Learning English in London? Why fluency can still feel out of reach

London is proudly one of the most linguistically diverse cities in the world. According to the 2021 Census, around 1.83 million people living in the capital aged three and over have a main language other than English, representing roughly 22% of the population.

What is perhaps more interesting, however, is that the vast majority of those people already speak English well despite it not being their first language, with a recorded 81% reporting that they speak it well or very well.

For me, as a scientist who specialises in education technology, and as someone who speaks English as a second language, that raises an interesting question. If so many people can already speak English confidently enough to live, work and study in the capital, why do so many language learners still feel that they have not quite reached fluency?

The answer is that being able to speak a language well and feeling completely comfortable in it are not always the same thing.

For beginners, language learning is relatively structured. There are common words to learn, basic grammar rules to understand and simple sentence patterns to practise. Most learners need broadly the same foundations, which is why traditional courses and language apps can work well at this stage.

The challenge comes later.

There is a point I think of as “day 1,000”, when somebody can already hold a conversation, read an article or follow much of a television programme, but still comes across gaps that make them feel less fluent than they would like.

At this stage, those gaps are also increasingly personal. One person may have learnt English largely through work and be completely comfortable discussing their profession, but struggle with a joke in the pub. Somebody else may have picked up much of their English through films and television but find formal workplace language difficult.

The more somebody uses English in everyday life, the more individual their knowledge becomes.

Fluency is about more than knowing more words

One of the difficulties is that knowing a word is not as simple as either knowing it or not knowing it.

You might understand the word “bank” perfectly when somebody is talking about money, for example, but not immediately recognise it when somebody refers to a river bank. You may understand a word when you read it but struggle to recall it quickly enough during conversation. You might know exactly what it means but not know whether it sounds natural in a particular situation.

Then there are idioms, phrasal verbs, humour, slang and tone.

Expressions such as “keep me in the loop”, “play it by ear” or “I’m up for it” can be completely ordinary to a native English speaker but confusing if you try to understand them word by word.

This is where living in a city such as London can be both helpful and challenging for language learners. You are surrounded by English every day, but the English you hear is far from uniform. London brings together people from an enormous range of cultures and backgrounds, and that is reflected in the way the language is spoken across the city.

Move between different workplaces, neighbourhoods, friendship groups or generations and you may encounter different accents, slang, expressions and ways of using English. A learner who feels completely comfortable in one conversation can suddenly come across a phrase, pronunciation or joke they have never heard before in the next.

In some ways, that is what makes London such a valuable place to learn a language, because you are constantly exposed to English as it is actually used. But it also helps explain why somebody can speak English very well and still occasionally feel as though they are catching up.

That does not mean somebody’s English is poor. In many cases, it is the opposite. As learners become more advanced, they simply become more aware of the nuance and variety that exists within the language.

Use the English that already exists in your life

For somebody who already speaks English well, improving fluency does not necessarily mean spending more time completing traditional lessons. It can be much more useful to pay attention to the English you naturally encounter.

I learnt this from my own experience. After moving to London, I assumed that being surrounded by English would naturally keep improving my fluency. But years later, I realised that progress through exposure alone could be surprisingly slow.

When I began deliberately learning the idioms, phrasal verbs and words that were both common and relevant to me, something changed. I immediately started noticing them in films and in everyday conversations. They had almost certainly been around me all along; until I had consciously learnt them, my brain had simply filtered them out.

That is why the most effective approach combines deliberate learning with real-world exposure. Even a small amount of focused practice can prepare you to recognise useful language, while daily life supplies the situations, people and emotions that help it stick.

In a city like London, everyday life itself offers plenty of opportunities to learn. You might hear a new expression at work, notice a phrase being used differently by a friend or come across an unfamiliar pronunciation on your journey home. Those moments are part of learning too.

Importantly, do not feel you need to understand every single word. Fluent speakers encounter unfamiliar words too. The aim is not to reach a point where nothing is ever new, but to become increasingly comfortable working out meaning from context and recognising the language that matters most to your own life.

This is also why learning through things you enjoy can be so effective. An expression is often easier to remember when it helps you understand the punchline of a joke, follow an important scene in a film or understand the lyrics of a song you already love.

Where technology can help

This is also where I believe technology can become particularly useful for people learning English in a city like London.

Two people may both be described as advanced English speakers, yet the language they encounter every day can be completely different. One may work in finance in the City, another in hospitality in Soho. One may spend most of their time speaking English professionally, while another picks up new expressions through friends, television, music or conversations in their local community.

A traditional course cannot anticipate every word, expression or cultural reference each person will come across. AI has the potential to make learning much more personal by building a picture of what an individual already understands, identifying the gaps in their knowledge and helping them focus on the English that is actually relevant to their life.

A simple example is entertainment. Technology can analyse the language used in a film or television programme, compare it with what a learner already knows and highlight the words, meanings or idioms they may struggle with before they watch it.

The same principle could increasingly apply to other parts of everyday life. Rather than every learner following the same list of lessons, technology could help people concentrate on the language they are most likely to encounter at work, socially or through the culture they consume.

In a city as varied as London, where the English someone hears can change enormously depending on who they are speaking to and where they are, that kind of personalisation becomes particularly useful.

The technology itself is not the most important part. The aim is simply to help people spend less time learning English they already know and more time understanding the language that helps them participate confidently in the life happening around them.

The next step is not necessarily learning English from the beginning again. It is filling in those individual gaps, becoming more comfortable with nuance and gradually reaching the point where English feels less like something you are learning and more like something you simply use.

For London’s huge population of people who already speak English well, that distinction matters.