BEYOND having a general knowledge of the language, there are two sides to fluency. This article will explore each of these sides, while providing practical methods and great tips in ameliorating fluency.

One side to fluency is physical; it involves producing and connecting with your mouth sounds and words in a soothing way. The other side of fluency is mental. In this exercise, your brain needs to find and build sentences smoothly and quickly. To improve your fluency, you need to work on both sides: physical and mental.

Talk to people regularly and immerse yourself in conversations. Nothing you do is as important as this. Reading English will improve your reading, practising listening will improve your listening, and speaking will improve your speaking. Although it may feel difficult or uncomfortable to do so, do not let that stop you.

Speed reading can help you. For any text that is easy and not above your current level, read it with a timer and again try to beat the previous time. Repeat the same action three times. Remember, a part of fluency is physical. Your mouth needs to produce English words and sounds fast and smoothly. Speed reading like this is a fine way to practise that kind of fluency. This way of improvement and practice is useful because you can do it almost anywhere, and you can do so for as much or as little as you have the time. 

Another way of improving your fluency is through using music. Find a song that you like, with its lyrics online. If you do not know what to do, simply put in the title and the word ‘lyrics’ beside it, on Google search. Play the song; read the lyrics. Like with speed reading, this is a good technique to practise the physical side of fluency. When you sing a song, you go at the speed of the song. Start with slower ones, then move on to faster ones. Try to choose something that is possible but challenging. It may be easy to sing the song but difficult to go fast enough. This will not just be an easy way to improve your physical fluency, but it is one for which you will feel a difference quite quickly. 

To improve the mental side of fluency, learn language in chunks. How do you learn vocabulary?  By writing the English word, translating it to your own language, and then memorising it. That approval forces the brain to learn language in an unnatural or complicated way. First, you are learning each word individually, but when you speak a language, you do not only need individual words – you also need phrases and sentences.

Additionally, if you do this, you’re learning English through your own language. You are not learning to speak English; you are trying to learn how to translate your language into English in your head. Does the following sound familiar? You have a sentence in your head in your own language; you move through the sentences, translating each word to English. You do not know the translation of a word – you get stuck, you feel bad about your English, and you stop speaking. You need to break this habit if you want to speak fluently.

To enhance your fluency, it is important to recognise that thinking and speaking at the same time is always slow. It will always be so because it encourages multiple actions at once. You’re trying to think and remember things in two languages, which may be too difficult for anybody. 

Learn a language in chunks – in phrases and sentences. If someone asked you what you’re going to be doing this weekend, you could use any of these: “I am going to see some old friends”, ‘I am thinking of going for a bike ride’, or ‘I might do some odd jobs around the house’. Now, make your own sentences using the intros. Practice, and remember the phrases and sentences. This is a much more natural way to learn vocabulary needed to speak fluently. 

As you practise fluency in your day-to-day interactions or activities, keep the following tips in mind to accelerate the process. The first tip is to become an active listener. Most times, when we listen to anything, we focus on understanding what a speaker is saying. However, when we want to improve our fluency through listening exercises, it’s not enough to simply understand a speaker. Why? Because in getting the point we unconsciously translate the idea back into our first language. We know the “what”, but we haven’t noticed the “how” needed to reproduce it well. To improve our fluency, it is vital to actively listen to fluent speakers as much as you speak. 

This may be tricky, but another helpful tip is to think as you speak.  Practising forming thoughts in English can help you almost as much as speaking in English. Try narrating, constructing, and organising your thoughts carefully with fluency before speaking, and try not to speak before organising your thoughts. A well thought out process will greatly improve how you fluently communicate. 

Another great tip is to repeat sentences. This is beyond reiterating a point, and it is not just a constant use of specific choice of words. It involves putting to practise an accurate knowledge of a language in a fluent manner. To do this, one can repeat sentences of native speakers, focusing on pronunciation, cadence, and rhythm. To imitate this, you can record yourself and evaluate the differences from the original and how the speaker chooses and uses the language. 

In summary, fluency has two distinguished sides: the physical side which is concerned with producing sounds and words and can be accelerated by speed reading and music; and the mental side which uses the brain to find and build sentences in a soothing way. To do so, it’s important to learn in chunks and to learn language in phrases and sentences. To enhance fluency, we must become active listeners, think before we speak, and become imitators of fluent speeches by repeating the same.

*Want to get a group or one-on-one training on elocution and/or writing? Feel free to contact me for your customised training solutions.

•Dr. Oji is a Senior Lecturer of English at the Institute of Humanities, Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos