Learning how to speak fluent English is one of the main goals for most English learners. Fluency is the ability to speak smoothly and freely. It’s that moment when things ‘click’ and you don’t need to pause and think about the pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary to communicate effectively.
If you still don’t feel confident after months (or years) of study, don’t worry! English fluency takes effort, but with the right approach, you achieve it. This is our three-step strategy based on years of teaching experience.
💡Go to blog post: How to Speak English Fluently: Learn 15 Powerful Tips and Tricks
📚 Explore our free resources on business English: https://www.talaera.com/free-resources
Business English training for career success.
.📩 hello@talaera.com
Learning how to speak fluent English is one of the main goals for most English learners. Fluency is the ability to speak smoothly and freely. It’s that moment when things ‘click’ and you don’t need to pause and think about the pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary to communicate effectively.
If you still don’t feel confident after months (or years) of study, don’t worry! English fluency takes effort, but with the right approach, you achieve it. This is our three-step strategy based on years of teaching experience.
💡Go to blog post: How to Speak English Fluently: Learn 15 Powerful Tips and Tricks
📚 Explore our free resources on business English: https://www.talaera.com/free-resources
Business English training for career success.
.📩 hello@talaera.com
Paola Pascual 0:03
Welcome to Talaera Talks, the business English communication podcast for non native professionals. My name is Paola and I am co hosting the show with Simon.
Simon Kennell 0:13
In this podcast, we're going to be covering communication advice and tips to help express yourself with confidence in English in professional settings. So we hope you enjoy the show.
Paola Pascual 0:24
All right, welcome back for a new Talaera Talks episode. I'm here today with Simon Simon, how're you doing today?
Simon Kennell 0:32
I'm doing great doing really well. Just Yeah, another lovely day to discuss English. Beautiful summer so far here in Denmark. How about yourself? How are things in Spain?
Paola Pascual 0:44
Yeah, things are pretty hot here in Spain. Summer gets... Yeah, temperatures rise. And it's it's awesome. I wish we could live in summer the whole year.
Simon Kennell 0:55
It's there you go. Well, so that's like, the thing for me is it's like I think summer just started like last week. So we're in like the end of June now. And it's now warm enough to wear shorts. So everybody's really excited. As am I, so it's it's all really exciting. But yeah, hopefully one day I can make it down to Spain and enjoy the nice. Yeah, enjoy the nice drink by the beach. That would be that'd be so nice.
Paola Pascual 1:23
You should you should for sure. So today we have a I think it's a very interesting topic is one of the most popular requests that we get from our students. And it is how to become fluent in English. It's the million-dollar question, right?
Simon Kennell 1:41
Yeah, yeah, we I mean, how many times have you been asked this question?
Paola Pascual 1:48
A handful. It's been it's been many times. And so today, I think we're drawing from our own experience learning other languages, but also from our experience teaching. So we've seen Okay, what does what works? What doesn't? How can a person actually become fluent in English? I think it's a good thing to start by actually defining what do we mean by English fluency? Right? What does it really mean to become fluent in English? Simon, do you think becoming fluent means not making any mistakes? And speaking absolutely perfect English? Is that what English fluency means?
Simon Kennell 2:26
Yeah, so this is, I think it is an interesting question, because I hear this all the time from students is, yeah, I want to become fluent, or I want to increase my fluency. And so when you say that you kind of get the answer there, when you say that I want to increase my fluency, which is not that you're at a native level of the language, right? That's not what we would consider fluent to be. Fluent is, I think, more than anything, almost a feeling. It's when you can speak easily, right? When it's when it comes easily to you when you're going at a normal pace, right? When you're speaking at a a normalized pace in that language, when you don't need to make these pauses to stop for thinking about is this the right word? Or? No? Is that the rule for grammar? It's a bit easy. It's the I guess, the best way that I could say it is it's smooth and free, right? I mean, you agree with that?
Paola Pascual 3:30
100%? Yeah, it's that moment where we're talking before, is that moment where things just click, and the words flow. And in, you know, you're able to communicate your message smoothly, even if you make mistakes. So again, it's not really about speaking perfect English, but it's about being comfortable enough to share your ideas, as we said before a normal pace and smoothly. And it's not, it doesn't take that massive mental effort that it takes at the beginning, when you're starting to learn a new language.
