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Ask HN: I’m already fluent in English. How can I improve further?

87 points by matanrubin ↗ HN
I’ve been reading, writing and speaking English as a second language ever since I was a kid. I can conduct hour-long conversations at work or when on holiday with native speakers without getting tired or feeling strained. I give presentations, tell jokes and would sometimes even speak in English because I find it easier to express my current thought in it. And yet it doesn’t feel like a mother tongue. I still feel some sentences are direct translations of the way I would say something in Hebrew, and that a native speaker would have said it differently. I’m also aware of my grammar not being perfect. Knowing which preposition to use is sometimes challenging.

So, how do I improve my English further? What’s the next step after reaching this level? Obviously online classes wouldn’t do. The only option I could think of is living in an English speaking country, but that currently not an option.

PS this entire post was written without any help from online resources, so you can take that as my current level of English writing. If you spot out anything you might have articulated differently, it’d be great to hear! Thanks!

98 comments

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_fwu1
My biggest struggle is to sound like native due to lack of daily practice with native speakers. There is not enough resources on this one while there are plenty of resources for beginners / intermediate levels. In my native language, I can comfortably phrase one sentence in multiple ways, make it sound casual or less casual, while in English, I think I don't know enough about making myself sound casual.
tirant
I wouldn't prioritize so much sounding as a native speaker unless you fear discrimination that may affect your career or personal life.

Under my point of view I view keeping your accent as part of your identity and something that makes you unique.

roadbeats
I used to appreciate to hear this actually. However, now I'm a father who needs to teach his son speaking, and I feel that I'm not good enough.
mandelbrotwurst
Nothing to worry about there - he'll pick it up from his peers. You'd do better to be sure he learns your first language as well.
Lio
I totally agree with that too.

You’re unlikely to sound like a native but it’s also not really needed. English is a really mixed up language and we (native speakers) are used to diversity.

There’s actually a huge variations between different regions of the UK let alone native speakers from the rest of the world. So feel confident that it’s OK to retain your own accent as long as it’s not so strong it stops people from understanding you.

If for some reason you did manage to adopt a regional English accent then we’d actually find that quite funny. :D

AhtiK
Sounding "native" whether it's General American English or something else, is often a long path for a "foreigner".

The easiest start is to find a good accent reduction and pronunciation coach to have the initial assessment and understand your unique path.

Unfortunately one often finds that even the basic vowels you think you had nailed down might be "wrong" and have to be corrected in order to have an easily understood and enjoyable articulation.

For a long time I couldn't even hear a difference between IPA [i] and [ɪ]. It took a few weeks to properly recognize and replicate them in English.

Couple of my favorite resources: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-MSYk9R94F3TMuKAnQ7dDg https://www.youtube.com/user/rachelsenglish/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv8YBYZ2s_imUC3H84FwVFQ

jotm
> I still feel some sentences are direct translations of the way I would say something in Hebrew, and that a native speaker would have said it differently. I’m also aware of my grammar not being perfect. Knowing which preposition to use is sometimes challenging.

Just learn how to do that properly, and maybe learn why certain things are spoken/written the way they are (the history behind English is quite fascinating). Google exact match is a godsend for this :D

> The only option I could think of is living in an English speaking country, but that currently not an option.

That may actually turn out to be a major disappointment. Native English speakers don't care about how they speak (or even write). Aside from your accent, which may never improve, you will likely be better than half of the country you'll be living in :D

On the accent: You can sound native, but always a bit off to anyone paying attention. Physiological differences due to growing up with another language in the very early years. Perhaps constant everyday training and speaking only English can help.

AlwaysForward
Etymology, learning about the roots and origins of words gives a language so much more depth and meaning.
itchynosedev
I found that living with a native English speaker in the same house does teach you a lot of intricacies of the language - pronunciation and grammar. However, it's a deep territory of diminishing returns. In Europe, everyone's English is kind of bad (a lot of people are fluent, of course, but almost never above the level you want to reach), so there are not many people to appreciate your fluency. I found it to be more enriching to learn a new language instead, that gives massive appreciation of the languages you already know.
saagarjha
Have you tried reading a lot of English text written by fluent native speakers? I find that this is a great way to learn idiomatic usage that you can then emulate. (Disclaimer: I’m a native speaker, but this is how I’ve improved my language skills. Also I’ve started writing more.)
yiyus
Practice. Reading will always help you (with any language), and watching movies and tv will train your ear. If a totally immersive experience is not an option, I do not think there is much more you can do. It is normal that a foreign language does not feel like your mother tongue, you will probably keep improving but there will always be some difference.

