Reach new Heights || Learn like a Native

Peace Steemians,

If you've been reading my post you've probably seen the way I made a significant change with my learning when I started to learn like a native...

But how exactly did I apply this idea to become a confident speaker?

By doing just two things most students never hear about in school.

The first is to learn conversational speech.

I struggled so much with English (at first) because I was reading textbooks and hearing easy-to-understand listening practice exercises.

These lessons were "clean and clear," not like the real, "messy" speech you hear on the streets.

So I began watching TV shows for native kids, and this developed my listening, pronunciation, grammar, and NATIVE vocabulary...

And very quickly, I was understanding more natives in movies, TV shows, and real conversations!

But KNOWING the spoken language was just the first step...

I also needed confidence and fluency (so I could speak correctly and automatically).

So the second thing I did was repeat what natives said in conversations.

Whenever I hear a new word or phrase, I repeat it back to the person I'm speaking with in different ways.

Here's an English example with the phrase give someone a hand.

This is a more native and conversational way of saying "help."

Illustration of conversation from Drew training tools

Speaker: A friend who's moving just asked if I could give him a
hand. He's moving next week.

Me: Oh, he's moving? And he asked you to give him a hand?

See what I did there?

Instead of just listening, I used the opportunity to repeat the
phrase back to the person. This makes it clear that I understood what
they said while making it more memorable for me.

And natives do this all the time!

It's called mirroring, and this helps you deepen your connection with someone in a conversation.

See how this builds my speaking confidence, improves my pronunciation, trains me to use correct grammar automatically, develops my fluency, and much more?

Of course, you don't need to be in a real conversation to do this...

You can also pause movies and TV shows and repeat what you hear.

Train with these "simulations" and you'll prepare yourself well for the real thing! :)

When you stop learning the traditional way, you discover that fluency doesn't have to be a long and boring process...

So if you'd like Drew to teach you more than a THOUSAND useful words, phrases and expressions that natives REALLY say...

And share the tricks I used to build fluency in the real world, join The Fluency Course:
The-fluency-secret