I see it every single day in my comments.
Thiago, I understand your videos a hundred percent, but I still can't speak fluently.
Let's be honest for a second.
I don't buy it.
In fact, I'm tired of reading comments like that.
Because if you truly understand a hundred percent of the English you hear you wouldn't be stuck at a B2 level for the last three years.
You wouldn't freeze in meetings and you wouldn't feel robotic when you open your mouth.
The truth is you are suffering from a cognitive bias called the illusion of competence.
You are catching the gist, the main idea of what I'm saying, but you are completely blind to the language mechanics I'm using.
You're hearing the story, the message, but you are missing the functional schemas.
Today, I'm going to prove this to you.
I'm going to prove to you that you are only hearing, in reality, about 40 or 50 of what is actually being said.
This video today is a reality check.
Now, if you're looking for a teacher to tell you that you're doing great and to just keep listening, go find an AI channel.
But if you're ready to hear why your brain is essentially hallucinating fluency, Stick around.
Before we start this audit today, I need to address why you think you understand me 100%.
It's a psychological trap called familiarity.
Because you have watched my videos before, your brain has become comfortable with my voice, my rhythm and my facial expressions.
You've reached a point where your brain can autopilot through my sentences.
The danger here is that you confuse familiarity with mastery.
When you say Thiago, I understand you perfectly.
What you're really saying is Thiago, I can follow your message, your story.
But following a story is not the same as processing language.
You are essentially a passenger in a car that I'm driving.
Imagine you can't drive, you don't have a driver's license.
You know we are going to the beach. and then you think you know how to drive because of that.
But if I handed you the keys right now, you wouldn't know what to do.
You would realize that you have no idea how to drive.
Going back to English, you aren't hearing 100% of my English.
You are hallucinating the parts you don't know based on the parts you do know.
There is a name for this specific type of overconfidence.
It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect.
You can research about it later if you want to.
In short, the Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where people with low to medium ability in a task overestimate their competence.
In other words, we are very bad at self-assessing our abilities and expertise in something.
So many times we think we know a lot about something when in reality we don't.
On the other hand, many times we also may think that we don't know a lot about something, when in reality we do.
In language learning, the B2 level is the danger zone for this.
You have reached what we call the peak of Mount Ignorant.
You think you are near the top of the mountain because you can't see how much more mountain is still hidden in the clouds above you.
You think you understand 100% because your brain literally doesn't know what's missing.
You are blind to the nuances, the advanced modals, the prepositions and the professional registers that you aren't yet capable of noticing and producing.
You feel like a master simply because you've stopped being a beginner.
I keep using the term functional schemas.
If that sounds complicated, let me explain that in very simple words.
A schema is just a mental map or a template.
Think about your microwave in the kitchen.
You probably have a button there that says popcorn.
You don't have to program the time, the power level, or the heat.
You just hit one button and the machine knows exactly what to do.
The popcorn button is a functional schema or mental map or template that the microwave has.
In English, advanced speakers don't think about grammar rules.
We don't build the sentence from scratch every time.
We have buttons in our brain for specific situations.
For example, if I want to be polite while asking you a favor, I can hit the.
I was wondering if button.
My brain knows exactly how that structure sounds and feels, without me having to think about the rules.
The problem for a B2 learner is that your buttons are broken.
You might know the word wondering, but you don't have the schema or mental map, for I was wondering if how the whole phrase fits together.
And because you don't have this map, your brain has to work 10 times harder to decode meaning and it usually fails.
To prove this to you, look at this paragraph on screen.
Try to read it.
You could read that easily, couldn't you?
Why?
Because your brain isn't reading every letter.
It's just skimming for the gist or main idea.
It sees the first letter, the last letter, and the context, and it hallucinates the word.
This is exactly what you are doing with my audio.
Your brain ignores the have been that I use, the would have that I use and the tiny prepositions I'm using as well.
It just jumps to the nouns and the verbs to get the message.
This means you are a consumer of content, but you are not yet an analyst of language mechanics.
To reach C1, you have to move from being a spectator to being an analyst.
If you don't analyze every D and every V in my speech, you aren't learning.
You are just passing the time.
Now, why does the brain do this?
It comes down to two ways of listening.
One, semantic processing.
This is listening for the what.
What is the story?
What is the message?
This is what B2 learners are actually good at consuming.
You are consuming the information, taking the photo and moving on.
You feel good because you got it, but you didn't learn anything about the language itself.
Two syntactic noticing this is listening for the how.
It's a fancy way of saying paying attention to details.
When you listen semantically, you are a consumer.
When you listen syntactically, you are a detective of language.
Most B2 learners are great at consuming, but they are absolutely terrible at noticing language.
You aren't looking for the fingerprints on the door.
You aren't noticing exactly how the bricks in a building are held together.
You are hearing the story, the message, but you are blind to the mechanics.
