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Fluency
techniques and real-life situations
You see, the things you need are a thorough knowledge of fluency
techniques and the experience of using them in real-life situations.
Can
classroom practice be practical for learners who aren’t
fluent at all?
Of course, classroom sessions can set up mock conversational
situations and get you to take part in them. But if you want
to take part in a mock conversational practice session, and
if you want to contribute something to that session in English,
shouldn’t you already know how to speak English
spontaneously – at least somewhat fluently? Otherwise,
how will you be able to take your turn and say something meaningful
at all?
Suppose
that a few people (who can’t speak fluent English) keep
getting together and keep speaking among themselves in broken
English for a few months. Are they going to pick up the skill
of speaking fluent English – from this sort of
practice? Won’t they only be getting more and more used
to their broken English habit – and other bad
speech habits? Instead of breaking those habits?
You
see, that’s why the most important thing you should do
first is to learn fluency techniques.
Teacher
can help only with accuracy — Not fluency...
Mind
you, even a teacher’s presence cannot improve the situation.
No, it can’t. Why? Because a teacher will be able to
notice and correct only ‘externally noticeable’
mistakes: Mistakes of grammar, usage, vocabulary, etc. But
remember this: We’re speaking about people who know English
— very well or reasonably well. Don’t they already
have a good command of grammar and usage? And don’t they
have a reasonable (or even a wide) vocabulary? Even then,
don’t most of them find it hard to be truly fluent?
So
‘externally noticeable’ mistakes are not the real
reason that blocks fluency. The real reason is this: Internal
speech processing difficulties. And internal speech composition
problems. Mistakes, difficulties and problems that happen
when your mind tries to compose speech before its delivery.
When your mind tries to manipulate the semantic and syntactic
resources of the English language — to process information.
And to formulate speech out of that information. And to bring
it up for delivery.
Mind
you, a teacher or anyone else will not be able to notice these
internal mistakes and problems. Or the pre-delivery
process. No, they can’t, because these things happen
inside your mind. You are the only person who’ll
be able to be aware of them — and to cope with them on
the spot.
Deal
with the realities of the real-life situations
A mock conversational session is an artificial speech-situation,
and not a real-life speech situation. And so in a mock session,
most of your time would be spent in wondering what to say
and in racking your brain – unless you’ve prepared
yourself thoroughly in advance with the help of a script.
And
if you train to become fluent by first learning from
a script and then by repeating the same thing from
memory, you’re not going to become fluent. No.
This is because in such a situation, you’re actually
training in ‘prepared speech production’, and not
in ‘spontaneous speech production’. But in a real-life
speech situation, you feel the real need to speak. And the
situation itself provides you with the content of what to
say. In such a situation, the very things that urge you to
speak provide you with plenty of ideas to speak about. And
so in such a situation, you won’t have to make any effort
to think of something to say.
And
the way the form and content of speech develop in a real-life
situation is quite different from the way those things develop
in an artificial conversational situation. When fluent speakers
speak in real-life situations, they put together and say their
speech-units by coping with a number of types of pressures
—pressures from factors connected with language as well
as pressures from factors not connected with language.
Depending on the way these pressures and factors work, they
keep adapting and manipulating the form, content and phrasing
of what they say. And they keep modifying and adjusting the
sizes and shapes of their speech-units and the very framework
of the whole spoken text.
But
in a mock conversational situation, the pressures present
are of a different type. So whatever experience you get from
such a mock situation won’t be of much real value to
you — in real-life speech situations. What will be of
real value to you in real-life situations are the skills you
need to manipulate your English and to adapt it to the moment-to-moment
demands of those situations.
And the fluency techniques that Prof. Kev Nair’s self-study
books teach you are the very things that help you get these
skills.
Classroom
sessions can’t train you in language manipulation
You see, if you join a group of learners and try speaking
to them in English, purely for gaining fluency in that
language, this is what’s going to happen: When you
start speaking, your attention would be focused not
on what you say, but on how you say it. That
is, your attention would be focused on the form of
the language itself, rather than on the content. This
would make you highly self-conscious. And you’d
keep feeling that others are looking at you — and judging
you and the way you speak. And this would make you keep feeling
uncomfortable, awkward, embarrassed and even shy.
All
this would prevent the speech situation from giving you effective
training in language manipulation. But you see, the
core of your fluency skill is nothing but your ability to
manipulate the language you use and to juggle with it —
to repeatedly rearrange, change and modify your speech-units
and the way they’re organized — in order to make
them convey your ideas in the best way possible. So, if a
mock conversational situation cannot give you effective training
in language manipulation, it cannot be called an effective
fluency tool at all — whatever else its other advantages
may be.
On
the other hand, in a real-life situation, your attention is
most often held firmly and completely by the content
of what you say and by your involvement in that content.
And so, in a real-life situation, your attention doesn’t
often get diverted to the way you speak.
So
the situations from which you should get the experience of
speaking are real-life situations, and not mock conversational
situations.
Get
experience from real-life situations
What you need (in order to achieve fluency) is not
training in mock conversational situations, but the experience
of speaking in real-life situations. And it won’t be
correct to think that self-study learners don’t get this
sort of experience. Self-study learners do get plenty
of experience of this sort. They get it from the only sources
from where anybody can hope to get it: The real-life situations
they face every day.
You
know, one of the reasons why many people buy Prof. Kev Nair’s
self-study books and do a self-directed self-training is this:
They often find themselves in real-life situations where they
have to speak fluent English. But they’re not able to
make the most of those situations, because the English they
speak isn’t quite fluent — or fluent enough to their
satisfaction.
Most
of the self-study learners who train with the help of Prof.
Kev Nair’s self-study books are people who have jobs
or professions or are in business. They’re usually in
contact with people who speak English. And they all have plenty
of opportunity to make use of their fluency skill in their
workplaces or in places where their jobs, professions or social
and spare-time activities take them — or while travelling.
Other learners who take this course also have enough opportunity
of interacting with people who speak English — at places
where their career-preparation activities, higher-educational
activities, social and spare-time activities and daily life
take them.
Even
otherwise, there are several practical ways to get yourselves
into real-life speech situations and to have the opportunity
of putting fluency techniques to real use. And so, remember
this: Generally speaking, classroom training in interaction
doesn’t have much value for people who already know English,
but are trying to become fluent. It has real value
only for beginners who are trying to learn English.
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