Finally, if I had to summarize how I achieved fluency in English in one sentence, it would be this: I achieved fluency in English by using it.
I know this sounds too simple to be the solution to something that so many people struggle with. Some people laugh and others even get angry (???) when I answer that this is how I learned. But though (or because) it is this simple, many learners often overlook this important part of the learning process and, as a result, they never reach fluency.
I first noticed this concept in 2025, while trying to better understand what happened in my own experience that led me to unintentionally become fluent in English.
(I wanted to better understand my experience so I could apply a similar process to learning other languages.)
Before that, I used to say that exposure to the language was what had made me learn it. But there was more to it than that. Saying that exposure alone made me fluent would be in an incomplete answer. I then came up with this concept of learning the language by using it, which encompasses the development across all language skills—not just listening and reading skills—and thus provides a more complete and accurate explanation of how I achieved fluency.
Once I understood what had happened in my experience, I started saying that I had learned English by using it (rather than through exposure).
It was only later that I became more conscious that this principle of “use to improve” is found in many other areas of life, as I will show in this post to illustrate and reinforce my point. I want to make this clear so that it’s not misunderstood as me applying ideas or teachings from unrelated areas to language learning (or vice versa). I’m not forcing this principle onto other areas, nor am I importing it from them. I’m simply noticing the same pattern in different areas and using them to illustrate my point.
Even if you study a language with intention, you won’t achieve a high level of proficiency unless you actually use that language.
I know that the need of immersion and exposure is widely understood nowadays. But the thing is, most people’s immersion is passive. They mainly use the listening and reading abilities, and so these are the only abilities that get developed or maintained. We will not be able to effectively speak or write if we never speak or write as well.
It’s not uncommon to hear people say, “I understand, but I can’t speak.”
And it’s no wonder, since listening and reading are the only skills they actually use.
And this ends up being evidence that the concept I defend in this post is true—evidence that you can see for yourself in your own life if you’re one of those who can understand English but cannot speak it. You’ve reached a good level of reading and listening comprehension through regular use of those skills. So you can be confident that, if you start writing and speaking as well, those activities will eventually become easy as well.
My biggest piece of advice for you as a language learner—the one thing I want to drive home in this post—is this: USE THE LANGUAGE YOU’RE LEARNING. This is extremely important, and I literally can’t emphasize it more. Make it a part of your life. Treat it as if it were your first language.
Improve and maintain your abilities in your target language simply by reading, listening, writing, and speaking in it.
In sum, use the language.
Our skills are developed through the use of those skills.
The body adapts itself in response to demand. Lifting heavier weights makes the muscle fibers stronger. Bones thicken under load. Sprinting makes the heart more efficient and even stimulates the growth of new capillaries. Using your own mind instead of AI to complete tasks strengthens your intelectual skills.
Conversely, our abilities atrophy when we stop using them.
Our abilities are not static; they are constantly shaped by use or disuse.
Numerous students of English don’t use the language in their daily lives. The result is not only a lack of development in their language skills, but also the loss of the little they already have. Like a muscle, your English skills must be regularly used; otherwise, you will not only prevent them from growing but also cause them to deteriorate.
Sedentary people may have enough muscle strength to, for example, lift a fork from their plate to their mouth or walk a few steps before getting out of breath. They can maintain at least these abilities because they use their muscles at least enough to perform these activities. But if they stop making even these minimal movements for enough period of time, they lose the ability to perform them as well.
- Muscles: In case of people in prolonged vegetative state, the complete muscle disuse results in severe muscle atrophy. Muscle fibers progressively degenerate, die, and are replaced by non-functional scar tissue. (link.)
- Swallowing: Patients who are fed through feeding tubes for a long period of time risk losing their ability to swallow. (link.)
- Vision: Covering an eye for a long period of time weakens its ability to see. (link.)
- Brain: Search Reddit for discussions like “AI is making me dumb” and see people from different walks of life describing feeling less capable of performing tasks independently after relying on AI to do work they previously handled alone.
The faculties of the body and mind grow stronger through use and weaken through disuse.
It turns out that the same is true of your English abilities.
