How to improve your fluency?
A practical guide:
First of all, let me tell you this. Improving fluency is easier than you think.
If you imagine achieving fluency as climbing a 100-foot mountain, it is actually a 50-foot mountain. When you think about achieving a goal which is unfamiliar to you, your mind magnifies the difficulty and makes you think that it is more difficult than it is.
You will be able to achieve good fluency using some practices which I have described in detail below. There are several other tips and tricks, but I will only share the practical ones that are super easy to implement.
I want to start by defining fluency. So, what exactly is fluency?
Imagine a person talking like this. “AAaah… My name is John. Ummmm, I am calling to ask if your aaah company is currently hiring for new positions or not.”
The gaps like Aaaah, Ummmm, aaaah are called fillers. They are not exactly bad things, but if a person uses too many fillers, that means he is not fluent enough.
By definition, fluency means a person’s ability to speak a language easily, correctly and quickly.
In fact, I guarantee you that if implement just 1, 2 and 3 from the list below, you will see a visible improvement in your fluency. Let’s start.
1. The best speaking partner.
We all know this. If you want to become fluent, the ultimate solution is practice. It is the universal truth. But I am not going to just say, “Ok, go practise every day”.
I will tell you exactly how to make it possible.
Many people suggest that we need to find a speaking partner, and then practise with them. A big NO! I will not suggest that, because I know it will not work, and let me explain why.
First of all, you have to find a speaking partner who is just as motivated as you are. If you are enthusiastic about improving your fluency and your partner doesn’t care much?
Second, they have to be at a level where you both can speak to each other and benefit from each other. If both partners are at different levels, the practice will turn into a teaching session and frustration will build up quickly.
Third, you both have to be free at the exact same time, and you need several hours of timeslots that perfectly match each other’s free time.
And finally, even if these 3 things somehow luckily happen, you will feel shy speaking to them and you cannot open up fully, because you are not fluent yet. And, because you are not speaking freely, you will not become fluent.
I am very sorry if I came across a bit negative there. I really don’t mean to be negative. I want to tell you that there is a better way.
Your best speaking partner is Yourself. Please don’t jump to a conclusion just yet, in about 5 mins, you will fully understand the magic that I am talking about.
Step 1: Create alone time for yourself.
It’s very simple. You need to create a 30-minute window of alone time in your day.
These are some options:
1. If you have to at least 30 mins commute in your everyday routine and you travel by motorbike, car or walk. (Public transport doesn’t work, obviously), that is your window.
2. Can you be alone in a room and lock the door? If yes, that is your window.
3. Can you take a 30min walk 2-3 times a week? If yes, that is your window.
Choose whatever works for you. If Options 1 and 2 are not possible, then option 3 is something that anyone can do.
Step 2: In this window, imagine there is a person inside you and talk to him/her.
He/She says, “Hey buddy, how was your day?”
You: “It was a busy day for me.”
Continue this conversation as if 2 people are talking to each other. You can talk about absolutely anything. You can say that you saw a girl/boy today and you really liked him/her.
Start with a casual conversation like this, and slowly start talking about a specific topic.
He/She: “Ok buddy, I want to ask you something, if I gave you a million dollars,
what would you do with the money?”
You: “Hmmm, I don’t know, maybe I will buy a big house first and then….”
He/She: “What is your favourite movie and why?
You: ” I really love Avatar, because….”
So basically, talk to yourself, and play both roles. Ask a question as if you are asking another person, and then answer the question, as if your friend has asked you.
Here are some casual topics to keep the conversation going:
1. Tell me about your first love.
2. Tell me about your crush.
3. What do you want to change about yourself?
4. What do you like about yourself?
True Story: Here’s how I developed my fluency in 2 months:
In 2015 I was working for Microsoft, and I used to have a 1.5-hour commute from my home. This was my daily routine, I would start my bike, wear the helmet and start talking to myself until I reach home. That gave me a full 90 mins of practice. In 2 weeks I saw a visible difference in my speaking.
These are some brilliant benefits to this method:
1. You can talk about absolutely anything you want, with no restrictions.
2. When you like how you formed a sentence, you can repeat it 10 times so that it gets nicely saved in your brain.
3. If you make a mistake, you go back and correct it any number of times.
4. There is no scope for shyness, so you can fully open up.
Can you do any of these with a speaking partner?
No, you cannot.
Your partner will not wait patiently while you pause and repeat a good sentence several times so that it gets saved in your mind.
And, you cannot fully open up in front of a speaking partner. If you don’t fully open up, how will you learn buddy?
It’s like tying up your legs and asking you to practise running.
The specialty of this method is that it is 100% in your control.
My dear friend, please give this a try. I guarantee you will see improvement in your fluency.
2. Listen to a lot of good English.
Listening, is by far, your most important tool in learning English. Please allow me to explain, how much you can learn by just “listening”.
