Hadar Shemesh (host, pronunciation expert and fluency coach) argues that 2025 is an especially good year to master English fluency, giving four main reasons: advances in AI tools (affordable AI tutors and writing assistants), thriving online communities that enable real human interaction, a decline in damaging 'speak like a native' trends and ultra-short viral content, and more authentic social content that reduces pressure on learners. She also shares personal context (teaching since 2008; challenging 2024 with an international move), and announces her programs: the influency community, Beyond membership and app, and the New Sound pronunciation program (opening in February 2025), plus free pronunciation training and email-list CTAs.
Questions this episode answers
January 7, 2025.
Since 2008 (over 16 years of experience).
In February 2025.
In January 2024 (she cites 2024 as a challenging year starting with a move in January).
I see in my communities that learning a language cannot happen without other people really mastering a language. You have to connect, you have to communicate. It makes it so much more interesting.
Hey, you're listening to the Influency Podcast. I'm Hadar, your host, a pronunciation expert, fluency coach, and a proud non native speaker. With over 16 years of experience teaching, I am here to share with you all my secrets on how to show up in English clearly with confidence and freedom. On this podcast, I'll provide step by step strategies, lessons, stories and practical tips to keep you inspired and motivated on your English journey.
Are you ready?
Let's do it. Foreign.
Hey everyone. Happy new year. Happy 2025. In this video, I'm going to talk about why this year, 2025, is the best year to master your English fluency and to develop your speaking skills and your confidence in English. This is based on trends that I see and patterns and changes in the way English is taught and I wanted to share that with you. I think it's such an exciting time for English learners. So if improving your English is one of your New Year's resolutions, you are going to love this video because it's going to get you motivated and excited about what is to come. Also, I'm here for you in 2025 and I'm going to help you reach clarity, confidence and freedom in in English this year as well. So why do I think that 2025 of all years, and I've been doing this since 2008. I've been teaching English since 2008 and I'm super excited about what's coming up this year. The first reason is AI artificial intelligence for language learning. Actually, it's revolutionizing language learning. Exactly one year ago I made a video about how to use ChatGPT to practice English. This is where Chad GPT just came out. Chat GPT chat GPT now, one year later, I feel like 2024 was a year of exploration and development of many different tools for people to use to learn and practice languages. And I think that what we're going to see in 2025 are more refined and holistic products and solutions that are really going to help people practice effectively. And also I'm not worried that it's going to take over English practice and English communication because people still crave the human interaction, the human connection. We don't learn a language just to speak it accurately and to speak it with robots. You know, we learn a language to be able to connect to others, to be heard, to hold space for Others. And I think at the end of the day, if we can use ChatGPT, like AI tutors, which is a great solution that we see that is really inexpensive, affordable, accessible for everyone. We see all those writing assistants that can help us with writing better and understanding our grammar, challenges and mistakes. So we see all of those things, and I think we can channel it into our speaking practice that will have to be with humans. So we take the best out of both worlds, and I think it's going to make your progress a lot faster and also a lot more exciting. Now, the next reason why I think 2025 is a great year to master your English fluency is because of online communities. And that's actually the opposite of AI, because from the cyber world and the world of AI tutors and assistants, we actually see that communities online just keep growing and keep thriving. Now, I know that when I first started my free community, the influency community, back in 2018, that was like the rise of Facebook groups. So we've seen a peak back then. Then it has declined a little bit. But I see that people now crave the human connection even more. With everything that is happening in the world and with the entrance of AI and the fact that we are all in our computers, I think people really crave the human connection. We see more communities online, and I see in my communities that learning a language cannot happen without other people really mastering a language. You have to connect, you have to communicate. It makes it so much more interesting. And whether it's a free community or a paid community, I think it's super valuable to be in a community. Put yourself in a community that allows you to connect with other people to learn a language. I think that being inside of a community and seeing people who already do the things that you want to do is highly inspiring, motivating, and it helps you stay on track. And in fact, AI is going to help filter out people who are not a good fit or people who make it unsafe for other people to practice and to learn. And if you've been to any community trying to learn English, you know what I'm talking about. So I think that AI with real communities, the combination of the two, is going to help elevate the quality of the community and the quality of interactions. Another reason why I think that 2025 is going to be a great year for learning English is because I'm noticing the decline of ineffective trends. So a few years ago, there was a trend of speak like a native and, you know, like perfect pronunciation drills and exercises. And don't say this because otherwise you're going to sound not intelligent or say this if you want. It sounds smart and interesting. And that created a lot of negative energy around the messaging and the experience of students learning. I talked a lot about that. So we started seeing pieces of advice or clips that were not aimed at helping people, but were just aimed at gaining more views and becoming more viral. But when people consume that content again and again, it gets them into this state of mind that they need to speak with more advanced vocabulary or they need to sound a certain way. And that is really, really unhealthy. It's honestly