(whooshing)

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- Hello, I'm Julian Northbrook from doingenglish.com,

coming to you from sunny, Ireland.

It's been about six weeks since I came to Ireland

and that I have been separated from my beloved family,

with whom, I speak Japanese, on a day-to-day basis.

And of course all of the media, the films, the TV,

the radio that I used to listen to

in Japanese every single day.

And yes, being by myself,

in a completely English-speaking environment,

I do feel like my Japanese proficiency has dulled somewhat.

I am not worried about this at all.

Because I know exactly what to do,

to bring it right back up in record time.

And I do get that this is a real concern for a lot of people

and that's what I'm going to talk about here in this video.

Perhaps you lived in an English-speaking country

and you've just gone back to your home country,

either temporarily or permanently.

Perhaps you were working in an international company

and used English on a day-to-day basis there

and you've now left that job

and gone to something different, in your native language.

Whatever the reason you may find yourself

in a situation, where suddenly,

you're not exposed to English on a day-to-day basis.

You're not using English as much as you used to

and you feel like you're going to forget everything.

Like I said, this is a real concern.

It's a real worry for many, many people.

First and foremost, don't worry too much.

You never actually forget something that you've learned.

This dulling of your proficiency,

is a result of the way that the brain works,

the way that it manages multiple languages.

Basically, if you got English in your head,

and you're not using English right now;

what your brain's gonna do is, it's almost gonna just,

it's gonna push it to one side, put it to sleep,

sedate it somewhat so that it's, again, out of the way.

So that it's not draining precious cognitive resources,

which can be allocated much better,

to something that is immediately in front of us,

that we've got to get done now.

What this means then is that, your English,

it doesn't disappear.

It's just a little bit tired and a little bit sleepy.

So what you've got to do is, you've got to wake it up

and that is pretty simple to do.

It's just a case of getting back into the habit

of using English on a daily basis.

Once you get back into the routine,

it'll come right back up.

Easy ways to do this is things like, you know,

switching up the media that you consume,

so that you're watching TV, films,

things like that in English.

Reading books in English, instead of your native language.

Listening to the radio in English,

instead of in your native language.

All this exposure will just help to keep the English up

and sharp and active in your brain.

Just understand that it's good for keeping your level,

not really for improving your level.

However, a big mistake that many people make,

is thinking that they can just listen to stuff all day

and suddenly become fluent from that

or go to an English-speaking country and just being there,

is gonna make them highly proficient in the language.

Whereas what they actually find is,

that if they're not doing anything else, again,

the level is just kept and that's about it.

If you want to go beyond the level that you're currently at,

yeah, you're gonna have to put some hard, intensive,

focused study time in, to learn the language that you need.

To practice it,

and to actually force your English to get better and better.

That however is a topic for another day.

That's about all we've got time for for today's video.

So, this is me, Julian Northbrook,

signing out from another one.

If you found this useful, give it a nice big old thumbs up.

If you thought it was crap, whatever,

give it a thumbs up anyway.

If you haven't read my book, Master English Fast!,

an uncommon guide to speaking extraordinary English,

check it out at MasterEnglishFast.com.

It'll show you step by simple step

exactly what you've got to do,

to bring your English level up to the level of Mastery.

It's a good 'un.

Like I said, check it out.

Bye-bye.

(upbeat rock music)