#462 - 4 Things You Should Do To Get To Advanced English

Summary

Podcast Summary: RealLife English #462 – 4 Things You Should Do To Get To Advanced English

Date: December 2, 2025
Host: RealLife English (Andrea, Senia, Ethan, Ollie)

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Overview

In this classic lesson, the RealLife English team explores the essential practices that help intermediate learners break through plateaus and reach an advanced level in English. Andrea, supported by Senia, Ollie, and Ethan, delivers practical tips focused less on hard study and more on changing how you engage with English on a daily basis. The episode is packed with actionable advice on developing listening skills, mastering connected speech, expanding vocabulary with idioms and phrasal verbs, and leveraging word formation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Intermediate Plateau: Why Advancement Feels Hard

• [00:55] Andrea: Reflects on how rapid initial progress slows down at the intermediate phase, which frustrates many learners.
  • Quote: "Maybe when you were a beginner, you felt like your English improved really fast...But now, for some reason, you feel stuck at intermediate level. No matter what you do, your English never seems to get better."
• Identifies common signs:
  • Needing subtitles when watching movies, though you can follow the storyline.
  • Understanding individual words, but feeling lost regarding meaning.
  • Trying various methods without seeing progress.

2. Practice #1: Listen to English Without Visual Aids

• [03:11] Andrea: Highlights how relying on subtitles or transcripts can prevent actual listening growth.
  • Quote: "Listen to English more often...Make sure you include moments where you will just listen to the language without any help or visual material. Podcasts are excellent for this. Close your eyes and simply listen."
• Regular listening practice without aids helps your ear catch up with your reading skills and reduces dependency on visuals.

3. Practice #2: Learn About Connected Speech

• [04:05] Andrea: Explains that native English speakers cut, reduce, and connect sounds, making speech hard to follow for learners.
  • Quote: "Connected speech is how we describe when native speakers reduce, cut, or connect sounds when they speak. This is absolutely crucial."
• Recommends:
  • Studying how sounds change in fast/native speech.
  • Training your ear to identify these patterns.

4. Practice #3: Expand Vocabulary via Idioms, Phrasal Verbs & Chunks

• [05:17] Andrea: Discusses the importance of understanding not just individual words, but phrases and expressions as used by natives.
  • Example Question: “What do you believe you can bring to the table if we decide to take you on?” ([04:42] Ethan, [04:51] Andrea)
    • "Bring to the table": Contribute something valuable.
    • "Take you on": Phrasal verb meaning to hire or employ.
  • Quote: “Learning idioms can be a game changer for you. These are expressions that natives use regularly…learning more idioms, you will be able to better understand natives and sound more like a native yourself.”
• Suggests focusing vocabulary building on:
  • Idioms, phrasal verbs, and "word chunks" (collocations).

5. Practice #4: Master Word Formation

• [08:13] Andrea: Introduces the concept of word formation—using prefixes/suffixes to build related words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) from the same root.
  • Uses "beautiful" (adjective), "beauty" (noun), "beautifully" (adverb), "beautify" (verb) as examples.
  • Quote: “Most intermediate learners probably know the words beautiful and beauty, they don’t realize that we also have the words beautifully or even beautify.”
• Practice:
  • Make lists of different forms of familiar words.
  • Use each form in sentences to understand syntactic differences.
• [09:57] Andrea: Shares a quick word family (success, succeed, successful, unsuccessfully, etc.) to illustrate.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On listening without aids:
  • [03:36] Andrea: "Podcasts are excellent for this. Close your eyes and simply listen."
• On word formation:
  • [09:32] Andrea: "This is why we call it word formation because we take a word that we already know and form other words from them."
• On emotional hurdles:
  • [08:04] Andrea (role-playing a discouraged learner): "I've tried everything, but I feel like my English is not getting better no matter what I do. I think I'm going to give up."
• On breaking the plateau:
  • [12:13] Senia: “Becoming an advanced English speaker isn’t about doing more. It’s about focusing on the right things that truly move you forward.”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:55] – Identifying the intermediate plateau and common frustrations
• [03:11] – Why you get lost when removing subtitles (& how to practice listening)
• [04:05] – Connected speech explained and its importance
• [05:17] – Understanding idioms and phrasal verbs to sound more natural
• [08:13] – The value of word formation and expanding your word families
• [12:13] – Recap and motivational send-off

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Actionable Takeaways

• Establish a habit of listening to audio in English with eyes closed or without support, e.g., podcasts.
• Study connected speech patterns; learn reductions and sound linking to boost both comprehension and speaking.
• Focus on learning idioms, phrasal verbs, and word chunks—not just single words.
• Practice word formation by playing with prefixes/suffixes and using all forms in your own sentences.

