Becoming more fluent (TIPS)

But when it comes to speaking English, they struggle. They have more of a difficult time. So on today's episode, I'm going to share some advice that I have been giving my students. So let's jump in. You are listening to the eighteenth episode of English with Dane. Hid it to before I get into the tips on how to become more fluent, I wanted to announce the new episode schedule.

As of now, I'm going to release three episodes a week instead of two on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and episodes will now be somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes. They will feature more practical English than before, but I will still talk about TV shows, news, and share my thoughts in general. I think this format will make each episode more digestible, and it will become easier to remember any vocabulary or sentence structures that you want to remember.

So I'm going to try that for a while and see how we do. Okay, now let's talk about speaking English. Like I mentioned in the introduction, reading and writing seem to be less of an issue for my students most of the time. But when it comes to speaking, they struggle. Don't get me wrong, they also have struggles or difficulties in terms of writing and reading, but they definitely feel that their level of spoken English doesn't reflect or represent their level in general.

This might be something that happens to you too. You have good vocabulary, but when you are speaking, it feels like you need more. You know what you want to say, but then you take a long time to say it because your brain is translating it from your native language to English. As a consequence, you speak slowly and then you get self-conscious or insecure because you think you speak too slowly. Well, these are some of the things I want to address on today's episode.

I want to share some of my thoughts about this problem and give you some tools to hopefully become more fluent. I see a lot of blog posts about how to become fluent in English, and I've seen some good advice in general. They usually say things like, watch TV shows, go to a language exchange, and things like that, which you should do. But I think there are a few other things that aren't spoken about as much. Let me give you some context.

Last episode we talked a little bit about learning how to learn, and I think this relates to that. We spoke about how learning efficiently is the best approach, how to maximize your effort by working smarter, right? Well, I recently had a two-hour English class with a friend of mine. He is preparing to pass the IELTS exam to go and study music in Scotland, but he is nervous about the speaking part or portion of the exam. So we have been having English classes on Skype.

And during our first class, we identified one of his biggest problems when speaking English. We realized that although he can hold a conversation quite well, he often gets stuck starting sentences. I noticed after about ten minutes of speaking to him that he could understand English perfectly, and he had no problem understanding some of the more subtle details, the less obvious language. He understood the jokes I was making, and he understood the idioms and expressions.

He is someone who consumes a lot of media in English, so I knew to expect something like this. But when he started a sentence, he would stop and look off or look away into the distance, trying to think of the best way to say what he wanted to say. Then he would start a sentence and quit. Start another one and quit. As if the destination of the sentence would be too difficult to reach. And I know this sounds a bit obvious, and you may be thinking, well, of course he's going to do that.

What do you expect him to do? But that's not really the angle here. So what my friend does is what most intermediate speakers do when they speak a foreign language. They translate. But think about how difficult that is. You are forming a sentence in your mind, in your native language, a language which you know perfectly, inside out. All of your ideas, concepts, stories, etc., have happened in this linguistic context. So you could say that your brain has been molded by this language.

And now you have to translate what you say word for word to English. A language in which ideas and concepts are not necessarily expressed in the same way, and sentences are not constructed in the same way. A language with different grammatical rules that prevent you or make it difficult for you to replicate the sentence you want to say. So a difficult task. People train for years to become interpreters. Have you seen those people that do simultaneous translation?

In real time, they are hearing something in one language and processing it to another language while retaining the original meaning. It's an incredible thing. And like most incredible things, it's very difficult to achieve. So, some advice. Instead of translating word for word, try paying closer attention to how native speakers express their ideas in terms of sentence structure and intonation. Think, how do they talk about certain ideas? What words are they using to introduce what they say?

When do they pause? It will vary with different people, of course, but if you begin to pay closer attention, you'll find a lot of common ground. Then write some down and be specific. Write down some starting points that appear frequently. Write down some common transitions between sentences. Write down different ways of asking questions, etc. I know it sounds a bit basic, but you would be surprised how much easier speaking English becomes when you have several starting points for your sentences.

It's like having a template that you can just fill in. Alright, more advice on becoming more fluent. Speak slowly and don't be ashamed of it. I feel like there is a stigma about speaking slowly, but speaking slowly helps with several things. Firstly, speaking slowly means you minimize the amount of mistakes you can make. It gives you more time to put together or assemble your sentence without having to rush through it.

Sometimes the pressure of wanting to sound more native than we are or wanting to sound more fluent than we are sometimes leads to making more silly mistakes, which in turn make us sound less fluent, if that makes sense. I think someone who speaks a foreign language slowly but correctly has a better understanding than someone who speaks faster but makes easy mistakes. The content of your sentence must be the priority, not the speed.

People are more patient than you think, and most of my students believe they are speaking slower than they actually are. Listen to some of the people that you consider to be highly intelligent. How do they speak? You'll find that in general, they don't rush through their sentences, and it's because they don't have to. They choose their words well and produce efficient sentences. This means they need fewer words to express meaning.

That said, being specific does require a strong vocabulary, so it's crucial to develop one. Which leads me to my last piece of advice. When it comes to vocabulary, it's easy to get overwhelmed. When you are learning another language, there will always be a word you don't know, a word that you have never seen before. It's easy to get discouraged. But again, working smarter is better than working harder.

I read this BBC article that says that according to some linguists, knowing 800 to 1,000 words in a second language will allow you to understand 75% of day-to-day use. So go and find the most common verbs, the most common phrasal verbs, adjectives, etc., and get good at those. Think about your profession or interests and look for the most frequently used words. A vast majority of my students have never done this, and I think it's a really good way to make learning more efficient.

So, a quick review of today's advice on how to become more fluent. One, try not translating word for word. Instead, pay closer attention to different starting points to express ideas and different available sentence structures. Write them down and start using them. 2. Learn how to speak slowly and choose your words. Don't rush because you think you're speaking too slow. Efficient word choice is faster than saying more words.

And three, when you are learning vocabulary, find the most frequently used words and practice incorporating them into your daily use. Once you have those under control, make your list longer and get more specific. Again, efficient word choice. Okay, that's the show for today. I hope you found it useful. If you have personal tips that work for you, don't hesitate to write me at Englishwith Dane on Instagram and Twitter.

Subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iVox, etc., to be notified when a new episode is out. And if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, remember the best way to support the show is to give it a five-star rating and leave a review. Okay, talk to you next time. Bye bye.