Simon Kennell 4:03
Yeah, and I think this is why it's, we hear it so much for Business English is because, you know, the job is already hard enough as it is, but then, you know, when I have to increase that mental capacity of speaking in a different language, that makes it even more difficult, so a lot of our students want to just be able to come to work and get their point across and feel comfortable, feel confident, right. And I think that's really what we try to focus on. And so, today, we're going to be talking about that, right? What are the strategies that we've seen, you know, work and I've seen many students that have used these strategies and have become fluent. It has worked for them. They have become fluent. They've gotten the promotion they've become more comfortable working in English. And we've used these specific techniques, right? If any of the students that I've seen that have maybe decided not to get to that point that they wanted to get to, I think it was a lack of, of doing these specific points. So, you know, we're going to try to make it as close to the magic recipe as as possible.
Paola Pascual 5:25
Sounds exciting. Yeah. It's a, it's a big shift, right? A lot of a lot of us, when we learn a second language we are, we get to a point where we understand pretty much everything and we're able to write texts in English, but then it gets to a point where you're need to have that smooth conversation, and then you'll get stuck. So let's look at the different strategies that we have for for our listeners today. I think the first step is to start with the goals. Right, right. What do you want to achieve? Why is it important for you to become fluent in English? Yeah. And do you have any tips and stuff in terms of helping people define their own goals?
Simon Kennell 6:12
Yeah, so this is I think it's the, I can't say it's the most important step, but it is fundamental you Yeah, before starting anything like this, it's important to define what does success look like? And I think you should think about it a couple of ways you should think about it, like, what do I want to feel like when I speak English? And then really consider that feeling? What do I want to feel like? Imagine a scenario where you're speaking English? Is it in front of a meeting? Is it with a manager? Or is it just, you know, in a conversation with a friend, imagine that and kind of, really embody that, which means, you know, go into that feeling and have that feeling and think about? Yeah, this is what I want to feel like, then you can start to visualize that. Okay, so what do I need to do to get there? Right? Well, a good thing is to as well have an idea of where you're at right now. So if this means you can take an English Placement Test, you can meet with an instructor who can give you a good assessment of where your level is, and what what things you need to work on. I think for this part, it's, it's pretty important to have maybe an outsider perspective, right? To think, okay, you need to work on these specific grammar points, or you need to work a little bit more on your speech and how smooth you're speaking, right? And have have these very clear weak spots that then you can create roadmap, you can create a game plan. And that makes it once you have those goals defined, then you know what you need to do to work on those specific goals. And that's what we do here. tilera. Right.
Paola Pascual 8:01
It's a very, very important step for sure. And do you have any examples? Like very specific tangible examples of a goal when it comes to becoming fluent in English?
Simon Kennell 8:13
Yeah. So definitely. It goes back to the first part of Okay, imagine this scenario, right? The dream scenario of use speaking English, and I've done this with several students, but one that comes to mind, you know, was an advertising manager. And, you know, we talked about that together. And she was like, I want to give a presentation on one of my projects in English, and I want to feel comfortable and do question and answer at the end, and I want to feel confident. So that's the, that's the specific big goal, right? And then we break it down to the smaller points of Okay, so what do we need to do to get you there? Number one, we need to increase the comfortability in your speech, right? So that's, we need to work on pronunciation, we need to work on a few grammar points, not a lot of grammar points. But a couple important grammar points. Let's focus on those two pronunciation and these three grammar points. And so we did that. And as we did that, you know, we were getting closer, she was feeling more confident. And we were getting a little we could kind of raise the bar as we went through. And then, you know, eventually she got to that point where, you know, she came back to me and said, Yeah, I had that presentation. And I did it. And I felt comfortable and confident. And it was really amazing to see her have that experience of like, wow, you know, four months ago, we talked about this doing this and then I just did it, you know, and that's a really cool, it's a really cool thing to see.
