Don't Make English the Subject. Make It the Medium.
The moment you stop studying English and start using it to learn about something else is the moment everything changes.
There’s a sentence I wrote in a recent post that keeps coming back to me. It was almost a throwaway line. But the more I think about it, the more I believe it might be the single most important idea on this entire blog.
Don’t make English the subject. Make it the medium.
Six words that, if you really let them sink in, change everything about how you approach learning English.
Because most English learners have the relationship backwards. English is the thing they’re studying. The thing they’re working on. The task on the to-do list. The mountain they’re climbing. The subject they’re trying to pass.
And the content? The articles, the podcasts, the books, the shows? Those are just the vehicles. The means to an end. The exercises they tolerate in order to get better at the real goal, which is English.
Flip it.
Make the content the goal. Make the ideas the goal. Make the stories, the knowledge, the entertainment, the fascination the goal. And let English be the invisible vehicle that carries you there.
That flip changes everything. And this post is about why.
The Language Class Problem
Think about a traditional English class. What is the subject?
English.
Everything in that room is about English. The grammar explanation is about English. The vocabulary exercise is about English. The listening activity is about English. The conversation practice is about English. English is the thing being examined, dissected, studied, and tested.
The content, whatever it happens to be, is secondary. A dialogue about going to the airport. A reading passage about renewable energy. A listening exercise about someone’s weekend plans. These exist purely as vehicles for practising English. Nobody actually cares about the airport dialogue. Nobody is genuinely fascinated by what happened on the fictional person’s weekend. The content is filler. English is the point.
And this creates a subtle but devastating problem. When English is the subject, every interaction with it feels like study. Every article feels like an exercise. Every podcast feels like homework. The brain categorises the entire experience as “educational task” and assigns it exactly the level of enthusiasm it assigns to all educational tasks, which for most people is somewhere between mild obligation and quiet dread.
Now think about what happens when you flip it.
You’re fascinated by astrophysics. You find an incredible English podcast about black holes and dark matter. You listen to it on your morning walk, not because it’s good for your English but because you desperately want to know whether there’s a supermassive black hole at the centre of every galaxy. The host explains it beautifully. You’re riveted. You barely notice the English.
What is the subject?
Astrophysics. The black holes. The dark matter. The mystery of the universe.
What is the medium?
English. The invisible carrier of the ideas you’re actually interested in.
And here’s the magic. While you were thinking about black holes, your brain was processing English. Every word. Every sentence structure. Every pronunciation pattern. Every grammatical construction. All of it being absorbed, automatically, subconsciously, through the same input-processing system we’ve been discussing throughout this blog.
You didn’t study English. You studied astrophysics. And your English improved anyway.
Actually, scratch that. Your English improved more than it would have in a dedicated English study session. Because your brain was engaged, curious, emotionally invested, and running at full processing power. All because the subject was something you cared about and the English was just the language it happened to arrive in.
Why This Isn’t Just a Motivation Trick
You might think this is just about motivation. Find interesting content so you don’t get bored. Stay engaged so you keep showing up. A nice little hack to make the medicine go down easier.
It’s much more than that.
As we discussed in our post on why your brain tries harder when it cares, research by Matthias Gruber at UC Davis showed that when curiosity is high, the hippocampus becomes significantly more active and everything encountered during that state of curiosity gets encoded more deeply. Not just the thing you’re curious about. Everything. The vocabulary. The grammar. The pronunciation. All of it, encoded with greater depth and retained with greater durability, because the brain was in a state of genuine interest.
When English is the subject, curiosity is low. You’re curious about English the way you’re curious about doing the dishes. It needs to happen. You’ll get through it. But the hippocampus is not exactly lighting up with excitement.
When English is the medium for something you’re genuinely fascinated by, curiosity is high. The hippocampus fires. The encoding deepens. The acquisition accelerates. Not because you tried harder. Because your brain tried harder, automatically, without you having to do anything except be genuinely interested in the content.
This is not a motivation hack. This is a neurological reality. Interest changes the physical processing of language in your brain. And the way to maximise interest is to make the content, not the language, the thing you care about.
What English-as-Medium Actually Looks Like
Let me paint some pictures. Because the shift from English-as-subject to English-as-medium looks different for different people, and seeing specific examples might help you find your own version.
The football fan. English is not the subject. Football is the subject. You read match reports on English football websites. You listen to English football podcasts breaking down tactics. You watch English-language punditry after the games. You follow English football journalists on social media. You know the English words for “offside trap” and “false nine” and “gegenpressing” not because you studied them but because you needed them to follow the analysis. English is just the language your football obsession happens in.
The true crime addict. English is not the subject. Murder mysteries are the subject. You’re deep into an English true crime podcast, following a case across twelve episodes, genuinely trying to figure out who did it. You learn the words “suspect” and “alibi” and “forensic evidence” not from a vocabulary list but from a story you can’t stop listening to. English is just the language the detective speaks.
