How to get fluent in English without leaving your city

Do you think you need to live in an English-speaking country to get fluent? No, I have a friend who lives in England and she's still not fluent. Why is that? Before I answer, I have a challenge for you. There's a secret word on this card. Can you try to figure out what it is before the end of the video? If you can, you'll understand one of the most important ideas for becoming fluent in English. So, shall we explore Kuala Lumpur? Everything around you is English, if you choose to see it that way. And the way I do it is simple. Name it. Describe it. Two questions. What is it and how would I describe it in one sentence? For example, instead of just remembering vocabulary like digital billboard, you would name it and describe it. This is a digital billboard and it's showing an advert for Malaysia. The advert is showing fish underwater. I actually have a little rule. A word isn't really yours until you can use it. So, let's do some more examples together now. Up there is a skyscraper and it's enormous. At the top of the skyscraper, there are twinkling lights. This is a traffic jam. It's a busy Saturday night in Kuala Lumpur and there are many cars on the roads which is causing a traffic jam. This is a fountain. Water is spurting out every side of the fountain. These are mannequins. The mannequins are standing in the shop window staring into space. I wonder what they're thinking. Now guys, we are walking down the road. An area in Kuala Lumpur famous for its beautiful streets, beautiful restaurants, and apparently a very nice view of the Petronas Twin Towers which we're going to look for. But first, look at this. There's a cat asleep. The cat is sleeping on the floor. It looks dead. That's one way of describing it. Another way of describing it could be the cat has a spotty brown back. One more way of describing this could be I love cats because they remind me of my four black cats when I grew up as a kid. So there I described the cat in three ways. Three different simple sentences. The first way was slightly humorous. I compared the cat being asleep to being dead. The second way was describing its physical characteristics. The brown spots on his back. And the third way that I described the cat was linking it to how I feel about cats and what I think about cats. And that's a wonderful tip for any of you guys out there. Linking your English sentences to your thoughts and your feelings. When you can do that, then you can share your ideas. When you can share your ideas, then you're one step closer to fluency. So this is a shop and the shop is called Vitra. If I were to describe this scene in one simple sentence, I would say there are many colorful lamps on display in the shop window. I could also say I want to buy that orange lamp because I think that would look wonderful in my home. All right, let's keep going. Hey, look at that, Chang. We found it. What have we found? We have found the Petronas Twin Towers. These famous towers are one of the most popular landmarks in Malaysia. And Chang is getting a photo of me. No, she's not. Yes, she is. This is for next week's video, guys. I'm waving, posing for a photo. She's taking a picture of my ugly mug. We've just left the busy area to come chill at this cafe to rest our little legs and get a drink. I hope by now that you have internalized this simple exercise of name it, describe it, and I would encourage you to use it. That's actually the idea behind the vocabulary feature on Sprouts. You are given a word and then you are encouraged to use it in a sentence. That is how a word becomes part of the way you speak. Now, it's getting late, so after we have these drinks, we're going to head back to the hotel because tomorrow is an exciting day. We're going to go to the bookshop and there's something I want to show you. I love mornings like this. They slow everything down. They remind us that big changes are built slowly from small habits we make every day. Learning English is the same. One of the biggest myths is that you have to move abroad to become fluent, but I don't believe that's true. The secret is much simpler than that. Well, guys, we've arrived in the largest bookshop in Southeast Asia. There are over 1 million books in this bookshop. That's a lot of books. Now, let's break down the anatomy of a book. So, just like the anatomy of the human body, a book has a spine, just like the spine that we saw on the whale on the way into this bookshop. This part here is the spine. It has a front cover with an illustration on and a back cover. On the back cover, we have writing and that's called a blurb. The blurb is a small piece of writing that tells you about the book. So, if you love to read, you really like reading, you can say, I'm a bookworm, but not many people know the alternative to that, which is an avid reader. An avid reader is also somebody who loves books, but it's a lot more common in the UK. Are you an avid reader? Right now, I am browsing these books, which means I'm looking at them and I'm trying to find one to buy. Now, I'm browsing in the non-fiction section and non-fiction is books about facts and information, unlike fiction, which is story and imagination. Now, within fiction and non-fiction, you have different genres. This comes from the French genre and in non-fiction, you have genres such as business and economics. You have psychology, biographies and a personal favourite, self-help. In fiction, you have genres such as science fiction and fantasy or crime, thriller and mystery. For me, I prefer the non-fiction genre. Ah, nice. This is a book on curiosity and I'm a very curious person. I like