Paola Pascual 9:48
Visualizing that ideal scenario. I love that. I also really liked what you said about not not stressing over grammar too much. Sometimes. grammar is important. But I do think it's only important to the extent that it unlocks your mental flow. Sometimes we get stuck just because we keep thinking, Oh, is that the right verb tense? Or did I use the conditional the second conditional correctly? So it's really more about I think interior arising like making those structures yours and feeling comfortable using them, rather than just going over different grammar points, one after the
Simon Kennell 10:28
other. Exactly. Like I have students that asked me like, yeah, I want you to correct me every single time I make a mistake. A lot of German students ask me that every single time, and then I tell them, Okay, I'm not going to do that. Okay. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to correct you on the three or four biggest, most common mistakes that you use that that hurt your fluency, and then we're going to work on those first. And then we're going to continue because you don't you set yourself up for failure. If you think I need to sit down with a huge grammar book and just go over each step one by one, you're not setting yourself up for success, you need to feel that fluency, you need to feel that comfortability so that you can feel like that you're making an improvement. And yeah, setting down maybe two or three big, you know, errors that you have very often will help, you know, kind of make that a little bit easier.
Paola Pascual 11:25
Agreed, agreed. So we have the goals, we know where we want to get. And then the action items that we've collected from our experience, we divided those into two. First, we'll start with exposure. And then we'll we'll move on to practice. So practice is the active usage of the language. But before that, it's very, very helpful to get exposure to the language. And I think most of us will agree that full immersion is the best option, if possible, moving to a different country, or getting together with native English or English speaking, friends. Having a romantic partner that speaks English is probably one of the fastest ways to learn a language.
Simon Kennell 12:17
Right? Right. Right. Yeah, that you have no chance, no choice but to communicate, right? So you have to make it work. And so okay. And when we talk about immersion, right, what does that mean? Immersion, like, think about when you jump into a pool, you're going all the way into the water, you're fully immersed in the water. And that's what you kind of want to think about with language learning if you want to, as much as you can get to that point where you're fully immersed in the language and yeah, moving to another country, yeah, a relationship, what have you where you really don't have a choice, but to be in that in that water. And I think that's, it's so important for, for, for fluency for improvement, that happens very, very quickly that way. So if you can't, you know, fully immerse if you are already in a relationship, if you can't move to that country, you know, what, what strategies can we do like on a daily basis to immerse ourselves
Paola Pascual 13:26
so try to have as much English exposure as possible. I think the digital world we live in makes that easier, we can virtually travel anywhere, just from our devices, so set your phone to English as well as your any of your devices. When you watch movies, watch them in English or Sirius. So any use your your entertainment time to get that English exposure that will truly truly help you if you need to read the news. Try to read them in English. If it's too complicated, and you're don't feel that you have that level yet, at least read the headlines, just by reading the headlines in English will truly truly help you. Stay up to date with current affairs, but also get that vocabulary and that flow that that you will then truly need. listen to podcasts just like you're doing now. That that truly helps you get that exposure that you may not have living in in the country. I also think that it's important to be exposed to different accents. So when you listen to podcasts when you watch series or movies or even YouTube interviews, watch them both from native English speakers and non native English speakers because when you're communicating in a business environment, you will have people from India and Japan and the UK and the US and Australia. We all have different accents. So the more used to the more used to the variety you get, then the easier it will be for you to to become fluent. What else? What are some of your tips, Simon?
Simon Kennell 15:13
Well, I think for exposure, you know, I think you kind of have to be a little bit strategic with it. So you have to turn it into a habit, you know, if you can on your wait for your daily commute on your way to work, you listen to a 30 Minute English podcast every day, that's going to be huge for your improvement, right? Find one that you like, where you'd like the hosts, you know, and listen to that, because that's going to really help you. You know, if you have time at lunch, that's going to be your English reading time or something like that, you know, make it a habit. And that makes it that makes it very, very helpful. I think one of the things about exposure that, that I really like is I always tell students, it doesn't need to be work related. It can be anything that you're interested in, what is your hobby? What do you like doing? What do you like talking about, I guarantee there's going to be the English version of it somewhere that you can you can look into, right? So that's always going to make it a little bit easier for you. I tell if you're watching a series, right a lot of people like to watch with the subtitles on. I tell people, okay, try to do 15 minutes subtitles on 15 minutes subtitles off like that, which back and forth. And so what that does is you're automatically if you think, Okay, I have to watch this with subtitles off, it's good not going to make it as enjoyable, right, you still want it to be nice. So it's just like any type of training or practice, you get into the show with the subtitles on. So you know what's happening, you know, what the plot is, you know, what, what's really going on in the show, and then you switch to the subtitles off, and then you put yourself under a little bit of strain to continue understanding and to continue, you know, following along, but you know, okay, this is only for 1015 minutes, and then I can turn the subtitles back on. And that's a great way to go through it, where you're getting in that practice while watching a show that you actually like. And I've seen that that's had a lot of impact, a lot of really good impact. Yeah.
