Have you ever wondered why you can read English, you can even listen to English, but you cannot
speak English fluently? Paula an English learner that watches our videos left us this comment on
one of our lessons. We understand that if this is your case you're frustrated. After all, who
wants to learn English if not to speak it. Here at RealLife English we’ve helped thousands of English
learners just like you overcome their fears and limitations, connect to their deep desire of why
they’re learning English, and transform themselves by becoming confident, fluent English speakers who
can connect with anyone in the world. Each of these people’s stories are different, but we
recognized some patterns. I’d even go so far as to name the villains in their story! These are:
shyness ,forgetting words, lack of opportunity. In this lesson, we'll uncover the truth behind why
you can understand more than what you can actually speak in English. Also, I’ll give you 7 tips on
what you need to do in order to overcome shyness, leave the problem of forgetting words behind,
and find opportunities to speak English. Before we get into the lesson,
here at RealLife English we would be honoured to accompany you on your journey to English fluency.
Let’s go on this adventure together. So, please, like this video and hit the subscribe button; this
way, you’ll probably notice the next video that we upload. However, if you don’t want to leave
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With that said, let’s get right into it: why can't I speak English as well as i can listen?
The main reason why that happens is because of what is technically referred to as memory
recognition and recall. Turns out, recognizing is much easier than recalling. Broadly speaking,
this means that when you listen to English, you’re basically recognizing the words that you hear.
When you speak, on the other hand, you need to recall or remember words in order to produce
a message. This takes more effort to do. Imagine this. You’re in your car driving
to work, to the gym, or to any place that you regularly go to. When you look out the window,
you can recognize where you are. You’ve seen that building many times, and that house,
and that square. You see, recognizing takes very little cognitive effort.
On the other hand, recalling is much more heavy duty or intense.
If I asked you to think about each house in the right order_ that you pass by on your way to work,
you can probably very easily think about the house that’s right next door to yours,
and the next one. But as you try to recall the houses that are further and further away from
your house, it becomes more and more fuzzy. Recalling requires tons of mental effort!
This is what speaking is. It’s a very dynamic activity that requires you to integrate everything
that you know about English: vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation to produce sounds.
Listening is a passive skill, while speaking is active. To go further, we can classify
the four basic English skills into 2 groups. Listening and reading are receptive skills,
while speaking and writing are productive skills. What all of this means is that your receptive
skills are always going to be more developed than your productive skills. In fact, it doesn’t make
sense for it to be the other way around. Having said that, the frustration that so
many of you have still isn’t any less of an issue when you know all that, right?
You still feel that you can’t speak as fluently as you’d like;
you still freeze and get scared when speaking. Many of you don’t even have
opportunities to practice speaking. These three villains have gone nowhere!
Later, I’m going to give you specific tips on how you can overcome those problems.
However, the root of the issue, is probably that you’re not getting enough practice speaking.
A scholar recently argued that in the language classroom
there should be more focus on speaking practice, she said:
“It’s not surprising that practicing talking can make you better at talking.”
Let’s take a look at the three essential activities that you need
to master the English language or any language.
The first one is exposure. This is a non-negotiable, as we like to say, so you _HAVE_
to get it. The more exposure to the language you get, the better off you’ll be. In today's world,
this is really easy to get. You get exposed to English by reading, watching Netflix, playing
video games in English, by listening to music and podcasts. There’s never too much exposure.
Stephen Krashen is famous for his input hypothesis, in which he states that you
acquire language through exposure and that you learn by studying. And he says that acquiring
is better than learning. Acquisition is great! But I also do think that you need to set aside
some time to learn, if you want to make some serious progress in your English. That’s the
next essential activity. Focused learning. This is when you deliberately learn some aspect of the
language, whether this is something about grammar, meanings of words, or how to pronounce words.
In order to learn a language well, you need to dedicate some time to learning it conscientiously.
In my opinion, at a beginner and early intermediate level,
as little as 2 hours per week is going to be enough to move you forward in your learning.
But the more time you can dedicate to your learning, the better off you’ll be, of course.
Finally, you need practice to help you really learn and make w hat you learned
deliberately yours, or even what you acquired by being exposed to the language. This is why we
always say use or lose it. If you don’t put into practice what you’ve learned, you will forget it.
Now, how this looks in the span of a week might be something like this:
As we said, you could do focused learning 2 hours per week. Maybe up to 5 depending on how much time
you have. As for exposure it’s hard to quantify, maybe you read here and there, listen to some
English at different moments in your day, etc. It can very easily amount to several hours per week.
So, let’s say that that’s 20 hours per week. Then, what you really don’t want to neglect is
the practice part. You never want this to be less than the time that you spend on focused learning.
When I say practice, I mean the productive skills of writing and speaking that we saw earlier.
Ideally, practice should be at least 3 times as much as focused learning. As I said, that’s how
you solidify what you learn or even acquire. Now, you can look at that in terms of those 3
activities. But you can also simplify it quite a bit and come to the realization that when
you welcome English as a part of your life, rather than accept it as something that you
have to study, you will always be getting the exposure, learning and practice that you need.
We always say don’t just learn English, live it. And that’s exactly what we want for you:
to have the opportunity to live your English. That is why we have created a tool that will
be incredibly valuable for you if you want to become a fluent English speaker.
We’ve recently launched the RealLife English Podcast and Speaking App, which will give
dedicated learners, just like you, the opportunity to speak English with other
learners from around the world, at the touch of a button, for free.
