BECOME MORE FLUENT IN 3 STEPS 

Thanks for watching! Leave me a comment to let me know what kind of video you'd like to see at the end of the 60 days!

When I used to study classical music my teacher once said "most people practice a piece until it's possible for them to play it without mistakes, but the really good ones practice it until it's impossible for them to play it with mistakes". I've always found musical practice mapped quite well onto learning accent and intonation, probably because they're both fine motor skills

I can really say that Atomic Habits changed my life. I started learning Italian after reading the book and I made it a rule to listen to the languages at least 10 minutes a day. It really helped to have such a tiny goal because I never felt "too tired" to do it. Sometimes I did more than the 10 minutes because it was fun, but I never felt forced to. After a year, I am conversational (B1 level maybe?) After seeing this "success", at the beginning of the year I started reading a book in Russian with the rule to read a page a day, and now I have almost read 300 pages. I would have never felt capable to read a whole book in Russian but breaking it down to small steps made it doable in my mind. I really feel that the book enabled me to take action, as the small things I decided to do were achievable. "Learning Italian" or "reading a book in Russian" would have sounded like too much. So whenever I talk about Atomic Habits I mention the subtitle too: "Tiny changes, remarkable results". An awesome book, everyone should read it

I kept nodding my head vigorously as you talked about "fluency thieves" -- such an important point and so well said.

I love how you defined fluency as the ability to think clearly in a language. It kinda raised the bar for me, but nevertheless, it's for a good reason. Thank you for this video!

Shadowing was so helpful with my Korean! What first piqued my interest in Korean was that I couldn't hear it. It didn't sound like any discernable words and nothing I could replicate. I got so frustrated one day, I decided to listen to one phrase over and over and tried to repeat it every time. I didn't know it was called shadowing at the time. After spending quite some time going over about 20 phrases like that, I turned on a RU-vid video of a native speaker and was shocked to find that I could now hear what he was saying! I still didn't know what it meant but I could now hear the pauses between words and the different intonations in the words. I completely agree that shadowing helps tremendously with hearing your target language. It was better for me than just repetitive listening because I pay more attention if I know I have to repeat what I hear.

Who doesn't floss? Those who don't reach D1 in their language, that's who.

By the way, THANK YOU for demonstrating the power of deliberate practice of native speech mimicry. Too many people just don’t seem to get the extremely powerful effect it has on one’s linguistic abilities.

The analogy with the Orchestral music was so spot on! I remember that it was only after I started to play the clarinet in a high school band that my ear improved and I could then pick apart all of the different instruments within a band!

This is why I love you Channel, you cut through the bs and find the nuggets of gold. I’m going to try some of these suggestions 🙌

Exactly, Italki lessons are really more helpful if one reviews and practices what can be learned, instead of finishing the session and sort of congratulating oneself for simply staying in the ring for 30 min or an hour.

I've been doing something similar to what you've said about going on a sprint then a walk with reading Japanese. Every once an awhile I will try to read a book way above my level, even for just a page. Then, before I get burnt out, I go back to the easier material that I am immersing in now, and I understand it so much better.

After 100 + days of dual lingual (sp!) My wife has noted an improvement of my speaking. As a result of your posts I watch and sing along with contemporary Christian music in Swedish with subtitles. Those I already know from Church in English have a profound effect on my growth. Thank you.

I've started writing down phrases in my target language, as opposed to single words. I have a check box next to it for repeating it slowly, medium speed, faster, and finally as fast as the native speaker. My voice and their's should overlap perfectly before I move on to the next phrase. My speaking is quite rough. I usually can only do two phrases with the repetition required to get it "perfect" before my brain says enough, I'm about to start tuning out. After a half hour break, or more, I'll try something new. This means my progress is very slow, especially since I can't seem to get into it everyday. Seeing your videos inspires me to keep going and keep trying for the little improvements.

