英语母语者也要背单词吗？How to become fluent in any language

recently I've got a lot of questions asking how I learned Chinese and also a lot of questions asking how native English speakers learn English how do

Americans remember so many English words so I thought I'd make a video talking about my language journey and also share some tips and techniques for learning a language as an adult without any

language environment especially if you struggle with memorizing words this is going to be really helpful so make sure to stick around to the end I've been learning Chinese for about 6 years now

and a lot of people have asked how I was able to reach a relatively fluent level and honestly being in the classroom environment really helped me a lot in

the beginning it was really helpful to have a teacher teach me the basics and give me a foundation in this language but a lot of the work for me also came

from outside of the classroom especially in situations where you don't have a language environment and you're not surrounded by this language every day

and you can't practice these basic daily conversations so it's really important to try to make the environment for yourself and put in the extra effort

outside of class I would surround myself with as much Chinese as I possibly could so I would constantly watch TV shows movies and I would listen to Chinese

music while I was walking around campus and really anything to help me listen to more Chinese and get more input I would constantly take note of the new words

and phrases that I heard and write them down and I have so many notebooks just filled with me repeating the same things over and over and writing everything I

heard down but most importantly is that I would talk to myself in my head using Chinese for example if we learned a new word or phrase or even sentence

structure in class then I would try my best to really Inc incorporate that into my inner monologue so even though nobody would be there to practice with me I could still practice with myself and

this is really important because if you honestly want to improve in any language then the key is practice and spending time to really say all these words

phrases and structures that you encounter and another key point is not just focusing on one single word or phrase but putting it into a sentence

and understanding how it's really used in real life because if you spend a lot of time just repeating one word over and over and over you might be able to

remember it but it's going to take a lot of extra effort and brain power and it's not really applicable if you don't know how to use the word properly so instead

I would recommend finding some more examples of how to use this word and this way you can really understand and deeply feel the meaning of this word and

you'll be able to use it naturally and when other people use it you'll be able to understand what they're trying to say this is also important because in real life conversations or when we're reading

a paper or a book or something like that these words are never really isolated they're never just alone they always have some context and we can use this to

figure out what they mean the use of context clues is actually how a lot of native speakers learn a lang language no matter what the language is for example

if your native language is Chinese how did you learn it your parents and the people around you would constantly be speaking in this language so as a baby you just start to pick up on the sounds

and the words and you eventually start to speak it on your own and this is the natural way of learning any language we connect words to real life objects and

we learn new words based on how other people use them in different contexts even native speakers make mistakes when learning their native language but each

mistake is just a step closer to fluency and we can use these methods when we're learning a foreign language as well I've had a lot of people ask how Americans learn English like do we have to

memorize a lot of words too or do we have English classes or what do we do when we encounter a word that we don't know we learn English the same way that

anyone else else would learn a native language but in order to go past a very basic level of English native English speakers also have to spend time

studying English in school for example when we're younger we have to do a lot of spelling tests and memorize the spelling of new and longer words as we

get older we also have to learn how to analyze English writing and we have to learn how to write an English paper and we spend a lot of time learning about English literature

and also history as well so English is a big part of our curriculum English is a very wordy language so naturally there are a lot of words that we might not

know the exact meaning of and even as native English speakers we have to spend time learning these new words there are a few different methods of learning

these new words but I'm going to share one common method that is going to be very helpful we'll call this method the context clues method it's also used a

lot for learning English when it's not your native language and I've summarized three main steps for you to follow but just keep in mind this method does

require a little bit of a basic English understanding to use it when we see a new word that we don't know in a sentence first we need to figure out the

basic and general meaning of the overall sentence like what's the tone or what other words could we put in place of this new new word and still have the

whole sentence make sense and this is the core of using context clues second we use context clues or the information surrounding this word to make an

educated guess on what this new word really means and then the third step is to finally use a dictionary to confirm

our educated guess and doing this also reinforces this word in your brain and helps with memorization this is really important because if you see a new word and you just immediately go to the

dictionary or you immediately translate this word to understand what it means and then quickly move on without even understanding the context of how to use this word it's actually going to be

really hard to remember the word and understand how it's really used so checking with the dictionary is important but it should be the last step

using your brain to understand the use and meaning behind these new words is actually going to give you a deeper impression and help you understand the Practical use of the words and

eventually this will make things a lot easier in the long run I also used this method when I was learning Chinese and I think it's part of the reason why I was

able to pick up on things so quickly while I was listening to these TV shows and movies and anything like that in Chinese if I saw something new that I

wasn't sure of exactly what it meant instead of just directly translating it I would look for it in other contexts and slowly start to understand the

meaning and how it's used and honestly when you rely too much on direct translation of words and phrases then a lot of the times you'll start to lose

the nuance and the feeling of a language it's also really important to remember that learning a language no matter what the language is takes a lot of time and

persistence it's taken me about 6 years to learn Chinese without knowing anything about the language previously but only in the past year have I started

to really kind of connect the dots and become a little bit more fluent in the language I spent years just understanding the sounds of Chinese and

memorizing sentences and words and phrases and talking to myself a lot all of these steps were needed for me to get

to where I am today so my biggest piece of advice is don't give up I hope this video was somewhat motivational for you no matter what language you want to

learn and I hope that this technique is going to help you a lot in your studies so let me know if you have any other questions about language learning and

I'll see you guys next time bye-bye