THIS is Why Your English isn't Fluent | English Listening Practice
Are These Bad Habits Keeping You From Fluency?
Welcome back to another episode of the Peach Teach English Podcast! In this episode, I’m joined by special guests Jeremy and Taylor as we dive into some common habits that may be slowing down your English fluency. You’ll hear real tips, honest struggles, and practical advice to help you become a more confident English speaker—without chasing perfection. This transcript is great for intermediate and advanced learners to follow along with real spoken English and improve listening and vocabulary at the same time.
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📝 Peach Teach English Podcast - Episode 28 Transcript
Welcome back to the Peach Teach English podcast. I'm Frankie Mesmer, your host, and today I have my guests, Jeremy and Taylor. And we're going to be talking about bad habits that might be keeping you from English fluency. Jeremy and Taylor, can you introduce yourselves, please? Sure. I'm Taylor, and this is my husband Jeremy. We have been teaching since 2020. We just love helping people, especially the women in our program.
I'm Jeremy. We have worked with people from all over the world. We started with teaching grammar to kids and moved up to teaching soft skills in business. Thank you so much, Jeremy and Taylor for joining me today. One of the first things that you guys mentioned that can really help people achieve fluency is having a feedback loop.
Could you expand on that, please? A feedback loop, it's when you make a mistake, you hear it, and then you correct yourself. Many of you have probably accidentally done this with pronouns like he is going, she is going to the store.
That was the feedback loop. You heard it, you recognized the mistake, and then you fixed it. When we have a tutor, we are then having an active feedback loop where we have a third-person perspective telling us what our mistakes are.
So the faster you can establish these feedback loops, the faster you will become fluent in English, because that's just how our brains process and categorize everything around us. Practice doesn't necessarily always make perfect. Practice makes permanent.
If you are practicing something incorrectly, it will become a habit that is stuck in your brain. You need to eventually be corrected, or else it will stay, and then it's going to be so much harder to break.
We need to be getting this feedback so that we can correct our mistakes. So, coming off of that is we're often trying to be so perfect that we become afraid to speak.
And that's not really gonna help you achieve fluency either. But if you never receive those corrections, you will also not become fluent because you're not gonna understand correctly the speech that you hear. And when you speak, people are gonna be confused about what you're trying to say. It's okay to make those mistakes, but we also need to get that feedback so we can correct them.
Jeremy and Taylor, do you see this from students trying to be perfect before communicating? Yes, the biggest thing that holds you back from fluency is fear. Because, like you said, when you are afraid of making mistakes, you end up speaking less. When you speak less, you don't make as many mistakes.
And when you don't make as many mistakes, you will not get that feedback. You won't get corrected. You don't get practice, you don't get better. We are big advocates for make mistakes loudly. Loud enough for someone to hear it, so you can get that feedback.
If you look at the most successful people in any type of industry, they made the most mistakes. That's the trick. Make more mistakes than everybody else. We trap ourselves because we try to sound perfect, and it's very normal. As humans, we don't want to feel ostracized.
Which is just a fancy word that means people don't want to be our friends. We don't want to make mistakes because this means people won't like us. However, research has shown that if we find a community where mistakes are normalized, we grow faster. Find some friends who you're okay with making mistakes with.
That's how you're going to get fluent a lot quicker. Think of who unapologetically makes the most mistakes. It's babies, kids. And we always say, oh, it's so easy for babies and kids to learn English, to learn their mother tongue.
It's because they're loudly making mistakes, and there is no shame whatsoever. And they learn the quickest. So we can learn from those children. And don't be ashamed of those mistakes. You make a mistake and you say, I'm sorry, teacher. It's okay.
You didn't hurt my feelings. It's normal. I wanna know your guess. How frequently do you think Native English speakers make a mistake?
Ooh, good question. How many sentences? Every five sentences, every 10 sentences. My guess would be three phrases.
Every six sentences. If you guys only knew how often native speakers made mistakes, you would be much kinder to yourself.
People put native speakers on a pedestal and think that's my goal, right? No mistakes. That's unrealistic because we make mistakes. We actually only need 60% of the sentence to be correct in order for our brains to understand what you wanted to say.
So, if we can get 60% accuracy with a sentence. We will be understood. And if we just knew how much we will be understood, we wouldn't be chasing that perfection going into a sentence or into a conversation.
