is that you are constantly stuck in consumption, this constant consumption of videos, right? And there is like this consumption in real life, like you were buying too much stuff, but there is this consumption, overconsumption in content, YouTube content. And when there's

information overload happens, you know, you're only able to scratch through the surface. You don't get to the core of things, right? So you are jumping just from one thing to another, from one video to another, and not really reflecting, not really

internalizing the things you're learning and not giving yourself time to practice those words to use them in your own conversations that's the problem I guess and that creates an illusion of learning and then you get this frustration right like why am I not improving I'm watching English videos every day but that's exactly it you're just watching them and you are watching too many videos without

deliberate practice without activating it the right way. Yeah, what we were talking about today. We're not obsessing over them, right? Exactly, you're not obsessing over them. And that might sound funny, but when we are in this constant rush, we

we get stuck because then just like it's something breaks and you don't understand anymore. It just, you don't see the progress. That's one thing that we talked about in a previous lesson that we interviewed Nira, the learner that we mentioned earlier in this lesson, that that's exactly what she did. She would obsess over our podcasts. That's what she did when she stopped studying at the language school in those nine months that

That's all it took for her to start teaching. She was obsessing over this podcast, actually, the different episodes. So once a week, we would release an episode and then she would obsess over it, listen to those episodes.

listen to them multiple times and extract the vocabulary and use flashcards. Basically do what you can do on a real life app. So Ksenia, this was really amazing because I think you also got to show people how you prepare a lot of our lessons too, right? You showed people how to understand the vocabulary, the connected speech and the culture in these clips. So on our Learning Through TV YouTube channel,

We do exactly that. You guys can learn with so many more lessons that we teach with movies, series, TED talks even. We'll leave the link in the description for you guys to check it out. And this is really great because you got to touch on your own work routine there too a little bit, right? Hey guys, if you're on YouTube, give this video a like, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell down below not to miss a single new video.

If you're listening to this podcast on a streaming platform, if you're on Spotify, don't forget to follow us and also give us a five-star review. And guys, make sure to download the Relive English app. And if you enjoy the experience, give us a five-star review on your favorite app store. So to summarize, guys, today we have learned in the first part, five things that you need to stop doing. Five things that are not really helping you go from intermediate to advanced learning.

Then we showed you the right method that you can use to actually reach an advanced level. And at the end, Xenia gave us some nice tips about avoiding information overload. So Xenia, this was really nice. It was really a pleasure. And guys, as we always say on this podcast, no matter what divides us, that which unites us is far greater. One, two, three. Aww yeah!

Ellen DeGeneres' character, Dory, is just unforgettable. Sorry, I suffer from short-term memory loss. So if you haven't seen it, it's definitely a great one to check out and learn English with.

Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep learning English. So the first one that I added for my list was Dodgeball. And this just has amazing performances as well from Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn. They have the best dynamic together. And when I was a teenager, I loved both their movies.