6 months ago I started doing “listen and repeat”for 30 minutes before having conversations in French. Every single one of my Italki tutors and language partners commented on my increased fluidity in French. Fewer pauses. I have tried zeroing in on what is causing me to pause or stumble but that makes the pauses much more pronounced, but maybe it is worth that short term pain to get more fluent. Looking forward to your results at the end of the 60 days.

i really appreciate your level of commitment to testing ideas like this before coming to a conclusion on them, if that makes sense. a lot of experts on social media (and in culture in general tbh) seem to look retrospectively on how they got to their level and make sweeping, neat little generalizations and “techniques” to explain how they got to where they are and how you can too. that isn’t always unhelpful, of course, but i do appreciate your more scientific and forward-thinking approach. also your analogies are always really interesting and helpful in allowing me to grasp what you’re talking about. keep up the good work!

How do you deal with iTalki topics? Some days I feel like I’ve run out of discussion topics and the conversation veers to basic routine discussions. Do you have a list of topics you prepare and share with the tutor beforehand? Do you discuss articles you’ve both read beforehand?

Glad to know that I'm doing something similar to listening and mimicry. I've been listen to thousands of great quotes and words of wisdom from Italian voice actors while trying to pronounce each line like them. 24 minutes of voice lines took me almost a week because of how tedious it is. My brain for the first few weeks had a hard time comprehending what they were saying but in time, my hears adapted and could pick up those small audible cues that you mentioned. The orchestra analogy is exactly what this is like.

Can't wait to hear more about the experiment! Btw, I hope you'll reach Swedish E4 and become Thor😂🤣

Your channel and Matt's channel are my favorites. I'm fed up with fake polyglots claiming that they speak countless languages but they know them only superficially and they don't remember half of them because in my opinion it's nearly impossible to maintain 10 languages, that's how our brain works. And getting very good at one language is what's really difficult. You channel is about that so I really like it. I'm studying Italian philology at university and I want to get extremely good because I would like my future work involve this language( by the way, the way they teach language at the University is so ridiculous, but I follow my own methods )

Very informative, thank you Lamont

To be honest, my biggest fluency thief right now is my limited vocabulary! I'm always having to slam the brakes on in the middle of sentences because a word eludes me. Sometimes it'll be a word I know - and that I know I know - but it just won't come.

So spot on the analogy with music... Very interesting talk btw

OMG!! I love Atomic habits. I read it too, but in German. In German, it is also called the 1% rule. Scandinavian languages and German are quite similar from what I heard..

You hit the nail on the head at around 13:00. Learning to vocalize is helpful when trying to listening ability. Also, at my level of Italian I am running across new words all the time. If I just 'say' that word in my head, I fumble when I need to use it. But if I practice saying it aloud when I come across it, then I have a better than fair chance of getting it out when I use it. While I believe in massive input, some output early helps input, imho.

Your content is getting better.

Well.done, inspired to emulate this practice

Can you do a topic on accents? We all know that laguages have rules that people follow but when it comes to speaking, people have a variety of accents so when you want to speak like a native Swede for example, you typically don't have one ultimate stereotypical Swede accent for anyone learning a foreign language. You have multiple accents to choose from, multiple voices to adopt. When I first got into language learning, it never occured to me that there are multiple accents of Italian from different regions, class, etc. I just thought Italian just had an Italian accent like the Italian accent people make when speaking in English. Anyway, I find accents interesting because it start off fresh with a voice of your choosing and I noticed that people when they speak a foreign language, they seem entirely like a different person. Different tone, enunciations, personality even. Almost as if they were putting on a mask (technically voice) and were someone else. Acquiring a new language and getting good at it really gives you another soul.

Forvo helps with this, because you can search for phrases and hear different native speakers say it, and the variety is helpful.

Despite having a high level in Spanish and speaking it for hours almost every day, watching this makes me feel like I need to not leave my accent on the side assuming that it’s good enough and letting it plateau. I also know that I REALLY need to work on my Russian pronunciation. Very creative video - appreciate your take on Atomic Habits!

I love your channel. Something that helped me a lot with my Spanish early on was working on a page of tongue twisters with a native speaker. The day I first produced a trilled r was glorious, and that time of practice has paid big dividends 15 years on.

