How to Be Fluent When Speaking English

The main goal of every English learner is to learn to speak English, but not only speak or know how to pronounce some words or to understand native speakers, what every learner want, is to express ourselves in English, speak fluently and sound natural. For most of the learners this could be a big challenge and this is because the old and traditional methods that schools generally use don't work.

Learning a language must be something that our brains do naturally, we actually shouldn't be conscious of it. Let's imagine that you are in a school to learn how to speak English, you're quietly seated paying attention to what the teacher says, you're even taking some notes on your notebook, and so the teacher starts talking about the “verb to be”.

And here it goes, he says that there are different tenses, so if you need to say something about the present you should say “I am” or the past “I was” or the future “I will be”, and then you think “nice, now I learned something really important in English”, and then the teacher keeps talking about verbs, he says that when you say something that you’ve been doing it progressively you should add “ing” to the end of the verb, and then you think “OK, I need to remember that”, and then the teacher says that every time you want to say something in this way, you need to apply the formula: I + am, was or will be (depending on the tense)+ the verb (and “ing” if it’s something progressive), again the teacher says: “OK guys let’s now turn to the page 28 which discusses the regular and irregular verbs”. 

Now he explains that there are many ways to conjugate the verbs and it depends on what tense you're talking on, so the teacher comes up and says: “all right I want you to memorize the list of irregular verbs that are in pages 30 and 31, that' all for today”. School is over and then you go home, and in the way home you find a foreigner, he comes up to you with a confused expression and he tells you:”Excuse me, do you speak English?” you proudly say “yes, of course” and he keeps on saying “can you tell me where the airport is?”- You think:  “This is it! It’s time for me to apply what I just learned at school” and you start talking, but then you figure out that you're stuck trying to remember the verbs, the right tenses and so many “formulas” you need to use to speak rightly, and then you say: “uhhh…..yes….uhhh.....the airport is …. Uhhh….there….” How frustrating! You studied for hours, but you cannot even give a direction.

Now let’s picture the next scene, you’re watching a nice movie in English at home, it’s a really good movie, you’re enjoying it, actually you’ve seen this movie so many times that you already know many of the words and sentences of the movie. So let’s say that one of the characters of the movie asks someone for directions and because you’ve heard this movie many times, you already know what the directions are going to be, so as the character says the directions you repeat what he says, just like children do when they watch a TV show or a movie they really enjoy, and the directions are: “keep walking two blocks ahead and then turn to the right”.

Some days later you’re walking on the street and a confused foreigner comes up to you and say: “Excuse me, can you tell me where the airport is?” you understand the question thanks to the many times you saw that movie you like so much, you're familiar with this kind of words, so your brain is going to know how to answer to the foreigner's question, you are not stressed, you're not thinking about where this word goes or what tense you should use, you just answer the question just as the answer in the movie was, what you say just comes out from your mouth fluently, you say “keep walking two blocks ahead and then turn to the right”.

The Key for Fluent English

What was the mistake of the first story? It clearly was thinking about grammar, when you think about what the right word is for a sentence or the right tense you should use, your brain gets stuck and then you start thinking, just like if you were trying to divide numbers or trying to make a math multiplication. Well, English is a language, is not like mathematics that you need to memorize formulas or something like that.

On the second story the key for being fluent was on listening many times to the fun movie you watched, you did this several times, until you became really familiar with everything the characters of the movie said, you were so familiar that you could even say some sentences of the movie, just like the direction you gave to the foreigner. So the secret for being fluent when speaking English is, again, listening, and also repetition, try not to memorize single words, here are some tips for being a fluent speaker:

Listen to English many times
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Listen to interesting and fun things

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When you feel comfortable repeat sentences of what you hear

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Try to focus on sentences

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Do not think about grammar rules

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When speaking, think about the idea you want to express, not the words or grammar rules

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Relax and enjoy your learning

Children don't learn to speak immediately; they need time to develop their speaking skills and this is all the same for us. we need to be patience and constant with our English learning, it takes time to become a fluent English speaker, but if you really want to learn to speak, this is the most powerful method, and I assure you, you'll end up speaking fluently if you apply my advice.

Also, I want to recommend Effortless English, which is a really nice web site, it has a really nice and powerful material to learn English, and again I'll leave a fun video I found on the internet in English so you can watch, enjoy, listen to English and learn to speak.

REMEMBER: Becoming fluent in English takes time, be patient and enjoy your English learning.