Download this app now, and don’t miss the opportunity to take advantage of
this amazing way to connect with people from all over the world and practice your English!
If one of the reasons why you can’t speak English as fluently as you want is because
you don’t have opportunities to practice it, I hope our app will solve that problem. Now,
how do we solve the shyness problem? Or forgetting words?
Maybe you can relate to what this other subscriber commented on one of our videos:
So, I’ll give you 7 tips that combine learning and practice that will help you be
more confident in your speaking.
Imitate away The thing is we’re naturally inclined
to copy what other people do. As this article puts it imitation is at the heart of being human.
When we imitate others, we’re learning from them, copying what works for them.
It activates the watch and learn part of our brain.
What this looks like for you as an English learner is using a model English speaker.
It could be a more experienced English learner or a native English speaker.
Imitate what they say, and how they say it.
The idea is that you explore, play, listen and repeat. Activate your curiosity for sounds
and words. If there’s a particular word you imitate but that you don’t know the meaning of,
go ahead and look it up. This over time builds up and that’s how you make progress.
Learn chunks We covered this in detail
in a video we titled: The #1 Key to Advanced Fluency: Word Chunks. You can watch it here.
But to give you a summary, word chunks
are a sequence of words that come naturally together to express an idea. For example,
when you first learned "Nice to meet you", you didn't study each word in that sentence.
You simply learned them all together, and even the answer, "Nice to meet you, too!", right?
Well, don’t just stop there and continue prioritizing
learning chunks over learning single words. Chunk learning is extremely valuable because.
It helps with fluency. Various research studies have found that more fluent speakers are able
to speak faster and with less hesitation due to the effective use of chunks.
It helps idiomaticity. The use of chunks can help students appear as idiomatic
language users - by that we mean they can use expressions that are natural and correct.
It sets you up for further learning. For example, when you learn a word chunk with the word way,
you’re more likely to learn other chunks, by just changing a word. For example, “on the way”
means something is coming (ex: "there's more snow on the way")
Now, you can replace “on” with “by” and you get “by the way.” Then there’s more chunks
you can play with: when you say I’m on my way, or no way of… as in no way of knowing,
no way of telling, etc. One chunk can help you get the foundation for subsequent learning.
Be proactive By this I mean put what
you’ve learned into use immediately. If there is one thing your brain enjoys, it is feeling useful.
Our brains dislike storing information that we don’t use. (Maybe that’s why you keep
forgetting the English words you tried learning yesterday!). As we always say, use or lose it.
You can come up with sentences where you can use a new word or chunk that you’ve learned.
If English is already integrated as a part of your life, you’ll find the opportunity to use that new
learned word soon enough. Be an actor!
Think about what an actor does. They read a text, memorize it, then internalize it and then they
repeat it. They use emotion, exaggeration, repetition and practice. These are awesome
things you can integrate in your English practice. You’re probably used to sounding a certain way in
your native language, but don’t be afraid to add new layers to your voice. If you’re shy,
this will definitely help you to embrace a new way of speaking that pushes through that shyness.
Get feedback (from others too!) That’s right. Your feedback or the self-monitoring
over your speech is essential. Hear yourself. Listen to how English sounds when you speak it.
Notice when you get stuck in a certain idea and don’t know how to express it correctly. Or when
you realize you don’t have the words you need to say something. Then, be proactive and Google them!
Talking alone and recording yourself can be a great way to give yourself feedback. When you
do this, you’ll notice that the first thing you’d be inclined to talk about is your own life. So,
go for it. A student of mine told me he’s been narrating his life or how his day went for years,
and that he finds it interesting to listen back to old recordings as it
feels like a trip back in time and he can notice how much his English has improved.
Then, there are two other types of feedback that you can get. You can get direct feedback
from a more experienced learner, a native English speaker or even a peer, someone who’s
in a similar stage in their learning. Ask them about what they think about their honest opinion
on how you’re speaking. Sometimes you might need to hire a teacher to give you more qualified
advice and also to actually give you feedback. If you rely too much on a friend, this person
might feel uncomfortable pointing out what you need to improve.
The other type of feedback that you can get is indirect feedback. This requires you to
be willing to speak English with others. The way this works is that you have to pick up the signals
other people give you when you’re speaking. When you try to say something, does the other person
understand you without any effort? If the answer is yes, great. You can be fully confident you can
file that sentence away as correct. But, if the other person is unsure what you mean, use it as a
sign that you could reflect on whatever you said, how you said it, and how you could say it better.
My last tip is: Or as Ethan would say: Do what you gotta do
This is a bit like the “be proactive” tip I just gave you. However,
it’s more about the realization that you have to take responsibility over your own
learning. A teacher can help. I can help to guide you in certain aspects. But you’re the hero
of your own adventure, and you have to figure it out. You absolutely can if you want it.
If you’re too shy to speak, make a plan to gradually put yourself in more and more
challenging situations until you can feel much better about yourself and about your English.
You might not stop being shy completely, but at least you will have made
enough progress to keep that shyness from making you pass on valuable opportunities.
If you forget words. It might be because you’re not putting your English into use. If you don’t
have an opportunity to practice your English… Well, once again I will tell you, you can download
our new app, where you can instantly get connected to another English learner just like yourself.
That’s it for this lesson! I hope you find it useful! Remember, it all becomes a lot
easier when you make English a part of your life, because at that point,
you don’t just learn it, you live it and when you live it fluency will come on its own.