It's been 2 months that I've been procrastinating to practice my English and my Spanish by shadowing, but you motivated me man! I just shadowed a little part of this video ahahah

Flossing is important.

Incredible summary, thank you! Like you, being "functional" is my current target also, in Farsi. You can only be ignorant to repeat errors for so long before you realise you're holding yourself back. The orchestra analogy is particularly important to understand, especially for us Australians with our 20-26 vowel phonemes! Comparatively to Farsi and its 6-8 vowel phonemes, the "customer effort score" (to use a business term for it - Ha!) for learning the language is *very* real and what you've raised is an unescapable exercise if you even just want to produce the same word(s) successfully with consistent production each and every time you want to use it.

At the end of the 60 days, I'd like to hear you speaking Swedish (WITH SUBTITLES). By the way, have you tried Discord for speaking Swedish?

Hej! I reallly enjoy these videos. These är great for Swedish learners. One thing that i reallly find useful is after an speaking lesson listening a part of Swedish podcast. You can realize that you understand better and enjoy more. Its like brain sports.

Really looking forward to the video at the end of this experiment! Could you explain a bit more about how you do the shadowing? Is it consecutive (playing a short segment and then pausing while you repeat it) or simultaneous (talking directly over the native speaker in real time)?

You can ear train in any language. I think this is the benefit of learning multiple languages. I can even ear train mimicking your Australian English. It's actually interesting hearing you speak to my very American ear. I do think having been exposed to music helps.

Hi Lamont, thank you a lot for sharing. I have struggle myself with improving my pronunciation, in English and French. The point is, I've learned them wrongly, and I accumulated a lot of bad pronunciation habits. it's difficult to "undo it". The best method I have found is using my ear plugs with the ambient sound option on. Like that I can hear myself, I don't have to record anything, re-listen to myself (🤮) or keep any files. I went through Pimsleur lessons of French. During 2 weeks of daily practice I had incredible results.. but when I stopped, quickly I became "sloppy" in speaking again. My brain just automatically came back to the old pronunciation. The methods are easy to implement, but without consistency we will not get a stable result. There is also a reason why some people stay for 20 years in a foreign country and still talk with a strong accent. If you don't pay attention to the sounds, you will never really fully notice them. It's like with really sloppy drawing. We "re-draw" sth but without giving attention to the exact shape. So we keep drawing like children.

I really appreciate how the music and video match up at 7:58 .... so satisfying

Best piece of advice in Atomic Habits, imho, is to PAIR a desired behaviour with something you're already doing or place you're already going to.

Is it sad that I got quite happy when I saw my face pop up in one of your videos, even though you told me it would..? Probably 😂 Anyway, great vídeo as always man and looking forward to seeing the results! Will be interested to see how you get on with improving pronunciation because that’s something I haven’t really done much of but feel I need to start addressing more now

Re: "thinking clearly": my current metaphor is getting my brain to run--and run smoothly--on a different operating system (i.e., the target language).

Thanks for the video and your insight on accent! Is there any specific software you are using for working/practing shadowing with those audio samples? *Open question for anyone who would like to answer. Thanks!

Improvement is not linear. Very rarely is it exponential, and most of the time it's exponential decay without practice. If you do try to practice and master what you've learned and simultaneously try to keep on improving as well, then it's as wild as a new crypto going up and down depending on how you tweak the system.

I agree the example is too extreme anyway but I think the reason why the compounding effect sounds ridiculous in regard to CEFR levels is because they already have that kind of exponential growth baked into them - i.e. A2 is double the vocab of A1, B1 is double A2, B2 is double B1 etc. so if your rate of learning does exponentially rise, the rate at which you progress through CEFR levels remains linear ... -ish

The thing that's weird, is how the better you get at something the easier it gets to just put more and more into it. So yes 1% every day compounds very quickly and isn't practical in human terms, but what makes it not completely crazy is you can keep putting more time in. In my case, I always simplify things so I don't waste time doing things like choosing books to read, or shows go watch, or whatever. I just say, every day I will listen to native content for at least 3.5 hours and read 30.000 words. Four months ago I was reading 25.000 every day. Now I'm wondering when I'll be ready for 4+ hours a day, or layering in another activity I might enjoy! The other thing you hit on is what I've been saying! Ask questions or have a tutor point things out to you, then try and actually notice the answer. It's like a game that when you notice it you win.

