Improve Your Language Skills (Advanced)

1. Introduction: Hello everybody. Welcome to this new course. I'm so pleased that you've decided to join me for this new course today. Today, we will have a look at how you can improve your language skills when you are at an advance or expert level. It's very common to get stuck at a certain level when you're learning a language, so we will have a look at some tips on how to use certain areas to continue to grow your language skills. Remember that being at that level is very subjective to each student to find the area on how to grow your language skills. I hope the following general advice will give you a couple of topic to work on. At the end of this course, you will have a class project to help the growth of your language skills. Let's get started. 2. Language Learning Tips: Now the first tip that we're going to have a look at is to imitate the pronunciation. Why would it be something that you need to work on? Basically, some of the reason would be that you don't sound like a native. People actually tells you that, you're from somewhere and you want to work on the pronunciation to sound more like a native. Sometimes people could struggle to understand you or sometimes you could be struggling to pronounce certain words or certain sounds in the language you want to learn. What are the benefits of actually imitating the language? You will sound like a native. It's also a simple way to practice pronunciation in general, and it will boost your confidence in speaking another language, which is something sometimes people are really good at writing at the grammar, the conjugation, in the language, but they're really scared of talking. Imitating a language might actually help them not being that scared of speaking the language because they will sound more like a proper native. So how can you practice this? Well, for instance, you can find a video on YouTube of someone speaking the language that you're learning or a podcast or anything literally in the language that you're learning. You would look at it and then record yourself, repeat the same sentences a couple of time and work on this. Even if it's the same sentence saying a couple of time. The second tip is to read books, and I think this one is the most important tip of all when you are at advance or expert level. I think it's actually the last step for you to progress in your language skills. And why would you read more books? Well, because you're laking in vocabulary knowledge in the language, or you're looking in knowledge in some areas on some topics. And it's also a very easy practice because you can do it in your own time with books that you actually like. And what are the benefits of actually reading more books? You will definitely expand your vocabulary knowledge. There's so much that you can learn from a lesson. If you're watching different topic, there's so much that you can learn because it's literally restricted to what the teacher will give you as vocabulary rather than reading books. It will also help you in expanding your understanding because you will be reading books in a language that you know, but sometimes you might find a word that you don't understand but you will understand it. You will understanding depending on the context because of the whole book. And also you can reuse the vocabulary that you're learning in books. So it's linked to expanding your vocabulary knowledge. How can you practice that? Well, choose your favorite books in general and you can find a translated version. Something that comes a lot with my students is actually reading Harry Potter because it's something that is very common and a lot of people have read the books. And if you already know the books, it actually gives you a certain advantage. You know why you are reading. So just find the books that you like. Either it's in the language you like or it's in your own language and find a translated version and read it in the language you learn. And then you can also find a book in the language you're learning so that will make you expand your knowledge to books from foreign writer. The next tip is about using synonyms. Why would you learn synonyms? It's because you lacking in vocabulary in some areas, and also to avoid repeating yourself all the time. So if you've got more vocabulary, you can choose different words in whatever context you're talking. The benefits of it is to also expand your vocabulary knowledge and you can build up sentences and paragraphs and things you say with similar words. I will show in the example. Also you build up your interests and knowledge in the meaning between synonyms. That's more for people that really wants to understand a language. If you look at the example, we make more sense. I've put those examples, which I've chosen beautiful in French, which is B, and then you can learn synonyms. Pretty, sublime, magnificent, sublimely beautiful in French, that would be Jolie, sublime, manifq Bism. What's interesting is you can learn those words with go. For one word that you knew, beautiful, you have now five words. You expand your vocabulary. Also, you can try to start learning what's the difference between the synonym. In those one it's a degree of beauty. It's the context, and it just makes you understand words a bit more and understand the language a bit more as well. The next tip is about watching or reading the news. What are the reason? It makes you stay in tune with the country and its language so you can watch what's actually happening in the country you learn the language from. You can just spend 10 minutes every day just going on Google News and reading the news in the language you want, just for 10 minutes, even reading the headlines in the evening, you can just put the TV for half an hour watching the news in a different language. It's very easy to put in practice into your daily life. The benefits is something, expensive vocabulary knowledge. I think that's one of the main problem when you are an advanced level because you know the grammar, you know the conjugation, you know how to speak more or less, but you're missing the lay off thing, which is knowing more words. That's one of the benefits and also keeps you watching and listening native speakers. How can you do that? Find free news channels, free newspaper. I've put an example for French because it's the language that I teach. We have BFM, BFM TV, which is a free French news channel that you can just type on Google and have a look at it and you've got a live show that is always on and you can literally watch the news 247 if you want to. But that really makes you it's very easy. It's free and it's on computer. You can just pull it for 10 minutes a day and that's 10 minutes of French that you are listening. The other thing, if you want to read, it's similar to the books. You can go to 20 