This is so connected to what we were saying, that feedback loop. Like Speak, get that 60% out there and then receive that feedback so it becomes more 70, 80, 90% over time. I record these videos live, so I'm not thinking that much about the grammar.
I'm just talking. When I go back and edit it. I noticed I made a grammar mistake there. I can't go back and change that grammar mistake. That's an excellent reminder. Life is live. Every single moment is live. No going back, no pausing. So this is where we say, Hey, you gotta get out there, you gotta do it.
That's just how our brains work. That's why when we move to a different country. Oh my gosh. Suddenly, I'm speaking Japanese a lot better because you're always speaking Japanese. You're making mistakes, you're speaking it. The problem, though, is that a lot of people, the biggest excuse that we hear is
I don't have a speaking partner that is consistent. We've seen this a lot with apps, where you make friends on there. It's the consistency of the partner
that's the biggest complaint. And that's why we have jobs, right? We are the consistent partner. One of the first things I do when I go on a journey to learn a new language is find a language partner, and I find more casual language partners that I don't necessarily need the consistency, and I do always have at least one teacher that I can trust to show up every week. Because if you don't have consistency, that's when your level stops improving, because you start forgetting the things you've studied, or you're not using it. So it's not quick to your mind. Consistency is one of the keys to fluency and maybe holding you back from it.
You study for three months, and then you take three months off, and you come back, and you're taking steps backwards instead of forwards. Consistency does not look the same.
Consistency doesn't mean the glass is full every single day 100%. We all have 100% to give every single day. But on those days that are hard, and you only have 20%. Give that 20% because that is everything you can give.
It just means showing up. It doesn't mean matching your level of energy the same every single day or every week. If you want to be more consistent, it's very helpful to have a plan as well.
It's not about being perfect every week, but when you have a plan, it's easier to show up more regularly. Jeremy, do you have any advice for creating a good study plan? Yes. So this one I actually lean into James Clear and his book. It's called Atomic Habits. His philosophy is that we fall to our systems. We as humans create systems. Like I wake up, I brush my teeth, I go to work, I come home, I walk the dog.
We have schedules that we create. And so his trick to mastering things is to simply create that into your day. The hardest part, though, is to create the habit, which needs about 21 days to fully solidify. Three weeks to make a habit. In this, we have to set a bare minimum. Like I will speak with at least one person per day in English. Now, maybe the goal is three or five, but the minimum has to be there. One, and always doing that. The second thing you do is you create a trigger to that minimum.
So, for example, you attach it to something. Let's say I'm trying to work out. I want to lose weight. So I need to exercise for 15 minutes every day. So what I'm gonna do is, of course, shower after I work out. Right now, my shower happens in the morning.
So what I'll do is I will work out for 15 minutes to then take the shower. Your shower is the trigger. So now every time you wake up and it's your time to take a shower, you go, oh wait, I need to work out first. This then becomes the trigger. So you need to add something in your life that triggers your need to practice English.
If you can do that, it will become part of every single day by habit. If you do this, let's say for 15 minutes or no, actually I'm gonna do 10 minutes because that's easier math for me. So 350 days of a year. Let's say you miss a week. We'll say 350 days for easy math: 10 minutes.
3,500 minutes. I don't know about you guys, but to me, that's a lot of English. 3,500 minutes. That's a lot. So you can see how, by just that tiny 15 minutes every day, it compounds. And that's what we're looking for. We want that English to compound every day. That was amazing, Jeremy. People need solutions for creating a good plan. I think there's a lot of amazing study plans. There's not just one solution for all, but this is usually the plan I like to recommend.
And like you're saying here, 10 minutes minimum is a good place to start. If you can do 15, 30, an hour, great. But you know that 10 minute minimum. I think it's really important to make sure you are including receptive skills, which are things like listening and reading, as well as productive skills like speaking and writing.
And you should try to implement these in your study plan each week. So, for example, you could do
Monday: writing
Tuesday: listening
Wednesday: take a break or catch up.
Thursday: reading
Friday: speaking
and really be able to create some kind of habit to keep English in your life every day.
And one of the habits that really helped me, that we mentioned before, is having a language partner that I can message on WhatsApp every day. Just, Hey, what did you do today? What was the best part of your day? And really practice communicating the language with someone in an interactive and fun environment.