Great video, I do have a question/concern about iTalk if you wouldn't mind please, as I have been thinking of using it for some time but hesitate... Is there any expectation of booking another lesson/pressure to go with the same tutor again? I would really like to sign on and speak to a new person each time, or is that not really the aim/mentality behind iTalki? I might be thinking to much with the chatroom or Omegle mentality, but it would be so good to just practice introducing myself and learning in this way. Thanks again for another great video

I am using fado as a way to get my sound right in Portuguese. I am learning one song but I think just carefully listening would be fine.

this is amazing advice Lamont, I'll make sure to share it with my friends and students! can't wait to see the results of your 2 months experiment, it's going to be worth it 😊

you're becoming such a role model for me, i just need to put stuff into practice... laziness has pulled me back very baadddlyyy, any tips on overcoming laziness? like: "just do it!", fuck i just gave the tip for me myself :O

Can’t wait for you to get to D1 in Swedish!

Can you recommend any good vocabulary, grammar apps for memorisation. I am learning italian, would you recommend, Speakly!!

A kind of video that might help you, just by giving yourself a task to carry out in Swedish, might be to start documenting your progress through the original Canterbury Tales, using only Swedish resources to assist with the process. (That's an eternity worth of material, so the trick would probably be to start with The Miller's Tale - which might bring you some Swedish viewers, just because of the subject matter.) I have a tendency to, myself, try to "get the accent right" in the languages I dabble in, but for others, to encourage them to just make the gift of their lovely accents to English. (The only accent it's not right to share is a South African accent - although even with one of those, I've met speakers of one of the proper Englishes who say things like "Say something to me" ... which might be less impossible than it seems for someone less shy, I suppose.) You've offered the first rationale I've ever heard that makes sense, for trying to sound native, instead of just bringing the lovely gift of a new accent for the language I'm borrowing to be spoken in, and just focusing on things like lexicon und so weiter. If you try out the accent, you improve your ear. That's a good reason for doing so. (To be consistent with wanting foreign speakers of English not to spoil their accents - and I don't just mean making themselves sound brutally South African - I have to set an ultimate "accent goal" for myself in other languages as becoming ... not quite authentic, because that would mean doing horrible South African things to some innocent language ... but maybe "apparently Australian"? Or Ner Ziland, since that's a bt claser too Seowf Efrikun. ... stop being stupid, you're losing the point you twat ... ... oh yes ... I feel like I SHOULDN'T be paying the attention to accent that I do, and now you've given me a good reason (not just an excuse, which would've also done) to do this.) )) ? maybe one more for luck ). Given that the accent-learning is justified in terms of how it improves your hearing, (and yes it does!), it would be best to not choose a "good accent", though? One could, one supposes, tastefully select the most noble of the Swedish dialects, to emulate with superior erudition (old chap) but for ear training, it may be necessary to stoop to something foul and common. Heaven forfend! One may even need to speak in a yokelish and rural manner at times. Or you could just give it a go, mate. Imitate the bastards. Find out how they say Oy! there. Or ow they say Aaarh! when them marines is comin tru the market day "recruiting" and they pokes you out from under the table you wuz hidin under so it's off to sea ye go to teach Bony to leave ole Jack Tarr sleepin if you hear him snore. (One would perpetrate jolly abominations, no doubt, were one to make a habit of mimicry of all forms of Swedish, right to the very swineherd's curses; however it might be fun?) If you don't do the Canterbury Tales, you could do Swedish lessons in English punctuation? (I could use some of those, so all I'd have to do is learn Swedish to get on that wagon.)

How can you buy Swedish audible books guys?

Does shadowing songs in your target language count? Does it matter if the music is close to every day conversational speech if you are just focusing on accent?

