Why you're still STUCK at intermediate English (and how to fix that)

Intermediate English is dangerous. Why? Because it feels good enough. You can't survive, but you can't shine. That's why you are stuck. And in today's video, I'm gonna show you how to break that wall. Guys, thank you so much for watching. Welcome back to my channel Wanna Speak By Veronique. As a language learner myself, I really know your struggle. English is my second language. And let me tell you the truth. You are not stuck because you are lazy. You feel so stuck because your English hit a survival mode. You can order food, you can talk about your weekend, maybe you can even join a business meeting. But when you want to express yourself deeply, you feel like you reached a plateau. Let me show you three walls keeping you stuck at the intermediate level and the exact tools to break them once and for all. At the end of this video, I'll also share why the fear of making mistakes and the fear of exposure was keeping me stuck. Ready to dive in? Let's go. Most probably you understand most of the English conversations. You watch a movie, you get the story. You listen to a podcast, you get the main point. You are in a business meeting, you can follow the conversation. But when it comes to details or when somebody asks you something, you are like, oh my god, you freeze because you didn't understand one or two words. Why? Because your vocabulary is enough for survival but not enough for fluency. So the obvious question, my friends, how do we fix it? We're gonna learn in chunks. Vocabulary chunks are ready-to-go phrases. Let me give you a couple of examples. The next time your friend tells you, oh I had to make a tough call, you can naturally and confidently reply, what decision did you have to make? Because you already learned that we make a decision. We don't do a decision, we don't bring a decision or whatever. We make a decision and it makes your life so much easier. Instead of learning the word a problem, you learn the whole phrase to deal with a problem. So next time you have a problem, you know that you have to deal with the problem. You got it? Or instead of asking your co-worker, hey let's go eat something, you can say, hey let's grab a bite. Recently I worked with a couple of women from Poland. I am from Poland and in Poland in school they were teaching us to translate word by word from Polish to English. It doesn't make any sense, I'm gonna talk about it in a second. But these women were saying something like, please write to me when they meant text me. Most probably your natural impulse is to translate everything literally from your native language to English. We're gonna work on that, no worries. But this method, learning in chunks, is gonna help you think in English. So here we actually have double benefit because you learn ready-to-go phrases so you don't give your brain like additional work and at the same time it teaches you to think in English. Brilliant. Okay guys, let's go to the second wall that keeps you totally stuck at the intermediate level. You sound correct like a textbook but not natural. If you learned English at school, your brain was trained to translate. As I mentioned earlier, my Polish students, they are translating everything literally from Polish to English. But the truth is that these languages are completely different languages. That's why you build sentences word by word. That's why it takes so much time. That's why you doubt yourself. That's why you feel so lost. You were taught to overanalyze grammar. Present perfect, present perfect, continuous, oh my god, maybe past perfect. I don't know. I am lost. So before you even said something, you already froze. You see? And I completely get your struggle because I've been there. When I was like 18, 19, I was so afraid of speaking English because I was like, no, for sure I'm gonna mix something up. I was trying to, you know, connect millions of words that I had in my head. But I didn't know how to create a natural sentence. And the way they taught me at school worked, but only for exams. It didn't work for real life. It made me sound so stiff, so slow, so unnatural. Yes, people understood me when I was, for example, traveling, but I didn't sound like me. I wasn't myself. I sounded like a textbook, and I didn't want that for myself. So here's how to fix it. We're gonna collect everyday slang, and we're gonna expose ourselves to that slang. You need to hear how native speakers really speak in movies, podcasts, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and then copy it. You need to copy native speakers out loud. Even if it feels fake at first, you already know that this is called the shadowing technique. So we basically listen to a movie, we listen to a video, to a podcast, to whatever. We pause and we repeat after native speakers. This is how kids learn languages. By copying. By copying their parents, by copying their teachers, by copying the adults. So we can imagine that we are kids again when we shadow native speakers. And this is how, this is how you're gonna sound natural, not like a textbook. We don't want to sound like a textbook anymore. So we're gonna copy native speakers, and at the same time, we're gonna pay attention to the slang words and shortcuts. So when you consume content on social media platforms, it's gonna be super easy with the slang. Instead of saying, do you want to meet me? You're gonna say, wanna hang out? You see how want to became wanna, and meet me became hang out? You're gonna pick it up from the native content. Or for example, instead of saying, I am going to go, you say, I'm gonna head out. You see, going to became gonna, and go became head out. The more you expose yourself to that content, the more you pause, the more you repeat, the more natural you're gonna sound. The faster you'll kill that textbook voice in your head. To give you an example that it's totally possible, I'm gonna talk about one of my clients. Her name is Julia, let's say. Obviously, I cannot say her real name, and I do coaching sessions with her. I don't know if you guys know that I have my second channel, it's called Authentica by Veronica, and it's all about relationships, it's only for women, it's about trauma healing, it's about self-development, diving deeper, it's about feminine energy. And once we were exploring her inner world and her problems with her husband, she also asked me like, Veronica, you also talk about English stuff on YouTube, right? And I said, yeah. And she was like, does my English sound super stiff? And I said, okay, Julia, I'm gonna be honest with you, it does. And she was like, okay, give me a tip, what can I do? And I told her exactly what I'm sharing here with you. And I've been working with her for quite some time right now, and after six months, her progress is incredible. Obviously, she talks with me every week in English, but