Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World

More Complex Discussions
While your ability to express yourself and understand others will definitely
improve when you move from level B1 to B2, I find that the actual content
of the conversations can be somewhat similar, depending on how you use
the language, of course.
In my case, in both levels I am able to participate in social situations;
but in the first one, I require people to speak to me slowly and adjust the
way they speak for my benefit. At this level, I won’t understand if they
speak naturally to their friends, so I can’t participate in group discussions.
When I reach B2, people can relax around me and talk faster, and they
don’t have to “dumb down” the conversation for my benefit. But despite
this, I’m still getting to know them better through asking what they do for a
living, asking for their backstory and giving mine, making plans, and
talking about something topical but lighthearted that people might discuss

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in a social situation. Certainly a much more varied set than what I was
doing in level B1, but it’s still friendly chatting.
Once again, I’m tempted to stop here, because ultimately this will be
what I’d do the majority of the time in my language: use it to get to know
people and have straightforward chats socially, especially as I travel and get
to know new people. With a level B2, you can effectively participate in the
majority of conversations you may end up having.
But if anyone asks me for my political or philosophical opinions or asks
me to defend a point of view or something more complex, I’m stumped,
unable to offer my thoughts in a complex way.
That’s why, when it’s time to push on to the next level, I force myself to
have these conversations, so I have no choice but to learn how to express
myself when they happen. Whether I’m getting spoken lessons or doing an
exchange or simply hanging out with friends, I try to move away from
superficial chats about how things are in general and steer the conversation
toward very complex discussions.
I defend my philosophical arguments for being an atheist, talk about the
vast differences in wealth and poverty I’ve seen in my travels, try to provide
a scientific or technical explanation for how something works based on my
engineering and online media experience, ponder the true meaning of
happiness from a purely psychological point of view—things that I happen
to be passionate about and enjoy discussing.
It can be as frustrating to have these conversations when you are still
stuck at level B2 as it is to try to have a simple conversation when you are
just beginning to learn, but as with everything else on this path, you need
practice to drag yourself up a level or two!
If I have a good teacher or language-exchange partner, we decide on a
topic and try to argue points of view. In my best languages, I’ve tried to go
a step further and even argue against something I actually believe in so that
I’m forced to use different arguments and try to expand on my ability to
express a point of view. This would, of course, be during a formal learning
session, rather than something I’d do in a casual discussion.
These conversations pressure me to use more complex terminology and
vocabulary related to the argument itself or related turns of phrase, such as
“that may be true, however . . .” or “I think you’re dancing around the real
issue,” which you might use in such complex discussions. This in turn sends
me back to my vocabulary studies and even to my grammar book for certain

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trickier sentence forms. Once again, studying is used in between sessions of
genuinely speaking the language.
If you are in the country itself, you can, of course, join debate or
discussion groups or go to events that would push you up a level.
Otherwise, you can find online forums to participate in that focus on
complex topics or get a private teacher to help you with such specific topics
of discussion.