If you don't shift from a consumer to an analyst of language who notices the tiny D at the end of a word or the specific preposition that everyone else ignores, you will stay a tourist in this language forever.
I'm going to prove this to you right now.
I'm going to say three sentences at regular speed.
Here are the rules.
Pause the video after each sentence.
Write it down.
Not the gist, not a summary.
Word for word.
Every single preposition, every contraction I use.
And don't cheat either.
Listen to the sentence once, pause, and write down exactly what I just said.
I mean, if you truly understand 100%, this should be easy, right?
So let's see.
Sentence number one, listen.
I'm thinking about changing my career path later this year.
Pause.
Write down exactly what I just said.
If you got that, congratulations.
You have basic intermediate comprehension.
The words were distinct, right?
Thinking, changing, career, path.
Most B1 and B2 students get this because the bricks are large, the words are large, and easy to see.
But this isn't where the C1 gap exists in terms of listening.
Sentence 2, listen closely.
I've been meaning to touch base with you regarding the updated project timeline.
Pause, write down exactly what I just said.
Now, be honest.
Did you write about instead of regarding?
Did you write I was meaning to instead of I've been meaning to?
If you missed that or any other word, you failed.
Your brain hallucinated a simpler version of my sentence.
You were deaf to the language.
You missed the present perfect continuous.
I've been meaning to.
The verb.
It's just a tiny vibration of air, but it's the difference between a B1 and B2 learner and a C1 user of English, especially when it comes to listening.
So that means you aren't noticing the mechanics of the language.
You're just consuming the intent.
Now sentence three, level three, listen closely, pause and write exactly what I say.
Here it is.
I was under the impression that you'd already been briefed on the matter.
Now, let's look at what I actually said.
Here it is.
Did you hear the D in you'd?
That is had, past perfect.
Did you hear the been?
If you wrote, for example, that you already briefed, you are grammatically blind.
You missed the passive voice.
You also likely missed the link between briefed and on, because I said briefed on, briefed on, briefed on the matter.
So you consume the story, but you didn't notice the functional schema.
And if you can notice it as an analyst, your brain will never be able to use it in a high pressure meeting or situation.
This is why you stay stuck at B2.
Here's the secret.
You cannot recognize what you cannot produce.
The reason many of you failed level 3 isn't because I spoke too fast.
It's because your brain hasn't learned to build the structures I used yet.
You don't have the blueprints in your head.
You can't just listen your way out of the plateau.
You have to produce language as well.
Only when you start incorporating these more dense functional schemas or blocks of language into your own speech will your ears finally unlock and recognize them when other people use them.
And this is exactly why I built the B2Edge app.
The B2Edge app is not a fun app, it's a production engine.
Our 77 lesson curriculum forces you to generate original, complex ideas using the same mechanics and language we discussed today.
We force your brain to stop ignoring the D, the V and the BIN by making you use them to solve professional scenarios.
First, you need to become aware of the structures and language you don't know yet.
Second, you need to start using them so that they become part of your English.
Only then you will start noticing them, when you listen to a song, to a person speaking to a native speaker, to a YouTube video, to a movie.
The curriculum inside the B2 Edge app is hard, it's dense and it's exactly what your brain needs to break that B2 plateau.
If you're ready for this, link in the description.
I want to end today by talking about intellectual humility.
The biggest obstacle to reaching C1 fluency is the belief that you are already good enough.
Intellectual humility is the ability to acknowledge that what you know is only a fraction of what there is to learn still.
If you start watching a video thinking you understand 100, you close your ears to the nuances that make a speaker truly advanced.
But if you start watching a video with humility, knowing that you might be missing a passive here, a conditional there, a preposition there, you start to listen with the eyes, ears and mindset of an analyst.
The students who make it to C1 are the ones who are willing to say, I missed that detail.
Explain it again.
They are the ones who watch a video twice because they know their brain is prone to hallucination.
So don't let your ego keep you at B2 level forever.
Now here's your challenge for today.
Take that level three sentence from earlier.
Remember, I was under the impression that you'd already been briefed on the matter.
Write it down in the comment section below and then write a second sentence starting with that.
Block that schema.
I was under the impression.
But now apply it to your own life.
This is how you improve your level of proficiency, fluency, and listening in English.
And remember the rules.
Watch this video again.
I promise you that you missed a lot of the new ones on the first pass.
In the comment section below, ask questions.
Don't assume things.
Stop pretending you understand 100% of things.
Stop lying to yourself.
Instead, start training.
Ask questions and seek feedback.
That is how you improve.
Thank you so much for hanging out with me today.
I'm Thiago.
I'm signing off.
If you want to learn more about my app, Link in the description of the video.
This is a great app for serious learners.
If you are ready to do the work necessary to become a solid B2 level user of English and then a C1 level user of English, my app is going to help you tremendously with that.
If you have any questions, again, ask me in the comments section below.
And if you want to keep learning more, you might want to check out this lesson next.
I'll see you in the next video.
Bye-bye.
