Learning English and Growing Mentally

Here, I want to record my process of learning English and growing mentally.

I started learning English on Oct 12, 2025. One reason I’m learning English is to run an experiment on myself. It’s also a challenge. I’m curious what I’ll be like after studying for six months. Today is Jan 23, 2026.

About the challenge

When I learned Japanese, I followed the conventional path: memorize vocabulary, study grammar, and only at the end try to talk with people. Although my Japanese has now reached a fairly fluent level, there’s no denying that the learning process was painful. So I started wondering: can I learn a language happily? Because of my work environment, I’m exposed to English a lot, even if I don’t actively use it. So I decided to try learning English—and only in ways that genuinely interest me.

About the experiment

Here I’ll also share some channels I really love. One video teaches “How to learn any language in six months.” Right now I’m learning exactly according to the method described in that video. I’m running an experiment: if I learn with that method, what will I look like after half a year? I’m extremely curious.

Bilingual subtitles

At the beginning, I just watched YouTube videos to learn English. Then I realized I really wanted YouTube videos with bilingual subtitles—like English and Chinese side by side—but many videos don’t have them. So I started researching how to achieve that experience.

That’s when I found a plugin called “Immersive Translate.” Following online tutorials, I installed it, set it up with GPT-4o mini, and finally I could use bilingual subtitles on YouTube.

This made me so happy. It’s a great tool that I strongly recommend to anyone learning English, and it can translate other languages as well.

Five principles:

Choose materials that are relevant to you.
Use English from day one.
Before you understand individual words, focus on understanding the meaning of the whole sentence.
Train your speaking muscles (your mouth).
Stay optimistic and positive.

Seven actions:

Listen a lot.
Understand the meaning first (then worry about words).
Start mixing the words you’ve learned.
Focus on the most commonly used vocabulary.
Imitate facial expressions.
Find a native speaker who is genuinely interested in you.
Connect the language to your imagination (respond intuitively).

Here, I want to explain why these five principles matter.

1

The first is that the material you choose must be relevant to you—meaning you must truly be interested in it. In my English-learning process, I’ve watched many talks and speeches that I’m genuinely interested in. I can watch them many times without feeling annoyed or bored. But for some videos, after one watch I lose interest. When I force myself to watch a second or third time, I’m already irritated.

During that process, there’s a voice in me saying: “Even if this video is a bit boring, I’ve already invested in it, so I want to master the vocabulary and grammar in it.” But in reality that’s wrong—it’s inefficient, it betrays my original intention, and it doesn’t align with the principles in the video. I can simply let those materials go.

The professor in the video said that only when something is relevant to you will your brain store it in memory. He gave an example: you walk through a forest and see a claw mark on a tree. You might notice it, or you might not. You keep walking. Then you reach a muddy area and see a huge bear claw print—you pay attention. Not far ahead, you might see a bear. That’s because those signals are relevant to you (they relate to survival), so you remember them.

He also gave another example: “A drowning person can’t swim.” What he meant is that if you put a child in a language environment but nobody interacts with them, they won’t learn the language. We’ve long assumed that as long as you go to the environment, as long as a language environment exists, you’ll learn the language. But that’s not true. I can prove it: I grew up in Guangdong, yet I can’t speak Cantonese. Even though many people around me and my classmates spoke it from childhood, I could only understand a small part of what they said.

2

For the second principle, he gave an example: we become skilled with tools by using them. Imagine you want to use a power drill. You buy it, but you don’t know how it feels to tighten or loosen. Don’t you acquire the skill only after using it? That’s why he says from your very first day learning English, you should use it frequently.

In my own experience, learning English doesn’t mean I have to create a perfect sentence in pure English from scratch. I don’t do that, because it’s hard, and I don’t like doing it. My method is: I love journaling, so I translate my journal into English with AI and paste the English version alongside the original. Each time I reread my journal, I also look at what the English version says. This works very well because I already know what I wrote, so I’m already understanding the meaning—exactly as the professor suggested: “understand the meaning first.” When I read the English version, I’ve already grasped the meaning, so it’s quick to understand. When I run into words I completely forgot, looking them up helps me remember more deeply.

Also, I like that on my commute there’s usually almost no one walking with me, so I talk while walking—speaking English. This matches what the professor called “mixing.” He said you don’t need to be perfect; you just need to say whatever words you know. Then you keep rearranging and combining them, and you can express many things. In the video he gave an example: if someone knows ten words, they can only say a few sentences; but if they know 1,000 words, they can produce countless expressions. He said language learning is a creative process. I strongly agree. Right now, my process is mostly speaking and listening; I don’t spend much time reading purely English materials. Still, I can truly feel how effective “speaking and listening first” can be.

When I look back on how I learned Japanese, I also reversed the order. I studied grammar and vocabulary first, and only later listening and speaking. In the end I realized that even though I passed the highest Japanese proficiency level (N1), my listening and speaking ability wasn’t necessarily as strong as some people from other countries. They might have passed a lower level, yet they speak very fluently and their listening is very good—even without N1. For many people, Japanese kanji is extremely hard, so many foreigners I know started by listening and speaking a lot, instead of obsessing over text. In hindsight, it really is better to train listening and speaking first. Because living and working in Japan, communicating with locals, my listening and speaking ability is especially important. Now that I’m working, I still encounter many unknown words in documents, but when reading, I almost always have the conditions to look things up immediately.

