Hi there I'm Drew Badger, the English Fluency Guide, and in this video, I'm going to talk
about some basic training you can do to help develop your fluency. It should be a fun video.
I hope you do enjoy it and hopefully it gets you thinking in a different way about how
to practice and how to develop fluency. Now, fluency, that's what I do, really helping
people use all of the language they already know and one of the most fun things or the
most interesting things I like to tell my students is that you can become fluent without
learning any new words or grammar, because likely if you're watching this, you already
know a lot, it's just a question of, how do you develop fluency? How do you learn to use
all these things without having to think about things and translate things in your head?
And that's what fluent means, it means to communicate automatically and often people
get stuck, and I'll explain a little bit about why this happens in this video.
But if you look at little kids, it will remind you of a very important and powerful truth
about language learning. And that is that the amount of words that you know has no real
connection to how well you speak. So your level of fluency is not really connected to
the amount of words you know. Obviously, if you know maybe two words in a different language
that you're learning, it doesn't really matter how confident you feel, you don't have enough
words to express yourself. But if you can understand this video, and most of the people
I help they already have a good level of vocabulary, you should be able to communicate fluently
if you practice and actually develop fluency, rather than just learning more words. Now,
we know this is true because you can look at little children, and I have two young daughters
right now, a four year old and a one year old, and the one year old is already starting
to speak more. I should get her in a video. Let me know if you want to see Noelle in a
video too. I'm actually in the studio again. Coronavirus
is still happening, but now I am back and I can record videos. But we'll see. Maybe
I will bring them to the studio sometime. So, anyway, if you look at little kids and
watch how they speak, they're able to communicate and express themselves quite well. Now, they
might not know a lot, but they're able to take the words that they do know and use them
very well. So understanding all this, really, the idea of developing fluency is, can you
just communicate and express yourself without having to stop and think about things? And
so what I'd like to help you do in this video is just give you some basic training that
I do, even myself as I'm just trying to think about ways to improve my Japanese or talking
with my own kids or just helping personal students when I meet them or other students
like yourself online. So a way to do this, again, because fluency
is really about making connections, so what happened for many learners in a conversation
or if they're trying to think of something they're practicing by themselves is they will
maybe have an idea in their mind, they want to say something, there's a particular expression
or some situation or something that they want to communicate and they're using or thinking
of a specific word or phrase to express that thing. And if they don't remember that, then
their mind just goes blank. Does that ever happen to you? If it does, it's very common.
And again, the reason it does is because most people are learning through translations.
And even if you're not doing that now, so it's great that you're watching this video
because it's all in English, but you've probably spent many years learning through your native
language and often when you're learning through your native language, you have kind of a one
to one connection between the native vocabulary and whatever that word is in English. So when
you want to express something in English, there's usually just one way to express that.
But if we're going to talk about the same situation, so you've got the situation, and
then here's the vocabulary you use to describe that. In your native language, maybe you have
10 ways of expressing that. So maybe you can even take something very basic like snow and
you could describe that with many different words in your native language, whatever that
word happens to be. So the idea here is that what you've really developed in your native
language, the fluency comes from making connections and what you're also doing kind of as a child
when you're learning is you're making these same kind of connections just in the world
and then you're learning to make those same connections with language. So I'll talk about
two basic things that you can do. The first one, makes sure this is coming up here. So
the first one is connecting words. And then here, we'll get to the second one in a minute.
But the first one, just talking about connecting words, to develop fluency, all you want to
do is just take two words, it doesn't matter what they are, you can take words that are
maybe related or you think they're similar to each other, like we could take cat, I'm
going to put this here. I almost misspelled the word dog. That's pretty funny. So if we
take the words, cat and dog, now I want to free associate and try to make as many connections
between them as I can just to practice speaking. So I could begin with something very simple
like, cats are scared of dogs. So that's one sentence I could make. And again, this can
be very simple. Cats are smaller than dogs. Cats don't like dogs. Or I could become much
longer depending on what my level of ability is. But if you really struggle with expressing
yourself, you're looking for a way to make a connection between this word and that word
just to get your mind used to making connections between different things.
And this is a pretty easy one because cats and dogs, it's kind of a common thing. Maybe
I have a cat but my neighbor has a dog. Again, it doesn't matter what the situation is, but
you're just trying to connect both of these words and allow your mind to make that connection.
So your mind will make a connection between two different things naturally if you just
allow it to do that. Now, again, this is a basic example where we're taking two things
that are often related where people, when you think about cats, you kind of naturally
think about dogs. But maybe we talk about a cat and we think of something a little bit
more different or less connected, obviously connected like a pencil. You've got that in
there. So we have, cat and pencil. Now, what you should be doing is thinking, how can I
come up with a sentence as quickly as that just by looking at this? So, my cat is bigger
than my pencil. Again, it doesn't matter what the exact sentence
is, but the point is you're just making connections between just individual words like this and
seeing if you can make those connections faster, because that's what fluency is. It's enabling
you to think of different things and make connections between these different things,
and especially more like the crazier thing is or the more obviously different they seem
the more training you're getting. So we could have this word be battleship or snow snowstorm
or something like that. And as you make it a little bit less obvious, you just take some
random words, this can even be a thing that you do if you have some vocabulary flashcards
or even you have a dictionary, you open up one page and you look at one word and then
close the dictionary again and open it up and find a different word, and as quickly
as you can try to make a sentence about that. It's really very simple and you can begin
with a one word thing, one word here, and maybe two or three words between them.
