How To Become More Fluent In English

Wouldn’t it be great if there was something we could listen to whilst we sleep that would train our brains to retain another language, so that when we wake up in the morning, we find we can magically speak fluently? How amazing would that be?!

Unfortunately, we have to put in the work before we can see the results. Don’t look for the quick fix. I know lots of programs out there claim that you can learn a language rapidly, but we need a little bit of realism - things are not usually that easy.  Have faith in your abilities and be confident, but don’t look for an overnight success! 

Having said that, there are ways to help speed things up and we can look at some now. 

• Don’t try too hard to understand the English language - Don’t look for too many rules and patterns. If you continue to question and ask why, you’ll get very frustrated! A lot of times, there is no rhyme or reason - English is very irregular with a lot of exceptions. Save your energy and effort for better things! Work at memorizing phrasal verbs and idiomatic expressions.

• Work at your English learning on a daily basis -  Set up a routine and stick to it - whether you feel like it or not! When you do something on a regular basis, at the same time each day, you make it a part of your daily routine and after a while, you don’ even have to think about it. You will automatically get out your notes and start learning. As short amount of time daily is better than a long session once a week. Science says that a  15 minute session is ideal daily because the longer the gap between study sessions, the brain has to work harder to try and recall what was learned and your memory may fail you. Also, doing a quick revision of what you looked at the day before will help strengthen the memory in her head.

• Scare yourself! If you are feeling nervous about practicing speaking or trying out new vocabulary, then you are moving outside your zone of comfort - which is good when you’re trying to get better at something! Be brave and throw yourself into scary things in English!

• Make mistakes - Remember, if you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t really learning. If you don’t stretch yourself then you won’t learn. Don’t stick with things you know how to say or do - find something you don’t know and jump in!

• Visualise yourself as an English speaker - Don’t say  ‘I’m trying to learn English’ - say ‘I’m an English speaker’. See yourself how you want to be seen. If your aim is to be fluent in English, imagine yourself chatting away to native speakers at a party. Imagine them laughing at a funny story you tell. Visualise yourself asking intelligent and grammatically correct questions. Feel yourself confidently moving about, fluidly speaking English to everyone. Then get to work practicing! Make it happen….

• Start dreaming in English - I was told by a teacher that you know you are on your way to fluency in a language when you find yourself dreaming in the language you are learning (or daydreaming - that works too!) Thinking in English should be your aim. If you find yourself writing a shopping list or a note to yourself in English - that’s great. If that hasn’t happened to you yet, start doing it now! If you start doing routine things you normally do, but in English, then you will be fluent in no time! 

• No translating allowed -  If you need to find out the meaning of a word, then look it up in an advanced learner’s dictionary and look at the definition in English. Your knowledge of vocabulary will improve immensely and it will train your brain to understand a word using other English words, rather than your native language. Sometimes if you are pressed for time, then a quick translation may be a good idea. But I personally think that you should try not to rely on it too much. 

• Use it immediately - When I met new students, I sometimes struggled to remember their names, especially if there were 20 new faces! So, I tried to use their name immediately whilst looking at their face. Something happens in the brain when you use the information straight away. This is what you need to do when you learn something new - try and fit the new word into a sentence, and try to connect it to another piece of previously learned information. 

• Think of learning English like a jigsaw puzzle  -  You need to pay attention to the piece of jigsaw in your hand and work out where it fits into the bigger picture.  For this reason, it’s not so helpful to learn individual words. You need to see how the words connects - you need a sentence or phrase so that people can understand you. It’s not so helpful learning individual words (unless they string together) as you can’t just stand in front of someone and say all the separate words you have learnt! You need to have something to say - learn the whole phrase so that you can communicate!

• Don’t hide behind a book -  It’s great to be accurate and to know what you’re talking about, but you have to make sure you just do that. You need to get out and about and talk to people. Even if the other person doesn’t understand English, it doesn’t really matter! You just want to get used to chatting and communicating. Maybe the other person will be grateful to you for helping them to learn too!

• Teach what you have learnt -  If you want to check that you have indeed learnt and understood what you are studying, then you might want to try and teach this to someone else. It is a true test of your understanding. If you can successfully teach what you have learned to someone else, you are doing really well - start small, and work your way up! 

• Practice reading aloud your favourite books - If you are uncertain of how to pronounce the words, then you could listen to an audio version of the book and read along out loud at the same time, following the words by looking at an ebook or paper book. Then afterwards you could record yourself speaking and see how you compare to the original recording. 

• Teach yourself to speak - As a mum, I used to talk to my children all the time, telling them what we were doing whilst we were doing - possibly not so interesting for any adults who were listening nearby, but it helped my children to put words to the actions we were doing. For example - ‘So now we’re going to put on our boots and get our coats on. It’s cold outside and we need to wrap up warm’. This helped the children hear new words and phrases, and it meant that when they were ready to say the same, they knew how to say it. You can do the same - when you are doing things at home, you can narrate your day! Tell yourself what you are doing. I recommend not doing this outside the house, unless you wan to get some funny looks from passers by!

• Give yourself some credit - celebrate your wins and the things you have mastered. Give yourself a pat on the back for your hard work and your effort. Give yourself some encouragement to continue learning.

• You have two ears and one mouth - this means that you should try and listen more than you talk. Listening is more important than speaking when you are learning. Listen for the pronunciation and listen again, and only then should you try to say it yourself. You’ll learn much faster!

• Who do you want to talk to? Find a model speaker to follow - listen to podcasts that talk about things you are interested in.  If you are learning so you can use your English for business, find someone who talks about business. If you want to learn more social English, then look for someone who maybe talks about what’s happening on the social scene. If you want to use your English to study for a particular university course, then listen to someone who discusses the topics you might need to look at during your studies. Nowadays, there’s something for everyone.

• Get some square eyes! In England, parents always used to tell their children that if they watched too much television, they would get square eyes - to match the shape of the TV! Watching soap operas that are filmed in the UK is a good way to learn about culture and colloquial sayings. They can give an insight into daily life in the UK - even if sometimes the plot or story line is a bit exaggerated!   

• Repeat….I said repeat….The more times you repeat something, the more times your brain brings up the information and the stronger your memory becomes, and therefore the more fluent you will become. Your friends might get a bit fed up with you though if you go round repeating the same word over and over…..use your discretion!

•  Shadow speaking  - find a short clip of video of a native speaker talking. First, just watch so you know what’s going on. Then listen to the dialogue and pay attention to the way the words are used, intonation and speed. The next time, notice the actual words used. Finally, try and speak along with the dialogue, saying the words either at the same time or just after. Practice and try and get as close to the original as you can. You can also record your voice to listen to later and see how close you were the original.

•  Get to work - Find a job where you have the opportunity to speak in English - This is a great way of improving your fluency. When you have to communicate and have no other choice, it forces your brain to come up with the answers, which can help you to think under pressure in English.

And what does it mean to be fluent anyway? Is an intermediate learner who feels comfortable chatting about themselves and their family and interests fluent? Or do you think someone who is fluent will be an advanced or proficiency level learner, who hardly ever makes mistakes?

I think that if you are fluent, you can talk without too much hesitation, and you can most certainly make mistakes - someone who is fluent doesn’t have to be perfect. I think someone who is fluent can circumnavigate their mistakes and work around them. If they can’t remember the exact word in English, they will either use another similar word or explain their way out of the problem. Fluent means movement - not staying motionless, and this is exactly what an English speaker has to do - keep on moving freely within the language. 

So relax….and go with the flow!

Anna - World Language Explorers