The aspiring chef. English is not the subject. Food is the subject. You watch English cooking shows on Lingopie. You read recipes in English on LingQ. You listen to English food podcasts about technique and ingredient sourcing and restaurant culture. You learn “sauté” and “reduce” and “season to taste” because you need these words to cook the dish you’re excited about. English is just the language the recipe is written in.
The psychology nerd. English is not the subject. The human mind is the subject. You read English articles about cognitive biases. You listen to English podcasts about behavioural economics. You watch TED talks about emotions and decision-making. You learn “cognitive dissonance” and “confirmation bias” and “intrinsic motivation” not because they were on a vocabulary list but because you needed them to understand the ideas that fascinate you. English is just the language the research is published in.
The gamer. English is not the subject. The game is the subject. You play in English. The dialogue is in English. The menus are in English. The online chat with other players is in English. You learn “inventory” and “quest” and “respawn” and a hundred other words because the game requires them. English is just the language the game runs in.
The fitness enthusiast. English is not the subject. Getting stronger is the subject. You watch English workout videos. You read English articles about training programmes and nutrition. You listen to English fitness podcasts. You learn “progressive overload” and “compound movement” and “caloric surplus” because you want to understand the science behind your training. English is just the language the knowledge comes in.
In every one of these examples, the person is acquiring English at a rate that would make a grammar student weep. And they’re barely thinking about English at all. Because English isn’t the point. The content is the point. English is just the air they’re breathing while they do the thing they actually love.
The Identity Shift
Something happens when you stop studying English and start living through English that goes beyond just improved acquisition.
Your identity changes.
When English is the subject, you are an English student. Someone who studies. Someone who has a level. Someone who makes mistakes and is working to fix them. Someone who is not yet good enough but is trying. The identity is built around deficiency. You are defined by what you can’t yet do.
When English is the medium, you are a football fan. A cook. A psychology enthusiast. A gamer. A person with interests and passions who happens to pursue them in English. The identity is built around your interests, not your language level. You are defined by what you love, not by what you lack.
This shift matters more than it might seem. Because the identity of “English student” comes with a built-in ceiling. Students are, by definition, not yet there. Not yet competent. Not yet finished. The identity keeps you in a permanent state of arriving.
The identity of “person who does interesting things in English” has no ceiling. You’re already doing the thing. You’re already reading the articles, listening to the podcasts, watching the shows, having the conversations. You’re not preparing to use English someday. You’re using it now. Today. On things that matter to you.
And that identity, the identity of someone who already lives partially in English, is far more powerful for acquisition than the identity of someone who is still studying it.
Your Native Language Works This Way Already
Here’s something that might make this click.
In your native language, you never think about the language as the subject. When you read a news article in your native language, the subject is the news, not the language. When you watch a documentary, the subject is whatever the documentary is about, not the language it’s in. When you have a conversation with a friend, the subject is whatever you’re talking about, not the language you’re using to talk about it.
Your native language is always the medium. Always invisible. Always the carrier of something else. The language itself disappeared from your consciousness years ago. It became transparent. You look through it, not at it.
That is what fluency feels like. Not thinking about the language. Thinking through the language. The language becoming so automatic, so transparent, so natural that it is no longer an object of attention but a tool of thought.
And the fastest way to get there in English is to start treating English that way now. Before you’re fluent. Before the language feels transparent. Start using it as a medium for content you genuinely care about, and the transparency will develop as a natural consequence of the engagement.
You don’t become fluent and then start using English as a medium. You start using English as a medium and that is how you become fluent.
The Practical Shift
Here’s what changing from English-as-subject to English-as-medium looks like in your daily practice.
Stop looking for English learning content. Stop searching YouTube for “learn English” or “English vocabulary” or “English grammar lesson.” Unless you find those genuinely fascinating, which some people do, they are putting English in the subject position. Instead, search for the things that interest you. In English.
Follow your genuine curiosity. Whatever you would read or listen to in your native language, find the English equivalent. Business news? Read it in English. Science podcasts? Listen in English. Cooking shows? Watch in English on Lingopie. History books? Read them on LingQ. Your interests are your curriculum.
Stop thinking of your English sessions as study. You’re not studying English when you listen to a fascinating podcast. You’re listening to a fascinating podcast. You’re not practising English when you watch a gripping drama. You’re watching a gripping drama. The reframing is not just semantic. It changes how your brain categorises the activity, which changes how it processes the input.
Let the content choose your vocabulary. Stop worrying about whether you’re learning the “right” words. The words you encounter through content you love are, by definition, the right words. They are the words that belong to the topics you care about, the conversations you want to have, the ideas you want to express. The content knows which words you need better than any vocabulary list ever could.