Kids speak full meaningful sentences when they are just 3 years old. Did they learn grammar? They did only one thing, they listened to other people talk.
They did not even try to remember or practise. The human mind will do that for free.
Imagine this. Let’s say you got a job at a place where the radio is always on and it is tuned to only 1 channel which is an English news channel.
You cannot turn it off, you have to do your work while you listen to the news on the radio. After a couple of days, you really liked it and started listening to it with a lot of interest.
What do you think will happen after a few months?
Your fluency will undoubtedly improve even if you don’t do anything other than just listen to it.
What if you listen to the radio news with the goal of improving your English? Your fluency will improve even more.
Many people underestimate the power of listening. When you listen to good quality English frequently, your mind will automatically try to pick up those words, sentences, and pronunciations and imitate them. All you have to do is listen with a calm mind, that’s all.
Another important point to note here is, DON’T force yourself to listen to something that you don’t enjoy.
Don’t force yourself to listen to the news if you hate it. If you do that, your mind will find new ways to avoid listening. After a few days of forceful listening, your mind will come up with a strong reason to stop listening. That is why it is very important to choose your listening content carefully. Just ask yourself. Do I like it? Or am I forcing myself?
There are several options you can choose from, here are some ideas to help you.
Do you like movies and TV shows?
Watch movies and TV shows with subtitles.
Watch interviews of movie actors.
Listen to podcast interviews of movie actors and directors.
Whatever your favourite topic is, just google “What is the best book about ______”? And start listening to the audiobook.
To benefit even more from listening, do this.
When you hear a great sentence. Pause it and say it out loud a couple of times, feel the rhythm and sound of that sentence. If there is a chance, next time use it in your own conversation.
For example, let’s say you heard, “Oh, I couldn’t thank you enough.” This is a beautiful alternative to the regular way of thanking someone. So, say it out loud a couple of times, “I couldn’t thank you enough, I couldn’t thank you enough.”
And next time, say that to a friend.
You may not realize this, but the ability to listen is no less than a superpower in my opinion. Just listen to good English as much as you can and you will see a visible improvement in your fluency.
3. Tongue Twisters.
First of all, What is a tongue twister?
A tongue twister is a set of words that are difficult to say quickly and correctly.
For example, She sells sea shells. – Can you say this quickly and correctly? Probably not.
What is the benefit of practicing tongue twisters?
Tongue twisters are exercises for your mouth, they strengthen the muscles that we use for speaking. They also improve your pronunciation a lot.
Saying tongue twisters out loud will improve the clarity of your pronunciation. Tongue twisters will also force you to speak out words that are generally very slippery.
For example, You can say “She sells” perfectly, and you can also say “Sea shells” perfectly, but when you say them together, your pronunciation gets a very good exercise. You know what happens when a muscle gets exercise right?
Follow this simple process to add Tongue Twisters to your practice.
Step 1: Choose your tongue twisters.
No need to search the internet, I already did that for you. Below is the list of some very good tongue twisters. Choose any 5 of them.
1. I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.
2. You know New York, you need New York, you know you need unique New York.
3. If a dog chews shoes, whose shoes does he choose?
4. He threw three free throws.
5. Red lorry, yellow lorry
6. Stupid superstition.
7. Which wristwatches are Swiss wristwatches?
8. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
9. Betty Botter bought some butter, But she said the butter’s bitter.
10. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Step 2: Save them.
Put these 5 tongue twisters in a place where you can refer them every day, easily. You can write them down in a notebook, save them to a document or save them on your desktop, or even better, just bookmark this page.
Step 3: Practise them out loud.
Say each tongue twister out loud 2-3 times every day. Total practice will take 5-10 mins, but the results will be great. If you are unable to complete one full tongue twister without mistakes, that means you need to slow down.
4. Record your voice.
If you know you are pronouncing a word wrong, you will correct it. But what if you are saying it wrong, but you are thinking that you are saying it correctly?
That is where recording helps a lot.
I know listening to your own voice in a recording can be awkward and difficult, but it comes with some great benefits.
Basically, by using this method, you are taking an opportunity to look at yourself from another person’s angle. And, the feedback that comes from this process is extremely helpful.
When I first recorded my voice, I noticed some mistakes in my speaking. I noticed that sometimes I am speaking too fast and not pronouncing each word as it should be.
I noticed that sometimes I am cutting off the end part of a word. For example, Instead of saying “with that in mind” I was saying “wi tha in mind.” The listener still understood me, but there was a clear opportunity to improve my fluency.
I would have never known or corrected this mistake if I hadn’t recorded my voice.
What happened when I corrected this mistake and started speaking each word clearly, “With” “that” “in” “mind”, my fluency clearly improved, it brought clarity to my voice and people loved when I spoke.
It’s very simple, prepare a 5 mins script if possible, totally optional. Turn on the recorder and speak for a few mins, listen to yourself and note down the areas where you need to improve.
