3 common myths that are holding you back from being fluent in English

'Do not follow this advice if you're learning English'.

The truth is that if you are an English learner, or if you're looking to improve your fluency and pronunciation and confidence in English, you might hear a lot of different ideas and tips on how to improve your English. But the truth is that there is a lot of very popular bad advice out there.

And today I'm going to talk about some bad advice that you might be following. I'm going to tell you why it's bad and what to do instead. I also want to invite you to a free masterclass where I'm going to talk about methods that people are constantly using to simply do not work, they are outdated. And I'm going to share with you three strategies that do work that will help you transform your English. I cannot teach these things on my videos, because I have to go in depth, they're a little bit longer, and I want to leave time for questions.

I'm only going to teach this class four times, and seats are limited. It's absolutely free, but you've got to grab your link. So click the link, save your seat, there are four options to choose from. If you can't attend live, you can watch the replay, but it's going to be available for a limited time. So join the free class, The Three Strategies to Transform Your English.

Now, before we talk about the popular bad advice, I want to share with you some of the recommendations my followers have received over the years. These are the comments that I got on a post where I asked what is one piece of really bad advice that you have received.

"You need an English speaking native girlfriend."

"Stop saying very."

"Americans speak incorrect English, speak British English instead."

"Study grammar, and then speak."

"One of my professors at the university told me that English was not for everyone."

"Learn English quickly while you sleep."

"If you aren't young anymore, English isn't for you."

"Don't study grammar rules."

"Pronounce English as it's written." Or actually, 'pronounce English as it's written'.

"Your goal should be to sound like a native speaker."

Ridiculous, right? These are actual recommendations that some of my followers have received.

Now, while this advice actually sounds a little silly and you may not follow it, there is advice that actually sounds like good advice, but I want to talk about why it isn't. Here are the top three worst pieces of advice that are going to mess up your English, or at least make you wonder why you're not making progress any faster.

The first one is "watch movies and TV shows to get fluent". Now listen, while listening and exposing yourself to English as much as possible is good, and it's going to help you improve your comprehension, it is not going to get you fluent. If you don't practice speaking, you're not going to get better at speaking. If all you do is practice listening, you're going to get better at listening, it's not going to help you with your speaking. So, it might help you with passive vocabulary, but still passive vocabulary, it's not available for you to speak when you speak. So, make sure you don't follow this advice without putting into practice what you learn, without integrating a lot of speaking practice as well as listening practice.

The next piece of advice that is terrible advice is "memorize those 1000 words or 2000 words or 500 words or 10000 words so that you could get fluent". The truth is that when you memorize words separately, in isolation, outside of context, you might increase your passive vocabulary, but you won't be using those words.

First of all, you can't memorize a bunch of words at once and expect yourself to use them. Second, the brain doesn't work this way. You have to remember it in context and you have to use it. So, focusing on less words over the course of time, and doing it with the right method is going to guarantee that you will use those words rather than just memorizing lists and lists and lists of words or phrases or sentences.

By the way, I have developed a really effective method to integrate new words into your speech. I'm going to link videos about it in the description below. I'm also going to talk about that and more in the live masterclass. So if you haven't saved your seat just yet, make sure you do it now.

The third bad piece of advice is "do a lot of grammar exercises". While grammar is really important, and again, I study Spanish now, and I have to understand basic grammar, but just doing exercises over and over and over again, it simply doesn't work. It doesn't register. You don't get it. You logically get it, conceptually you get it, but then when you speak, it's not there.

You use other grammar, maybe the grammar of your first language, maybe you just get stuck, maybe it's not available, it's not quick enough. If you want to improve your grammar and if you want to improve your speaking and you want to be more accurate, you got to use it repeatedly again and again and again. One of the ways to do that is to create drills and say them out loud, to create your own sentences, to speak intentionally.

Again, I have a lot of videos about that, so I'm going to link resources as to how to do that differently in the description. But just so you know, this is not going to get you to improve your grammar. What will is practical and effective practice once you learn something. You don't need to learn more, you don't need to solve more quizzes, you just need to put it into practice and understand the context through the practice. Okay? So more about that in the live masterclass, or you can also check out the links below.

Now, before we wrap up, I want to just share something that I'm very passionate about. That is my last piece of advice about bad advice that you might be getting. I often hear that people are told that if they want to improve their English, or any language that they're learning, they need to learn with a native speaking teacher.

Now, if you benefited from this video, if you've watched other videos of mine and you have gained value from them, you know that this is not true because I am a non native speaker of English. And I think that because I'm a non native speaker of English, I know how to explain things to the brain of the non native speaker, because this is how my brain works. Because I have had to figure it out myself. This is why I can explain pronunciation in a simple way, because I had to make it simple for myself when I studied it.

I think that non native speaking teachers are excellent teachers if they're good teachers, and if they know the language well. Because they have gone through that journey themselves as well. They know exactly what you're going through. They understand your obstacles.

Now, teachers who are native speakers could be good teachers and bad teachers. They could have all of that as well, they could also understand your journey. Maybe they have experience with another language. The point is, a good teacher is a good teacher, whether they're native speakers or not native speakers.

And when you're looking for a teacher, make sure you're looking for a teacher because they're good, because you connect to them, because they explain things in an easy and simple and digestible way, and not because they're native speakers. And don't reject teachers because they're non native speakers, because you never know what the experience of learning with them is going to be like. That's it. That's what I wanted to say in my name and in the name of all the non native speaking teachers. And if someone says otherwise, you can send them to me.

Now, again, I wanted to remind you that I'm going to host a free masterclass. I'm only going to have four classes available, so grab your seat, limited time. If you can't join live, you can sign up and then you're going to get the recording after. And these are things that I simply cannot teach on video. I'm going to teach you the three most incredible strategies that are going to help you transform the way you speak in English. And I'm going to talk about methods that don't work, outdated methods that don't work. I want you to know them so that you are on the right track to achieving your English goals in 2025? Okay. All right.

That's it. Thank you so much for being here. And I will catch you next week in the next video, or in the masterclass. Bye.