You see, a chief factor that blocks your speech fluency is this:
If you’re a person whose mother-tongue is not English, the chances are, you’ve learnt English in the “non-natural way”. That is, you’ve learnt English in a way that is opposite to the way of natural language acquisition.
You know, the natural way of acquiring a language is to learn to speak it first and then to write it. But in your case, you first learnt to write English, rather than to speak it. So you’re now in the grip of written English. And so whenever you try to speak English, you try to produce written English orally. And not spoken English. And this grip that written English has over you holds you back from speaking English spontaneously.
Is there any wonder fluency in speech has eluded you so far?
The Fluentzy series of self-study books aims to help you free yourself from the grip of written English – and to help you get into the spoken English track.
Our self-study system adopts a two-pronged strategy... and deals with your fluency problem from two different directions. You see, there are certain factors that prevent you from speaking English fluently. From one direction, our self-study system helps you get rid of those factors. This will smooth your way to high levels of fluency, and make your progress easier. From the other direction, our course teaches you a series of techniques – specialized techniques that add to your fluency.
• Our self-study system aims to teach you a series of dedicated fluency techniques. Through lessons specially designed for self-study.
• Our self-study system aims to teach you how you can break free of hesitations. And how you can deal with hesitations... And maintain fluency... The way native speakers of English do. So that you can speak English with a high degree of fluency. With your words flowing out.
• Our self-study system aims to help you train your organs of speech. With collections of specially selected word-groups. This training is aimed at getting your organs of speech to work like those of a native speaker of English. So that you can achieve a high level of fluency.
• Our self-study system aims to get you to do deliberate and intensive practice of core fluency skills. So that it becomes second nature to you to use fluency techniques whenever you speak English.
• Our self-study system aims to help you go beyond the stage of making one-line statements and asking one-line questions and giving one-line replies. And to help you achieve the skill of speaking English continuously... At length. In detail. Discuss. Explain. Describe. Argue. Negotiate. Chat. With a stream-like flow... At work... At meetings. Interviews. Group discussions... On the platform... In your personal lives. At parties. In social situations... In academic and professional situations. Everywhere.
You see, speech fluency is a unique skill – the one and only skill of its kind. And picking up the fluency skill is not like picking up other skills: Computer skills or cycling or swimming or whatever. And it's not similar to learning a subject like mathematics or science. And so if you want to pick up the fluency skill, you'll have to follow a mode of learning that's quite different.
For example, face-to-face instruction may be the best way of picking up these other skills or learning these other subjects. But as far as the fluency skill is concerned, understand this: If you already know English reasonably well, face-to-face instruction in a classroom is not the best (or even a desirable) way of training to speak fluent English. NO.
Now, take your own case, for example. You’ve had several years of classroom instruction in English. And that has given you a lot of knowledge of English language. But has that made you a fluent speaker of English? Do you think a few more months of classroom instruction will bring you fluency?
Now what happens if a few non-fluent people get together... and make an effort to train and achieve fluency – by trying to speak to one another in English? Do you think that, by keeping on talking among themselves in non-fluent or broken English, they’ll be able to achieve fluency? Even if they do this in the presence of a trainer who keeps track of the whole thing?
You see, if your aim is to achieve fluency, the very first thing you should do is to master fluency techniques. These are techniques that native speakers of English use unconsciously. As long as you’ve not mastered these techniques, no amount of classroom instruction or group practice is going to help you become fluent in speech.
And as far as fluency development training is concerned, the sort of training you should really get is not training in mock situations in classrooms, but in real-life situations. In real-life situations outside classrooms. That’s the only way you can learn to deal with the realities of real-life speech situations. The only way you can learn to put language manipulation skills to real practice. Yes, that's the only way you can learn to cope with the moment-to-moment demands and pressures of real-life speech situations.
That’s why the very first thing any fluency aspirant must do is this: They should try and master fluency techniques – the techniques the self-study books in the Fluentzy series aim to teach. Remember this: If your aim is fluency development (and not just picking up of knowledge), you should do this. No matter how advanced your knowledge of English may be.
And you know, these are techniques you can master by self-study – without an instructor giving you face-to-face instruction.
Please note: You'll find these points discussed in great detail on the "Fluency Facts" pages. Yes, in great detail.