Your skills in that language, or any other, are constantly shaped by use and disuse.
Cases of people decreasing proficiency in their own mother tongue for lack of use are very common.
It’s a gradual, non-pathological loss of proficiency in one’s native tongue due to reduced use and increased exposure to a second language. Lexical retrieval becomes slower, grammatical errors increase, and phonetic pronunciation shifts toward the dominant new language. The phenomenon is called “language attrition”.
This happened to my dad.
My dad spent so much time outside his country that, at some point, he wasn’t able to properly speak his own mother tongue anymore. There was a decrease in performance. After spending the last half of his life abroad, it was with difficulty that he wrote something in his language or spoke with a fellow countryman. A fluent non-native speaker could speak his mother tongue better than him.
If this can happen even to native speakers of a language, it is even more likely to happen to non-native students who don’t know much and don’t use the language in their daily lives.
We need to use the language we are learning.
- Use leads to growth.
- Disuse leads to atrophy.
As the saying goes, “Use it or lose it.”
“Some of our people will learn the languages in the countries to which they are sent. This is the better way.”
(Fundamentals of Christian Education by Ellen White)
The piece of text quoted above was written in the 19th century for Christian missionaries.
Of course, the author considered learning a language in the country where it is spoken to be a more effective approach because it was there that learners would be exposed to the language and have plenty of opportunities to use it in their daily lives—something that, at the time, was not as accessible or easy to achieve without moving abroad.
But we are in 2026 now.
Through the internet, you can closely emulate the experience of a language learner living in a country where their target language is spoken.
It was because of the internet that I was able to use English so frequently and eventually become fluent. In recent years, I’ve also been using English more in real life as well, when sometimes talking (and having to talk) with Americans or with people from other countries who don’t speak much Portuguese or Spanish. Yet, to this day, the internet remains the main place where I use the language.
If you can use the language through the internet, then you have everything you need to develop your language skills, no matter where in the globe you are.
It’s the actual use of the language that makes you learn and improve, not the geographical location by itself (as you know).
A proof of this is the fact that it’s quite common to see Brazilians who can’t speak English despite having lived in America for many years. This happens because, even though they are geographically in an English-speaking country, they may not interact much with English speakers, choosing instead to remain within Brazilian communities. By living in the U.S., they would probably end up learning more Spanish than English.
And I’ve seen people from Indonesia, Russia, and other places becoming fluent while still living in their own countries, without ever having traveled to an English-speaking country.
So, as you know, it’s not the geographical location by itself what makes you fluent.
Despite the fact that the quote makes a very important and correct point—in fact, the idea behind it is precisely what I’ve been defending in this post—that doesn’t mean we should follow it to a T. We should follow this kind of advice in principle, and the underlying principle is that we need to actively use and be exposed to the language we are learning. Back then, moving to another country was almost the only way to do that. But that’s no longer the case.
In the 21st century, we have many accessible ways to immerse ourselves in a language, especially through the internet.
Brazilians are internationally known for having poor English skills, and foreigners often have a very hard time communicating with them.
One of the reasons usually apointed as the reason for this lack of proficiency is related to what I’ve been covering here: Most Brazilians don’t need English.
As they don’t need English, they simply don’t use it.
Portuguese in Brazil is a “self-sufficient” language. Brazil has a huge domestic market, a rich media industry, and a large Portuguese-language internet. In other countries, English is more necessary because their language market is too small to sustain everything. Brazilians in contrast can work, study, consume entertainment, and do business entirely in Portuguese. Most Brazilians simply don’t need English for daily life or work, and so there’s not much pressure for the average Brazilian to use English.
Furthermore, even when consuming international media, Brazilians usually do so entirely in Portuguese.
Dubbing is very common in Brazilian TV and movies, unlike in smaller Europeans countries, where subtitling is more common. Brazilian dubbing is even praised among Brazilians for its witty adaptations to our language and culture. As a result, Brazilians often aren’t used to the sound of English, since it’s rare for them to watch something in English with subtitles at least.
So, this lack of need to use English in any way is appointed as one of the factors contributing to Brazilians’ low English proficiency.