to ask questions, both to myself and to other people. Speaking of asking questions, a wonderful small talk question that you can use with other people to have engaging conversations is ask them, what is your favourite genre? Now, you can use this for books, films or music. What's your favourite genre of book? What's your favourite genre of movie? What's your favourite genre of music? I think they'll get this. One thing that you might not know about me is that I love to write and illustrate picture books. So, it's my dream in the future to publish my very own children's books. What is your dream? Being in a place like this always makes me think about what to read and people ask me that a lot. What should I read in English? My answer is always the same. Read because you enjoy the topic, not because you're learning English. I love self-improvement books because they challenge the way that I see myself. One book that really changed my life was the book called Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Joe Dispenza. And I read that book when I was living in Spain. I actually read that book in Spanish. It's about how your personality isn't fixed. It's not rigid. You can actually rewire who you are through changing the way you think, how you feel and how you act. Now, I didn't read that book to improve my Spanish. I read it because I enjoyed the topic. I loved the topic of neuroscience and that's what I was fascinated in at the time. When I was reading that book, I felt like I became someone new. If your English isn't ready for something like that yet, then you can take a smaller step. You can start with something shorter, more simple and something that you already enjoy. So you could read articles about things you're interested in or simple short stories if you enjoy fiction books. As your English grows, you work your way up the ladder. You become better through reading what you enjoy. If you're just starting out, I would recommend The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstone. It's a great book. I'd also recommend the author Roald Dahl. Now, a lot of people think Roald Dahl is a children's book author, but actually a lot of adults enjoy his books too. The humour is slightly dark. It's very clever and there's always something underneath the story. Some hidden message or hidden meaning. My mum's favourite book is the SEO Trots, which is a book by Roald Dahl about a man who wins a woman's love through making her tortoise bigger. My mum always laughs when I mention that book and when we talk about it. Okay guys, the food has just arrived, so we're about to dig in. We're about to begin eating. Let's go. We have arrived at the Batu Caves, which are 400 million year old limestone mountains. And behind me, there are rainbow steps. Around 272 rainbow steps, which we are going to climb. But before we do, I want to share the last simple speaking habits that you can adopt to bring English into your everyday life. And that habit is to speak with the five senses. Ask yourself, what can I see? What can I hear? What can I smell? What can I taste? And what can I feel? I can see a flock of pigeons on the ground and I can hear their wings flapping as the tourist runs through them waving her arms. Before we go up there, we're going to hydrate. It's very hot, very thirsty. How do you feel? Do you feel ready to go up those stairs? That pause tells me no. Right, ready? Here we go. So guys, a word here, this is very steep. These stairs are very steep and there are monkeys feeding on the stairs. Look at that, there's a tiny baby monkey on the handrail at the side. Very cute. In front of me, there's a monkey sitting in a funny position with its hands flopping in front of it. I can hear it chewing on something. Maybe it's nuts, maybe it's fruit, maybe it's chocolate. I can feel my legs burning as I walk up the steps. Nice skirt. Almost there, nearly at the top. All right, a few more to go. Slightly out of breath. Out of breath means I'm panting like a dog, but I made it. Feeling accomplished. So we just arrived to the top and I want to hit the next few senses. So first of all, I can feel a drop of water on my shoulder. It's wet. I can taste this dairy milk ice cream. I can taste the smooth chocolate, the crunchy hazelnuts, and it is spot on. Spot on is a very British phrase for it tastes really good. I can smell the dampness of the cave. Let's go inside. I can hear the silence of the cave. Here I can see the little girl trying to blow out the candle and the parent pushed her away. Right, now we're heading into the main cave and this is unreal. So guys, with the five senses method you can do this anywhere. You can do it while you're out and about like me or you can wait till you get back home and describe your day using the five senses method or if you prefer to speak with someone. I'm out of breath. You can talk to J.I. and simply describe what you see, hear, and feel around you. He will listen, ask you questions, and give you feedback afterwards. At the beginning of this video, I said that you don't need to live in an English-speaking country to get fluent. You just need to recreate that environment yourself and that environment has a name. The name is immersion. Immersion means to be completely absorbed in something and that is what you have been doing today. Walking around the city, reading books that you enjoy, and describing the world through your five senses. That's also why Chang's friends moved to England and still isn't fluent. Location doesn't create immersion. You do. Fluency isn't about where you live. It's about how much of your life you choose to live in English. So what will you choose?