Paola Pascual 17:28
100%. And I one thing that worked for me when I was learning French, for example is and this ties back to your tip of make it a habit. I used to be an Au Pair when I moved to Belgium. And my French was okay, but things hadn't clicked yet. So I was not super fluent. And that's something I really wanted to improve. And I had to drive kids to school, and there was a 30 minute drive. So when we went there, we were talking and things like that. But when I got back to the house, I was on my own in the car for 30 minutes. So I decided to have the radio on. And I think I would understand about 40% 50% Sometimes 60% On a good day. I didn't understand much. But I just kept listening to it listening to it. And then I started at a point I didn't realize and then one day I was driving and I realized, oh wait, I can understand pretty much everything. And that was such a an incredible realization. And I hadn't really noticed. But the people around me had started telling me that I had been implementing those phrases or chunks that I had been unconsciously hearing into my into my own speech. So we tend to mimic that, you know, the patterns that we that we hear. So make that into a habit, it became really successful when I made it into an everyday thing. So from Monday to Friday, I would listen to the radio at least 30 minutes a day. And it really works.
Simon Kennell 18:56
Yeah. And it's it is that thing, right is a lot of times with improvement in language learning. It's it doesn't happen when it's you know, it's like oh, now you unlocked this level. And now you know about it and it's great. It usually you usually find out about it when someone tells you like hey, you know, you're really approved and you really have i And that's that's definitely what we hear a lot from students is they're waiting for the moment when the door opens and then everything you know happens, but it goes slowly. Go slowly. But when you realize it, it's a nice moment.
Paola Pascual 19:32
Yeah, when you look back and you realize how much you've learned. One more tip when it comes to immersion, and this is super helpful for people who have an important meeting. Performance Review, perhaps with their managers or presentation is if you work, for example, in Germany, and most of your colleagues speak German and your family speaks German. You need to get into that English speaking environment. So listen to people start thinking in English and start thinking about the phrases that you might use that kind of exposure of getting yourself into the English speaking mentality, at least 30 minutes before the meeting, or the presentation really, really helps us well,
Simon Kennell 20:17
yeah, I agree, there's that time aspect to it, it really is that you need to warm up to it, going into an English meeting, cold is really going to be difficult. But yeah, if you have the opportunity to get into that English mindset, I like that. Great. Okay, so we've talked about that, you know, we want to be very specific with our goals, right. And then we want to kind of craft our life create our life in a way where we're exposed as much as possible to the language. And then we want to have the active approach of the practice, what do we need to do on an everyday basis, or on a weekly basis to practice?
Paola Pascual 21:02
There are many, many things that we can do to actually practice. But the most important thing is that you apply it, that you use it as much as possible, we have this phrase in English, use it or lose it. And it means if you don't practice it, you'll end up forgetting it, which is actually okay, it probably means that you don't need it, that's what our brain does, they just have this clean up, you know, system where if we don't use it, then then our brain assumes that we don't need it. So try to use it as much as possible repetition is really important. There's, we're going to go into specific strategies, but working with a teacher, you know, one on one groups, whatever works for you is really, really effective. And it's a great way of going, you know, when you can not have the that immersion that we talked about of moving abroad or having a romantic partner that speaks English, having your teacher is the next thing that is the most effective. And it's great if that teacher that you find does not speak your native language. And this is very controversial. Do you agree? Simon? I know not everyone will agree.
