Hello, welcome back to my podcast. How's everyone doing? I know it's been a while, so I thought it would be better for me to just press record rather than keep procrastinating. Now I'm already at home. I came back from Beijing two weeks ago, then I also went to Japan for four days, and now I'm back. But I am going on another trip in a day, so there's no better time than now to record another episode of the podcast.

Today I want to talk about how I learned English. I know most of you subscribe to this podcast because you want to practice your listening of English, and you don’t want a really serious topic, but just want some friends over the Internet to chat with you, or maybe you enjoy my voice and listen to fall asleep. When I first heard about this, I was really surprised. Do people really listen to me when they go to sleep? I don’t understand, but thank you so much.

Yeah, so this episode, I’m gonna talk about first my journey with English, and I’ll give you two main tips slash takeaway for learning English speaking from experience. So my journey with English began at a really young age. I started to have my annual trip abroad at the age of five. That’s because I have this neighbor, and then we’re really close with each other, even until this day, our parents, our families, know each other really, really well. And we live basically door to door, and their son is at the same age as mine, which is really rare from a neighbor perspective. Anyway, so their mom, the auntie, she’s an English major, so their family always travels abroad. And because none of my parents speak English, our family back then was just tagging along. Since our parents became quite close to each other, we began to have annual trips to nearby countries. For example, we went to Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Australia. Australia is a really cool one. I always had this admiration for this auntie, because I thought it was so cool to be able to speak English, being the only person who could stand up and communicate with foreigners while we were abroad. It just felt super cool, and it solidified my desire to be able to speak English like her in the future.

From the age of six, which was the age of starting primary school, my mom started to send me to an English class outside of school. It was an extracurricular activity, not for raising my grades, but more like a hobby, along with my many artsy hobbies like drawing, painting, dancing, piano. English became one of my after school activities. Joining that English class, I really enjoyed it because it covered topics that applied to traveling abroad.

At secondary school, English just felt really easy for me compared to maths. My maths and physics were not very good. Especially back then, I was in the top class in my year. We had a lot of pressure from being ranked, and English was my strongest suit. I also had a really great English teacher. She was really young, and she almost felt like a big sister to us. Her class was always fun. We used to spend the entire class listening to an English song or watching a music video and analyzing the lyrics, or playing games related to English, or watching English movies. Her class definitely inspired me and made English as a subject seem even more appealing. It gave me a positive feedback loop. I was always looking forward to English class. It always gave me better grades than sciences.

Also, starting from secondary school, I had a celebrity crush on a boys choir in London. It’s kind of weird to say it now, but because I’ve always been singing in choirs almost my entire life, when I was introduced to this choir in year seven, I began to listen to them nonstop. Back then we were not allowed to bring our phones back to school, so I had this mini MP3 that I carried every day with me. I listened to their songs every night before sleep. They weren’t even big celebrities, but I still felt a strong connection to them. They inspired my choice of studying abroad because, because of them, London became a dream city for me. I always listened to their songs. I could memorize their lyrics. I can never do that now, but if you’ve ever had a celebrity crush, you know what I mean. I listened to their interviews, and all those things made being able to speak English fluently an even bigger priority for me.

Later, I decided to transfer to an international school, and we followed the British curriculum. All the classes were taught in English. Reading English started to feel really natural for me. It didn’t take up noticeable energy or time to understand. Because when you study a subject, you memorize the terms. And if you are learning through English, it just becomes natural. For example, if you ask me questions in economics or music, it’s easier for me to start the conversation in English rather than Chinese, because translating takes extra time.

Then I started my three-year university in London. I had the chance to make a lot of local friends, and talking to them daily definitely improved my English skills and impacted my accent as well.

So that’s basically my journey with English. And then I have two main tips if you want to study English.

The first big one is to know why you want to study this language. Passion and love are always a shortcut. For me, starting from a young age, I knew that because I wanted to travel abroad, I needed to be able to speak English. I wanted to take my parents abroad, arrange everything, order for them, book hotels. I wanted to prove to them that one day I could be like that auntie, doing everything for them. That was the first layer. The second was being a fan girl—I wanted to understand lyrics and interviews. If you are a K-pop, J-pop, or C-pop fan, you know what I mean. I have a lot of friends who like K-pop. Because they watch so many reality shows, they can pick up words or phrases naturally, even without systematic study. It’s the same for English. If you really like a particular actor, actress, or singer, you just naturally have greater passion for studying the language. It makes the process 100 times easier and keeps you motivated.

The second big point is to immerse yourself in an English environment. Now that I live in the UK, I’m surrounded by English naturally. If you go to school in an English-speaking country, your skills will improve no matter what. But if you’re in China, it’s harder, so you have to create the environment.

And it’s not that hard. There are many forms of media to surround yourself with: music, videos, YouTube, podcasts. You can talk to yourself in English, or find online friends for language exchange. I did that. I had quite a few online friends back when I was 13 or 14.

I’m really proud to say I’m still close friends with one of them now, Chloe. We even met offline twice. I visited her in Toronto last year, and she visited me in London this February. She was even a guest in this podcast. If you look back at episode 16, you’ll find her. It’s really cool—you might even start an unexpected friendship. But be careful, because there are scams on those apps.

Anyway, the point here is to create an English environment that feels comfortable and entertaining. I listen to a lot of English songs. I almost only listen to English songs. I talk to myself a lot. That’s why I started this podcast. I wrote to myself in English. I kept a journal mixing English and Chinese. I watched a lot of YouTube videos. I love vlogs, especially. I have a few comfort YouTubers I always go to. I remember the summer of 2022, I deliberately trained myself not to read subtitles when watching YouTube. At the start of summer, my listening was not great. I could only pick up around 50% of what they said. But by the end of summer, because I watched without subtitles and just listened, I improved. By the end, I could understand more than 70%. It felt great because it was such a natural process.

If you expose yourself enough, you will improve. I understand if you want to study English in a test-driven setting, it’s 10 times more boring. I’ve been there. I had to take IELTS. I hated it. I couldn’t take it a third time. It was really draining.

So if you’re trying to pass tests like TOEFL or IELTS, I understand the process is boring. Just treat it with an exam mindset. You don’t have to understand everything, because those passages often don’t make sense. But learning English is a long-term thing, almost a lifetime thing, and it guarantees great returns. Being able to speak, communicate, and understand another language gives you a whole new perspective on the world. You can read news in its original language. You can access books and fiction in their original language.

Speaking another language also gives you another way of thinking, even another personality. For example, I prefer talking to myself in English because it’s not my native language, so I think an extra moment before I speak. It makes my thinking clearer and my expression better.

Anyway, I have to say I haven’t spoken English in a while, because I haven’t recorded this podcast in a while. And I’m in China, so recording this podcast feels more difficult than usual. Yeah, surrounding yourself in an English environment is so important. Practice is so important. Anyways, that’s the end of today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Bye!