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Vanessa: Hi.

I’m Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.

Do you want to speak English fluently?

How can you know if you’re a fluent English speaker?

Let’s talk about it.

So your goal is to be a fluent English speaker, but what does that mean?

Today, I want to give you a little fluency test.

This isn’t going to be like tests that you had in high school with grammar and vocabulary.

I know people who have a great degree in English or they get the highest scores on English exams but they’re still not fluent English speakers.

So this is a real test to tell if you’re really fluent.

I’m here in my sunny backyard to share 10 fluency statements with you.

If you can say yes to each of these statements, then congratulations!

You’re a fluent English speaker.

But if there are any statements that you can’t say yes to, this is what I want you to do.

I want you to write down that statement, either on paper or mentally, and I want you to create some specific actions that you can take to increase that statement so that you can say yes to that statement.

Throughout today’s lesson, I’m going to be giving you some actionable tips so that you can follow through and really increase your overall English fluency.

Are you ready to get started with fluency statement number one?

Test yourself.

I can smoothly have a conversation about almost any topic in English.

This is essential.

In your native language, you can probably talk about your vacation and then instantly jump to talking about how public transportation is always late.

You can easily jump from topic to topic without much hesitation.

So this is what you need to do in English as well to be fluent.

Of course there will be topics that you won’t be able to talk about smoothly in English, but those should also be topics that you can’t talk about smoothly in your native language.

For example, last week I was talking with my friend about a Star Wars movie.

I don’t know much about Star Wars movies, but I was trying to have a conversation with her about it.

I was trying to explain, “You know that guy who wears the white suit?

He’s kind of like a soldier.”

I couldn’t remember the word stormtrooper.

So she said, “Oh, do you mean stormtrooper?”

Great!

We continued our conversation even though I didn’t know exactly what that word is.

So if you don’t know a word in your native language or you feel uncomfortable talking about a topic in your native language, it’s okay if it’s the same in English, but those two should be a balance.

Fluency statement number two, I can think in English and not translate in my head.

I like to think of it like a light switch.

You can turn it on for English or off for English.

When someone says a word in my second language, in French, when someone says Paris with a French accent, my brain immediately switches to French because it was kind triggered by that French-sounding word.

But if you said Paris with an English accent, well, it doesn’t make my brain start to think in French.

So this is kind of like the light switch idea.

It is on or off, and you need to be able to keep English on so that you’re not translating in your head.

So when you’re speaking in English but you can’t remember a word, let’s say that you’re telling me about a car accident that you had yesterday, you might say, “I was driving, and then a bird flew at my car, and I drove into a … “ And you can’t remember the words, so you explain it in English.

“You know that dip or that hole on the side of the road usually for water or rain?”

And then your friend says, “A ditch?”

And you say, “Yes, I drove into a ditch.”

You explained the word ditch in English instead of immediately saying it in your native language because the light switch was turned on to English.

You probably couldn’t even remember that word in your native language because you weren’t thinking in your native language.

You weren’t translating in your native language.

Instead, your brain was all in English and you just didn’t know that word ditch.

So instead, you were trying to explain it in English.

If you’ve ever had this happen to you, it’s the strangest sensation.

I remember one time I ripped my shirt, and I was trying to ask my French friend if she had a thread to sew it but I couldn’t remember the word thread, [French 00:04:26].

So I just tried to explain it.

But do you know what?

I couldn’t remember the English word for it either.

It’s as if English was completely turned off and instead my brain was turned on to the other language.

So if you have experienced this, congratulations, you’re fluent.

The third fluency statement is I can use English all day and not feel tired.

Of course, if you have a busy, busy, busy day in your native language, you’re going to feel tired.

But when you use English normally throughout a normal day, you shouldn’t feel tired at the end of the day.

This means that you listened to English radio on the way to work.

You spoke with your coworkers in English.

You used an English recipe to cook for dinner.

And in these situations, you’re not mentally exhausted because it’s tough to think in English.

Instead, if you feel comfortable and not tired, congratulations, you’re fluent.

The fourth fluency statement is I can speak and other people don’t slow down their speaking for me.

This is a great way to test your English fluency.

When you have a conversation with someone else, if you can tell that they’re using different language for you compared with other people in your conversation, it means that they don’t see you as a fluent English speaker.

But when someone can speak with you without slowing down because they realize, “Oh, you can understand.

It’s going to be fine.

We’re going to be able to have a normal conversation,”

great!

You’re fluent.

This is especially true when you’re with someone who isn’t an English teacher.

English teachers tend to slow down when they’re speaking with an English learner because it’s part of our job.

But when you’re talking with someone who’s not an English teacher, maybe you’re talking to customer service on the phone about a problem that you had with a product or maybe you’re talking with a cashier at the grocery store, if they speak with you at a normal speed, the same speed that they’re talking with everyone else at, great!