Simon Kennell 22:24
I think it's, it's critical. You know, there are the cases where if someone is an absolute, absolute beginner, then maybe perhaps, but again, what we've seen time and time again, and what studies show is that full immersion in language is the fastest way to learn it. The I think one of the big reasons that it's on that it's controversial is because it's extremely uncomfortable, right. So that can lead to higher failure rates, if the student feels like, this is this is too difficult, you know, this is, you know, this is not gonna, they're not gonna make it happen. But, you know, I was talking with someone the other day. And this, this woman speaks four languages, because she's had to write because she's moved to different countries for work. And there was no choice, you know, it was, hey, you have to learn this language, or you don't work, right. So, you know, as rough as that is, as difficult as that is, as much as we can get in a situation where, you know, we have to speak that language, it's going to be helpful, it's going to help you more than if you have that mental idea that I can just, I can ask them a question in my native language if I need to, then it's easier to do that, right? I don't know, what do you think about this?
Paola Pascual 23:54
That's especially true for higher level students. If if, if you have a lot of anxiety, when you join a lesson, for example, and your level is not that great, then I think it's okay to have a teacher that speaks your native language, I think that's fine. But if you're at that point where your English is pretty good, but you need to find that next step where you feel like things are working and you're thinking smoothly, you need to put yourself under stress, and you need to, you need to find it hard to express your ideas, because that's what growing feels like growing. hurts a little.
Simon Kennell 24:36
Yeah. Yeah. It's literally your your brain is creating more pathways, you know, as you do that, and it's not going to be comfortable. So, you know, what you have to do is, yeah, get into those uncomfortable positions. And make it fun, you know, make it fun, you don't and that's why I think it's important to find a teacher or someone or a group that you're comfortable with. That's very important because mistakes are so important. It's so important to make the mistakes so that you can you can grow. What else?
Paola Pascual 25:10
Yeah. And that's something I want to go back to that thing that you said like finding the right teacher that clicks for you. And that's I mean, you work on, on your our people and culture manager and you're the one recruiting new teachers. And that's something that you put a lot of emphasis on. And that's part of the success of tilera. It's like we really, we always say, we hire teachers, we would love to have a drink with, apart from their massive expertise, their in depth knowledge, they're, you know, they are people you would like to hang out with. And that's important, because you've had a very long day. And now you have to sit through 60 minutes of a lesson. If it's boring, chances are, you're just going to drop out. And I would I would do that as well. I've done yeah, in the past. But if you really like your teacher, if you're having fun, then it's something that becomes part of your, you know, it becomes a hobby, and that's what it should become. Another strategy that has worked really well, for me learning a second language and for a lot of our students is to record yourself. And again, it is uncomfortable. We know that for a fact, when we started listening to ourselves when we started this podcast, but it works wonders. Record yourself, listen to your own recording, have fun a little bit, you can start your own podcast or record your audiobook if you there's a book you really like and then listen to your own voice. That is really effective.
Simon Kennell 26:41
What am What do you think? Why do you think that's so effective that, that listening to your own voice.
Paola Pascual 26:48
Because we look at it from an outside perspective, when we listen to our own voice, it's inside of our head, and were thinking and so many things are happening at the same time. And it's really hard to assess how we're doing, you're thinking you're probably translating words from your native language into your, you know, into English, and then trying to think what you're going to say next and trying to listen to what the other person has to say. So there's so many things going on. Versus when you listen to it, you listen to it from an outside perspective, and it's much easier to judge others than yourself. So it really helps you identify and it really helped us as you know, native English speakers identify we started the podcast, identify our own weaknesses and work on them.
Simon Kennell 27:41
Exactly. I mean, I yeah, I think everybody knows if you've listened to this podcast, how many times I was so embarrassed of the number of times, absolutely in the first like 10 podcasts, right? So that you learned a lot, you learn a lot by that. Yeah, seeing it objectively. So we're gonna get into some tips for work and some tips for home for practice. But is there anything else just general practice that you want to discuss before we get into those tips?