In fact, many of the Europeans who learned English through a process similar to mine often mention that they grew up watching TV in English with subtitles, since dubbing is less common in their countries.
In the past, when foreigners asked me how I learned English, I used to answer something like, “Well… English is everywhere. I couldn’t help but learn it.” But as I just said, English is not so prevalent in my country to the point you simply pick it up spontaneously. If that were the case, more Brazilians would be able to speak it—when in reality, fewer than 5% of Brazilians speak English (that’s precisely why people would ask me how I had managed to learn English in the first place).
The constant use of the language is what really made me improve, for English became part of almost everything I do.
So, it wasn’t that English was really everywhere.
I only felt that English was everywhere because, unintentionally, I was progressively surrounding myself with the language. In my own bubble, in my private life, English was in fact everywhere, and this made me go far beyond the level of exposure and use of English that most Brazilians experience.
Being in the English part of the internet gave me opportunities to use the language and have contact with its speakers, which opened the door to more advanced stuff and opportunities to use the language in more advanced ways. One thing led to another. Progress built upon itself, and over time, I found myself using the language with increasing ease and fluidity.
At some point (in 2021), I consciously decided to switch entirely from my mother tongue to English whenever I was online or engaged in solitary activities.
I didn’t mind doing this at all, and being open to it helped me improve in the language.
Speaking of adopting a foreign language this way, I’d like to clarify one thing: I didn’t surround myself with English or adopt it as a first language in my private life because I believe it’s superior to my mother tongue or anything like that. I’m not even a fan of American culture and stuff.
I’m much more interested in other foreign cultures and countries than I am in the U.S. and its culture.
As a matter of fact, I reached what is considered an advanced level of English by accident, whereas I’m learning Russian intentionally, and after that, I plan to intentionally learn Mandarin Chinese as well. Moreover, I grew up at a time when the aura and prestige America once had in the collective imagination had already started to fade. So, my adoption of English has nothing to do with worshipping America or trying to fit into American culture.
I embraced English as if it were my first language because
- I like to learn things and read books,
- I want to deliver the things I have to share with a broader audience,
- and I like the idea of being a “citizen of the world”.
If you want to learn something, you’ll have a much easier time finding material in English than in Portuguese or any other language. Not only is the sheer quantity of material appealing, but the quality is as well. The difference in quality can sometimes be striking. “This is something else,” I would think.
I’m pretty sure that if I had relied solely on my mother tongue instead of using English, I wouldn’t have learned even half of the things I know.
I like to read books, and most books are published in English. That fact alone is reason enough for me to seek out books in English rather than in my mother tongue. In fact, many interesting books have never been translated into Portuguese. I also wouldn’t have been able to find nearly as much information and learning material for studying Russian if, for ideological reasons, I had chosen to use Portuguese instead of English.
And if you have important knowledge to share with the world—such as, for example, a message that is to be given “to every nation and tribe and tongue and people” (Revelation 14:6)—you’ll reach more people by speaking and writing in English than you would in Portuguese.
Anyway, the thing is: If I need to use a foreign language in my pursuit of knowledge or to share what I know, then I’ll do it.
I simply don’t care at all.
I suggest you not to care about it either. If I allowed national pride, political ideologies, or anything like that to get in the way, I wouldn’t be able to learn the language and also learn many things through it. And when it comes to learning a language itself, I personally don’t care about what its native speakers did or do. For me, English is a means through which I gain access to knowledge, opportunities, and many other things. At the end of the day, English is just a language, like any other.
I simply didn’t mind using English and incorporating it into my daily routine.
I suggest you not to care about it either.
I even write in English first on my other website, both because it allows me to reach a wider audience and because 99% of the many sources I cite there are in English. Translating all those sources into another language would be more work than simply leaving them in the language they were written in and writing my own text in English. Besides, using English on the internet has become second nature to me. Wait, even this very post you’re reading should have been written in Portuguese first (since this website will mostly be used by Portuguese speakers for the time being). But here I am, writing it in English…
English quietly sneaked into my routine and, little by little, expanded until it became part of almost everything I do every day.
Not minding the fact that a foreign language was taking over much of my life helped me on my English-learning journey.
