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Comment by bayindirh | Hacker News Reader

First of all read a lot. Read local communities like Reddit, HN (here), slashdot, etc. This will make you familiar with the daily language.

Second, listen a lot. Watch movies with original sound and English subtitles. Try to understand, try to make sense of it. If you listen English songs, try to listen a little more attentive.

Then write a lot. Try to take your notes in English. Comment your code in English. Try to comment more into stories or forums around the world.

These three will sharpen you in daily English. You'll become more familiar. Becoming fluent becomes after becoming familiar. As everyone said, also read books, novels in English and take notes, however some books' vocabulary may be drastically different from others (e.g., Both Hyperion Cantos and Ready Player One are SciFi novels, but latter one has a much more accessible English than the former).

Last but not the least, don't focus on your progress. You'll advance inevitably. Just continue doing so, and you'll find yourself much more improved after some time. Fluency is best when it comes with time, and when it's built step by step, it becomes permanent.

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Mimicking is the critical skill for spoken English.

I bet you have ugly flaws in your spoken English, although I also bet that your written English is better than many brought up speaking English.

I often deal with tourists, and I detect serious flaws in their speaking as a result of their learning to read and write first (transliteration is a problem too). Common ways of teaching English in schools are deeply flawed IMHO.

Babies and children learn by listening, talking, mimicking, and some correction.

The best late learners of speaking English that I have met, have been those that interact by talking and mimicking, with very little (if any) reading/writing. My favourite was a young Japanese guy that had worked in East London and Australia, and his accent would switch between perfect Cockney and perfect Ocker depending upon where he had learnt a phrase!

Personally, my Spanish only really improved when I had a Spanish speaking girlfriend that didn't want to speak English with me.

Obviously if you mostly interact in English by writing, it doesn't matter.

But if you want to work in a country, you will usually be judged quite negatively if you have a strong accent.

Also clearly not everyone can find a way to talk with native speakers.

Learning by listening to movies and mimicking songs including accent of the singer helps a lot and is fun. (e.g. in my experience Spaniards typically have horrific English due to dubbing films into Spanish, while Portuguese often are way better at English).

Ideally limit reading and limit learning grammar/spelling until after you have a good grasp of the language. That's how all native speakers have done it.

Actually, you're assuming that I'm doing all these to mimic other English speakers, and you're wrong.

I'm not a late learner. I'm exposed to English when I'm ~4 yo, and started to learn it at 7. Also, I cannot learn by mimicking. I listen and read to learn, to understand how the culture is choosing words, how it works in real world. It's a kind of practice.

Because of my Job, I'm talking with Europeans a lot, and I'm considered a very clearly speaking guy. I've some accent which is carried from my mother tongue, but not from mimicking English dialects.

My English education wasn't purely language education. Whole curriculum was in English, so there was no place for mimicking. We were forced to think in English. The language is integrated into our lives for 6+ years. As a result, I can write at the speed of speech. Also while initial spellings are given as complete words, pronunciation is taught to us. So I can reasonably read or speak a work I've never seen.

When I go abroad to attend some meetings, I cannot completely switch to my mother tongue (both in spoken voice and inner voice) when I land for 30 minutes or so.

Sorry to say it, but your written English reads very stilted to me, a native (British) English speaker. Assuming your spoken English is a similar level, your European colleagues are right - it is clear in the sense that it is easy to understand what you are trying to say. But your word choice and grammar are a very long way away from a native speaker. If you do have a desire to sound more natural in the way you use English, I would suggest you actually take the advice to listen to the way native speakers use the language and try to copy what they do. At the moment you sound much more like a tourist than you think you do.

> a very long way from a native speaker

uh....this guy's English is really excellent. it may be distinguishable from a native speaker by occasional poor phrasing or misuse of words, but it's really, really good. i think your criticism is overblown.

The guy's English _is_ excellent (100% intelligible and reads fine), but there can still be a long way between excellent/"functional fluency" and a native speaker. A native speaker wouldn't say "I'm exposed to English when I'm ~4 yo" (they would say "I _was_ exposed..." or "I've been exposed... since...") or capitalise "Job". Small things in the grand scheme of things, but they make it fairly obvious it's a non-native speaker.