Another really good way to really make the best out of those bare minimum tasks. Tie emotion to what you're doing, tie emotion to your goals. That's why we all remember the name of the kid who was rude to us when we were little. We all remember his name or her name because they made us feel an emotion. There's a reason we remember their name. And it's the same with our funniest moments with our friends. This is why I love learning through gaming and having activities as a group, where you're laughing because you will remember that vocabulary word that made everybody laugh their heads off.
So anything that gives you some sort of emotion while you're learning is going to be the perfect way to retain it, too. Ooh, yes. Those emotional triggers are so good for memory or connecting it to a life experience, something tangible in your life. That'll help you recall it more easily.
A very important topic when it comes to fluency is maybe you are doing those 10 minutes regularly in your life, but you feel like you're still not improving. Maybe you're not being intentional enough in actually remembering that information, applying that information.
It's not just about consuming it. It's about using it in your real life. Yeah, absolutely. Oh yeah. Consumption will not make you fluent. It doesn't matter how many TikTok videos you watch; you will not be fluent. Unfortunately, a lot of people will say, "Oh, I practice English with Netflix."
They watch a Netflix movie, that consumption does not really do much. You are getting a little bit of practice, but it's like Frankie said, we have proven time and time again that you gain fluency through multiple sensory activities like reading and listening at the same time.
Netflix can be good, but you have to engage yourself. Be intentional. So rather than just, I'm gonna go use Taylor's idea of a video game, right? If you're playing a video game and you turn everything in English, it doesn't really help except, yeah, I'm reading English.
But it does help if you are narrating and reading at the same time. You're playing your game. Okay, I'm going to walk down this hallway. Let's look in the dark and see what's happening. Oh, what does this scroll say? By doing this, you are engaging more than just that. You're speaking in English, reading in English, listening in English. You're getting the full thing. But if you just go and play the game and the settings are to English, you're not really doing anything except consuming the sounds. And I think that's a very big mistake. You will never be fluent, only practicing receptive skills. You have to actually start producing it as well. And a lot of people neglect the writing and speaking aspect. For example, I've had a free consultation. We've never had class before. I ask them a question in English, and they respond in their native language correctly.
They understood my question, but they're so scared to speak English. And this is just an obvious example that these people are only consuming. A lot of input, but they don't practice a lot of output. And you have to have a balance. Otherwise,
you're just consuming, but you're not actually building all of the communication skills. But I've actually seen a transformation because if they're able to understand a lot, they have a good bit of vocabulary in here, they're just not using it, or maybe they're scared to use it. And I've seen after 15 minutes, they're actually starting to try to speak more and get a little more out of their comfort zone. So you'd be really amazed how quick your transformation can be when you actually challenge yourself to speak and use the language that you've learned.
So this is a big one. We have inside of our minds something called the reticular activating system, RAS for short. The reticular activating system does one thing.
It looks for patterns and it confirms what we believe. This is amazing if you are in a positive environment. This would be someone who is like they live on an island where there's no violence. They will ultimately view the world as a good place.
While if you live in an area where there is more violence, more turmoil, you will view the world as a bad place. What we do in English is, and this is very normal, a lot of people do it, but it is hurting you. You are looking for all your mistakes, every time, every English conversation you have, every time you practice, you are only looking for your mistakes.
And what this does is it trains your brain to only notice your mistakes, but what we forget to do is to point out what we're doing well. And this is why most people start to see an increase in confidence when they get a tutor. The tutor is usually feeding them positive feedback. If we were to start being aware of what we are doing really well. Hey, maybe I'm not so good at grammar, but I am good with my pronunciation.
People understand me very well. We can start to build that, and we can start looking for the positives as well as the negatives, and we feel less discouraged once we have those wins. It's like when Jeremy and I lived in Vietnam, I struggled with putting sentences together. Sentence structure and grammar was always difficult for me, but I was very proud of my pronunciation and vocabulary and my ability to hear the tones.
So I had to focus on those things that I was really good at in order to keep going, because if I just continuously thought, I suck at this. I need to get better. I would just talk myself out of practicing. I would talk myself out of speaking, but if I'm focusing a little bit more on my strengths. I'm a little bit more brave and going, I can practice this 'cause I know this word and I know it will sound good.
And then they'll teach me more. We want to also be very careful with the little ways that we do that, because one thing to say, I suck at English. My English sucks. That's a big way to do it. But the other, more subtle, is when you're talking to someone and you say, I'm sorry about my English.