If your goal is to improve your writing too, I cannot recommend enough "The elements of style" by Strunk and White.

rgoulter
If you'll tolerate nitpicking (EDIT: I don't consider any of this worth pointing out other than nitpicking):

Rather than "would sometimes" as "will sometimes".

I'd rephrase "current thought" to "thoughts" or "train of thought".

I'd rephrase "I’m also aware of my grammar not being perfect." as "I'm also aware that my grammar is not perfect."

"but that currently [is] not an option" (presumably a typo).

OJFord
These are all the things I would have picked out - except I would just drop 'would', not replace with it 'will'. (The verb then becoming 'do', later in the sentence.)

I'd also add that in changing any of those I could easily be proof-reading a native speaker's writing.

With the exception of:

> if you spot out anything

unless it's an AmE idiom or something, to me that's the only think that marks you out as non-native. I'm aware I've said both 'picked out' and 'marks you out', and I have no idea how to explain why this is different, it just sounds weird.

> if you spot anything

jgwil2
AmE speaker here. I have never heard anyone use "spot out" as a verb, but on the other hand, prepositions seem to pretty frequently attach themselves to new verbs or drop from common phrases. It still bugs me a little to hear colleagues talking about "building out" a new feature instead of simply building it, for example.
jjgreen
I looked at you post carefully (I do some copy editing, so I'm used to looking for errors), I couldn't find any. I'd not believe someone who said they could tell that you weren't a native speaker. The only thing, very slight, I'd probably say that "I'm also aware that my grammar is not perfect" would be a little more idiomatic, but that could be an AmE/BrE thing.
iwangulenko
Study "The Elements of Style" (https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-Strunk-...), a classic on better writing. It will teach you about how to really write for the reader and not for yourself.
jjgreen
Aside, for years PEP8 included the phrase "When writing English, Strunk and White apply", which used to drive me up the wall ...
xapxap
Browse https://www.urbandictionary.com/

look for games like https://research.google.com/semantris

Play online games with teamspeak

saagarjha
Would not recommend casually browsing the former to get better at English. Looking up new terms that you encountered on social media, maybe.
afiori
also urban dictionary contains a lot of obviously joke definitions where you need to already know the word to see it is not the actual meaning.
saagarjha
You don’t need to know the actual meaning, but you do need the context in which it appears. If your coworker puts a new acronym in a code comment it’s likely not a vulgar definition, for example.
afiori
Yes, but then it is something like reading those list of acronyms definitions where LOL somehow means "hail Satan" (urban dictionary often is quite good, but in the context of the question this can be a serious problem). I would recommend it more for refreshing old memories rather than for learning.
bryanrasmussen
What do you read in English? I would suggest that achieving deep fluency in a language requires experience with the greatest and formative literature of that language.
PeterEFox
The English language is changing. Nobody speaks like Charles Dickens, John Buchan or Emily Bronte. Even TV shows from the 1970s are wildly out of date.
bryanrasmussen
This assumes several things, all of which I believe are wrong:

1. it assumes that the references to the writings of Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, William Blake etc. etc. do not litter the linguistic landscape and that people could not improve their understanding of the language by picking up on those references (John Buchan maybe not so much)

2. that there are not levels of usage of the language where these references are required (which I called deep fluency), one can certainly be fluent and argue points, but not know how to adequately poke fun at Alan Simpson's quote of "Who steals my purse, steals trash" without some familiarity of Iago.

3. Finally it assumes that there will never be any conversation or situation in which there will be people familiar with these references, and that they would do anything like sprinkle those references throughout their speech, as a sort of intellectual spice. Widely read people may often do this and, as like seeks like, their acquaintances are probably widely read as well, so it can be helpful to know what these people are talking about.

If you cannot recognize the reference, you cannot respond in kind.

