How much practice does it REALLY take to speak English fluently?

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1. 0:01When women tell me that they want to improve their English, they often describe this heavy feeling.
2. 0:09They picture themselves sitting at a desk late at night staring at a vocabulary or a grammar workbook trying to force themselves to study when all they really wanna do is sleep.
3. 0:24But what if there was a faster and more effective way to build your fluency?
4. 0:30One that didn't feel like hard work, but something that you could enjoy and something that could easily become part of your daily routine in just 15 minutes.
5. 0:51Hey ladies! Welcome back to everyone joining me from all around the world today.
6. 0:57My name is Emma.
7. 0:59I'm the founder of Hey Lady!, an online community that connects women through English.
8. 1:07We bring together women who have learned English as a second language to practise speaking in real conversations so that we can build the confidence to use English in the moments that truly matter.
9. 1:23When we're at work, while we're traveling, and in all of those important moments in everyday life.
10. 1:31If you've been learning English for a long time, but you're still struggling to speak confidently, you are in the right place.
11. 1:40You can join me and thousands of others around the world right here every week as we break down the barriers that keep you from speaking confidently.
12. 1:52All right, let's get into the episode.
13. 2:03Today's episode was inspired by Amira who sent in her question from Egypt.
14. 2:11Emma, I have two children and two jobs.
15. 2:14My life is really busy.
16. 2:16My level is B2.
17. 2:18Uh, so Upper Intermediate, but I still find it impossible to, to speak confidently.
18. 2:26I freeze.
19. 2:27I've taken many online English courses and I know I need to practise, but..
20. 2:33The thought of adding more things to my life right now also feels impossible.
21. 2:39How do other women like me manage their time and get results?
22. 2:44Amira, thank you so much for this great question.
23. 2:47Firstly, I really want to acknowledge the huge effort that you've made already to come so far with your English.
24. 2:56And secondly, thank you for sharing your challenge so openly with us so that we have the opportunity to support you on your journey instead of feeling really alone and lost.
25. 3:09This feeling of being busy is something that I hear from our members in our community all of the time, and also from people outside our community.
26. 3:21When you look at your schedule for the week, I imagine that there is not a lot of free space is there?
27. 3:30Between your jobs and your family and just trying to keep everything running smoothly.
28. 3:37The idea of adding another thing to your plate probably feels really exhausting.
29. 3:45When women tell me that they want to improve their English.
30. 3:49They often describe this really heavy feeling.
31. 3:53They imagine having to find hours of extra time, time that they simply don't have, and they picture themselves sitting at their desk late at night after they've put their kids to bed after they've finished work and they're staring at a grammar book or a vocabulary book trying to force themselves to study when all they really wanna do is sleep.
32. 4:17English just feels like a huge mountain that you don't have the energy to climb right now.
33. 4:25So what do you do?
34. 4:28You wait.
35. 4:30You tell yourself, I'll start when things calm down a bit at work.
36. 4:35I'll start when I've got more time.
37. 4:38I'll start when I've got more energy to spare.
38. 4:42But I wanna share something with you that might help to take some of the weight off your shoulders.
39. 4:49The effort required to build confidence in your spoken English is far smaller than you currently believe.
40. 4:59And once you see the numbers, you might start asking yourself a very different question instead.
41. 5:07How can I afford not to do this?
42. 5:17Before I get to that, I want you to ask yourself, why does it feel like you need so much time?
43. 5:25Well, that belief, that fluency requires hours and hours of daily study.
44. 5:33It comes from the way that you learned English.
45. 5:37At the beginning, there's no other way to make progress than sitting at a desk, memorising the rules, learning words, taking tests.
46. 5:46Those methods are necessary at the beginning, even though they're incredibly time consuming.
47. 5:54And they're also really draining, which is why so many people give up.
48. 6:01But you didn't give up, and now things are different.
49. 6:06You aren't a beginner anymore.
50. 6:09You already know plenty of grammar.
51. 6:12You already have a lot of the vocabulary in your head.
52. 6:17Not all of it, but a lot of it.
53. 6:20Enough of it.
54. 6:21The problem isn't that you need more English.
55. 6:26The problem is that you haven't had enough chances to use English.
56. 6:31The English that you already have.
57. 6:35Think about learning to cook.
58. 6:38You can spend hours reading recipe books.
59. 6:42You can memorize every ingredient and every step.
60. 6:47But you won't actually know how to cook or to get better at cooking until you get into the kitchen and you start chopping vegetables and accidentally burning things and experimenting until you get it right.
61. 7:03Practising English is no different.
62. 7:07You can study all of the grammar that you want.
63. 7:11Having real conversations with real people is how you actually do it.
64. 7:19And of course you will make mistakes because you are learning.
65. 7:23You are getting the hang of it.
66. 7:26But the more you do it, the more experience you gain, the easier it gets.
67. 7:34And the best part.
68. 7:36It takes much less time than you think.
69. 7:46If you are watching or listening to me right now, I know you are smart.
70. 7:52You don't just want me to encourage you, you want evidence.
71. 7:57So let's learn from the research that's already been done about this subject.
72. 8:02In 2024, the Cambridge University Press published a study that looked at how people develop fluency in a second language.
73. 8:14The researchers compared different ways of practising, short, frequent sessions versus longer and more intensive ones.
74. 8:24And what they found was really clear.
75. 8:28Short, consistent practice sessions were just as effective as long intensive ones for building fluency.
