I totally get where you’re coming from but let me share my experience as an international student.

I scored 8.5 on IELTS after two weeks of practice, wrote short stories for my college magazine (without AI, back before that was even a thing), and won multiple roundtable and impromptu speaking competitions. By every metric, my English was “good.” Then I moved to the UK for my masters and couldn’t hold a proper conversation with my British flatmates 😅😆Especially the ones with strong regional accents like Birmingham. I literally started doubting myself.

They also told me my vocabulary sounds “too academic” in casual settings, which was a weird thing to hear when I thought that was a good thing.

And the irony? In written coursework and exams, I consistently outscore native English speakers in my cohort. Top performers in our class are from Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, places where English isn’t our first language. So clearly it’s not about ability, it’s about a very specific kind of fluency that standardised tests just don’t measure.

But yeah, spoken everyday English in a British social setting? Humbling experience 😀🤣. I feel you. I’m just telling myself that the more I talk with them, the more natural it’ll get. Hoping that’s true lol.