At any rate I thought it a truth universally acknowledged that some phrasings don't go out of style, and must be in want of insertion into any discussion they could possibly fit.

misja111
I think I'm at a similar level as you, I can speak and write fluently but I suspect that I'm not always using the right words in the right context.

In my experience, the only way to really get a feel for that is to have conversations with native speakers. I had some native (Canadian, British) speaking colleagues in the past, at a time when I falsely believed that my English was near perfect, and it was amazing how much I noticed that I still had to learn.

achow
I'm also a 'non native' speaker of English and it has been my second language from childhood.

For me the question is - for a global or a widespread language like that of English, is there any characteristic which can be defined as 'native'. English speaker from Scotland would sound very 'non-native' in Australia and vice versa.

I would imagine for a languages like Mandarin or Russian which is spoken in a particular geographical region with homogeneous population can have that characteristic - "Spoken like a true native". But for languages like English not so, same could be true for languages like Spanish and Hindi (3rd most widely spoken - contained in a geographical region but spoken among very diverse and non-homogenous population).

shrikant
> The only option I could think of is living in an English speaking country, but that currently not an option.

Speaking from personal experience, I think all this will do is change your speech patterns and modulate your accent ever so slightly.

You likely read/write English better than a native English speaker already. Some of the language/grammar I've encountered from my English colleagues in both formal and informal written communication is absolutely terrible, and I attribute that to them "learning" English by way of speaking and "incorrect" colloquial usage before perfunctorily running through their English lessons at school.

eythian
> You likely read/write English better than a native English speaker already.

Kinda by definition this can't be correct. English is defined by what the native speakers speak. It might be that sometimes how they say things doesn't match up to how you were taught was correct, but it is likely to be correct for their dialect.

shrikant
Just because a native speaker might have written OP's bit above as "[...] that a native speaker would of said it differently." doesn't make it correct for "their" dialect.
JPLeRouzic
>> English is defined by what the native speakers speak.

What about regional accents? For a non native speaker of English, understanding English as spoken in Scotland is a challenge. And I heard people born in UK complaining they had sometimes difficulties with American English (for example with real life/social things). This without speaking of people from India who speak an English which is slightly different from US' or UK's English (and equally valuable and "native").

So I guess a definition of "native speaker" is a bit difficult.

Maultasche
After I learned German for a few years, I lived in a region of Germany where many people spoke in a dialect. At the time I thought I had a pretty good handle on what was dialect and what wasn't. A good amount of dialect made it into my speech anyway, since that's how the locals spoke.

Later I discovered to my surprise that a few of the words I had placed in the "standard German" category were actually from the regional dialect.

I actually think it was more helpful to my language abilities to have learned two different German dialects (one of which was standard German). It also helped me to understand how languages change and what it must have been like several centuries ago when there wasn't a standardized German and people had to struggle to understand someone from far away area that in theory spoke the same language.

eythian
I imagine there is some blurring between what's an accent and what's a dialect, especially with your Scotland example. And to break it down further, as a native English speaker I can understand people in Edinburgh just fine, but Glaswegians are a mystery to me.

Your own native language probably has similar things - I know with Dutch, someone from one region can struggle to understand people from another region if they're speaking in their own dialect.

wl
Written English—especially the formal register—is a different language than the spoken English of a native speaker.
dmarchand90
For speaking and listening watch and re-watch seasons 3-10 of the Simpsons, very wonderful, dense humor. Try to make sure you get all the little off-hand comments and subtle jokes
DeathArrow
Try to make more mistakes. Many native speaking people aren't speaking properly.
timmb
There is a lot of variation among native English speakers. The only thing that sounds non native in what you wrote was “if you spot out anything”. I would always expect “if you spot anything”. But the fact that other posters picked up on different things suggests this could be regional variation (I’m in the UK). I know people who have lived and worked here for a decade and still feel they perform worse in a job interview in English rather than their native language due to the extra cognitive load. On the other hand, my partner has lived here about 10 years since she was a student and finds many things (e.g. work stuff) she can express more easily in English while other things (how she’s feeling) in her native tongue.

I speculate that you get better when you are pushing past your limit, whereas comfortable practice stops you from regressing. For example, being in a situation where you are too tired to speak English but you have no choice. Also, you could try more challenging forms of text such as poetry or older English literature. While I doubt you have need to speak like Shakespeare, forming a bit of fluency with 16th century English may prime your mind to be more aware of the subtle differences you hear in modern English. Anyway, just speculation so take with a pinch of salt!

