Learn English the Same Way I Learned Spanish Portuguese

Learn English the Same Way I Learned Spanish & Portuguese

 Learning a new language can feel difficult, slow, and sometimes even frustrating. Many learners spend years studying grammar and vocabulary but still struggle to speak naturally.
So what if you could learn English the same way someone successfully learned Spanish and Portuguese?
In this episode of Mind Life In English, host Profe Lao shares the mindset and strategies behind learning languages in a natural, practical, and effective way. Instead of focusing only on textbooks and memorization, this approach emphasizes real communication, listening, and consistent exposure.
🎙️ In this episode, you will discover:
• How learning Spanish and Portuguese helped shape a powerful language-learning method
• Why traditional study methods often fail language learners
• The importance of listening and immersion when learning English
• How to think in English instead of translating from your native language
• Simple habits that can dramatically improve your English fluency
This episode is perfect for English learners who want to speak more confidently and naturally, without feeling trapped by complicated rules or endless memorization.
Language learning is not about perfection — it’s about practice, exposure, and confidence. When you follow the right approach, progress becomes faster and much more enjoyable.
🎧 Join Profe Lao in this inspiring episode of Mind Life In English and discover how you can start learning English more naturally and effectively.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everyone. You're about to watch two videos that I filmed a few years ago. The first one is in English and the second one is in Spanish. If you don't understand Spanish, you can just watch the first one. It's basically the same information. In these videos, I'm talking about my advice for learning a language based on how I learned Spanish and Portuguese. Unfortunately, the audio quality of these videos is not very good, but the information is great, the advice is great, and I think they are worth watching. So, enough said, enjoy the videos. Usually what I do when I start a new language, immediately I go to Duolingo. I just make a routine of doing Duolingo like every day, like a little bit every day, some lessons every day. But there's so many, there's so many like applications, websites, there's so many resources for learning, for starting a language. Then when I start to feel like, okay, I I know some some stuff. I go to YouTube. YouTube for me is a huge resource. YouTube is amazing because you can follow so many channels of native speakers. You know, you basically you can follow the same YouTube channels that native speakers follow. You can watch videos about any topic, and you can watch videos of normal people talking to the camera just like this. It's a very realistic way of talking. There's so many different topics. See, if you like cooking, you could watch videos about cooking is the language you want to learn. I was open to watching anything. So I watch videos about girls doing their makeup in Spanish and like I don't even like makeup, but it was a way to learn, you know, because people they talk during the videos and I like to follow the same people and watch like all of their videos because everyone has a different way of talking. So I like to get used to the way that one person talks, like figure out all the different phrases that they use regularly. Because really every person repeats the same phrases and words over and over again. You know, most people don't use a huge vocabulary in their everyday life. If you do that every day, if you watch each videos of these people that you follow, you start to hear their voice in your head. You start to use phrases that they use, you start to understand people when they talk. This just happens naturally. You can watch TV shows and movies, and that's a great resource, but it can be a little bit weird because in those things they use a script, so it's not like realistic. It could be a little bit more challenging. Yeah, I just consumed a lot of content in Spanish every day. And I know people are busy, so from like my students, I usually recommend just 30 minutes a day. The most important thing is the consistency. They you do the same thing like every day if you can, even if it's just a little bit. But I was fortunate to have a lot of free time at this time of my life when I was learning Spanish every day. And I would spend, you know, a couple hours every day just watching stuff in Spanish. It really doesn't work just to move to another country. You have to focus on studying the language. You have to consume content in that language, and you have to practice. You have to be very motivated to practice by yourself, even if you don't have someone to talk to. I spend a lot of time consuming content, watching stuff, and also talking to myself. This is another big tip that I always recommend, which a lot of people don't understand this. They maybe have never heard this before. It might sound crazy to them, but for me it it's something very natural. I think talking to yourself, or you don't have to think of it like talking to yourself, but just talking out loud when you're alone is really important for improving your language skills. A lot of people tell me that they understand a lot of English, but they can't speak, they're afraid to speak. It's because they don't practice when they're alone. So when the time comes to talk to someone else, they get tongue-tied, we say. So you have to practice talking to yourself. You know, you have to talk about what you did today. You have to talk about what you think, what are your opinions, what are your feelings. You just have to talk. You have to make conversation with yourself, basically. You have to ask yourself questions. You have to rant, we say. You have to try to put your thoughts in your head into that new language. It's all about your your level of motivation because you have all the resources available to you. You have to understand that each language requires you to make sounds that you've never made before. You have to learn how to use your mouth and tongue in a new way. So it's not just remembering stuff, it's also like practicing a lot here. So you have to speak a lot. It's not too complicated. The the biggest things are consistency, motivation, focusing on pronunciation. That's the most important part for people to understand you speaking clearly. That's really the the key. Consume a lot of content, talk a lot, speak a lot. I know people that expect to have a high level of English and they never talk to themselves in their house alone. Like they never talk ever until they have someone to talk to. And that's crazy to me. That's like you are limiting yourself because you are like, that's weird. I don't feel comfortable, you know. You have to get out of this fear, basically. You have to overcome it. Like you just have to do it. You have to lose your fear of of looking stupid or feeling stupid or feeling like you are making a mistake. I love people correcting me, I love that so much. You have to change your perspective. If you don't love it, you need to love it. You need to make yourself love being corrected. I'm very autodidactic naturally. Some people are not that way naturally, but I think that is a skill you can learn, you can develop, and I think that you should develop that in your life. Not just for learning languages, but for so many things. It's the future, really, because we have the internet now and like you have all the resources. You just need to use it without someone telling you, like, do this, do that. You have to do it yourself. You have to tell yourself to do it. Yes, you have to take more responsibility instead of just going to school. But it's cheaper and it's faster and you can go at your own pace. You can do it at home in your pajamas on the computer. So it's great. If you have any questions, comments. I love to hear about people's stories of how they learn languages or their experience or what they did to learn to improve their advice. So write all that stuff down in the comments.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

