How I became a near-native speaker of English — what I did to get there (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this series, I covered how I went from a teen to a university student who, at the end of his 3-year English Bachelor at the University of Groningen, failed his BA thesis. I called it my pinnacle of failure. What happened then?

Honestly, I was done. I looked at the feedback my supervisor had given me, and it was all language feedback. I knew I hadn’t written the strongest discussion section (which is why it got rejected the first time around), but I felt I had improved it sufficiently to at least pass the second time, and had I failed the second round based on the discussion, I would have accepted it and I would have done new research next year. But now: I failed because of my language.

I felt like I had to climb Mount Everest barefoot with a donkey on my back: I was never going to get there. We were in July, the university was closed, people were on holiday, and I couldn’t contact my supervisor — which made sense. I had to put my mind to it and solve the problems she pointed out.

In the end, I passed my BA thesis with only the pass mark, which was nothing to be proud of. This experience, however, opened my eyes: even though I had completed a BA programme in English, I had lived in the UK for six months, and I did a lot in English, I wasn’t there yet.

In the subsequent two master’s programmes I followed at the same university, I accepted that I had to improve my English to reach an academic level. I had already been teaching for a year when I started my first MA programme (Applied Linguistics/TEFL), but that was at lower level secondary school, and the students I taught were at A2 or B1 level.

What did I do?

I want to repeat something crucial: I accepted the fact that I had to improve my English. In part 1, I explained that I’d always felt that I was the best in class. I knew all the words, I passed all the grammar tests, and I had nothing to lose. I had to let go of that mindset (a fixed mindset).

I want to repeat something crucial: I accepted the fact that I had to improve my English.

I increased the level of my exposure to English. The modules I followed taught me that exposure is key to language learning, and I drastically increased my exposure level. I started reading all the research papers my professors put on the required reading list, underlined all the words I didn’t know and wrote them down in my vocabulary organiser.

I started doing the same while watching documentaries, to the disgust of the people with whom I was watching. I made sure the English subtitles were on and scribbled down everything I didn’t know. I was learning.

Weren’t you an English teacher?

I was still teaching during my MA programmes, and I had to keep up my teaching skills too. I learnt a lot about teaching in the L2 (in English in my case), and I moved from Dutch-based teaching to English-based teaching. I taught all my classes in English, was critical of my fluency, and practised teaching at home before I had to teach my classes. With success: I could teach in English for eight hours straight. I was exhausted at the end of the day, but I had achieved my goals.

I also accepted my flaws while correcting student work. If I wasn’t sure a particular construction was correct, I took out the good ol’ grammar book and dictionaries and looked things up.

My vocabulary was still very narrow, and the fact that I specialised in linguistics in my master’s programmes didn’t help. I knew all the linguistics jargon, but that wasn’t of any help when talking to people or writing articles.

In comes the Audiobook

Reading was never my favourite thing to do, as I struggled with down and reading a book for hours on end. I know the research behind reading, and I try to get my students to read too, but I’m a realist and know that it’s an immense struggle for some. One day, while I was commuting home from work, I realised that instead of listening to music, I could listen to books.

I got an Audible subscription and started listening to all books I was supposed to read at secondary school, but I hadn’t read. I got on Goodreads to find interesting books to listen to and created a list of books I wanted to read that year. Great stuff! Instead of considering the hour commute from home to work a waste of time, I thought it a time to catch up on some reading. With two hours a day, four days a week, I could finish one book each week (or maybe one book every two weeks, depending on how long it was).

English teacher?

As I started a new job teaching upper-level secondary school students who were working towards C1 and C2 levels, I enjoyed the challenge of teaching classes in English and adjusting my language to the learners. I gave them appropriate texts to read and indicated that even I don’t know all the words and that there was no need to feel ashamed when you don’t know a word.

The same went for pronunciation: I sometimes mispronounced a word. I went to an online dictionary, looked up the IPA, listened to the pronunciation, and practised it with my class. Again: nothing to be ashamed of. I even had a student question my pronunciation of a word at some point, and I told him I’d get back to him the next day. I looked it up and praised him for knowing how to pronounce this difficult word the next day.

Now what?

I hope my experience functions as an example to other learners of English. Even though I operate at a very high level, I still have things to learn. I still listen to my audiobooks, look up all the words I don’t know, practice pronunciation in the process, and listen carefully to my own pronunciation while editing my YouTube videos. I took a subscription to TIME Magazine, and I read their articles to improve my language (vocabulary, reading skills, and writing skills — the authors have an enjoyable writing style).

Language acquisition never stops. You’re never done acquiring a language. I hope this experience has shown you that even an English teacher doesn’t know everything. Heck: even a native speaker doesn’t know everything. I’m a Dutch native speaker, and I’m absolutely sure there is so much in Dutch I don’t know and have never encountered. It all comes down to exposure. What are you exposed to? What do you do when you’re exposed to it?

Some final things I do.

Here’s a bullet point list of things I do to keep enhancing my English:

• I read TIME Magazine articles;
• I write down and look up all the words I don’t know or can’t use in a sentence;
• I use Grammarly to check my writings critically;
• I make Instagram posts with synonyms;
• I make glossaries for texts my students have to read and include words I don’t know myself;
• I watch documentaries on Netflix and Amazon Prime that are outside my comfort zone (but within my Zone of Proximal Development — more on that in another article)
• I listen to Audiobooks and focus on adjectives that enhance the story — both Young Adult Literature and “real” literature (whatever that is).
• I question why people use the words they use in tweets, Instagram posts, stories, books, etc.
• I’ve adapted a realistic growth mindset for my language journey: I’ll probably never be done.