Natalia Tokar | Native-Like Fluency

Learn to apply metacognitive strategies to become a better learner. Here are the strategies that both teachers and learners can use: 1. Allow time for thinking and reflecting. This means consciously self-correcting and actively engaging in self-reflection practices, such as journaling, creative writing, or creating practice routines for yourself. A teacher who is unfamiliar with self-reflection may not be able to provide high-quality feedback to students who practice these skills. Endless and unsupervised self-reflection can lead to negative self-talk, and a teacher who does not know how to address this issue will not be able to support the student. 2. Have open-ended discussions. If you’re a teacher, allow your students to think out loud. If you’re a student, take time to think out loud before giving an opinion or answering a question. 3. Recognize strengths and weaknesses in different learning/performance contexts.Every approach has its advantages and disadvantages, and the best approach is a combination of many. Do not believe anyone who claims they have figured out the best and universal learning method for everyone. 4. Learn specific and broad learning strategies, thinking strategies, problem-solving methods, problem-framing methods, and investigative methods, with examples and demonstrations. A teacher must be able to demonstrate these. If you’re a teacher, apply these methods outside of your subject. For example, improve other areas of your life or learn a new skill. This will give your a deeper understanding of what your students are going through. 5. Use prompts and cues to steer a discussion or practice routine. A teacher must FEEL what prompts are appropriate for different days and audiences 6. Promote epistemic feelings like curiosity and interest. This is big factor in students’ success. 7. Explore many learners’ and experts’ logic, train of thought, and strategy. Learn from the best, reflect on your own experience, and trust your intuition. 8. Explore insights from multiple perspectives and relate them to past knowledge and real-world applications. This is a great method to learn empathy and learn to take on a different perspective 9. Mix purposeful planning and strategizing with improvising. A teacher must be comfortable with improvising and be able to inspire students to do the same. 10. Build realistic confidence and trust in learning capacity, metamemory, teaching capacity, and performance in tests and real-world problems

Above are the shows that I listen to. If you see the show that you like too, please let us know! If you know really good podcasts that are not on the list, add them in the comments. What do you like listening to?

Here is a reminder for all of us: ""Finish something. Anything. Stop researching, planning, and preparing to do the work and just do the work. It doesn’t matter how good or how bad it is. You don’t need to set the world on fire with your first try. You just need to prove to yourself that you have what it takes to produce something. There are no artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, or scientists who became great by half-finishing their work. Stop debating what you should make and just make something." James Clear

In this video, I have broken down the exercises that I use on a daily basis for you. Watch them, put them into practice, and share what worked and what didn't. You can be effortlessly spontaneous only when you have rehearsed enough. Being unscripted requires courage. Being spontaneous means putting yourself out there and embracing your mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow quickly.

A new Youtube Video is out. I described the step-by-step system that I use to imorove my own spontanesou speaking skills. I apply if every time when I teach or make a new video https://youtu.be/19GLxbe-Wts

Can you self-edit your writing? Many editing tools are available today. Grammarly has become the new normal because people want their spelling and grammar checked. They want to focus on the message, not the mechanics. Until today, I have used over 45 different software tools to self-edit my writing and learn to express my ideas with clarity in English. Now, with Chat GPT, most of them have become obsolete. I can ask AI to suggest synonyms, paraphrase my text, check my grammar, change register, and more, which makes self-editing much faster and more convenient. However, we all want to SPEAK better in English, not rely on copy- pasting suggested text into our pitches to investors. Writing is a tool to help you analyze your thinking patterns in English, so you can apply these new habits when speaking. Chat GPT is a text generating tool, not a writing tool. It's an important distinction. My rule is simple: delegate what you know how to do. If you delegate the job that you have no idea how to do, you become totally dependent on your contractors - their worldview, their level of mastery, their productivity habits, and their level of consciousness. You have to accept their work because you don't have the skills to evaluate it. People who blindly copy texts generated by AI are not learning to use the language or evaluate its use. Be smart and use AI to assist you, but don't delegate THE work to it. Ai can't create a pitch for your brilliant idea because it can't be in your head. You must find the words first. AI can edit your words. You decide whether you accept its corrections. Continue creating and challenge yourself to think better if you want to speak better. The video is a real-time demonstration of self-editing. I didn't use any tools to edit the sentences. To me, this is a valuable skill because I want to be present in conversations with people without having to rely on AI or technology. Watch the full video on YOUTUBE - https://youtu.be/Wc_xMs_EK3M

What looks effortless is not done without effort. A fragment from my free video course "Daring Learner." Years of practice transform numbers and rules into intuitive knowledge. As Josh Waitzkin puts it, "What was once seen mathematically is now felt intuitively." When you become an intuitive learner, you are able to apply a lot of effort effortlessly. Native-like fluency means that you're able to manage many things at the same time: rhythm, accent, words, sentence structure, clarity, grammar, etc... It takes deliberate practice but it's so worth it! https://community.nataliatokar.me/c/welcome-course/

What is a practice routine? If you want to improve your wheel pose, you need to spend more time in the wheel pose 🙂 If you want to improve clarity or pronunciation, you need to do specific exercises on a regular basis. A practice routine always has a FOCUS. For example, your big goal is a confident wheel pose. Great! The FOCUS of your practice, however, must be more specific: shoulder mobility, hip flexor flexibility, or maybe wrist strength. If you choose wrist strength, your practice routine must include very different exercises than a wheel pose. If you simply insist on doing what you don't have the capacity to do yet, you will be hurting yourself - physically and emotionally. If your goal is better pronunciation, your FOCUS may be thought chunking, the shape of specific vowels, pausing, connected speech, etc...depending on where you are on your learning journey. When you know what your FOCUS is, choose the exercises that align with your focus. As you do the exercises, ask for feedback. Get the feedback and re-iterate. Improve the application. Develop your learning skills. It's the best investment because they will allow you to learn anything. Watch my youtube video on metacognitive strategies and meta-skills to learn more. If your goal is native-like fluency in English, join the community of practice. You will get help to choose your FOCUS, and you will unlock over a hundred of exercises that you can include in your practice routine in order to make your learning efforts meaningful. Remember that practice routines are finite. You're supposed to revisit your practice routines and welcome change and adjustments. Learning in and of itself is infinite though🙂

Effort Reinforces Learning Our key finding, replicated across both experiments, was that greater effort increased learning rates following positive outcomes and decreased them following negative outcomes, which corresponded to a differential effect of effort in boosting positive RPEs and blunting negative RPEs. Interestingly, this effect was most pronounced in individuals who were more averse to effort in the first place, raising the possibility that the investment of effort may have an adaptive effect on learning in those less motivated to exert it. By integrating principles of reinforcement learning with neuroeconomic approaches to value-based decision-making, we show that the very act of investing effort modulates one's capacity to learn https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36096671/

TEASER. Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast app https://shows.acast.com/nativelikefluency/episodes/accent-or-poor-pronunciation

There is No Evidence Supporting Auditory and Visual Learning. It's always been more complicated than that...but people like easy explanations and quick solutions. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/learning-styles-debunked-there-is-no-evidence-supporting-auditory-and-visual-learning-psychologists-say.html

ADD THE FREE WORKSHOP TO YOUR CALENDAR! Feb 14, 2023 Memorable presentations in English: a practice routine to help you craft ONE BIG IDEA You can easily add events to your calendar once you click RSVP https://community.nataliatokar.me/c/calendar/memorable-presentations