You may have watched videos of multilingual people speaking different languages. They seem to talk impeccably whether alone in front of a camera or with someone else. Some even claim themselves as polyglots, a term often used to call people who know and use several languages.
These polyglots' performance may impress you very much. They may be an inspiration for you or just entertainment to refresh yourself after a long day at work. General audiences often don't question the fluency standard being used by those polyglots because of the lack of information or knowledge about fluency standardization.
There is a fluency standardization called CEFR. It is often used for academic purposes, such as proficiency exams. Not all of these polyglots have taken exams that use CEFR standards, or they may not even take proficiency exams and claim to be polyglots.
Everything for the sake of view count
A popular saying "Fake it until you make it" plays its role here. These polyglots know that the general audiences don't have sufficient knowledge about linguistics or language learning. It is logical to think that if someone cannot even learn a second language well, how can that person have such knowledge? These people would always say "I will learn that language after learning this language" or "I want to know that language but I don't have time".
In the era where we can earn income by making videos, view count is the key to everything. Thus, these polyglots who mostly play as actors and video editors know tricks to get the attention of the general audiences who don't have a linguistics background and don't have sufficient knowledge and experience about language learning. It is surprisingly similar to how self-claimed successful sellers or investors motivate the public to invest their money in their affiliated platform in return for big profit and financial freedom.
Behind the scenes
General audiences rarely question the authenticity of a polyglot's video. On the contrary, they would share their misery in learning languages and ask for advice as if these polyglots were divine beings. You can appear in a video speaking whatever number of languages you want. Here are some tricks you can do to make yourself look fluent in the video:
Script preparation
You have to choose the topics you are already familiar with. As an example, your job or learning experience. Everything about yourself is considered the easiest because you know yourself better than anyone else.
You must prepare the sentences just like preparing a bedtime story. You may make yourself the main actor and tell the story based on facts or imagination. You must simplify your sentences because you will do it in a foreign language, the simpler the better. The goal is to make your audiences understand and follow your story. It doesn't matter if you talk like a 5-year-old kid because you will speak a language you are still learning or improving.
You can see in many videos that these polyglots always talk about their experience and reason for learning a language. This happens in both monolog and dialog videos. These polyglots even tend to dominate the conversation in a dialog video. They even direct the conversation to the topics they understand more.
Video editing
You can edit the videos by yourself or hire someone to do it. Audiences don't like watching videos full of mistakes, filler words, or pauses. You can remove the parts where you make mistakes, be it vocabulary or grammatical mistakes. I know it will take much time, probably much more time than your script preparation. The goal is to make you appear in the video speaking as fluently as possible.
Conclusion
I know people who speak flawlessly in several languages in their videos but the reality shows me the opposite. My best advice is to continue improving your language skills so that your audiences won't be disappointed when they meet you in person because they already have high expectations of you.
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