I just use the language in almost everything I do, and it doesn’t bother me at all.
“Money makes money. And the money that money makes, makes money.”
Benjamin Franklin
Knowledge makes knowledge.
Your knowledge of English can make your English improve.
As an ilustration of this fact, let’s say you studied and learned the sounds of English and how these sounds connect to each other in phrases. This knowledge of the sound system allows you to better understand what you hear and make your interlocutor have a better experience hearing and undertanding you (mispronounciation is not accent). These new realities you entered because of you knowledge of the sound system gives you more opportunity to improve your overall English.
What I mean is:
- When you hear clearly and intelligibly, you understand more. → More understanding = more interest = more listening = greater exposure to vocabulary = acquisition of new words and phrases.
- When you sound clear and intelligible, you speak more often. → More speaking = more practice = more feedback = more internalization of words and phrases.
Thus, the knowledge of the sounds of English created more knowledge in that language.
But here’s the catch: money and your knowledge of English only increase when these assets are used.
For money itself is just bits of papers or numbers on a screen. It won’t multiply if you hide it in a piggy bank (on the contrary, it’ll lose its original value). Likewise, your English won’t improve if you hide and let it dormant inside your brain. You have to actually use it in your life in order to advance and not lose what you have.
If you hide money under the bed and let it there stagnated for enough time, it’ll value less and less overtime due to inflation.
Without use, your knowledge of English will not only stagnate but also decrease.
Come to think of it, Jesus also taught this principle—that use leads to growth, while disuse leads to atrophy—when he told the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14–30).
In the parable, a master entrusts three servants with different amounts of money (talents)—5, 2, and 1—according to their abilities to use them. He then leaves on a journey. While he is away, the first two servants trade and double their amounts. The third servant, however, out of fear, buries his talent in the ground. When the master returns, he rewards the first two servants, saying, “Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things.” But he condemns the third servant, takes back his talent, and gives it to one who has ten talents.
“For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away.” (Matthew 25:29)
“So the spiritually unprofitable shall be punished by utter deprivation of the grace which was given for his advancement in holiness.” (Pulpit Commentary)
“The words have the ring of a proverb applicable, in its literal meaning, to the conditions of worldly prosperity. There fortune smiles on the fortunate, and nothing succeeds like success. Something like that law, our Lord tells His disciples, is to be found in the conditions of spiritual growth in wisdom. They had some elements of that wisdom, and therefore, using their knowledge rightly, could pass on to more. The people, including even scribes and Pharisees, were as those that had few or none, and not using even the little that they had, were in danger of losing even that. The faithless Jew was sinking down to the level of a superstitious heathen.” (Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers)
Jesus used the general truth expressed in the proverb to illustrate the religious teaching he wanted to convey.
“As a great ethical principle, we see it in operation everywhere, under the general law of habit; in virtue of which moral principles become stronger by exercise, while by disuse, or the exercise of their contraries, they wax weaker, and at length expire. The same principle reigns in the intellectual world, and even in the animal—if not in the vegetable also—as the facts of physiology sufficiently prove.” (Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, by Robert Jamieson)
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre;”
Aristotle (The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle)
As we have seen, we find the principle that skills improve through use across many areas of life.
We see this principle again in the Bible, in Hebrews 5:11–14, where we can draw two lessons from the experience of some students mentioned by the biblical writer—lessons that apply to learning other things, including languages. The first is, again, the principle that our skills are developed through use, and the second is the importance of consistency in language learning (this was key to my own path to fluency).
The apostle Paul says that his students’ spiritual faculties are trained “through use” (Hebrews 5:14).
The Greek word (ἕξις) used by the apostle in that verse “denotes the capacity or dexterity acquired by practice” (Meyer’s NT Commentary). His students were not making use of their faculties and, as a result, were not only failing to advance but actually regressing. He says to them, “Ye have need again that some one teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God.” (Hebrews 5:12)
The fact that they needed to be taught the elementary principles again shows that their inactivity not only left them stuck but also caused them to lose even the basics they had learned.