Congratulations.

You’re fluent.

Our fifth fluency statement is I can say something, but I can’t explain the grammar because it just feels right.

If you’re speaking but you have no idea why you correctly used I have eaten instead of I ate, well, great.

That means that you’ve internalized the grammar.

Maybe you can’t explain why this was correct and why that one’s not correct.

You’ve just internalized it.

Great, you’re fluent.

A good way to test this is by writing the same way that you speak.

You could just ask yourself the question, what’d you do this weekend?

And as you’re writing your answer, try to write exactly in the same way that you would speak.

Well, this weekend I went to a friend’s house, and then I decided to leave early because I was feeling a little bit under the weather.

And as you’re writing this, are you thinking about the specific grammar verb tenses about the sentence structure or are you just writing naturally and correctly, and this is the same way that you’re speaking?

If you have internalized English grammar and you can use it correctly without thinking about the rules, congratulations, you’re fluent.

The sixth fluency statement is I can be myself.

I hear a lot of my English students say that they want to accurately express themselves in English.

And when I hear them say this, what it makes me think is I want to be myself in English.

You want to show your same personality in English as you have in your native language.

So if you’re clever and humorous in your native language, you want to also be clever and humorous in English.

If you’re kind and thoughtful in your native language, well, you want to also show those character traits in English as you speak.

When you feel like your true self is showing in English, congratulations, you’re fluent.

A good way to practice this is by following the steps that I mentioned in this video up here about how to start speaking English without fear.

Make sure you check out that lesson.

Fluency statement number seven: I can watch English TV shows and movies without subtitles, just like a native English speaker.

In my opinion, I feel like TV shows and movies are a little bit more difficult to understand than just daily conversation because it’s scripted.

They use sometimes words and humor that’s extra clever or extra advanced.

But if this is something that you want to do and you can actually watch movies and TV shows without subtitles, congratulations, you’re fluent.

If you’d like to take it to the next level and be able to understand movies and TV shows but also be able to talk about them, make sure you check out this lesson I made here about how to talk about movies and TV shows in English.

You’ll learn a lot of great phrases and expressions so that you can enjoy those activities and then talk about them in English with other people.

Fluency statement number eight: I can understand different accents in English native and nonnative.

A lot of you need to use English for your jobs, and that’s great.

That’s a great way to be able to use English on a daily basis.

Some of you work with Americans, British people, Australians, but a lot of you work with nonnative English speakers, people from Germany, Indonesia, Brazil, all places around the world.

When you can understand all English accents, congratulations, you’re fluent.

I remember the first time that I heard someone speaking French from Canada and I realized the way that they speak is different than the way I hear people speaking in France.

When I could hear that they had a different accent, I felt so proud of myself because I realized I can understand them and I can understand that they have a different accent than what I’m used to hearing in France.

This can be a tough skill to master, but with YouTube there’s a great way to do this.

If you have some co-workers who are from Germany and you often speak with them in English, you can try to watch videos of Germans speaking English on YouTube.

That way you can feel comfortable with the way they speak, the language choice, the accent, the intonation.

You can just test yourself with YouTube and kind of train so that when you speak with your German co-worker in English, great, you’re already prepared.

Fluency statement number nine: I can understand humor and jokes.

Of course, the humor and jokes may not be funny to you, but at least you understand why they’re supposed to be funny.

There’s nothing worse than sitting at a dining room table with a lot of English speakers and they’re all laughing and having a good time laughing at jokes, and then you’re just sitting there thinking, “I have no idea what’s funny.

Why are they laughing?”

You feel really left out and lonely.

But on the other hand, there’s nothing better than understanding the humor and laughing with them.

It’s a great way to bond, to form relationships.

When you can understand humor and jokes in English, congratulations, you’re fluent.

Fluency statement number 10: I can read an article, listen to a podcast, watch a movie in English and forget what language it was in.

This is such a strange sensation when this happens.

I remember one time I was listening to a French podcast while I was cooking dinner.

And then during dinner, I was asking Dan, my husband, some questions about the podcast.

He doesn’t speak French, and he looked at me like, “What are you talking about?”

And then I realized, “Oh yeah, I forgot.

That podcast was in French so you couldn’t understand it.”

So when you can seamlessly jump from one language to the other, congratulations, you’re fluent.

There’s one movie called Paris, Je T’Aime, and it’s a movie about different areas in the city of Paris.

And in this movie, a lot of the characters speak in English and then jump immediately to French.

And I remember watching that movie and listening to all the different languages that they were speaking and realizing I can understand this.

I’m so happy.

I don’t have to use subtitles for part of it or feel uncomfortable when they switch to French because I could easily understand both languages.

I felt so happy and so proud of myself, and I want you to have that as well.

So if you can understand a podcast, a movie, a TV show, read an article and then forget, oh yeah, it was an English, congratulations, you’re fluent.