Paola Pascual 28:14
Just one more, and I'll be super brief about it shadowing, I bring this up every time we talk about fluency, but it's one of the strategies that I find the most effective. And shadowing consists of listening to a native English speaker, speak it at an interview or speech or you can use a TED Talk. Ideally, you will have the transcript in front of you, so it's easier. And your goal is to repeat right after, don't let them finish the sentence. You can do that a couple of seconds after and you talk right after them trying to mimic their patterns, their intonation, the way they speak, their their even their facial expressions. It really helps you mimic the way they use their mouths and their tongue. So yeah, shadowing, very effective technique.
Simon Kennell 29:03
learn by watching Absolutely. There we go again, saying absolutely. All right. Oh, we're
Paola Pascual 29:09
back. No, there
Simon Kennell 29:10
you go. Alright, so to India here, we're talking about the practice section, we're talking about tips that you can use at work, right. So what can you do at work? And what can you do at home? At work? I think it's really important to apply what you're learning in the flow of work. So what does that mean? That means while you're working, you're trying to apply things, whether it be in emails that you're writing, or if you have a meeting, to actively think about, okay, can I use this vocabulary at some point today? Can I challenge myself to use five of these vocabulary words, at some point, whether it be in an email or in a meeting, right? Think about opportunities where if I'm focusing on this grammar point, how can I actively use This while I'm working. And you know, this is really helpful. As you're putting yourself more and more in those, you know, hot situations where you're a bit more anxious, you're a bit more nervous to do this in English, right? But you're, you're kind of exposing yourself a bit more in English. And you can always find what I call an English informant in the workplace. So I like if you Yeah, if you have a colleague that you feel comfortable with who's you know, native or fluent English speaker that you feel pretty comfortable? asking for advice, you know, use them, right, use that knowledge, like, Hey, would you ever say this? Or what do you think about this email? Or, you know, what did you think asking for feedback, right? What did you think about that presentation that I gave in English, using that kind of Yeah, that that assistance, that feedback is going to be very helpful in the workplace.
Paola Pascual 30:54
I agree, I really liked what you said also about applying or using the new vocabulary in the flow of work. And I just wanted to quickly add on to that, and try not to learn words in isolation, and instead, learn chunks or phrases that they're ready to use. Because it's, it's, for me learning words, in isolation, it's like buying a spice, you know, buying an ingredient. And then you don't know how to create the recipe. And buying the chunk is when you buy the sauce already made. So you just open the jar and use it. So learn them in chunks so that you don't have to think about them. Yeah, you know how to use them immediately.
Simon Kennell 31:38
Absolutely. And it's easier for you to remember when you're using them in chunks. And that's yeah, we see that a lot that that's very helpful. Okay, so tips for when you're at home, when you're studying at home, when you're practicing at home, the one that I like is what I call, you know, the English hour, you know, challenge your family make it a fun thing, where, hey, for the next hour, we're only going to speak English and I had a student who tried this was with his family. And he said it turned into like, a really, really fun activity that even the kids were onto it because they would try to ask their mother a question in their native language. And their mother would pretend like she didn't understand them. They had to speak it in English, right? And it turned into a really fun activity of just let's have this hour of speaking English together. And yeah, make it fun, right. And you can definitely do that.
Paola Pascual 32:35
I love that I actually do that in my family, my partner's Spanish and His English is really good. But he would love to practice more English. And what we do is, every time we have a rule every time we're in the car, we only speak English. That's the moment we get into the car. English is the only language spoken and it really works.
Simon Kennell 32:56
Yeah. And it's a habit right? You put yourself in that situation of now we're in the car. It's it's just English that and, and this is a great thing with habit making as you pair it together with something that you're already doing. You're already driving, turn it into English driving, right? Already washing the dishes, turned it into washing the dishes while you're speaking English. Very helpful.
Paola Pascual 33:21
Yes, what else? Anything else? Any any other tips when you're at home?