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Episode Tone

Friendly, encouraging, and practical. The coaches empathize with frustrations and share advice in a motivating, understanding way.

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Final Words

Andrea and Senia stress that becoming advanced isn’t about working harder, but about shifting your focus and practicing the right things. With regular, strategic practice, you can overcome the plateau and use English more naturally and confidently in the real world.

Transcript

[Senia]

Hey, I'm Senia, your real life English fluency coach. And today we're bringing back another one of our classic lessons. And trust me, this one is packed with gold. If you've been learning English for a while, you'll know that sometimes progress doesn't feel linear. You might have moments of big improvement, then long plateaus where you wonder what you're missing. So in this lesson I'm bringing you, Andrea breaks down the practices that separate intermediate learners from truly advanced speakers and how you can start closing that gap right now. What's great about this one is that it's not about memorizing more grammar or studying harder. It's about shifting the way you listen, speak and think in English. So let's jump into it.

[Andrea]

Maybe when you were a beginner, you felt like your English improved really fast. In just a few months, your English got better and you started to feel more confident. But now, for some reason, you feel stuck at intermediate level. No matter what you do, your English never seems to get better. Maybe you feel frustrated because while you can watch movies in English, you still need the subtitles. Maybe you understand every single word in a sentence, but you feel lost because you can't understand the actual meaning of that sentence. Or maybe you have tried everything, courses, books, methods, schools, but nothing has worked. If you are an intermediate learner who wants to break free and finally get to an advanced, fluent level of English, stick around, because this video is for you. By the end of this video, you will have a more clear vision of what to do if you want to take your English to a true advanced level. You will learn the exact things you should focus on in order to become an advanced speaker of English. But before we start, make sure you join our community of over 300,000 learners who, just like you, are ready to take their English to the next level. Just hit the subscribe button below to join the global conversation. Fart.

[Ollie]

Pull over. We'll stop fighting, we promise. Prove it. Yeah. Kiss and make up. We're not quite there yet, but we've opened up a dialogue. Not good enough. Kiss.

[Andrea]

Have you ever experienced this?

You're watching your favourite TV series with subtitles in English and you can understand it just fine. Maybe you don't understand every single word, but you can follow the story and enjoy the show. However, the minute you remove the subtitles to test your listening, something terrifying happens. You can't understand anything. Suddenly you feel like a beginner again. Or worse, you feel like an imposter. Like someone who still doesn't know English. Even after studying for years. What is going on here?

Believe it or not, every intermediate learner experiences this, and that's absolutely normal. It's part of the process when learning another language English. In time, your listening skills will catch up with your reading skills if you continue to study and don't give up. But let me give you a couple of tips that can help you overcome this faster. Listen to English more often I know this may sound obvious, but it's true.

Maybe you've gotten used to always having subtitles to read a transcript or any kind of visual aid to help you, but when was the last time you only listened to English in your study routine? Make sure you include moments where you will just listen to the language language without any help or visual material. Podcasts are excellent for this. Close your eyes and simply listen. If you do this regularly, you will start to become less and less dependent on subtitles and images.

Learn about Connected Speech Connected speech is how we describe when native speakers reduce, cut, or connect sounds when they speak. This is absolutely crucial.

Make sure you study connected speech and learn about the main sounds and letters that are reduced, cut, or connected in spoken English. Also, it's important that you train your ear to identify these patterns.

If you want to get started with connected speech, we highly recommend you watch this lesson about how to cut sounds when you speak English.

[Ethan]

So what do you believe that you can bring to the table if we take you on?

[Andrea]

Could you repeat the question, please? Let's analyze this question. What do you believe you can bring to the table if we decide to take you on? If you're an intermediate learner, you probably understand every single word of this question. Let's look at each word individually.

What do you believe you can bring to the table if we decide to take you on?

These are pretty easy words, aren't they? However, can you understand the meaning of this question? Here we have an idiom to bring to the table and a phrasal verb to take you on. To bring something to the table means to contribute something of value to a discussion, project, etc.

In this context of a job interview, the interviewer wants to know what contributions the potential employee will make if she gets the job.

This phrase is an idiom. An idiom is a phrase or expression that can't be understood literally. If you feel stuck in your English, learning idioms can be a game changer for you. These are expressions that natives use regularly. By learning more idioms, you will be able to better understand natives and sound more like a native yourself. To take someone on is a phrasal verb that means to hire or employ someone. In other words, to give someone a job. If we rephrase this question, we have something like what contributions can you bring to our team if we decide to give you the job? Much better, right? Notice that while the idea expressed in both versions is the same, you would probably understand one better than the other. This is why learning more idioms and phrasal verbs can be the difference between becoming an advanced speaker of English or staying forever stuck at intermediate level. If you focus your efforts on improving your vocabulary with idioms, phrasal verbs, and groups of words word chunks, you will definitely feel that your English is getting better again.