she exposes herself to this type of content. This is your way. And Julia is an example that it's totally possible. Let's go to the third wall, you understand but can't speak. So you understand more than you can actually produce. Because you binge watch shows, you watch movies, you listen to podcasts, but every time you open your mouth, you are like, it sounded so perfect in your head, right? But you just can't. This problem is so common. And I also faced this problem. It's because fluency isn't about recognizing words. You hear a word and you are like, yeah, you know, I know it. Next. Real fluency, it's about pulling these words out of our memory and practicing them in context, we need to create emotional connection with them. Because if we don't pause here, and if we don't practice in real life, these words are just gonna vanish, they're gonna fade away, we're gonna lose them. How do you fix it? You watch a short scene, you pause, and you explain it in your own words. Now I know it's not comfortable. It's not easy. It's not like the easy learning. Yeah, I'm just gonna listen. And that's it. I learned English. No, you need to do it out loud. Meaning your mouth has to get used to the new sounds, the English sounds, the American sounds, right? So you need to teach your facial muscles to move in a different way. So once you explain the scene to yourself, then you need to try to catch some useful chunks, okay, whole phrases, you can write them down. And when you write them down, you create sentences or a story about your life. Using these sentences, these chunks, what I want you to do is to create emotional connection with these phrases. This is your way to fluency. In reality, you don't need to study grammar, you don't need to do endless exercises, you don't, like, forget about memorizing vocabulary lists, please. This is what kept you stuck. This is your way out. Make it about yourself. Learn the whole phrases. Explain things to yourself. Produce speech. This is how I learned Spanish in just seven months. This is how I speak Spanish, and I learned in just seven months. Obviously then, for like two years, I've been mastering my Spanish. So now it's better than it was before, obviously. But these are the methods I used to learn Spanish so, so fast. And finally, the bonus wall, probably the most important one, the fear of making mistakes, the fear of exposure, and oh my god, I'm running out of battery. So give me a second, I need to change the battery, and we're gonna talk about the fear of making mistakes. Okay, I got it. So the fear of making mistakes, guys. I was terrified of speaking English when I was like 18, 19. Even I lived in the UK for like six months, I was working there, I was terrified. Because at school, they taught me that I need to be perfect. And the result was miserable. I had this huge language barrier, this blockade, like, I just couldn't. I felt so insecure, I didn't feel confident, I was so afraid that people are gonna judge me and laugh at me. And actually, that was my biggest nightmare. You know why? Because in high school, I used to get bullied for my English. First of all, I needed to change high school, because I was bullied in my first high school. And I got there in the middle of the year. So they put me into the most advanced English group that existed in that high school. And it was too advanced for me. Every time the teacher was asking me something, all my classmates were laughing at me. Now I have distance to it, because I do a lot of trauma therapy and trauma work. I talk about it a lot on my second channel. Girls, if you want to connect with me on that deeper level, you can go and subscribe to that channel. Anyway, now it's like easy, easier for me to talk about it even. But back then, it was like a horror movie to me. I get you. I've been there. I know what it feels like to be terrified of speaking in English. I know what it feels like to be terrified of being exposed, to being judged. But it doesn't define you. You can break free from that fear, because that fear only lives in your head. Maybe you also have some bad experiences. Maybe you were bullied, laughed at. Maybe you experienced a lot of judgment, even racism. Because I know that a lot of immigrants and expats are watching this channel that live in the US. I also experienced that when I was living in the UK for six months. I was treated worse, because I was a Polish woman. So I want you to know that you are not alone. Feeling this fear means that you are growing, because you know where we grow when we step out of our comfort zone. So feel the fear and do it anyway. You know, I needed to pay a really high price when I started recording for YouTube. I lost a lot of my friends. They didn't like it that I started being on YouTube, that I started growing. A lot of people at the beginning were judging my accent, even right now. I'm not an American. I'm not gonna sound fully like an American, right? So this fear of judgment and this fear of making mistakes really got me. It became real. It was like the worst case scenario coming true. And you know what? I'm still here. I'm still here and I'm stronger. I'm more confident. This is actually called in vivo exposure therapy. My therapist told me about this and this is fascinating and actually fantastic. So in vivo therapy teaches us that we can get exposed to a trigger, to a scary thing, in this case a fear of judgment, step by step. You don't need to go out there and speak publicly in front of 100 people if you are not ready. But maybe you can have a conversation with a native speaker. A five-minute conversation, nothing more. You know, and step by step, slowly, slowly, you're gonna start feeling more comfortable. And you know, even when people are gonna judge you, that's none of your business. Just let them. This has to do a lot with self-development and with like psychological work. I talk about it on my second channel a ton. But here I want to let you know that you are not going to die because people judge you. You basically let people do whatever they want. Can you control them? No. That's it. You do you and you let other people do whatever they wanna do. But please, my friend, don't play small just because someone is judging you. Don't play small. It's not worth it. Go for your dreams and English is a tool that you're gonna use to get your dreams. These people maybe are not gonna be even in your life in one year or two. But your success is gonna be yours and nobody's gonna take it away from you. You got it? So don't play small. Expose yourself to the triggers. Expose yourself to the fear. Don't let it control you. Okay guys, thank you so much for watching. Again, my name is Veronika. Follow me on Instagram when I speak by Veronika. Let me know in the comments if this video was helpful, useful, if you also struggle with the same things. I'll see you in my next one. You got this!