Name: Speak English Fluently - How to Improve Your English Fluency
Uploaded: 2017-04-19T13:07:39.000Z
Duration: 13 min 31 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

Hi, I’m Oli. Welcome to Oxford Online English! In this lesson, you can learn how to speak

Adverbs of frequency

How long have you been studying English? Do you find that sometimes that even though you

study hard, you can’t speak fluently? Do you learn lots of grammar and vocabulary,

but you find it difficult to make sentences when you speak.

In this lesson, we’re going to talk about fluency and what you can do to change this

situation and improve your English fluency.

Sometimes, when people talk about fluency, they just mean speaking a language well. For

some people, speaking English fluently just means having a good general level of English.

However, fluency is more specific than that. Fluency means you can speak smoothly, without

There are two sides to fluency. One side is physical: your mouth needs to produce and

connect English sounds and words in a fast, smooth way.

The other side of fluency is mental: your brain needs to find the right words and build

To improve your fluency, you need to work on both sides: physical and mental.

Part two: rule number one: get out there!

There are many things you can do to improve your English fluency.

However, if you want to become more fluent, there’s really one thing you have to do.

Get out there and speak English. Talk to people and have conversations regularly. Nothing

Reading English will improve your reading. Practicing listening will improve your listening.

But what about speaking? Nothing will help your speaking except speaking.

Speaking English is a practical skill. It’s not an academic subject; it’s not something

It’s more like doing a sport or playing a musical instrument: you need to practice

There’s no maximum, but I’d recommend you need to spend at least 2-3 hours a week

Go to classes, talk to expats in your city, join groups or activities with English-speakers,

find a conversation partner online, do a language exchange; there are many possibilities!

By the way, what you do doesn’t have to be language-focused. You can go to English

classes to practice your speaking, but anything you do which is in English and which will

I’m going to take a guess here about what many of you are thinking right now: “But

I don’t have people to talk to”; “But I’m shy”; “But it’s too difficult.”

Speaking a foreign language is hard. Situations which would be easy in your language can feel

difficult in another language. Situations which would feel difficult in your language

can feel almost impossible when you have to do them in a foreign language.

That’s how it is. It’s easy to imagine when you start learning another language that

you will reach a point where everything is easy and comfortable.

But unless you live in a foreign country and live completely inside that culture, that

won’t happen. Trust me—I’ve studied several languages at this point in my life,

and speak them quite well, but it never feels easy or comfortable.

Why are we talking about this? I’m trying to motivate you to go out and speak more,

practice more. To do that, you have to accept that it will feel difficult, uncomfortable

That’s how it is—don’t let it stop you! You can still practice, you can still communicate,

I’ll give you an example of this from my own experience. I hate making phone calls

in another language. I don’t know why, but I find it particularly intimidating. I guess

because I can’t use context or facial expressions or anything like that to help me understand

I lived in Russia and I studied Russian. I hated making phone calls in Russian. Then

I lived in China and I studied Chinese. I hated making phone calls in Chinese. Now I’m

studying Greek. Guess what? I hate making phone calls in Greek, too.

It still feels just as difficult and just as intimidating. I haven’t learned any tricks

to make it easier. All I’ve done is that I accept that this is how it feels. That’s

it. I still do it, because I have to sometimes.

I just accept that I’m going to feel nervous or uncomfortable, and I have to speak and

And I do! It doesn't stop you. Feeling nervous does not stop you communicating.

This will be the same for you sometimes. It might be phone calls; it might be something

The key point? You have to accept and learn to deal with that pressure. Don’t think:

it feels scary, so I won’t do it. It won’t feel less scary in the future. The only way

to make it easier is to go out and do it.

If you do that, you'll feel more confident. It will get a little bit easier with time.

Okay, so you know the most important point about fluency, but is there anything else

Find a text in English. It can be something from a textbook, from a newspaper, from a

The text should be fairly easy for you. Don’t choose something with a lot of new words or

something which is way above your current English level.

Sit down with a timer. Read the text aloud. Time yourself.

Now, read it again. Try to beat your previous time!

Keep going like this. See how fast you can read the text.

Remember that part of fluency is physical. Your mouth needs to produce English sounds

Speed reading like this is a good way to practice that side of fluency.

This way of practicing is really useful because you can do it almost anywhere and you can

also do as much or as little as you have time for. You can do five minutes practice or fifteen

minutes, or half an hour. It’s all helpful!

Let’s see another good technique like this:

Find a song in English. Choose something which you like.

Find the lyrics online. If you don’t know where to look, just put the song title and

the word ‘lyrics’ into Google. You’ll find them.

Like with speed reading, this is a good technique to practice the physical side of fluency.

When you sing a song, you have to go at the speed of the song.

Start with slower songs, then choose faster ones. Try to choose something that’s possible