“So, in the spiritual sphere, the mental faculties, exercised at first on simple truths, should acquire by practice the power of apprehending and distinguishing’ between higher and more recondite ones. It was because the Hebrew Christians had failed thus to bring out their faculties that they were open to the charge of being still in a state of infancy.” (Pulpit Commentary)
“But solid food is for the mature, who, through use, have the senses trained to discern good and evil.” (Hebrews 5:14)
And this leads us to the next point I want to make: the importance of consistency in everything we learn and do. This is a theme that deserves a dedicated post of its own, but I’ll briefly touch on it here because I recognize how much my own path to fluency was influenced by my consistent use of the language.
We see the importance of consistency when we become more aware that we lose what we don’t use.
Inconsistency is one of the things that keeps many of us at the same level forever.
One starts their language-learning journey with enthusiasm and learns many things. But somewhere along the way, they begin to lose motivation or simply take a break for whatever reason. When they eventually return, however, they don’t return to where they left off. During the pause, they have lost some of the abilities they had previously acquired because they completely stopped using the language.
This leads to frustration and discouragement.
And this discouragement may lead them to yet another pause, causing them to lose again what they had previously acquired again. Then they have to relearn what they had already relearned, creating the feeling that they are making no progress. Then this feeling may make them stop again. And so the cycle repeats itself again and again.
I was consistent in my English-learning journey, without even trying to be, simply because I in fact used the language in many different areas of my life.
The only way for me not to use English—and therefore not to make progress—would be to stop living or doing anything in my life. When you make English part of your routine and use it as much as possible in the things you already do, it simply becomes impossible not to be consistent. Make English a natural part of your life to the point that it feels as though it were your first language (treat it that way from now on).
Reading in English, writing in English, listening in English, and speaking in English must become a habit, a custom of yours.
The story of the one who received one talent from his master could have been different if he had used the little he had instead of leaving it unused.
The fact is that he wouldn’t have been able to handle more than the amount he received, and his master knew it. In the parable is said that each servant received “according to his ability” (Matthew 25:15). It would not have been wise to entrust a larger amount to someone who was not yet capable of handling it. The master would have been irresponsible to do such a thing.
Now, having less than the others did not excuse the servant’s failure to use what he had, nor did hiding his talent keep him from losing even the little he possessed.
“The talents, however few, are to be put to use. The question that most concerns us is not, How much have I received? but, What am I doing with that which I have? The development of all our powers is the first duty we owe to God and to our fellow men. No one who is not growing daily in capability and usefulness is fulfilling the purpose of life. In making a profession of faith in Christ we pledge ourselves to become all that it is possible for us to be as workers for the Master, and we should cultivate every faculty to the highest degree of perfection, that we may do the greatest amount of good of which we are capable.” (Christ’s Object Lessons, by Ellen G. White)
What was expected of each servant was in accordance with what they had.
- The one who received 2 was not expected to produce 5.
- The one who received 5 was not expected to produce 10.
Each one produced what was possible with what they had, and each one of them heard the exact same words from their master: “Well done, good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” (Matthew 25:23) The exact same words would have been said to the one who received one talent if he had made use of what he could use.
In anything, it’s important to make use of what we have.
“To every man God has given ‘according to his several ability.’ The talents are not apportioned capriciously. He who has ability to use five talents receives five. He who can improve but two, receives two. He who can wisely use only one, receives one. None need lament that they have not received larger gifts; for He who has apportioned to every man is equally honored by the improvement of each trust, whether it be great or small. The one to whom five talents have been committed is to render the improvement of five; he who has but one, the improvement of one. God expects returns ‘according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not.’ 2 Corinthians 8:12.” (Christ’s Object Lessons, by Ellen G. White)
So, don’t wait for great opportunities to use what little you already have.
You won’t be able to handle those greater opportunities anyway, and the path to being ready for them is through using what you have now.
So, why wait for greater opportunities to use English? Putting off the practice part won’t help (in fact, it will do the opposite). It’s the small, everyday uses the very exercises that develop your English and prepare you for more demanding situations. You don’t have to jump straight into debates with native speakers about deep topics. But resist the temptation to fall back on your mother tongue when you can use English instead. It is more comfortable to avoid using a new language, but that comfort will only hold you back from growing.