Baeocystin
Joseph Conrad is considered one the greats of English literature, yet his sentence structure and flow is strongly influenced by his native Polish.

Would have he been a better writer if he had worked to eliminate this obvious influence on form? I highly doubt it.

At a certain point, you have achieved native fluency. From there, what you do with grammar and flow is up to you- the rules are not cast in stone. Borrow what you think is best from any and all languages at your disposal, and knead it in to English. If it works, we all benefit.

bantunes
Really great reply, thanks for this!
keiferski
French too. He spent a bit of time working for French ships prior to moving to British ones. English was actually his third language, amazingly enough, which just further solidifies your point.

On 13 October 1874 Bobrowski sent the sixteen-year-old to Marseilles, France, for a planned career at sea.[15]:44–46 Though Conrad had not completed secondary school, his accomplishments included fluency in French (with a correct accent), some knowledge of Latin, German and Greek...

ganonm
I am going to suggest you watch a few episodes of 'Only Fools and Horses'. It's an 80s sitcom set in Peckham, South London. The show is practically considered a national treasure in the UK and most people who grew up in the UK are very familiar with it.

The reason I suggest it is that it showcases a very particular dialect of British English that many people struggle with (even native English speakers) if they aren't familiar with it. The show was so popular in fact that many modern colloquial British English phrases/words can trace their appearance to this show, not because the show invented them, but because the show exposed so many people to this dialect.

Some examples of words/phrases popularised by OFAH: dipstick, wally, cushty, lovely jubbly.

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/onlyfools/lingo/ for more.

If you want to master modern British English, check it out. It's also hilariously funny.

Lio
Although not as good as Only Fools, I’d also throw in ‘Ello ‘Ello.

The show, set in occupied WW2 France, represents different languages by using English in different accents.

A character to particularly look out for is the British secret agent disguised as a French gendarmes. He is able to “blend in” because he “spokes prefect Fronch”.

It’s a great illustration of how much you can mangle English and still be understood ...and is also quite funny.

stevekemp
I was going to suggest something similar; listening/watching English TV which doesn't have the received-pronounciation.

Other good choices would be "Yes Minister" (original series), "Fawlty Towers", and for extra-credit you should absolutely try to watch "Rab C. Nesbitt" (which is set in Glasgow.

I'd suggest that Only Fools & Horses (after the second/third series) is pretty understandable to all British people, but a lot more would struggle with the Scottish accents.

Here's a brief sample, and another Scottish themed comedy sketch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k7VoFiagfs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8

ecaradec
I’m in the same ballpark as you are, and you actually seem a bit better than I am. Some teachers specialize in accent training, it might be a good idea to find one that could help you progress in that direction.
laingc
Firstly, your English is indeed very good - for a second language, that's awesome. Well done!

Secondly, I'm in a similar position to you with German. I have two advantages over you:

1. I lived and worked in Germany for several years; 2. I am married to a German.

That said, there are a few things that I try to do to improve. Not sure if they're relevant to you, but take what you can from them.

1. I ask lots of technical questions. I enjoy languages and try to get to the root of both my own language and others, and to find the connections between them. I talk about German grammar and idiom to my wife to the point of tedium.

2. I listen to lots of podcasts by people from different regions with different dialects.

3. I try to read some older German texts, to get a feel for how the language has evolved over the last few hundred years.

Honestly though, you're getting to a level of proficiency that is quite rarefied for a non-native speaker, so returns will naturally diminish.

One final thought:

> spot out

is not good English idiom. "Spot" would suffice. :-)

Good on you for making such an effort, mate. Best of luck.

PappaPatat
I was born in one, lived long in a second and now am home in a third country.

In all three languages I feel confident, can tell jokes, understand and have tested level C2 (https://www.efset.org/cefr/).

Still, every once in a while, I "have this feeling" my proficiency is subpar. Still I learn new expressions and grammar twists that I was now aware about before.

What helps me getting more certain and better in the word craft of the local language is asking locals to correct me and ask them to explain words and constructs that seem strange or unknown to me.