Sorry, my English is bad. You're doing it. That negative self-talk can really keep you from fluency. I hear people saying things like, English is hard. Yes, I'm not good at English. When you tell yourself these things, you're almost telling yourself like, I'm not good enough. This is impossible for me. So even if you feel that it's hard, don't connect that as a fact. There are ways that you can validate those feelings in yourself. But also shifting your perspective. Like, for example, when you're making a lot of mistakes and you're frozen in a conversation, and your first instinct is to say, Sorry, my English is bad.
Shift from apologetic to grateful. Thank you for your patience. Or, instead of saying, I can't. Say, I'm still working on this.
So it's just shifting the perspective of how you're critiquing yourself. There's a big difference in, I'm trying to stop smoking, and I don't smoke. There's a big difference. When it's, my English, is bad versus I'm still learning English. Those are two very different states of being.
But that perspective can really change how you see the whole learning process altogether. When you sit down to study English, and you already are telling yourself, I'm not good at this. This is hard. You're not going to enjoy it at all. I would like to encourage you guys to try to have a more positive outlook and believe in yourself.
You really can do this and become fluent. It's not like a toxic positivity. Like, there is no bad, everything is good. We don't do that. We know that can be a little bit toxic. It's just shifting the focus. I need to find more positive things.
I'm not going to hide the negative things. I am going to address those negative things. I'm just going to look at it a little bit differently. While I am creating a system for myself, because you are your harshest critic. You probably insult yourself more than anybody else does.
We are our own bully in our mind sometimes. Shifting your perspective and treat yourself like you would treat your best friend. You don't have to ignore your problems. You don't have to hide your struggles. Put love towards your struggles. Like when somebody's sick, you take care of them. If a flower dies, you don't blame the flower.
You blame the conditions that the flower is in. I think it's also not necessarily looking at everything through a positive lens. But accepting that there is no such thing as perfect English. And in fact, even me, I'm a native English speaker.
If I go to Australia and I say, "Hey, you guys want to hang out?" Hang out. No, it's rack up. I have different vocabulary than them. I'm wrong if I go to Australia, so there is no perfect English. It's just acknowledging that and understanding, Hey, I'm gonna make mistakes, and that's okay.
I've heard students say that. I wanna have perfect English. That's a mindset switch, too.
A lot of people will say, I want to sound like you. And my first thought is, oh no, you don't.
I very frequently end my sentences with a preposition. That would be incorrect on the IELTS.
But by saying What are you talking about? That is technically grammatically incorrect because about is a preposition. So there are a lot of sentences like, Where are you off to? So I constantly end sentences with prepositions, and there's nobody going, you can't do that. Except Jeremy, unless he is joking.
Yeah. That is actually more common than the correct form, only used in academic writing. To whom are you talking? No one talks like that. Who are you talking to? Not to whom are you speaking? Drinking my tea. Like I'm not talking to the queen.
Talking about who you're speaking with. Look at that, another preposition at the end. Who you're speaking with, where you're speaking, are you speaking colloquially, using slang? Are you in a formal setting? Your correctness is based on where you are. You'd actually be very shocked at how casual your English is, even in a business world.
The only time you really even hear that formal English is with client to business. This is me talking to my clients. Hello, sir, how are you doing today? Yeah. I just wanted to follow up with you on that contract that we were signing, but when I'm talking with my coworkers, I'm like, dude, did you see the game last night?
Even that with work, if you're speaking to clients, if you are too formal, which is very easy to be too formal with clients, you will seem cold and impersonal.
Guys, really, thank you so much for being here today. I know we talked about some really great learning hacks to help you. Create a great study plan, become more confident, stop chasing perfection, and reach that fluency that you're aiming for. Jeremy and Taylor, you can go ahead and tell us about your business real quick. What do you do?
We help women overcome their struggles that they have. A lot of times, it's due to a plateau. They've been learning for a very long time. And sometimes, you stay at that intermediate level for a very long time, and you feel like you just can't get to that advanced level because something's not working anymore.
So help them overcome those struggles, understanding a lot of cultural nuances, and just become unstoppable. And then we help everyone with our free content online, on YouTube, on Instagram, on all of those apps, @marriedtoenglish
I'll be sure to include all of that in the description so people can get in touch with you guys. Thank you, everyone, for coming today. It was a great discussion. And enjoy the rest of your day. Bye-bye everyone.
