It seems I'm the only person doing this in this channel, and we have tens of thousands of learners here. As you might have seen, I have posted 5 videos about my English learning progress in this channel. To me, it's more like keeping a promise. I made this promise publicly, then I might stick to it for a longer time. I have tried to break through my English plateau a few times, including setting a goal for a specific IELTS score etc, but I always gave up shortly.
This time, it seems to work. In order to make the progress obvious between each week's video, or at least within weeks, I have to push myself to really spend time studying in a serious way.
In fact, I doubt if I should continue making videos, as I feel like I have build a good habit of learning this time, also it does take some time to make videos. Even though each video is unstaged, without preparing a script or prompt, but I still am not used to facing a camera, especially considering this video would be public. I might go blank during the recording, so I have to record it again. It really takes time, and it also takes time to set up everything.
But of course, there are also other benefits. I am always afraid of talking to people, even in my native language, but I always had a dream to be confident when talking in front of people, such as doing a speech, a presentation, or even an improv. This experience of recording video and publishing it seems to stimulate my passion a bit more. I started attending some public speaking events in the past weeks, and it might continue.
Furthermore, learning is about input and output. For an intermediate level, using daily conversation as output might be enough, but for an advanced level, besides writing practice, recording videos and making the content organized and coherent might be a better way. But this might be off topic, because I am talking about whether it is weird to make this personal experience public. But anyway, what is your opinion?
Well, it is not prohibited under the rules of this sub, and nobody has ever objected to your posts as far as I've seen. I've watched two or three of your videos and liked them
Thank you :)
Keep doing it! It will help you with general public speaking as well.
Yes, I think so, thanks!
Keep doing it 👏
I saw this post and then looked at your account and watched your newest video. You are very understandable! You speak English better than some professors/instructors I had in college. You should be proud of yourself!
What's most impressive to me is that your English speech flows very well, the words and rhythm and stresses all flow. The flow is very important. You are making some stumbles and mistakes but the flow bridges over them and you're understandable with minimal listening effort. And on top of that you can speak for 5+ minutes!
I'm learning French (about 1.5 years now) and I'm at an A2 level and you speak English way, way, way better than I speak French. I struggle to speak more than a few sentences at a time whereas it sounds like you could probably speak in English for as long as you want. You most likely have enough vocab in English to speak around a word or phrase you can't remember.
I think you making videos of you speaking in English is very good practice. I've thought about doing that with me in French but I'm going to be terrible at it--which probably means it'd be valuable to do.
I'm curious about your learning journey. Have you reached a point where you hear and think in English? Like you hear English sounds and recognize the meanings in your brain in English. When I'm doing French, there are some words that stay in French in my mind but a lot of the time I'm translating back and forth. I'm not at the point yet where I can hold meanings in my mind in French. Was there a particular factor or thing that helped get you thinking and operating in English? I kind of feel like at this point I've been exposed to the bulk of the grammar and so I've reached the point where it's just grinding vocab for a while, and then later work on production in writing and speech. I'm wondering what to focus on, like writing or learning vocab or what. I feel like I'm doing fine at reading and listening.
Thank you for your comment. Yes, I have reached the point that I do not need to translate English in my brain. I did not train my brain particularly, maybe because I listened a lot, and it gradually became automatic. These days, I am also trying to think in English.