Have conversations about things, not about English. When you have a conversation session with a speaking partner, talk about your interests. Debate a topic you care about. Tell a story that matters to you. Discuss an article you read or a podcast you listened to. Make the conversation about the content, and let the English practice happen invisibly within it. If you’d like to have exactly this kind of conversation with me, book a trial lesson here.
But I’m a Beginner. I Can’t Engage With Real Content Yet.
Fair point.
At the very beginning, when your English is close to zero, you might not have enough vocabulary to engage with real content in English. A football podcast in English is incomprehensible if you only know fifty words. A cooking show is meaningless if you can’t understand any of the instructions.
At this stage, there is a necessary period where English is, to some extent, the subject. You need the basic building blocks before you can use the language as a medium. Beginner courses on LingQ, comprehensible input YouTube channels like the ones we discussed in our Natural Approach post, children’s content: these are all appropriate for the earliest stages.
But even at the beginner level, the principle still applies in a softer way. Choose beginner content that is about something, not just about English. A beginner story about a man who wants a pizza is more engaging than a grammar explanation about articles. A comprehensible input video about daily routines is more engaging than a verb conjugation drill. Even in the learning-content stage, lean toward content where English is being used to communicate something rather than content where English is being analysed as an object.
And as soon as you can, make the jump. As soon as your vocabulary is large enough to follow real content with some support, whether that’s around 1,500 to 2,000 words, start engaging with content you’d choose regardless of language. Make the shift from English-as-subject to English-as-medium. And never look back.
The Beautiful Paradox
Here is the paradox at the heart of this entire idea, and it’s a beautiful one.
The less you think about English, the faster you learn it.
When English is the subject, you’re thinking about English constantly. Monitoring your grammar. Worrying about your vocabulary. Analysing your pronunciation. All of this conscious attention to the language is, as we’ve discussed throughout this blog, actually interfering with the subconscious acquisition process that produces real fluency.
When English is the medium, you’re not thinking about English at all. You’re thinking about black holes. Or football. Or cooking. Or psychology. Or whatever genuinely fascinates you. And in that state of not thinking about English, your brain’s pattern recognition system is free to do its work without interference. The acquisition happens faster because nothing is getting in the way.
The learner who is obsessively studying English is like a gardener who keeps digging up the seeds to check if they’re growing. The learner who is engaging with fascinating content through English is like a gardener who plants the seeds, waters the soil, and then goes about their life, trusting the growth to happen on its own.
The seeds grow faster when you stop watching them.
A Personal Confession
I want to share something about my own language learning, because it illustrates this principle perfectly.
When my Spanish was improving fastest, I wasn’t thinking about Spanish at all. I was reading about history. I was listening to podcasts about psychology. I was watching documentaries about food culture. I was having conversations about ideas that fascinated me.
Spanish was the medium. Never the subject.
The grammar improved without grammar study. The vocabulary grew without vocabulary lists. The pronunciation refined without pronunciation drills. Everything improved as a side effect of engaging with things I genuinely cared about, in a language that happened to be Spanish.
The moment I started thinking about Spanish as a thing to study, as a subject to improve at, the progress slowed. The monitoring kicked in. The enjoyment faded. The magic disappeared.
I had to keep reminding myself: stop studying Spanish. Start living in Spanish. The studying was the problem, not the solution.
The same is true for your English. Stop studying it. Start living in it. Find the things that make you come alive, and do them in English. The fluency will follow. Not because you earned it through study. Because you absorbed it through living.
English is Not the Destination. English is the Road.
This is the reframe I want to leave you with.
English is not the thing you’re trying to get to. English is the thing you travel on to get to everything else. The knowledge. The entertainment. The connections. The ideas. The experiences. The expanded reality we talked about in our post on how language creates reality.
When you stop seeing English as the destination and start seeing it as the road, everything changes. The road is not the point. The places it takes you are the point. And the more places you go, the more familiar the road becomes, until eventually you stop noticing the road at all.
That’s fluency. Not mastering the road. Forgetting the road exists because you’re too busy enjoying where it’s taking you.
Find what you love. Do it in English. And let the road become invisible beneath your feet.
For making English the medium rather than the subject, by reading and listening to content about the things that actually fascinate you with vocabulary tracking that works invisibly in the background, LingQ is the tool I recommend above all others: lingq.com
For learning about the world through English rather than learning English through exercises, with real TV shows and films that happen to be in English and happen to be building your fluency while you watch, Lingopie turns entertainment into acquisition.
For training your mouth on real English sentences about real things through structured repetition in private, Glossika makes production practice feel like a workout rather than a lesson. Available in both British and American English.
If you want compelling, story-driven English listening at just the right level, Olly Richards’ Conversations course is well worth exploring.
If you’re looking for a conversation partner who talks about things that actually interest you rather than working through a textbook, iTalki is where I’d start. And if you’d like to work with me specifically, book a trial lesson here.
✍🏼 Richard
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