It’s important to make a conscious effort to actually use the language you’ve been studying.
Start small.
Your abilities will grow as you make use of what you already have.
When people see someone who is skilled in foreign languages, it is common to hear them say things like, “He has a talent for languages. That’s why he’s good at it.”
I don’t believe that, if by “talent” we mean some kind of innate special gift—something that certain people are born with and others are not. Take this with a grain of salt, since I’m not a psychologist, but I personally believe there is only one type of intelligence: intelligence itself. I think we are all born with roughly the same potential and capacity across different abilities. The thing is that we each had different experiences as we grew up. For whatever reason, we exercised certain abilities more than others, leaving others dormant and thus causing them to progressively atrophy. So, those labeled as “language geniuses” may simply be people who, for one reason or another, used language-related abilities more than others.
I don’t believe that some people are inherently better at the exact sciences, while others are naturally more suited to the humanities from birth.
What happens is that, while growing up, some people, for whatever reason, made greater use of abilities related to the exact sciences, while others left those abilities dormant (causing them to progressively atrophy).
This is another reason why I do not recommend learning a language through exposure alone or “by accident.” Most of us have not exercised all of our abilities in a balanced way, and it is rare to find someone who has. So, when we tell everyone to watch movies in English and then wonder why it does not work for them the way it worked for someone else, we overlook an important part of the picture. It is not just a matter of background knowledge influencing the process, but also of background abilities—abilities that some people have used and developed, while others have left dormant long enough for them to atrophy.
We don’t all start from the same place, but through deliberate study and directed effort, we can overcome our weaknesses.
None of those geniuses developed their abilities without sustained effort, even if they didn’t realize it, even if they don’t recognize it. They made constant use of those abilities. Our human abilities are not special gifts that only some people inherently possess, nor are they something we have fully formed from conception. Some people simply developed, through use, abilities we all possess.
(Note: In all of this, I’m of course excluding people who really have a mental disability that prevents them from learning. The emphasis in “really” is important here. Unless you’ve been diagnosed with a cognitive or mental disorder by a doctor, your mind is just fine. It’s just a matter of putting it to work concerning the abilities you haven’t exercised much.)
But if we never use the muscles in our arm, it’ll seem as though we don’t have the “special gift” of moving our arm and that only geniuses are capable of doing so.
This means that we don’t need to shy away from language learning thinking it’s not meant for us or that only “gifted” people can learn languages.
It will be painful and unpleasant to use English if you’re not used to using it, just as math can feel difficult and stressful for someone who weren’t estimulated to use it that much. A light workout can leave a sedentary person’s muscles sore afterward. But avoiding the discomfort will only prevent you from developing your English, just as avoiding exercise and resistance will prevent a sedentary person’s muscles from getting stronger.
“some faculties that are weak are lying dormant for want of exercise, because the work that should call them into exercise and consequently give them strength, is not pleasant to you.” (Manuscript Releases, vol. 13, by Ellen White)
Starting to listen, read, speak, and write in a foreign language can be tiring and exhausting. The very act of searching something on Google, YouTube, or ChatGPT is easier and more comfortable in a language we already know well than in one we’re not yet fluent in. It’s harder to hold a conversation in a language you’re not yet used to using. At every step, pain is felt.
But let the exercise be persisted in, and the pain will eventually disappear, giving place to elasticity and strength.
Today I speak English with basically the same ease and naturalness as I speak my mother tongue. It feels automatic and effortless to me now, but it wasn’t always this way. So, make the effort to constantly use the language, even when it feels uncomfortable or unpleasant. Discomfort and pain is part of the process of growth, and if you persevere, it will eventually fade.
Again, you don’t have to go far beyond your current abilities.
Just make sure to actually use what you already have and explore, little by little, more advanced stuff.
In the next post, I’ll tell my story with this language and, in doing so, illustrate more concretely how you can apply the ideas I discussed in this post.
There is also in the next post an extremely important and useful tip I wanna give you for your language-learning journey. Really, it’s so important and helpful that I always feel tempted to say that it was thee most important thing I used to do in this “use the language” thing that made me end up achieving fluency in English.
See ya in the next post.