Hi, everyone!

As you may have already known, I put a lot of efforts in learning English and reaching C1 level. If you haven't read my previous posts, I'm going go over. I've set a goal to reach advanced level of English and become fluent, give or take. From my point of view, I consider it as a challenge since I'm trying to study for 2-3 hours every day. However it won't make sence if you try to improve, for instance, only vocabulary or grammar. By doing that, you'll get stuck and burn out after awhile.

I'm going to share my findings that I've made throughout my road.

I used to learn English emphasizing only improving comprehension skills. Nevertheless, I realized the significance of improving spoken English but I hadn't known the way how to do that and it was for that reason that I felt stuck and I was burnt out. However, more than month ago I came across the app (Speak Peak) that really helped me so much in the toughest moment of struggling with English. The whole point of this app is finding a partner to talk with. You just pick out the level of English that you want your partner has and click "find a partner" and when you match, you have 15 minutes to talk with him/her. At that time, I was so excited finding the way to become better in spoken English. My first talk was incredibly intense since I was in state of nervous tension. I had never felt this before, considering the fact that I was literally sweating as I went to a gym for 2 hours. However, I overcame this fear and every next conversation went smoothly and smoothly. It was my first stage for becoming fluence since I started noticing that I was getting bored talking there. I think this app fits for A1-B1 level because there aren't lots of people with B2-C2 level of English.

Luckily, I came across one guy in this app and he was telling me about Discords channels. He invited me to some channels and that's how second stage of improving fluency started. I'd been talking to non native speakers in the first place since talking to native speakers were over the top in my case. I'd been spending my time talking to people for two weeks, before I mastered up strength and worked up the courage to start talking to native speakers. The only thing concerned me a lot and it was American slang and jokes since I was out of this league. From my point of view, I sounded like a robot and it wasn't that natural as I would've wanted to sound. However I've become more confident talking to native speakers and even made friends from the US.

Here it is some new methods and techniques that I've explored lately.

Vocabulary.

If you have the feeling that you can understand everything what you watch or listen to, however, when it comes to speaking you realize your vocabulary is so weak and you want to enrich your vocabulary learning these new complicated words. There's no need to do that. There's one method which help you to turn passive vocabulary into active. First step - consume as much content in English as you can. Second step - listen carefully and try to find words that you know, however you don't use them in your speech. Put them on the list and learn one word a day.

I have a notebook where I write my words down. There's the word you have. You need to learn not the word, but a phrase since it's more useful. Then, try to find collocations (because it's essential), make up your sentences with this word. Most important thing that almost everyone misses is being obsessed by this word. For instance, when you go somewhere, you can make up sentences and do that out loud. This method has had a significant impact on my way to boost vocabulary.

I hope it was helpful

Marco