People love to say, “Just live in the US/UK for a few months and you’ll speak English like a native.” It sounded plausible because decades ago the environment forced you to use English all the time.
Why the myth used to be true
- Few Vietnamese communities abroad: Renting a flat, going to work, even grocery shopping demanded face-to-face English.
- Zero tech support: No self-checkout, no apps, no free video calls. Contacting home meant visiting the post office and paying a hefty fee.
- English or bust: Using the language was a survival skill—people progressed because they had no alternative.
What’s different now
- Vietnamese neighbourhoods, landlords, and coworkers exist in most major cities.
- Technology lets you shop, pay, and call without saying a word in English.
- You can easily spend an entire week speaking only Vietnamese and still get by.
The result: you could live in an English-speaking country for years and stay stuck if you never train deliberately.
So how do you really improve?
- Track your real speaking hours. If a 90-minute class gives you only five minutes of output, you need 12 classes just to log one hour. Every skill demands roughly 40 hours of meaningful “flight time.”
- Engineer your own environment. Join English-speaking communities, schedule practice with classmates, or shift parts of your job to English.
- Set concrete targets. “Speak three hours with real people each week” is far easier to follow than “try to talk more.”
The environment no longer pushes you automatically. You have to choose to step into English-speaking spaces every day.
Suggested visual references: public payphones, queues at the post office, handwritten letters—anything that shows how communication used to be a challenge (cite sources clearly if you use them).