The #1 Most Important English Question for Learners of English!

- Hello everyone and welcome back to English with Lucy.
Today I've got a little video for you
that is not about grammar, is not about vocabulary.
Its actually a question for you.
And hopefully this little question is going to really
motivate you and help you progress with your English
learning process.
Quickly before we get started,
this video is very kindly sponsored by italki.
If you haven't heard of italki before,
its a huge online database of both native and non-native
teachers that give video lessons 24 hours a day
anywhere in the world as long as you have a device
and an internet connection hundreds of languages
not just English, its incredibly affordable.
You can practise with real qualified teachers
native and non-native and also non-qualified conversation
teachers as well.
They've given me an offer for you.
When you spend $10 at italki
they will credit your account with another $10.
So its like a buy one get one free on lessons.
So if you're interested in that click on the link
in the description box
and it would take you to my italki page
where you can see my smiling face
and sign up for the offer.
Alright let's get started.
So today's lesson, I'm not gonna teach you any grammar.
I'm not gonna teach you any vocabulary
and I'm not going to teach you any pronunciation.
What I'm going to talk to you about
is a really, really important question
if you're learning another language.
I have asked myself this question
with my learning experience in Spanish
and my learning experience in Italian.
Many of you know, I am fluent in Spanish.
I have a video about how I became fluent
and you can click on it right here.
And I'm actively learning Italian.
The question I'm going to ask you is
which is more important to you, fluency or accuracy?
You're probably thinking that's
the most important question Lucy.
No seriously think about it.
It's a seriously important question.
Do you want to be fluent first
or do you want to be completely accurate first?
What's more important to you
sounding perfect or being able to communicate freely?
I know what my answer is when I'm learning another language.
I want to be able to be fluent.
I want to be able to communicate.
I make mistakes
but I then learn from them.
I am not somebody who wants to read all
of the irregular verbs and all of the grammar tenses.
And wait until I know them all
before I can then go on to speak with a native speaker.
Not everyone is like me.
Some people want to be perfect first.
Now as an English language teacher
I never ever recommend striving for perfection.
It is largely unachievable.
I want you to think about this question
and weigh up the pros and cons of each side.
Let's talk about fluency first.
The big pro about going for fluency
and making little mistakes here and there is that
you get to talk to people.
You swallow your pride.
You admit that you're going to make mistakes.
You know that you're okay with it.
What you want to do is to be able to converse
and communicate but perhaps if nobody is correcting you
you might start to get little errors ingrained
into your brain.
You might start repeating the same errors
over and over again.
There are a couple of ways to overcome this.
The first way is to have somebody correct you
and make a list of every correction
and really, really work on it.
Now if you go for accuracy
and try and speak perfect English
which is largely impossible,
I don't speak perfect English.
I make mistakes all the time.
Sometimes you can hear them in my videos
and that's normal, that's natural.
But if you're going to go for perfection first
that's great, that's great.
The big pro is that if or when you finish your
English learning journey, if it can finish,
but when you get to an advanced level,
you will be speaking an extremely high level of English.
It will be extremely high quality.
However, its going to take you much, much longer
to get there and you might not have practised
actually communicating with people so much.
So you might be able to a perfect letter
but a spontaneous conversation might be
a bit more difficult.
It will take you longer to achieve fluent communication.
Now I'm not going to tell you which side
you should go for.
I've already told you my preference
but that's because I understand the way my brain works
and I know that I want to get stuck in
and practise from the very beginning
and I accept that my way of learning
will mean that I repeat some mistakes over and over again.
I mean you can hear it in Spanish.
I confuse (speaks foreign language)
over and over again because instead of studying at all
I've just wanted to go in and communicate and chat
and enjoy myself.
If you're going to go for the complete accuracy method
then you have to accept that its going to take you
much longer that it might not be as enjoyable
that you might find the process more boring
but the rewards are greater in the long run.
Both are completely viable options
but this is a conversation, I would love you to
write below about your methods, which kind of side
you go towards, if you've got a completely different method
I'm so interested to hear what you guys have to say
because you guys are all here for the same reason.
You're trying to improve your English
so let's share some experiences
and ask yourself that question
and see if it can help you with how you go forward.
That's everything for today.
Don't forget to check out italki.
The link is in the description box
and you can connect with me on all of my social media.
I've got my Facebook, my Instagram and my Twitter.
And of course my PO box so you can send me letters
if you wish to.
I will see you soon for another lesson.

The #1 Most Important English Question for Learners of English! | #Spon

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