It's all about speaking a language in which you want to become fluent. I am trying to build up a community of motivated language learners. It has been almost one year since I’ve started out with my recording-myself-project to improve my spoken English. So far, I have published 34 episodes of “my fluent podcast”. I would like to take the upcoming 1 year anniversary as an occasion to share my insigh
ts and explain to you why to this day, I still believe, in general, that it is a good thing to record myself on a regular basis and publish the content. In my case, the podcasting did not only enhance various skills but also got me in touch with other fantastic language enthusiasts from all over the world – which to me is at least as important as becoming a fluent confident English speaker. I have studied English many years, sometimes in classes, sometimes on my own. I think there is no need to explain how it worked in school but I will wrap it up for you: a lot of grammar but no real communication training. I could not say a phrase without stumbling over my own words. The reason is clear to me today, I haven’t really trained my pronunciation or my articulation skills back in the days. So far, I have studied in a rather passive way and I had to change that! As I realized that, the time came where I began to take italki lessons. In a short period of time, I felt more confident. Something that makes it possible to measure my improvement and that keeps me motivated on a regular basis. As a very passionate podcast listener (in English or French) it was just a matter of time until the solution came to mind. I got the idea of producing something by myself. Two flies with one stone: getting my pronunciation practice and sharing all my language-related knowledge with other learners. But there was a lot of fear and self-doubt in the beginning. Why the hell should anybody listen to a non-native English speaker, who is about to become fluent in English? Finally, to my luck, the motivation to create something and share with others won over my fears. In the beginning, it was really hard though because I had to write down every single word before I could record. I looked up for the correct pronunciation and so on. Sometimes I wrote the whole script for one of my episodes beforehand and sent it to an Italki teacher to get it corrected. Sometimes, I took lessons on Italki to practice the right pronunciation and intonation of the whole script or to find out how I could say the sentences in a more natural way. I even decided to pay for a professional podcast hosting service to get more accountability. These days, I don’t need to write down every single word. My English is not perfect but I am more confident. The crucial thing – and that is in general when you are learning – is consistency and to not let you down by any fallbacks (and they will come, believe me on that). My original goal, for instance, was to record one episode a week, which I obviously couldn’t reach with my “only” 34 in one year produced episodes. But it’s ok. I am a learner with mistakes and with a life besides the podcast. One thing I had to learn as well was to not compare myself with others. You don’t exactly know the whole situation of another person and it will not bring you any further if you compare yourself with others and get a bad feeling about it. It looks different when you have idols and you think in a positive way, for example to become as good as your idol. I got mentioned on various other podcasts or websites. I even conducted interviews with native and non-native speakers. Something, I couldn’t even imagine in my mother tongue one year before! So, the language journey goes on with “my fluent podcast” and I still have to learn a lot but now I am certain, that my passion will bring me further with my English. The good thing is: Everybody can do it. If you have a device (every mobile phone does have it these days) to record yourself, you can speak about anything you want. You don’t need to spend a single penny. But the results will be incredible! And if you want to receive an extra boost, start out with your own published podcast! For some of you making videos on youtube or Instagram or vlogging may do the trick for you and finally bring you the results. The possibilities are actually infinite. The crucial thing is to combine passion with English learning… and of course to start out…
What are you waiting for?
