How I improved my listening & speaking in English to a C2 level

You want to take your English listening and  speaking to an advanced level, maybe even C2.  

And you're probably tired of hearing the same  old advice. Just practice more. Don't worry,  

I've been exactly where you are right now. I  was terrified to speak English. I memorized  

long lists of random words. I watched hours of  content without improving until I discovered a  

few strategies that actually helped me improve my  speaking and listening skills. So in this video,  

I'm going to share all of these methods with  you to help you not just understand English,  

but develop this natural feel for the language.  All right. So the first strategy that helped me  

improve my listening skills and my speaking skills  in English is input first, output later. Input is  

really your listening and reading and output is  your speaking and writing. And so if we look at  

this really famous 8020 rule in the past I would  focus mainly on my speaking and my writing like  

80% of my language practice at the very beginning  was dedicated to that and in many cases I pushed  

myself to speak to produce the language before  my brain had enough of that language stored but  

I think here I really want to mention that yes it  is just my personal experience. I have talked to  

many language learners who really like speaking  early on. It's pretty much the base of their  

language practice. For my learning though, I do  think that speaking fluently is the result of  

massive input. And so that is why right now this  is the strategy I follow in English and in Spanish  

because you know, think about it this way. If you  never consume the language, how are you going to  

produce it? And so that is why right now for all  the languages I'm learning, I have flipped this  

principle, this 80/20 principle. The 80% of all  of my learning is dedicated to massive input.  

And yes, it has to be comprehensible. So I'm doing  a lot of listening and a lot of reading. And yes,  

20% is still output, but it's only 20% because I  prefer to let my speaking skills emerge naturally.  

as a result of a lot of input. Before we talk  about the next strategy that is going to help  

you improve your speaking and listening skills  in English, I want to tell you about an amazing  

productivity tool, Akiflow. It combines time  blocking, AI planning, and all of your tasks from  

different apps in one clean, easy to use space.  I've been using a flow a lot to plan out my week.  

I just drag all of the things that I need to do  directly into my calendar, color code my events,  

and it helps me actually stick to my plan without  feeling overwhelmed. You can connect Gmail,  

Notion, Slack, and even Todoist. And all of  your tasks automatically show up in one place  

in what they call a universal inbox. So you no  longer have to switch between different apps  

and different tabs to remember what you need to do  and to keep track of everything. One feature that  

I really love is their AI Co-Pilot. It learns  your habits and starts auto scheduling your tasks  

based on how you work. And if you're someone who  likes tracking your progress, Akiflow also gives  

you productivity stats so you can see how much  time you're spending on different types of work,  

your language learning, and where you might be  getting stuck. A huge part of staying consistent  

and making progress is how you organize your  time. And Akiflow makes this process so easy.  

If you want to try it for yourself, use my link  in the description to sign up. And you'll also  

get access to a free one-on-one onboarding call,  which is a really helpful way to learn how the  

platform works. Huge thank you to Ailiflow for  sponsoring a portion of today's video. Okay.  

The second strategy that has helped me improve my  speaking and listening skills is trying to balance  

intensive and extensive practice. When I talk  about intensive listening and intensive reading,  

I kind of mean active listening and active  reading. It's when you analyze everything  

in detail. You pause, you check the vocabulary,  you repeat, you practice shadowing. An extensive  

listening and extensive reading is when you  listen and read a lot. You focus on large  

amounts of material without stopping. And I used  to be a person for whom balancing these two things  

like active practice and passive practice was  really hard because I thought that my practice  

always had to be intensive. I always wanted to be  a good student. I always wanted to do my homework.  

Many of us only focus on one kind of practice  either extensive practice or intensive practice.  

So I think combining the two is important. For  me when I was mostly focusing on overanalyzing  

everything like pausing the show to you know  read every single sentence multiple times and  

then write everything down. That really increased  my cognitive load. And I talk about this a lot on  

my YouTube channel because I think when we  are learning anything, especially when we're  

learning a new language, we have to be mindful  of cognitive load. Simply put, what it means is  

that our brain can only process a limited amount  of information before it starts to boil, before  

you start to get extremely tired. And so once I  started incorporating this extensive practice,  

this passive practice into my routine, I started  having more moments of fun. Like, you know, I was  

just watching a YouTube video just because I liked  it. Not because I wanted to pause after every  

single sentence and shadow every single sentence.  No, I was just watching this video in English for  

fun. What really helps me find this balance  is my notion template for language learners  

because there I can plan my study time, my active  practice, and my passive practice and also keep  

track of all of the languages I'm learning. So,  if you want to check it out, you can use the link  

in the description. And yes, extensive practice  really helped my language journey. I would even  

say it saved it. And there is actually a Japanese  method called tadoku that supports this theory.  