minutes Vanut. It's a free newspaper. And on their website, you can even download the PDF of the newspaper for free. So you could put it on your kindle on a tablet to read as well. It's different than a book. It's shorter. So if you just want to read one or two articles a day, it's more doable, maybe than a book if you're already a big reader. But watching and reading the news would be the next step. Tip number five is to translate for fun. It's something that I've done my whole life when I was learning English. Why would you do that? Makes you understand the way a language is structured and you've got more deepened vision of the language. The benefit is still the same thing. Expand your vocabulary knowledge. It's really this point that we see coming back and expand your understanding of the language as well. And how can you work on that? Well, I used to do that. I used to translate songs. A artist or bands that you like, choose a song, translate it on your don't look at the translation online. Just do it yourself to make you work with the translation. Also, if you don't want to translate song, articles from the newspaper, same thing. Just try to translate them. You will learn more vocabulary, you will understand the grammar, you will understand the conjugation. It just brings everything that you know into one thing. Translation is a really good exercise to learn a language and from my experience of learning languages in France, we don't get to translate. When we're at school, we learn the language as it is, which is grammar, conjugation, and vocabulary, but we never really did translation and it's something they're putting more and more back in schools because it's actually a really good exercise to learn a language. That's why I think it's not to be a professional translator or anything like that, but it's really to just have fun with the language. If it isn't something that you like doing, I think it's worth the shot training once in a while just to do some translation, just to see how good you could be. Just another way to practice the language rather than just learning vocabulary, and it's a good exercise. Finally, the last tip is to live in the country or to speak to native. I think this one is obviously if you can do it, not everybody can go in a different country or be in contact with native. That's very different to the other tips that I've given because the rest can be done at home, which is great. That's five tips out of six. But this one it's still very important. The point of language is to be spoken ideally in the country. Why would you do that? It's 100% being in the language, being in the country. That's why I was saying, why not doing that? Because the point of language is to use it. Being in the country and being with native will always make you speak the language. The benefits, it's the best way to speak and to learn the language, and you can literally learn from everything and everybody that is around you. How can you do that? Obviously, not everybody can do that, but there's different ways of doing this. You can either go and live in the country. Which is finding a job, moving there for family or for studying. It's a good reason to move in the country. If you can't do that, you can always go on holiday. If you can't do that, you can find a pen pal. It's an easy way. You can do that from home, otherwise, you can always look for a local language club. Usually those clubs have people who wants to learn the language, but sometimes you've actually got native going there because they're quite happy to speak the language again with some people around them because they usually expatriate. That would be the last step number six, to live in the country and speak to native if possible. 3. Conclusion: Everyone, you've made it to the end of the course. Let's have a look at your class project. Following the tips that I've given in the course, you can use this learning and plan and follow the next exercise. Let's have a look. The first thing that you can do is select a French book to read, write down the vocabulary that you learned, and a paragraph summarizing the book. That's be your first exercise. The second thing is for you to watch the news for a week and write a paragraph about what you've learned and your opinions on the different topic. The third exercise would be to choose an article and translate it in the language that you are learning. Finally, make a list of all the vocabulary that you recently learned and find two synonyms to each word. We now at the end of our course and let's summarize what we've seen today. You have learned how to improve your current language skills by imitating the way people speak, by reading books in a foreign language, by looking for synonyms to expand your vocabulary knowledge, by reading or watching the news in a different language, by translating for fun, and by living abroad or speaking more to native speakers. What I've noticed with my student is that the main issue to continue improving our language skills when we are advanced level or expert level. They are the lack of vocabulary. So what I would say is to learn more vocabulary. How do we do that? Read books, use the synonym technique, translate and watch the news or read the news to expand your vocabulary. The singular issue that comes back as well for advanced learner is not to be confident with speaking. The thing is, it's a language you just need to speak. It's meant to be spoken. How can you improve this by imitating doing the pronunciation exercise? You can do that on your own. It's the first one that you should be doing because on your own, you're not being judged by anybody by the way you're speaking a different language, and then speak to native. Watch the news, repeat what you hear, pronunciation exercise and speaking the native. Also, the next thing is the fear of making mistakes. You will definitely make mistakes by learning a language and the more mistakes you make, the more you're going to learn from them. It's very similar to being scared of speaking. So to summarize when you are an advanced level or expert level, even if you know all the grammar, you know all the conjugation, the last step is really to speak and to learn more vocabulary from any sources such as what we saw book, TV, films, music, articles. That's the way you're going to build up your language with that content. Then you need to actually use it and speak the language with that content that you have learned and to make mistakes from them because you will learn how not to make those mistakes again. Thank you very much for watching this course. I hope it will help you get to the next level and feeling like you are bilingual. Don't forget to do the class project and submit it back on the class project section so I can have a look at it. Thank you very much for watching this course.