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

Many women believe they need hours and hours of study to feel confident speaking English… but what if just 15 minutes of conversation practice could start changing everything?

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In this episode of the Hey Lady! Confident English Podcast, Emma answers a question from Amira in Egypt, who feels stuck between a busy life, years of studying English, and the pressure to somehow “find more time” to practise.

You’ll discover why confidence in English doesn’t come from studying harder, it comes from using the English you already have in real conversations.

🎧 In this episode:
00:00 Why English practice feels overwhelming
02:03 A listener question from Egypt
03:09 Why confidence feels like it takes forever
07:41 What fluency research actually says
12:55 The hidden cost of waiting
14:41 A simpler way to practise English

If you already understand English but still freeze, hesitate or overthink when it’s time to speak, this episode is for you.

💬 About Emma

Emma is the founder of Hey Lady! and creator of the YouTube channel mmmEnglish, trusted by more than 6 million English learners worldwide.

Hey Lady! is a global English-speaking community for women who want to build confidence through real conversations, connection and consistent practice. We welcome all women 18+ years old with Intermediate (B1) to Advanced (C2) English.

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#EnglishConfidence #SpeakEnglish #LearnEnglish

🙋‍♀️ Have a question or challenge you'd like Emma to talk about in a future episode?
You can send a voice message or share your experience below.

Transcript

0:01

When women tell me that they want to improve their English, they often describe this heavy feeling. They 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. But what if there was a faster and more effective way to build your fluency? One 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. Hey ladies! Welcome back to everyone joining me from all around the world today. My name is Emma. I'm the founder of Hey Lady!, an online community that connects women through English. We 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. When we're at work, while we're traveling, and in all of those important moments in everyday life. If you've been learning English for a long time, but you're still struggling to speak confidently, you are in the right place. You 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. All right, let's get into the episode. Today's episode was inspired by Amira who sent in her question from Egypt. Emma, I have two children and two jobs. My life is really busy. My level is B2. Uh, so Upper Intermediate, but I still find it impossible to, to speak confidently. I freeze. I've taken many online English courses and I know I need to practise, but.. The thought of adding more things to my life right now also feels impossible. How do other women like me manage their time and get results? Amira, thank you so much for this great question. Firstly, I really want to acknowledge the huge effort that you've made already to come so far with your English. And 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. This 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. When you look at your schedule for the week, I imagine that there is not a lot of free space is there? Between your jobs and your family and just trying to keep everything running smoothly. The idea of adding another thing to your plate probably feels really exhausting. When women tell me that they want to improve their English. They often describe this really heavy feeling. They 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. English just feels like a huge mountain that you don't have the energy to climb right now. So what do you do? You wait. You tell yourself, I'll start when things calm down a bit at work. I'll start when I've got more time. I'll start when I've got more energy to spare. But I wanna share something with you that might help to take some of the weight off your shoulders. The effort required to build confidence in your spoken English is far smaller than you currently believe. And once you see the numbers, you might start asking yourself a very different question instead. How can I afford not to do this? Before I get to that, I want you to ask yourself, why does it feel like you need so much time? Well, that belief, that fluency requires hours and hours of daily study. It comes from the way that you learned English. At the beginning, there's no other way to make progress than sitting at a desk, memorising the rules, learning words, taking tests. Those methods are necessary at the beginning, even though they're incredibly time consuming. And they're also really draining, which is why so many people give up. But you didn't give up, and now things are different. You aren't a beginner anymore. You already know plenty of grammar. You already have a lot of the vocabulary in your head. Not all of it, but a lot of it. Enough of it. The problem isn't that you need more English. The problem is that you haven't had enough chances to use English. The English that you already have. Think about learning to cook. You can spend hours reading recipe books. You can memorize every ingredient and every step. But 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. Practising English is no different. You can study all of the grammar that you want. Having real conversations with real people is how you actually do it. And of course you will make mistakes because you are learning. You are getting the hang of it. But the more you do it, the more experience you gain, the easier it gets. And the best part. It takes much less time than you think. If you are watching or listening to me right now, I know you are smart. You don't just want me to encourage you, you want evidence. So let's learn from the research that's already been done about this subject. In 2024, the Cambridge University Press published a study that looked at how people develop fluency in a second language. The researchers compared different ways of practising, short, frequent sessions versus longer and more intensive ones. And what they found was really clear. Short, consistent practice sessions were just as effective as long intensive ones for building fluency. So 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. And you don't need to dedicate hours of your Sunday. You just need to show up regularly and consistently. Now this is great news for busy women because it means that you don't need to find a whole hour in your day. It means you just need to find 15 minutes, and that's not a lot of time, is it? So 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. If you try to do that by studying for three hours every Sunday your one day of the week off. You 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. But if you practise speaking for just 15 minutes, three or four times a week, well something different happens. You are making steady progress every single week. You're building a routine that actually fits into your life. I see this happen every single day inside the Hey Lady! community. Women joining us, feeling overwhelmed and really short on time. They'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. So they begin with just 15 minutes of conversation, three or four times a week. That's less time than it takes to drink a cup of coffee. In fact, we encourage our members to build a habit by attaching their practice to something that is already part of their daily routine. Imagine having your morning coffee and an English conversation every day. It's not something that you have to reorganise your entire daily schedule around. It's just 15 minutes. And 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. It'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. And the results are incredible. Because these women are consistent, their confidence grows quickly. They 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. So words start coming out more naturally. They start to feel like themselves again. And here's the most beautiful part of this whole process. As our members build their confidence, the practice stops feeling like a chore and it starts feeling like something they really look forward to. Our high performing members, they often end up speaking for an hour or more in conversations four or five times a week. But they don't do it because they have to. They do it because they want to. They show up because they're excited to see their friends, and because English is the common language, English practice happens naturally, not by force. When we feel really busy, it's so easy to say. Oh, I just don't have time for this right now, but I want you to think about the cost of waiting. Of delaying. The real cost isn't in the 15 minutes of time spent. The real cost is staying exactly where you are. Things not changing. That cost is remaining frustrated because you stay quiet. You are afraid of saying something wrong. It's that feeling of being silent and invisible in a room full of English speaking people. It'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. Every week that you wait is another week of feeling that way. Another week of hesitating and hanging back. When you commit to just 15 minutes of real conversation practice a few times a week, everything begins to change. And the first thing that changes isn't your vocabulary. It's how you feel about yourself. How you realise that English opens up a window to a world that you just didn't have before. You don't need more time. You don't need more energy. You just need a simple starting point. And I know that taking that first step can feel really daunting, especially when you've already got so much going on around you. But you don't have to figure this out on your own. You don't have to commit to hours of study either. I wanna invite you to try a different way. This all happens inside Hey Lady! our online platform that's home to our community. Inside we've made it super easy for everyone who joins to meet and practise for just 15 minutes every day. No matter where you live in the world. It's so easy. Here's what you need to do. First up, sign up for a free seven day trial. I've put the link to do this in the show notes. This gives you full access to the Hey Lady! platform for seven days and nights at no charge. when 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. You'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. And that's all it takes. Just 15 minutes, three to four times and see how you feel. You already have all of the English that you need. So this is the perfect way for you to experience a better way to build your confidence using it. Thank you so much for joining me here today. And remember, you don't need to be perfect. You just need to start. I'll see you next time.