Why Your Over-Reliance on Videos Won’t Make You Fluent

And what you should change in your regimen

Photo by Dhilip Antony on Unsplash

I’ve been studying languages for 15 years and have written about how I became fluent in English in a year thanks to hundreds of hours of videos.

I mentioned in my article this technique worked great because I had some basics. People ignore this part too often.

Relying on passive exposure to thousands of hours of content is the norm nowadays. Countless people have talked about their “success” with this method. They praise it as the holy grail of methods.

And they’re also forgetting to mention the rest of what they did. Or at least not insisting on it.

Hundreds or thousands of hours of content won’t get you fluent in any language… unless you combine this method with other tools.

Here are the true non-negotiable to combine with passive exposure based on my experience studying over 20 languages and research.

Get your basics straight

This is the most crucial part. Before you even get down to binge-watching series and movies, you need to get an alright handle on the language.

What I’m talking about is simple: grammar.