Thanks for your comments. I generally write at the speed of thought, and don't read my comments for a second time to correct my errors.

These tense changes happen when I change the structure of the comment in my head in the real time, and don't revisit the beginning of the sentence to align things back.

When I read them for the second time after I send, I spot the errors, but don't always correct them since they are online and intended people possibly read the comment already.

Maybe I should write a little slower while commenting, and read again before sending.

No it isn't, and you are not doing him any favors by saying otherwise. His usage is at a level I would consider intermediate at best. FearNotDaniel's assessment is accurate.

There is no shame in not being 100% fluent. I'm multi-semi-lingual, in that I can read a newspaper, shop at a store, etc. in several languages. But I am only fluent in English. When I speak something else, my friends will frequently correct me. I appreciate it, because that is the only way to improve.

> His usage is at a level I would consider intermediate at best. ... There is no shame in not being 100% fluent.

Your notions about language proficiency are wildly out of whack. The speaker you're talking about is clearly articulating their ideas, coherently and without (one presumes) halting or grasping. That's fluency.

You don't have to agree with me, and that is OK. But my opinion is based off of experience.

You might be interested in http://www.govtilr.org/Skills/ILRscale5.htm as an example of the scales used when defining levels of competency.

I'm sure you meant this reply to be constructive, but without describing the experience in question or saying which category from your link you think applies here, it doesn't convey anything.

For me, my experience is two years as an English teacher and my opinion based on that experience is that someone who can convey complex ideas clearly and without effort is fluent. If you define that to be intermediate, what's left for "fluent" to mean?

Thank you for the friendly reply. Here is the ILR page regarding spoken language, which may be more what you had in mind:

http://www.govtilr.org/Skills/ILRscale2.htm

Based on the criteria given, I would estimate that his English writing ability is ~2+. Without hearing him speak, I can't properly assess. Perhaps a 3.

None of this is a criticism or a put down. Achieving this degree of competency in a second or third language takes a great deal of work over a long time, and is something to be proud of. But true fluency happens at level 4 and above.

(My father was a professional linguist and diplomat, and I spent much of my pre-adult life living in different non-English-speaking countries. I say this just so you know where I am coming from. I also want to spread awareness of what the various professional standards of fluency are.)

Thank you in kind, and I understand where you're coming from, but I still think the standard you're applying is pretty far removed from normal. Separate from any subjective rankings, the person describes having been educated solely in English for 6+ years, and from context appears to have been actively speaking it for at least 15-20 years overall. If one ranks that as intermediate, one winds up calling someone with 10 years experience a beginner, and such absurdities.

As for subjective rankings, I'm more familiar with CEFR, under which I see no obvious reason not to rank this person C1 or C2, which is what one would expect for someone with more than 800-1000 hours of study.

CEFR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_R...

> If one ranks that as intermediate, one winds up calling someone with 10 years experience a beginner, and such absurdities.

I'm sure you are aware of people that have spent decades+ in an English-speaking environment, yet still speak in a stilted manner. Time alone isn't enough- you need active correction. A few folks are able to self-correct via listening, but almost everyone does best with regular instruction by qualified teachers.

Thank you for the CEFR link.

Part of the problem with English in particular (I am sure you are aware of this, I am just stating it for other readers) is that the number of ESL speakers exceeds the native population. This rather unusual case means that many learners are receiving instruction from English speakers who themselves are not fluent, compounding the error. From a strictly academic standpoint, it is fascinating tracing the growth of all the different flavors of English (some mutually unintelligible) but it does present certain practical difficulties in communication!

> people that have spent decades+ in an English-speaking environment, yet still speak in a stilted manner

Again, the standard you're applying is unreasonable. English doesn't have any One True dialect - it's spoken natively in various ways, some of which sound stilted to you. I went to college with a guy from Malaysia whose speech you'd likely find highly stilted (or I did, anyway), yet English was his first language - the only language he used with his parents, the only language he ever used in school, etc. That is what it is - a person can be fluent or native and still sound stilted to you. You may well sound stilted to them!

This is why the rankings you linked don't use such language - they talk about whether someone can use complex grammatical structures clearly and without effort, and so forth, and when judging someone's fluency that's the sort of standard to apply. Saying they sound stilted just says that their English doesn't sound the way you expect correct English to sound, which is neither here nor there.