I really like this book, but my problem with James Clear's 1% rule was his intro to the whole concept of the book. He talks about the PROFESSIONAL sports team of the british cyclists, and how they improved 1% at EVERY SINGLE THING they did to become the best in the world.. Which is the exact opposite of what the book prescribes. It's not about optimality in any sense of the word, it's about small things done consistently. In fact at one point the book makes the point that we should 'focus on the important things, and work on them', which again is the exact opposite of what the british cycling team did - they improved every single thing even stuff you wouldn't think about like the pillows they used. Because of this I was quite confused about the whole concept for a while, but I love a lot of what the book talks about in terms of starting and maintaining habits.

"Perfection is the enemy of the good".

Damn I spend more time watching how to learn languages than actually trying to learn the languages lmao

What do you think of Lingoda? I’m thinking of doing a 2-month Super Sprint with them. If I take a class every day for 60 days I’ll be refunded the money. They have French (my target language), but not Swedish yet 😢

Grammar is a lot of output, moreso than input. You'll recognise the tense and interrogative of the phrases with just input but you'll be stumbling to construct your sentences if you've minimal output.

Hey La Monte, do you play drums? I notice you like the whiplash scenes lol. As a 🥁 whiplash is quite gosh, good movie tho.

Do you think there's something to be said for completely putting off speaking at the initial stage of learning a language and perhaps even up to the point where you've sunk several 100s of hours if not more to then begin to speak? The idea would be that you would have a more complete image of how the language actually sounds as opposed to what happens if you start talking from the start which is essentially your brain piecing together whatever you think the language sounds like in conjunction with sounds from your native language, in turn cementing a problem that is going to require hours of work to fix later down the line anyway.

What’s the difference between italki versus Verbling?

You might want to check out the YT channel of Richard deLong of Frictionless Mastery who has some slightly different ideas about how to use what you discover in speaking practice especially what to spend your time working on. Crudely, he suggests somewhat counterintuitively that it is most effective to spend your deliberate practice time on what you can do *almost* with full ease or ‘mastery’, rather than practice what you are strongly struggling with. I’m interested to hear if you find anything useful in his ideas/approach.

If clear thinking helps with speaking your target language, then idk what helps me speak better when inebriated. Is it really just the lack of anxiety?

I haven’t watched the video yet, but you look like you got a good crying session in in the thumbnail pic 😂 Sorry I had to point it out. You’re still one of the GOAT language RU-vidrs. I will leave another comment after watching the video.

Putting in the effort to sound "more Swedish" is probably the thing that will impress Swedes the most. 😜 Is there any progress on the trip here? Will you be allowed to travel soon? Also, are you getting better at recognizing different dialects in Swedish? Because there are LOADS! 😂

i think the thing about 1% not being realistic is true but i think the recommendation of that book (which i also read) is if you can't improve your skill or ability at something by 1% a day, you improve your daily processes and habits by 1% a day. so it's not that you get 1% better at a language each day. it's that you get 1% better at *studying* the language every day. you become 1% more efficient in your study methods.

1:04 😂😂😂 This got me dying of laughter. Are you sure, the journey of you watching movies begins with no steps?? Don't you have to walk to the kitchen to get the bag of chips. 😂😂😂 I usually go get chips and wine.

6:19

The only reason there are no tutors based in Antarctica is that the penguins have difficulty signing up as teachers. Do they make keyboards for flippers? I think not.

How many hours of Swedish have you done since you quit French?

How many Swedish tutors do you have?

"Astrid Lindgren level by Dec 2022, become Thor by 2023" The content I'm coming here for :D But no, good video! And interesting experiment :)

:)

I watch a show or talk but concentrate on one word, how it sounds, how it’s used.

Först!

1:00 Like looking in the mirror.

Is that a Red Sox hat? Because it just looks like “Sex” on a hat. Just sayin’….

Holy crap dude - How could U have managed to flapped your lips soo much and spoken so many words (in whatever language) and actually managed to communicate NOTHING?