[Senia]

By the way, with all these advanced English expressions like catch up with, bring something to the table, and game changer, I know it can feel frustrating trying to remember and use them if you wanted to speak naturally. It's not enough to just take note of them, you need to practice them until they are automatic. Well, with the hundreds of lessons in our app, you can learn new useful expressions and phrasal verbs like these every week and never forget them with our magic flashcard. They use smart technology that brings back words for review right when you're about to forget them. And even if you're busy, you can learn with as little as 10 minutes per day. It's that easy. So if you're ready to get unstuck and impress people with your fluent native like English, give the RealLife English app a try. Get this lesson for free by clicking the link below.

[Andrea]

I've tried everything, but I feel like my English is not getting better no matter what I do. I think I'm going to give up.

Maybe you're discouraged because you feel like you have tried everything, but for some reason your English still feels stagnant. In the last part of this video, I will give you one very specific topic you can study in order to start to see progress in your learning again. Study Word Formation There are four different types of words in nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. It's common for words in English to have some or all of these forms. Let's take the word beautiful. Beautiful is an adjective that means very pretty or attractive. For example, She's a beautiful girl. However, did you know that you can form other words? From beautiful, we can form a noun, beauty, for example. Many artists try to represent beauty in their paintings. We can form an adverb beautifully, for example, he sings beautifully. And finally we can form a verb, beautify. To beautify means to make something beautiful for example, I bought some pictures and vases to beautify my apartment. While most intermediate learners probably know know the words beautiful and beauty, they don't realize that we also have the words beautifully or even beautify.

This is why we call it word formation because we take a word that we already know and form other words from them. Also notice that depending on the form of the word you use, the sentence must be written differently.

The key to mastering word formation is learning about prefixes and suffixes.

Prefixes are added to the beginning of the word and suffixes are added to the end of the word.

Their main purpose is to change the original meaning Perfect Imperfect perfectly imperfectly Perfection Imperfection to perfect Success Successful Successfully Unsuccessful Unsuccessfully to succeed Word formation is also an excellent way for you to get out of intermediate level because it forces you to use the words you already know in a different way. You can start practicing this by making a list of words you already know and looking for different forms of each one. If you have a verb, try to think of the noun form of that verb. If you have an adjective, try to find find out the adverb form of that adjective. Once you learn all the possible forms of a word, learn how to use each one in a sentence. Word formation is such a fascinating topic that we can't discuss all of it in just one video. If you'd like to learn more about word formation, leave a comment down below with the phrase I want to learn word formation. If there are many requests, we will create more lessons on this topic. In this video, you learned very specific things you should focus on if you want to keep progressing with your English and become an advanced speaker. Do you remember what they were? Listen to English more often. Develop the habit of just listening to the language without any visual help. Learn about connected speakers Speech Study how natives cut, reduce, and connect the sounds when they speak. Then practice speaking using connected speech elements. Improve your vocabulary by learning more expressions. Learn different idioms, phrasal verbs, and collocations Study word formation Learn how to use prefixes and suffixes to form new words from the words you already know. And here's the list of the five new words and expressions from this lesson in case you want to take a screenshot.

[Senia]

Hey, thanks so much for watching. I hope this classic lesson reminded you that becoming an advanced English speaker isn't about doing more. It's about focusing on the right things that truly mean move you forward. Keep practicing with purpose and you'll feel your English becoming more natural every day. And if you want to master the expressions you learned today like to bring something to the table or take someone on. I highly recommend you practice them using the RealLife app. It's the best way to expand your vocabulary and become a natural English speaker in just 10, 15 minutes a day. Until next time. And remember that no matter what divides us, that which unites us is far greater.

[Ollie]

Oh

[Senia]

yeah.

[Ethan]

Hey, I'm Ethan, your RealLife English fluency coach. And the words that we natives use change from the us, uk, Australia and South Africa. Each country adds its own unique flavor to the language. In today's lesson, we we'll explore some of the most common vocabulary differences between American, British and Australian English in a fun lesson I recorded a while back with two amazing fluency coaches, Andrea from the UK and Ollie from Australia. We decided to bring it back because these kinds of differences just don't get talked about enough, and understanding them will not only help you enjoy movies and series from different countries, but also to feel more confident when connecting with native.