🗣️ Key Vocabulary from the Episode
Soft skills
Definition: Non-technical skills related to how you work and interact with others.
Example: "We started with teaching grammar to kids and moved up to teaching soft skills in business."Feedback loop
Definition: A system where you get information about your performance to help you improve.
Example: "We are then having an active feedback loop where we have a third person telling us what our mistakes are."Corrected
Definition: Changed or fixed after a mistake is made.
Example: "You need to eventually be corrected, or else it will stay."Afraid
Definition: Feeling fear or worry.
Example: "We're often trying to be so perfect that we become afraid to speak."Advocates
Definition: People who strongly support or recommend something.
Example: "We are big advocates for make mistakes loudly."Ostracized
Definition: Excluded or ignored by a group or community.
Example: "As humans, we don't want to feel ostracized."Normalized
Definition: Made to seem normal or acceptable.
Example: "Research has shown that if we find a community where mistakes are normalized, we grow faster."Unapologetically
Definition: Without regret or shame.
Example: "Think of who unapologetically makes the most mistakes. It's babies, kids."Mother tongue
Definition: A person's first language.
Example: "It's so easy for kids to learn their mother tongue."Consistent
Definition: Acting the same way over time.
Example: "It's the consistency of the partner that's the biggest complaint."Bare minimum
Definition: The smallest amount needed.
Example: "Set a bare minimum like 'I will speak with one person per day in English.'"Trigger
Definition: Something that causes a habit or action to start.
Example: "You need to add something in your life that triggers your need to practice English."Compound
Definition: To grow or increase gradually over time.
Example: "That tiny 15 minutes every day, it compounds."Receptive skills
Definition: Language skills used to understand, like listening and reading.
Example: "Make sure you are including receptive skills like listening and reading."Productive skills
Definition: Language skills used to produce language, like speaking and writing.
Example: "As well as productive skills like speaking and writing."Interactive
Definition: Involving communication and exchange between people.
Example: "Practice communicating with someone in an interactive and fun environment."Tangible
Definition: Real and able to be touched or clearly understood.
Example: "Connect it to a life experience, something tangible in your life."Intentional
Definition: Done with purpose and focus.
Example: "Maybe you're not being intentional enough in remembering that information."Consumption
Definition: The act of taking in or using something.
Example: "Consumption will not make you fluent."Engage
Definition: To be actively involved or interested.
Example: "You have to engage yourself."Narrating
Definition: Describing what’s happening as it happens.
Example: "You're playing your game... narrating and reading at the same time."Input
Definition: Language that you hear or read.
Example: "A lot of input, but they don't practice output."Output
Definition: Language that you speak or write.
Example: "You're not actually building all of the communication skills."Transformation
Definition: A big change.
Example: "You'd be amazed how quick your transformation can be."Reticular Activating System (RAS)
Definition: A part of the brain that filters what we focus on.
Example: "The reticular activating system looks for patterns and confirms what we believe."Turmoil
Definition: A state of confusion or disorder.
Example: "If you live in an area with more violence, more turmoil..."Discouraged
Definition: Feeling like giving up or losing confidence.
Example: "We feel less discouraged once we have those wins."Tone
Definition: The pitch or quality of the voice.
Example: "I was proud of my ability to hear the tones."Self-talk
Definition: The way you speak to yourself in your mind.
Example: "That negative self-talk can really keep you from fluency."Validate
Definition: To confirm or accept something as true.
Example: "There are ways that you can validate those feelings in yourself."Critiquing
Definition: Giving feedback or evaluation.
Example: "Shifting the perspective of how you're critiquing yourself."Mindset
Definition: The way you think about something.
Example: "That's a mindset switch too.Colloquially
Definition: In informal, everyday spoken language.
Example: "Are you speaking colloquially, using slang?"Slang
Definition: Informal words or expressions.
Example: "Are you speaking colloquially, using slang?"Hack
Definition: A clever trick or method.
Example: "We talked about some really great learning hacks."Plateau
Definition: A time when progress stops or slows down.
Example: "Sometimes, you stay at that intermediate level for a long time."Nuance
Definition: A small difference in meaning or sound.
Example: "Understanding a lot of cultural nuances."Unstoppable
Definition: Impossible to stop or defeat.
Example: "Just become unstoppable."
💬 Practice Question:
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