What a ridiculous comment. Intermediate? I just don't even know what to say.

> uh....this guy's English is really excellent.

It has very good vocabulary, but a whole lot of verb tense and subject-verb disagreement errors, and use of the wrong parts of speech in ways which are (especially combined with the excellent vocabulary) very emblematic of a non-native English speaker who either learned late or learned early but had much of their use of English with other non-native speakers.

Now, it's very good for someone with either of those backgrounds (and much better than my command of any language that isn't English), but the upthread comment that it is very far from that of a native speaker is spot on.

> I'm exposed to English when I'm ~4 yo, and started to learn it at 7.

It's not. He didn't even use the right tense in the first clause. It should be: I've been exposed to English since I was 4 years old, and started to learn it at 7.

His English is certainly perfectly understandable, but also 'a very long way from a native speaker'.

Let me see, if nine out of 10 people asses this poster as having non-fluent english and 1/10 seem to think he is fluent, the most resonable explanation is that there are now 2 people who are not fluent in english. Stop trying to grasp at straws, it quite clear the poster is not a native english speaker nor does he fool fluent speakers.

I never said he was a native speaker, did I?

Actually my language skills, regardless of language, varies according to my mood and energy, and it's late here.

However, this is not to dismiss your comment as moot or anything, I'll keep this in mind. Thanks for the heads up.

I am a non-native speaker so I tried combing through a few of your comments to see how a native speaker might be able to pick you out as a non-native.

> listen a little more attentive

attentively

> will sharpen you in daily English

"sharpen" should be applied to the skill, not the person? ("sharpen your daily English")

> Becoming fluent becomes after becoming familiar.

"becomes after" sounds weird. Maybe "follows" or "comes".

> very clearly speaking guy

clear speaking

But I think the most glaring issue is the way you use commas (lots of unnecessary commas, comma splices, and parallel structure violations).

All of this is beyond grammar nazi-ing since some of these are just word choices that I would've made differently rather than grammatical errors. Again, I am also non-native.

> "sharpen" should be applied to the skill, not the person? ("sharpen your daily English")

Possibly depends on the dialect. "Sharpen your skills" is probably more common, but applying it to the person (e.g. "This will sharpen you up") sounds fine to me as a British English speaker (though if specifying a specific skill in the same sentence you probably wouldn't use that form).

> But I think the most glaring issue is the way you use commas (lots of unnecessary commas, comma splices, and parallel structure violations).

Definitely true, but that can also be a trait of some native speakers, FWIW. Some of my sentences have a ton of unneeded commas and "loose" clauses when I first write them, until I refactor them to make them more correct. It's certainly not exclusive to non-native speakers.

Yeah well, there's a lot to nitpick here... "language skills [...] varies" - a skill varies, but skills vary. Obviously I'm making tons of mistakes too, especially in a conversation (when there's no time to think and you can't go back to correct a phrase). Besides, being technically correct - in terms of grammar, vocabulary and so on - doesn't mean it sounds natural yet.

Thanks for your comments. I'll take note of these, and will revisit from time to time.

Most of the commas I use (before the "and" & "or"s) are Oxford Commas which dictates to use a comma before the conjunction if the sentences are separable. If the sentences are separable you don't use the comma. A more general rule is explained in [0].

My juries of my Master's and Ph.D. were very strict in this manner so I learned it the hard way. Now it's hardwired in my brain. Honestly I may be over using them, and will write more carefully.

[0] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/30516/should-i-u...

> Most of the commas I use (before the "and" & "or"s) are Oxford Commas which dictates to use a comma before the conjunction if the sentences are separable

You seem to be confusing the Oxford (or serial) comma [0] used after the penultimate item of a list with the rule on comma + conjunction (or semicolon with no conjunction) separating independent clauses as opposed to a bare conjunction separating dependent clauses.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma

Generally the corrections were between independent clauses, and I made some research on the matter at that time. It's possible that I just mix the name of the rules since I got them from the back of my memory.

Thanks for clarifying these up. Will keep these in mind too.