No me gustan, ¿sabes por qué? You can say you appreciate Spanyol de la misma manera that one apprentice quality in the life. Primer te informate of the things and then practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. Literally, the only way to approach something. No, but I think that we're gonna do things specifically, like you know, and we'll explain all of this more in the video. But what does you when you want to appreciate? Nothing. Okay, for me, you go directly to the internet. I think that we have the more that we have the internet, and the people use it. It's for entertainment, her mom. It's for appending, for camping your life, your form of. You don't want to imagine the things you have on the internet. Aprend nothing in the school, but append the internet. Punch in the internet and repeat, repeat. So how appending a idioma? But the other point is why I appreciate Spanish, because it's the idea that you need to sit down a little bit. And most people say that you need to sit on a place to append an idioma. The kind of people who have contacted for taking classes, who have been years in States, Canada, Europe, don't have idea. It's not the man. So don't happen if it works, it's difficult. Regressing the house and the patience. Don't go to a place to append an idioma. We need to have other reasons. Make sure the idioma would be a little peculiar into various motives, but not the motive, because it function as it is. You appreciate Portuguese Brazil, never fell to Brazil. I was a bonus in Portuguese. I was talking. When you talk about Brazil, I found Brazil. I don't practice. One day it's horrible because I'm talking about Spanish. But I was talking about Brazil in the internet. I watched many videos Brazil and I practiced a month, I learned a lot. No pay for classes of grammatical that enseign in conversation real. Don't worry about your dinner. Don't go to a place also for this. Now I will say the things more specific that I think I recommend for appending an idioma. Well, first of all, the pronunciation is the important. If we enter the words, but the order or the conjugation or something is a little rare, or it's good. So if you say in instead of on, it's not much difference. If not what is the presentation is all. I recommend trying to imitate the natives lo más parecido que puedas. Piénsalo como un reto, como un chiste, tienes que imitation exactamente para burlar de ellos, o sea, tienes que imitation your form of producer sonidos nuevos with your book, with your language, that has seen in your life, because no existing. So that appends in the principle tends to approach, because if you pronounces one and approach and append the pronunciation more in this way. Where you want in the internet, why the audio of hablants natives, like the accent, the dialect, the idioma that you can approach, personals who have in a form that you can escule to them all the days, regularly. 30 minutes a year. If you don't escuch in a passive, like I did a telly next year, no. Ah, it signifies ah, well, in Spanish, but the form that expresen this. No, habla contigo mismo. Tú pensando que eso is raro, te limita. Tienes que entender que the person who are vendiendo algo, un curso, como aprende inglés in three minutes, usted están vendiendo algo. It's my negotiation. Tienes que entender eso, que it's a negotiating trying to vendor. But no vas a later at this fluid in three months. But yeah, yeah. No. Chao ciao, ciao ciao.