3

The third principle is that our subconscious actually absorbs information unconsciously when we understand meaning. When we understand what someone is saying, we’re also watching body language and tone—then we understand the meaning the language conveys. There’s someone who can attest to this: an online English teacher with many YouTube followers. She said some students shared an experience like this: they can understand their friend’s English, but when that friend talks to a stranger, they can’t understand the stranger’s English. To emphasize, the friend is a native English speaker. I remember a similar situation in my Japanese-learning experience. I can understand the Japanese of people I’m close to, but once I watched a friend talk with his parents—I couldn’t understand what his mother was saying, yet I could fully understand him. Later, that teacher said: you need to listen to different people’s voices and “train your ear,” discovering more versions of English. I completely agree.

4

About the fourth principle, the professor said our face has 43 muscles used for speaking. Whether you can pronounce a word correctly depends on whether you’ve trained those muscles deliberately. Correct pronunciation is training the facial muscles involved in speech. He suggested using videos that combine facial expressions and pronunciation. If you don’t have a “language mom” (a native speaker) who is interested in talking with you, based on my experience I found a very good tool: you can search the word you want, and it pulls clips from YouTube where native speakers use that word. You can watch their facial expressions and pronunciation. It’s excellent. It’s called YouGlish. It has a free daily quota—20 words per day.

5

The fifth principle, I think, is the most important. The professor said that when you’re in a low emotional state, you can’t learn—your brain won’t absorb new things. So stay optimistic and relaxed. He said if your brain stays in an alpha-wave (α) state—a curious state—you’ll learn very, very fast.

I think this is the most important point. It was the same when I learned Japanese. I’m very disciplined, and with my understanding at the time, I thought language learning should start with memorizing vocabulary, then grammar. That process is dull, but I forced myself to memorize vocabulary six hours a day and finished a vocabulary book in a month. That gave me a small sense of achievement, but overall it was monotonous. In reality, the absorption efficiency was low—compared to my current English-learning experience. Right now, I can communicate directly with native English speakers and express myself in English. I think my current English is roughly like the speaking level of Japanese N3. Why am I so confident? Because I use HelloTalk, and I now call native English speakers on it and talk in English. My longest record is talking with a native English speaker for a total of six hours. There are moments where I get stuck, but most of the time they can understand my meaning—even if my pronunciation isn’t standard. For someone who only started learning English a few weeks ago, this is a huge improvement. It increased my confidence and made me feel that this method is very feasible.

In the end

In the end, I want to say that learning English has brought me a lot of gains. Getting good at English became a byproduct. Through learning English, I’ve come into contact with a lot of content that I’m truly interested in. I use those materials as my learning input—and they are also refined, high-quality English content. Because I’m interested, I can watch them many times without getting tired. In the end, I learned many new things. This input didn’t just help me with English; it also helped me learn other knowledge.

For example

Beyond language learning, I have other life themes. A reflection happened a few days after my birthday: I realized I had turned 24. I started asking myself: what was my original dream? When did I plan to achieve it? How should I live my life? What do I want to do before 30? Is my current work valuable? What is my value? What is my social value?

So at that time, the English-learning materials I chose leaned more toward answering those questions. Eventually I watched more self-development content, and I saw an interview video where Naval (Naval Ravikant) was interviewed in 2025. I loved that program. I watched that video many times, even bought his book and the English edition, and eventually built a website to collect excerpts. That video and that book completely reshaped my values. Compared to my English ability, this gain made me feel like I was just practicing English on the side.

Around then, my values were slowly forming, and I started setting principles for myself. For example, I required myself to keep my energy up. From that time—around November 2025—my inner state was actually quite sensitive. I set a goal: always stay proactive, optimistic, and positive.

One difficulty at the time was this: I knew it would be very helpful to find a native English speaker who was interested in me, but I was afraid to communicate with native speakers. I worried I wouldn’t speak well, and their confused expressions would hurt me. Then I realized this conflicted with my November goal of being “proactive,” so I pushed myself to actively overcome it.

So I entered live rooms on HelloTalk and connected with people. I still remember being extremely nervous. That first experience gave me a big insight: even when I don’t understand something, both sides are trying to understand each other’s meaning. In that moment, I realized the best way to overcome fear is to face it. Still, I wasn’t strong enough to naturally click into a live room every time. I’d get nervous. Later I found a method that fit my personality better: I would find native English speakers and do one-on-one calls privately. That made me more relaxed and more natural.

Later I realized I was actually just learning English as a side effect, because I genuinely enjoyed the state of communicating with them. Therefore, speaking good English ultimately became a byproduct. On this journey, enjoyment and absorbing knowledge—broadening my horizons—are the more prominent keywords.

And I also made a friend. We even met offline, talked in English, had a great time, and became friends.

If you follow the traditional language-learning path, you might think the endpoint is being able to speak the language, or getting certificates and proficiency test scores. But my experience learning English broke me through. It trained my mind, increased my confidence, and helped me make friends.

So far, my English-learning journey has lasted three months. Being able to train my mind to my current state is, I believe, the most rewarding achievement so far. Can you imagine what it’s like to have almost no negative thoughts inside you? That’s my current state. I am a proactive person. The current me is completely different from the previous me—I no longer doubt myself at all.

People around my age probably understand how rare the ability “not to doubt yourself” is. Being proactive is a great quality, but maintaining that state all the time is hard. Still, I can say with confidence that I truly stay in that state now. These were built naturally throughout my English-learning process. And being able to speak English and communicate with native speakers is only a byproduct along the way. It feels like the protagonist became a supporting role—haha.