Simon Kennell 33:26
So I think you know, one of the tips that you talked about of shadowing and trying out recording yourself, I think that's definitely helpful to do at home. You know, the Netflix watching as much of that immersion that you can do at home is really helpful. Again, you know, put yourself in situations where maybe you have friends come over for dinner, who are, you know, native English speakers or you know, what have you and you're more comfortable in your own home and you can take those chances of Yeah, speaking in English. Of course, you you maybe will feel more comfortable to make mistakes while you're at home than you would at work. And then you can you can, you know, take those chances. Right,
Paola Pascual 34:14
exactly. And then if you're a busy person, try to find we all have downtime, even if we don't realize them that may be checking Instagram, for 10 minutes. Use those 10 minutes to improve your English and it can be something fun. Don't think that improving your English mix means doing some drilling grammar exercises, it can be really fun. It can be watching an interesting interview with one of your favorite celebrities. So find that downtime that we all have. Turn it into something fun that allows you to practice your English. Yeah, that's key. Make it fun.
Simon Kennell 34:53
Make it fun. All right. So we're wrapping up. So we talked about really what fluency It means, you know, for us, it does not mean that you're not making mistakes, right? It means that you're smooth, you're comfortable, you're confident. And that's ultimately where we all want to get to. And then we talked about kind of our three points for getting to that fluency level, right? And what are those three points that we're discussing?
Paola Pascual 35:21
So the first one, an essential step is to define your goals? Where do you actually want to get in, try to think about that ideal scenario, try to make it as real and tangible as possible. It could be? Well, my goal is to be able to negotiate deals effectively when I meet a new client, or I want to be able to give a presentation smoothly, and then handle the question and answers that I get from the audience. And then once you have that, define or design your action plan. You can use a teacher for that, or you can use you know, placement tests, there's a number of ways you can do that. And then once you have that, you need to expose your yourself as much as possible, you know, to English, and then practice.
Simon Kennell 36:11
Yeah, yeah. And those are the kind of Yeah, the having the goals, putting yourself in the environment. And then yeah, the act of practice, what you can do, the tips we gave at work and the tips at home. And these are, you know, what we've tried to boil down for, for you have been, I think, what we've found to be the most kind of successful students, they follow these points, and they turn it into a habit, they make it fun. And it may not be that you just reached the, you know, now you're fluent in English line, that won't necessarily happen. But you will have improvement, and people will come up to you and say, Whoa, okay, you've really improved, right? And you'll, you'll get there. And it just takes that continual, continual dedication.
Paola Pascual 36:56
Exactly. Be patient, and don't expect progress overnight. But trust in the process, and you'll see that it'll get to a point where you will look back and you will realize, oh, wait, I'm actually doing pretty well. So trust the process and be patient.
Simon Kennell 37:14
Yeah. All right. Great. Well, Paola, as always, this has been, I think, a lot of fun. And hopefully, you know, all of you listening out there. I know, we have. I mean, it's kind of getting crazy how many people we have listening in so many different countries now. But I mean, I love to see it. I think as as long as people are getting value from Talaera, and all of the things that we put out all of our free resources, you know, yeah, that then we're that we're doing our job, right. Yeah.
Paola Pascual 37:47
And it's exciting. We keep getting your feedback at hello@trulia.com. And we always love to connect with you. Whenever a point where we can afford to get back to all of you. So come say hello. Tell us what you like about the podcast what you would like to, to have that we haven't done yet. And yeah, we look forward to getting to know you.
Simon Kennell 38:11
Awesome. Awesome. All right. Well, Paola, as always, it's been a great, great episode. Anything any final announcements or anything like that?
Paola Pascual 38:22
Now just come join, enjoy all the free resources that we have all the webinars that we have every month, we have a very exciting one coming up in August about how to work across cultures. That one I'm super excited about. We got really great feedback when we did a similar one a few months ago. So I encourage everyone to join that one. There's so many great tips if you are working with people from other cultures. So yeah, come join.
Simon Kennell 38:49
Cool. All right, well, we will see you there. As always, to all of our listeners out there. Thank you so much for listening, and keep learning.
Paola Pascual 39:01
And that's all we have for you today. We hope you enjoyed it. And remember to subscribe to Talaera talks. We'll be back soon with more.
Simon Kennell 39:09
And visit our website at talaera.com for more valuable content on business English. You can also request a free consultation on the best ways for you and your team to improve your communication skills. So have a great day and keep learning.