Your English is fine and way better than my 2nd language skills. Unless you are going to become a con man or a spy, I wouldn't give it another thought.

Sorry but I disagree. Limit reading and limit learning grammar/spelling?

This is absolutely right. One of the biggest drawbacks of reading to learn a language is that it increases your accent simply because you will start to pronounce the words the way you learned to read in your native language.

Also, it's harder to memorize information when you read it. Mimicking and speaking is the fastest way to fluency. It turns out that embarrassment or the feeling that you need to improve will help you learn.

That might be more apropos for learning Chinese (where premature focus on reading/writing can distract from actually learning the (spoken) language). I think in learning English, reading will help, because the sound/spelling correspondence is sufficient (even though English arguably has the worst orthography after the logographic ones).

> because the sound/spelling correspondence is sufficient

I strongly disagree.

Firstly on listening to tourists, some of the worst pronunciation mistakes I hear are because they have learnt the spelling: you can hear mistakes that can only occur if you know the spelling (or are due to use a "general" voicing rule).

This shows up clearly when you are in another country and you tell someone a word for something and they repeat it back to you perfectly. However they often then ask for the spelling, and after you tell them the spelling, their pronunciation changes to something incorrect. Ouch.

Speakers with English as a mother tongue on seeing an unfamiliar word will ask how to pronounce it rather than making educated guesses at how to say it because any rule is often broken, and we learn not to trust our guesses. In fact someone who is well read but mispronounces words (intuited from spelling) is often laughed at.

One further problem that well spoken English is a sign of a good education, and it is often used to judge social status. In a professional job, correct speech helps one a lot. On the flip side you hear tradesman avoid using "correct" speech because they don't want to associate themselves with "suits" (or it is a group identity thing: I am not a ethanographer!).

The result of the above is that most people find it rude to have their speech or spelling corrected because of the implicit "I am better than you". Which means it is difficult to find anyone that will correct your mistakes because most people are polite. The exception is children: they love to correct adults and they often don't mind repeatably correcting pronunciation errors.

Note I think that a child that speaks English learns "rules" for sounding words primely to help identify the spelling of words they already know how to say. A learner may guess at a spelling, but the spelling is then corrected by the teacher.

You are really overgeneralizing your personal experience. I’m a native English speaker too, and I guess pronunciations all the time. I’d argue that it’s part of the skill of English fluency.

Stop discouraging people by telling them that your way is the only way.

Granted, it's easy to mispronounce an English word from the spelling alone (try to read aloud the poem "The Chaos" [links below], infamous among advanced English learners).

However, the sound/spelling correspondence is good enough, as I said, and certainly better than in Chinese. Thus, I stand by my position that premature concentration on reading/writing is a bigger problem for Chinese learner than for English learners.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ruize-rijmen/De_Chaos

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~clamen/misc/humour/TheChaos.html

> Speakers with English as a mother tongue on seeing an unfamiliar word will ask how to pronounce it rather than making educated guesses at how to say it because any rule is often broken, and we learn not to trust our guesses. In fact someone who is well read but mispronounces words (intuited from spelling) is often laughed at.

I disagree - I guess at pronunciations frequently (as a native speaker), and it is a useful skill to be able to do so. For a learner, it may be _helpful_ to ask how to pronounce (especially to avoid reinforcing misconceptions), but I don't think it's a universal rule of English that people ask how to pronounce words. I also find that many of the mispronunciations are regional variations or misconceptions (e.g. hearing Worchester as "War-chester" instead of "Wus-ter", or Yorkshire as "York-shy-er" instead of "York-sha"), so even if you ask, you might not learn the "true"/regionally appropriate pronunciation.

I've also never come across the later -- I know plenty of well-read people (native and non-native) who have made mistakes in pronunciation (such as a friend who read "parser" as "pa-ray-ser"; native speaker) and they are simply corrected, not laughed at.

> Limit reading and limit learning grammar/spelling?

From my comment: "Limit reading and limit learning grammar/spelling until after you have a good grasp of the language."

You have misquoted me.

This is great, but you're missing out on spoken English.

I think one of the biggest obstacles in speaking is overcoming the fear of saying something wrong, or not being understood. At least that was the case for me. Once you get over that fear and get a more "I don't give a crap" attitude towards if what you're saying is correct, and instead just say it, you've come a long way and it will help you improve.

