Can you lose fluency in a language? The question of all questions. Is it even possible? What happens when you lose fluency? Does it really get you back to square one and you have to start over? Is it even possible? What do you need to do to get back on track if you do lose your fluency? How does it feel like? What makes you lose fluency? All of these questions are questions that you might have asked yourself if you don’t live in an English-speaking country and use English daily. What we’re gonna do today is discuss just that: What it means to lose fluency? If it’s even possible? And if it is, what you need to do to gain your fluency back.
But before that, if you are new to my channel, then first of all, thank you so much for being here with me, you and me, today. My name is Hadar. I’m a non-native speaker of English, and I’m here to help you speak English with clarity, confidence, and freedom. And if you wanna find out more about what I can offer you, I have a lot of free resources and content. You can come on over to my website at hadarshemesh.com or follow me on your favorite social media platform: TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook. I’m everywhere.
So now let’s talk about fluency. But before we talk about what to do if you lose your fluency or if you can even lose fluency – it’s not something that you lose, like, “I lost my glasses, or my keys”, or “My fluency… oh my God, I lost my fluency”. No, it doesn’t work that way. I wanna talk about how to measure fluency. Right? Because if we lose something, we need to know what it feels like to have it. Or if we’re at a certain level, we need to know what it feels like or what it looks like or sounds like to be at that level. So if you regress, then you know what it feels like to not be there.
And this is a really tricky question. Because yes, I know there are proficiency tests. And there are all these levels: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1. And I’m gonna make a separate episode about that cuz I have something to say about all of that. But… yes, we have levels, but fluency is something that sometimes feels very elusive. Sometimes you feel like you’re really fluent, and some other times you may feel like a total beginner, like you have no idea what’s happening to your English, even though yesterday you feel super expressive. So it can be really, really tricky.
And fluency is something that is not really measurable. It’s like confidence, it’s like love. Can you really measure those things? It’s an experience, it’s an emotion. And yes, I’m sure that there are some AI experts that might tell me, “Oh yeah, we can measure the number of words you use per minute and how many fillers you have and how clear you are. And that, my friend, is fluency”. But none of us have access to such tools. And honestly, when we’re being tested, we actually perform a lot worse than what’s possible for us. So let’s put that on the side and go back to your real experience speaking English.
So I want you to ask yourself, what does fluency feel like for you? What does it mean? How do you identify it? How do you quantify it or measure it? For some it might be speaking without getting stuck. For others, it might be being able to speak about different topics without feeling hesitant or without second-guessing yourself. For others, it might even just be being able to speak because usually they might avoid speaking. For some, it might be speaking in public in front of a lot of people. Then I would feel fluent. So, your individual experience and assumption is what matters.
Now, please make sure that you’re not creating an unattainable goal regarding fluency – to sound and speak like a native because it’s not gonna serve you. And to be able to sound and speak like a native takes a lot of work and a lot of time. And a lot of times, you know, we would be totally fine and happy with just being able to express ourselves fully.
So to me, fluency is to speak and not even notice if I’m speaking in my first language or in English. For me, fluency is speaking and not thinking about the fact that I’m speaking, not having opinions about how I speak, to just speak. For me, fluency is to be able to listen cuz I’m present and I’m attentive to the other person listening. To me, fluency is to be able to make people laugh. To me, fluency is to be able to be quick and respond and to follow the impulse that I have to speak without pushing it down. That is fluency to me.
Now, I can’t tell you if scientifically you can lose fluency. I can only tell you from my own personal experience what it has been like. So, I don’t know if you know my story, but when I was 21, I moved to New York (20, actually). And I’ve lived there for a few years. Then I moved back to where I now live, which is Israel. I was also born in Israel and lived there all my life.
And when I moved back, I did not use English for a few years. And only a few years into my life in Israel, I decided to teach English and teach pronunciation. And even though I was using English fully, and I was actually performing and acting in English in different dialects back when I was in New York, when I started teaching, I did not dare to speak in English cuz I felt so rusty. And so incapable and so incompetent that I didn’t want people to find out that my English actually sucks.
So back then, yes, I felt that I really regressed and my fluency got a lot worse. And then I started teaching, and then I moved to teaching English when I wanted to take myself seriously and challenge myself. And I felt like I’m getting back on track. Now, after a few months of just teaching in English, I felt like I’m picking up my speaking power and that my fluency is getting better, and I’m becoming less and less judgemental of how I sound.
So, I see fluency as others may see building up your muscles or being fit and working out. Let’s say you’re a gymnast and you worked out all your childhood. And you can do all those crazy things up in the air, and your body is so fit, and you are strong. And then for several years you don’t do anything. So, is your body going to have the same strength, the same fitness level that you had when you were working out daily? Probably not. Will you be able to go back to where you were? Most likely, yes. Is it going to take you the same amount of time? Probably not, because the body remembers, and that’s the good news.
Because if you felt fluent in the past and more expressive, and let’s say you took a long break and now you feel like your fluency has regressed and you feel like, “Ugh, I have to start over”. The good news is that it doesn’t take much to get back on track and to get back to this feeling of fluency, but it does require work.
So, I’ll give you another example. When I had my first child, my first girl – now she’s nine, oh my God, that was nine years ago – up until the day I gave birth, I was teaching English several hours every day. So I was speaking English all day. I was speaking more English than I spoke Hebrew. And then for three months or two months, I did not speak English at all when I was like adjusting to being a mom. And then I started taking lessons again, and I truly felt that I had gravel in my mouth when I was speaking English. So even after two months for someone who has been speaking, you know, hours and hours every single day teaching pronunciation, I felt it was a little hard for me to get back on track. But it only took me a week to lose that feeling and feel, Okay, I got this.
According to a research published in the Journal of Cognitive Science in 2014, loss of fluency can include more pauses, more filler words like, ‘um’, ‘eh’, ‘so’, ‘hmm’, and decline of speech rate, and even more correction of mistakes. But it also says that it’s not permanent, but only temporary because it’s harder for the brain to retrieve the language. So, the language is there, it’s just that the brain focuses on other more important things that are relevant for your day-to-day communication, relevant for your survival.
So to not lose your fluency, ultimately you do have to speak English almost daily, like you would work out daily to stay fit. And that is why I always say that if you want to be more fluent, you have to build the habit of using it and practicing it every day. So the good news is that even if you feel like you’ve lost your fluency and a few years ago you were a lot more fluent, it’s not too late and it’s not gonna take you a lot to get back on track and to get back into fluency. But you do need to take action.
Now, if you want more advice on how to improve your fluency, I have selected a bunch of videos for you and I put them in the description on how to improve your fluency, and the best strategies to improve. And let me tell you this, it’s not just about speaking even though it’s a big part of it. It’s also about how you manage your mind and how you manage making mistakes, and how you manage negative thoughts about your loss of fluency while speaking. All of that is a crucial part of your personal development inside of English.
Now I want to hear your story. Have you ever felt like you’re losing your fluency? If so, what was the thing that has led to that and what have you done to change it? Let us know in the comments below and let’s start a conversation.
Thank you so much for being here. If you want more information about how you can learn from me, I have a ton of content, free content and freebies on my website at hadarshemesh.com. And I publish content daily on different content platforms: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. So come follow me there.
Have a beautiful, beautiful rest of the day, and I’ll see you next week in the next video. Bye.