So this word tadoku literally means extensive  reading and I obviously like to apply this  

principle to reading and also listening. It  basically tells you to focus on reading and  

listening to a lot of material that is easy and  enjoyable instead of struggling with texts that  

are way too hard for you. Because, you know, if  you're stopping every 10 seconds for a dictionary,  

whether while reading something or listening  to something, that means that this material is  

just way too hard for you. It's not comprehensible  enough. This Japanese method isn't about reading  

one book really carefully. It's about reading  lots of pages, lots of articles, and listening  

to a lot of audio that you can mostly understand.  Because I think that reading 10 pages of a simple  

book that you really enjoy will teach you so much  more than reading one page of a very difficult  

book that you literally have to struggle your  way through. And obviously that is exactly how  

we create our habit of language learning by doing  it consistently. And one thing that is going to  

help you a lot is if you actually have fun, if  you enjoy the process of language learning. And  

so that is why when I was in college, I started  reading young adult fiction in English. Those were  

the books that I really enjoyed reading and they  were comprehensible enough for me so that I could  

read pages and pages and pages of those books. All  right. So the next strategy is create an English  

environment. And this method is for all of you who  think that you can only learn English by moving to  

an English-speaking country. I mean, I learned  English without moving to an English-speaking  

country. So yes, it is possible to become advanced  without moving abroad. And I would even tell you  

that a lot of people who move abroad, they stay  in their native language bubble and it becomes  

really hard for them to create this immersion  and to actually create this English environment  

around themselves because moving abroad is  really stressful. When I moved to Mexico,  

I did not speak any Spanish. And like the first 6  months, it was really hard for me to be consistent  

with my Spanish learning because I was just  really stressed out. And only when I created  

this language bubble around myself did I start  improving all of my skills. Advanced speakers,  

C2 speakers, they don't just study English, they  live in English. And you can create this kind of  

environment for yourself no matter where you are.  All right, the final strategy that I'm going to  

share in today's video is going to be move from  translation to intuition. So, this is something  

that happens to a lot of us language learners.  We think of translation as a crutch. Like,  

we literally needed to survive. But actually, the  more advanced you become, the more you realize  

that translation doesn't help you at all. In fact,  it makes your progress slower. Because instead of  

teaching your brain to develop this natural feel  for the language, this like intuition, instead of  

starting to think in this language, what you're  doing is constantly translating everything. So,  

you're still creating those connections with your  native language. And that is something that's not  

helpful at those advanced levels. I have all  of these words here like angry, frustrated,  

irritated, furious, annoyed, resentful. And it  could happen that in your native language all  

of these words collapse into one word into one  translation. But obviously in English all of  

these words are a little different like what they  actually mean. And so if you only translate all  

of these words to your native language, you start  losing this natural feel because obviously in real  

life in English the word furious is not the same  as the word resentful. One is this explosive anger  

and the other is longlasting bitterness. And so  that is why right now I always remind myself that  

fluency isn't about knowing the right translation  all the time. Fluency for me is being able to feel  

the difference, being able to feel what this word  means without needing the translation. And so yes,  

you're probably thinking, Veronica, all of this  is great. How can I train my intuition, my feel  

for the language instead of relying constantly  on translation? The first principle is let's  

say you're learning a new English word. So use  English to explain English. Look up a definition  

in English or maybe talk to Chai GPT about this  word. Ask AI to explain this word in simple ways.  

The next principle that I really like, especially  if you're a beginner, an intermediate learner,  

is using images. And in psychology, there is a  theory that actually explains why our memory works  

so much better when we combine text with images.  It's called the dual coding theory. Basically, the  

way it works is it says that images are nonverbal  processing and words are verbal processing. And  

if we combine these two kinds of processing, it  makes our memory stronger. It actually helps our  

memory retain information for longer. I think I  really like using context and images because I'm a  

Gen Z and I have a visual memory. So, I think it's  going to be it for today's video. If you liked it,  

please don't forget to give it a thumbs up and  subscribe to my channel. It means a lot to me  

when you comment, when you like my videos because  YouTube starts pushing them to a wider audience  

and so more people see my content. Before you  go, don't forget to check out Akiflow, an amazing  

productivity tool to plan out your days, your  weeks in a simple way. If you want to see how  

to get fluent by reading in English and all of  the book recommendations for every single level  

that I have, I highly recommend checking out this  video right here. Just click here and I'll see you