So I like cats and pencils. Very simple. I mean, cat and pencil is even a very basic
way to connect this. Cat or pencil. Very simple. So whatever your level is, you can and you
should be able to make some kind of sentence out of that thing. But this will train you
to develop fluency and this is why I call it basic fluency training. So it's not about
just knowing these words, it's about, how can I make a connection between these? And
then you should challenge yourself to try to make something more interesting, try to
make it longer. So many years ago, I had a cat and he ate one of my pencils and he had
to go to the hospital. Now, that's not really true, but I'm just making this as an example
of how I can practice that. So if I'm doing this in Japanese, like similar thing, like…
So here I am using Japanese when just comparing these two things or figuring out what's a
way to connect them. A silly story of yesterday, I saw one of those cats that's walking around
the neighborhood. I tried to give him a pencil to eat, but he didn't want to eat it, basically.
So again, when you're looking at these, this is just one very simple way. Even as a teacher,
you can do this in the classroom, just giving people two words and letting them free associate
to make some sentences about them. So that's a very simple way to do this. The second way
to do this, and this is what you do in your native language already, is to find alternatives.
So again, I mentioned at the beginning of this video that we come across a problem when
we're speaking where we have one way of expressing something and if we can't think of how to
say that then we're stuck. So you need to train yourself to find different ways. If
this way doesn't work, we find some other way of saying that.
So if you think about water, like moving down here, I talk about this in my Speak Like Me
program, which shows more about how to communicate like a native in the same way that you're
developing fluency. So what water does, water is very lazy and so water is moving like this.
Usually, water is just going in a straight line unless there's something in front of
it like a rock, but then the water will go around that. The water doesn't really get
stuck unless this is just a really big wall, but over time the water will fill up and then
overflow that thing. So water is always finding a way to move around something and you need
to be thinking like that when you're speaking English as well. So if you have to express
something and you don't know how to say it, try to think about what's a different way
you can say that thing instead of being worried about not having something to say.
So there are different ways of doing this. One way could be, you could describe that
thing. So if I'm talking about an animal, so "Yesterday I saw an alligator." Now, if
I want to talk about the word alligator but I don't remember the word, so I know I have
a picture in my mind of an alligator, so this is the situation here but I just don't have
the vocabulary. I don't remember what that is. So yesterday I saw a ... What's the name
of that thing? It's like a big lizard, lives in the water, and so I'm just describing that
thing right now. Usually, the listener, if I give them enough clues, I could use some
gestures or something like that, people would say, "Ah, you're talking about an alligator."
And I say, "Ah, oh yes." And natives do this all the time. You probably do this in your
native language as well, because we often even forget words or some person's name or
something like that and we have to kind of, like water, move around that thing.
So what you don't want to do is just freeze and say, "Ah, I don't know how to say that."
So you practice finding alternatives by just trying to speak for as long as you can in
the same way that I'm doing right now. Now, I've practiced this for a long time and that's
why I can continue to speak the way I can. I could probably talk for hours, but maybe
that would bore you I think so I don't want to talk to them long. But what I'm doing is
coming up with alternatives, especially I might be saying something and then actually
make a mistake. I noticed this yesterday when I was saying something to my daughter, I was
saying something and I noticed I was about to say something incorrect.I used some kind
of grammar correctly because of how I said it. So I thought in my mind, "Okay, I'm good
continue talking," but I switched to using the passive voice or something like that.
I don't remember what exactly the example was, but I recognize them when it's happening.
And often when you see people who can speak continuously, that's what they're doing. So
they're thinking a little bit, planning a little bit in their mind what they're saying,
that's exactly what I'm doing right now. And then, like the water, you let yourself, you
trust yourself to do that. But part of this comes with just practicing. So you've got
both of these very simple, basic fluency building techniques. You're connecting words and then
you're also finding alternative. So if I can't think of a cat, I have to think of, what's
a different way of describing that? Or if I can't remember some other situation or something,
how can I find an alternative? What's a different way to do that? But these are what you do
instead of just freezing and saying nothing. And it's easier if you do these while you're
just practicing by yourself, especially something like cat, dog, or whatever. And a way to check
this would be just to, again, you're going to maybe a search engine like Google and you
just type in both of these words, cat and dog. And after you've maybe taken some time
to practice that, type in cat and dog and then you will get lots of examples of sentences
that contain these. And so you can practice, you can check your grammar, you can see, "Oh,
did I say that correctly?" Or, "What are some other ways I could do it?" I was being interviewed
recently and talking about this, about how you can even take something as basic as a
pencil or a pen, or this is a marker here, and I can describe it in many different ways.
And that's, again, another very simple way to develop fluency. It's not about learning
new words all the time. It's about taking the words that you do know and learning to
make connections between all these things so when you're in a conversation you can speak
without hesitating. Does that make sense? All right. Well, I don't want to talk too
much about that, but this is really simple, basic stuff, but a lot of people don't think
about it because most teachers are focusing on, how can we teach more when you don't really
know how to use the words you already know fluently. Does that make sense? It doesn't
really make sense. So that's why, again, even with a very small vocabulary, you can learn
how to speak fluently about those things or with that vocabulary rather than worrying
about trying to learn lots of words that you can't use. So improve your fluency, and that
will make you feel more confident. It will help you just enjoy conversations more, understand
more native speakers, and really you will just develop much faster because it's a skill
that builds on itself. Hopefully, you've enjoyed that. If you have,
let me know. Click the like button and also be sure to share this video with other people
who also struggle. Maybe they know a lot of vocabulary but they can't quite communicate
fluently. This is part of the way you develop it and this is exactly what kids do. Just
talking with my daughter today and she was saying, "This thing looks like that thing."
Again, this cat looks like a dog. Again, it doesn't matter if it's true, but you're using
the language in a fluent way. That's the key. All right, well, if you have enjoyed this,
do can do click that like button, subscribe, click the bell icon. And if you'd like to
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