76. 8:36So spacing out your practice doing a little bit often helps your brain to build those connections, the connections it needs for a smooth, confident speech.
77. 8:49And you don't need to dedicate hours of your Sunday.
78. 8:53You just need to show up regularly and consistently.
79. 8:57Now this is great news for busy women because it means that you don't need to find a whole hour in your day.
80. 9:07It means you just need to find 15 minutes, and that's not a lot of time, is it?
81. 9:14So research into language proficiency tells us that moving from an intermediate level, B one to an upper intermediate level, B two takes roughly about 150 to 200 hours of practice.
82. 9:32If you try to do that by studying for three hours every Sunday your one day of the week off.
83. 9:40You will probably end up getting frustrated or skip a few sessions without getting any of the real speaking practice that you need to build your fluency and your confidence consistently.
84. 9:54But if you practise speaking for just 15 minutes, three or four times a week, well something different happens.
85. 10:02You are making steady progress every single week.
86. 10:07You're building a routine that actually fits into your life.
87. 10:12I see this happen every single day inside the Hey Lady! community.
88. 10:17Women joining us, feeling overwhelmed and really short on time.
89. 10:22They're worried that they won't be able to keep up or that they're not good enough, and we tell them, just start small.
90. 10:33So they begin with just 15 minutes of conversation, three or four times a week.
91. 10:40That's less time than it takes to drink a cup of coffee.
92. 10:44In fact, we encourage our members to build a habit by attaching their practice to something that is already part of their daily routine.
93. 10:53Imagine having your morning coffee and an English conversation every day.
94. 11:01It's not something that you have to reorganise your entire daily schedule around.
95. 11:07It's just 15 minutes.
96. 11:09And in those 15 minutes, they're not just studying, they're talking, they're laughing, they're connecting with other women from all around the world in conversations that are interesting.
97. 11:23It's really exciting to jump online and join a conversation with other women who are literally logging in from different countries at different times of day to speak with you.
98. 11:36And the results are incredible.
99. 11:40Because these women are consistent, their confidence grows quickly.
100. 11:47They stop freezing when they need to speak, and they stop translating every sentence in their head because they keep using them again and again regularly and consistently.
101. 11:59So words start coming out more naturally.
102. 12:03They start to feel like themselves again.
103. 12:06And here's the most beautiful part of this whole process.
104. 12:11As our members build their confidence, the practice stops feeling like a chore and it starts feeling like something they really look forward to.
105. 12:23Our high performing members, they often end up speaking for an hour or more in conversations four or five times a week.
106. 12:33But they don't do it because they have to.
107. 12:38They do it because they want to.
108. 12:41They show up because they're excited to see their friends, and because English is the common language, English practice happens naturally, not by force.
109. 13:00When we feel really busy, it's so easy to say.
110. 13:04Oh, I just don't have time for this right now, but I want you to think about the cost of waiting.
111. 13:14Of delaying.
112. 13:16The real cost isn't in the 15 minutes of time spent.
113. 13:21The real cost is staying exactly where you are.
114. 13:25Things not changing.
115. 13:27That cost is remaining frustrated because you stay quiet.
116. 13:33You are afraid of saying something wrong.
117. 13:36It's that feeling of being silent and invisible in a room full of English speaking people.
118. 13:42It's the pain of knowing that you are capable and you are intelligent, but feeling like a smaller version of yourself when you speak English.
119. 13:53Every week that you wait is another week of feeling that way.
120. 13:59Another week of hesitating and hanging back.
121. 14:04When you commit to just 15 minutes of real conversation practice a few times a week, everything begins to change.
122. 14:15And the first thing that changes isn't your vocabulary.
123. 14:19It's how you feel about yourself.
124. 14:23How you realise that English opens up a window to a world that you just didn't have before.
125. 14:31You don't need more time.
126. 14:34You don't need more energy.
127. 14:38You just need a simple starting point.
128. 14:42And I know that taking that first step can feel really daunting, especially when you've already got so much going on around you.
129. 14:52But you don't have to figure this out on your own.
130. 14:55You don't have to commit to hours of study either.
131. 14:59I wanna invite you to try a different way.
132. 15:03This all happens inside Hey Lady! our online platform that's home to our community.
133. 15:11Inside we've made it super easy for everyone who joins to meet and practise for just 15 minutes every day.
134. 15:19No matter where you live in the world.
135. 15:22It's so easy.
136. 15:24Here's what you need to do.
137. 15:26First up, sign up for a free seven day trial.
138. 15:31I've put the link to do this in the show notes.
139. 15:35This gives you full access to the Hey Lady! platform for seven days and nights at no charge.
140. 15:45when we see that you've joined, you'll be invited to come along to one of our weekly welcome meetings, designed especially for our new members.
141. 15:54You'll meet someone from our team who is gonna help you to get started and show you just how easy it is to find and join 15 minute practice sessions in your time zone Then, join those 15 minute sessions at least three times this week, and I promise you, you will feel different about your English practice.
142. 16:20And that's all it takes.
143. 16:22Just 15 minutes, three to four times and see how you feel.
144. 16:26You already have all of the English that you need.
145. 16:30So this is the perfect way for you to experience a better way to build your confidence using it.
146. 16:39Thank you so much for joining me here today.
147. 16:42And remember, you don't need to be perfect.
148. 16:47You just need to start.
149. 16:51I'll see you next time.