Simple version of what I'm trying to convey:

Try to not be afraid to say something wrong, just speak your mind. Don't worry about grammar when you speak. It will come naturally after a while.

Personally I learnt most my spoken English through co-operative computer games and speaking to other players over ventrilo / mumble or in-game voice comms. The fear of saying something wrong or being misunderstood was minimized in this online setting, sitting safely at home but still communicating with real people.

You're right. English is not my native language, and I learned it in the school, which included speaking, albeit not too much.

The steps I outlined is how I sharpened my skills after school, during my non-educational life, in a spontaneous manner. I understood these steps years later, and share them whenever there's a chance to share.

I've practiced my speaking skills in the university via presentations, and during my work travels. Also my work requires me to send a lot of English mails, which tend to progress conversation-like. Since they were the things which came to my way rather than I consciously selected, I have no reproducible way of practicing spoken English, so I knowingly omitted those.

In addition to all those points you nailed, I want to add watch pygmalion, the British black and white movie, or my Fair Lady, the American version.

I told that to two people. Both of them had very thick accents. 6 months after watching, they lost their accents.

The movies are inspirational and full of guidance. And they are funny.

I've to completely disagree. Only way to learn to "speak" is to be in environment where you can only speak the new language and you have to speak.

You can read 10 years and won't be fluent. You can watch for 10 years and won't learn a thing. I've been watching Japanese animes before high school. Do I speak Japanese, no! Only 10 or so words.

One thing that cements this the fact grammar is something that's not absolute.

Again from experience, very important, you can take 5 semester of esl courses and still sound like you came over here last month.

> Watch movies with original sound and English subtitles.

Something I've heard over and over is that using subtitles actually stunts your growth, because it's too easy to fall back on instead of making sense of what you hear.

GP is saying to watch with subtitles in the language to be learned, not your native language.

IMO it's good advice. When I do it, I inevitably wind up looking for and finding differences between the audio and text, thinking about how I might have translated things differently, and so on.

Yes, I believe some polyglots recommend that you never watch a movie with a disconnect between subtitles and the audio track.

English audio/English subtitles is fine. Assuming you are French, English audio/French subtitles is bad. French audio/English subtitles is also bad but not as bad as the previous combination.

The reason is that if you have subtitles in your native language, you will tend to just focus your brain on reading them and kind of ignore the audio portion.

There's no substitute for exposure. "Learning" and memorization can help you recognize language use. But it's exposure that makes it second nature (i.e. automatic).

And as far as speaking goes, remember that you're using muscles and nerve signals. Just like with any other physical activity, i.e. a sport, it's practice -- doing it -- that improves facility.

If you're reading in a different language, try readlang (I'm not an owner, just a happy user.) It's a browser plugin that does 2 things: (1) inline translation, including of phrases, so reading becomes much much less painful; and (2) every word or phrase you look up, it saves as a flash card for you to review. It's well worth the $5/month.

Sound advice. Also, try to get to the next step as soon as you can, while still working on the previous ones. We are surprisingly quick to adapt even when facing complicated challenges, so take advantage of that. And always do something that you like. It will keep you both motivated and focused.

You can do all of them at the same time after getting the initial momentum, however not overloading the cognitive capacity is important. Otherwise the process may backfire.

The most important point is not forcing yourself to progress, but integrating the language in your life. A foreign language is not an achievement, but a capability (or ability), like programming in another language. You need to integrate into your life, not achieve and set aside. So not forcing is much more healthy IMHO.

Adding more to @bayindirh's comment. I am currently the active user of this app called 'memrise'. This app will help beginners improve their vocabulary. Also talk to yourself in the language you are learning, that will help you eliminate the translation lag.

This. As a native English speaker, this is a pretty good summary of exactly how I became proficient in a other languages, starting in my teens. True fluency takes years. It is not something that can just be rushed.

Thanks a lot. As a non-native speaker, hearing this makes me happy. :)

That's totally true.

When I start to read everyday and watch series with english subtitles, I fell that I was moving forward.

I need to focus on writing and conversation.

Great idea, Excellent suggestion. read, listen and write a lot for a long time.

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