Another great benefit:
By recording your voice, you can track your progress. You can compare your recordings from last month and see how your fluency has improved.
5. Read out loud.
This step is very simple. You have to read English, out loud. When we read something, we understand the meaning in our mind without making any sound with our mouth. I am not talking about that type of reading.
Read out loud!
This simple exercise improves your fluency and pronunciation of English words. I still practise this every day. You may be thinking, but what should I read?
Here are some ideas,
1. Go to Google News or Yahoo News, choose a category (I choose entertainment), click on any article that you like, and read it out LOUD.
2. If you have a book nearby, open it and read it out loud.
3. Do you have a newspaper in your house? Works perfectly.
Your goal is to read English content out loud, the type of content doesn’t matter.
If you are still having trouble finding material, open one of my articles and read it out loud.
Just like tongue twisters, reading out loud frequently brings clarity to your pronunciation.
6. Don't focus on grammar.
Yes, don’t give too much importance to grammar. You can speak perfect English without learning Grammar. You can still perfectly communicate and express whatever you mean without using complex grammatical structures.
This is the mistake many people make. In their English learning Journey, they start taking grammar lessons, become frustrated (because grammar is extremely boring) and finally give up.
Please don’t make that mistake.
It’s very much possible to learn English and speak great English by focusing your hard work on things like listening, reading, writing, speaking with your partner etc…
By breaking your sentences into small parts and simplifying, you can still communicate whatever you want without using complex grammatical structures.
Later when you want to learn advanced English, you can learn English grammar. If you want to become an English teacher or if you want to write a book, then you need to learn English Grammar.
Other than that, if your goal is to just speak and write good English, focus your efforts on other things that I explained in this article and my other articles.
7. Get yourself unstuck.
When trying to improve fluency, many people get stuck in a loop.
In order to be fluent in English, you need to understand and be fully aware of this loop.
Let me explain,
You cannot be a great speaker until you speak a lot on daily basis.
But if your fluency is not great, you will hesitate to speak a lot.
Because you are not speaking a lot, you won’t become fluent.
We need to break this cycle and I will show you exactly how.
Do this: Consciously remind yourself that you need to keep speaking even if you are not fluent, even if you are making mistakes.
Repeatedly tell this to yourself:
- Making mistakes is acceptable.
- Stopping the practice is not acceptable.
Remember this, your goal is to be good at English, not perfect.
8. Use a mirror.
Ok, what happens when you stand in front of a mirror and speak while you look at yourself?
You connect with the person looking at you, you can observe how that person is talking, the body language, the facial expressions etc.
Basically, you are getting a brilliant chance to look at yourself from another person’s point of view. What you are seeing, hearing, and observing in the mirror, is exactly what other people see when you are talking to them.
When you talk, you can already hear yourself without a mirror. But when you use a mirror, you can observe, rectify and improve your non-verbal communication.
Do you know that 60% of our communication is done non-verbally?
That means, without using a single word.
Non-verbal communication means eye contact, hand movements, facial expressions, your appearance, nodding etc…Can we observe all these things without a mirror?
So Yes, whenever possible, practice speaking in front of the mirror. By doing this, you will be able to improve your non-verbal communication, and it will boost your confidence like magic.
9. Keep it simple.
Until you feel comfortable framing lengthy sentences, try to keep the sentences short. Whatever you want to say, break it down into small pieces.
To give you a quick example,
Instead of saying, “John is the guy that I met last week on the train when he was trying to convince his friend to go to the movies with him.”
Just say, “I met John last week on the train. When I met him, he was talking to his friend. I think he was trying to convince him to go to movies with him.”
Don’t be under the impression that making short sentences is bad English. It is definitely not. Do you know what is the best kind of English? It is the one that is understood easily by everyone. So keep it simple.
Make short and clear sentences.
Conclusion:
Let me say that again, improving English language fluency is easier than you think. Each one of tips and tricks I mentioned above are the ones I use myself even today. I can guarantee that they work. You don’t have to follow all of them, but definitely try all of them and then choose what you like. For any method to work, the number one ingredient is the “action”, your action. So don’t just read this article and move on my friend, implement these tips and see the results for yourself.
If you need more guidance, or if you have questions, you can leave a comment or directly reach out to me on my Instagram. Good luck buddy !
Highly beneficial!!! 👏🏻
Thanks Malik !
This a fantastic article, Kal. 👏👏👏 Your article is accurate and intriguing, which made me read the complete content. 🤩🤩🤩
Highly beneficial thank you so much for providing us guidance about fluency. Keep continue your great work one you would have millions followers.
Really loved the article for being fluent in English I also have tried number 1 even before reading this article. Now my goal is to become perfect speaker in English so I’m gonna try all the mentioned tips and tricks.
Great summary and guidance!
Thank you Joshua.