destructive. And it creates the sense of not being good enough and always feeling like you need to know more. And it's good for marketers and people who want to sell courses, but it's not good for the learners. However, I do see that it's dying down. Honestly, I think that people are tired of it, so they watch it less. And then if it doesn't do well on Instagram or YouTube, people stop creating this kind of content. So I do see more valuable content circulating on social media and on YouTube. Having said that, my one reservation from content on social media is that people's attention span has reduced from once it was a minute to 30 seconds, to now 15 seconds, sometimes to 7 seconds. And we see a lot of short videos that are very short and they teach you one thing. So sometimes it's good because it's effective, but a lot of times it's not really good because it doesn't really do the work at teaching you and helping you. So just be mindful of that. Right? If you are the type of person that collects a lot of shorts and a lot of videos to watch later in practice, first of all, remember to go back and practice it, otherwise you will forget about it. And second, that remember that it's not necessarily real because you have to put it all together and you have to practice and you have to be very strategic about how you learn. So that's what I'm saying. But I am seeing less and less of those destructive trends. But let's see, let's meet again at the end of 2025 and see if I was right. One more thing that I'm seeing, and that's not related to the English teaching industry, that we see that people tend to consume more authentic content. So if before, whenever you scroll through Instagram or TikTok, mostly Instagram or YouTube, even you, you used to see a lot of very polished content filmed beautifully with the Titles and, you know, like, it all looks very, very high production value. And we start seeing people showing up more authentically, more real, not necessarily all made up or dressed up. And the reason why I think it's good is because when we have that image on social media and online of something that looks perfect, it creates this illusion as if it's possible, as if it's really perfect in real life. Now, we all know that behind the scenes, everything is messy and dirty and ugly. And, you know, it's not perfect, but when we edit it a certain way, it always looks as if it's perfect. And that creates this false belief that this is perfect, but I'm not. And again, generating that sense of not being good enough. The more we see authentic people creating content, showing up, having a real conversation with their audience, whatever industry they're in, whether they're just influencers or their teachers, I think that it gives people permission to also be themselves. And when that is the case, it's always easier to. To connect, to communicate, and to just be authentic in your real life, especially when you speak a second language, because it's so easy to tap into this character or this personality that is not yours when you speak a second language. But when you allow yourself to just be you and you're okay with that because everyone is trying to just be them, then you put less pressure on yourself. And I think when that is the experience and when that is the case, it's a lot more fun to speak and to communicate. Now let me tell you why I think 2025 is going to be the best year for me to teach you English and how I can help you. First of all, 2024 has been a really challenging year for me, personally and professionally personally, because I moved to a new country in January and the entire year felt like just one big ADHD experience where I was trying to keep up with everything and to adapt. And it was really hard and for. For us and for the girls. But I'm very grateful and I'm very happy for this change. We also had some challenges in the business. We've made some changes to our programs. We only open doors to New Sound, which is my signature program. And since the time I opened it, we always opened it twice a year. That was the first year that we only opened doors once at the beginning of the year because we had to just catch up on things and to invest time and energy into our other programs like Beyond. And that's why I feel that 2025 is the perfect year for me to Support you because first of all, we have our free community on Facebook. The influency community that we're going to develop. I have beyond which is my English practice space membership. We have created our own app and we changed the content strategy, and it's now super exciting for us to teach and for students to learn. So I'm very thrilled about that. And we're going to open doors to New Sound again. New Sound is my signature program where we teach all things pronunciation, intonation, rhythm, stress to help you speak English with clarity, confidence and freedom. We're going to open doors and in February. So if you want to improve your accent, if you want to improve your confidence, speaking, your listening skills, and you want to do it in a fun way, make sure you get on the wait list for New Sound that is going to open doors in February. I am super excited about that because I'm. I miss it. I haven't done that in a year teaching pronunciation, and I can't wait and share with you all the new things that I've learned over the last year. So that is why I think 2025 is going to be the best year for me to support you. And we have other exciting surprises coming up throughout the year, so just stay tuned. If you're not on my email list, make sure you sign up for my email list to get all the notifications and the invitations and the events that we're going to create. So, just saying, we have a bunch of things coming up, including a pronunciation training that is absolutely free. All right, so that is it. Now you tell me why think that 2025 is going to be a good year. I know that some of you might say, no, it's actually going to be a bad year. I don't want to talk about that. I want us to be optimistic. I want us to focus on the positive and I want you to think of all the things that are going to make 2025 the best year for you and for learning English. Okay? So let's get excited about it in the comments. If you are listening to this on the podcast, you can just think about it. You don't have to write it down. And that's it. So have a beautiful, beautiful new year. I wish you all the best. I hope you're gonna have a fantastic year. I hope you are going to achieve all your goals. And you bet that I will be here for you this year. All right, so that's it. I'll see you next week in the next video.
