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As a qualified, practising teacher of English as a foreign language, I guess I should be able to help. For competence, once you've got past the basics of gramm
by Pitarou 13y ago
As a qualified, practising teacher of English as a foreign language, I guess I should be able to help.
For competence, once you've got past the basics of grammar, it's mostly about memory. Create a database of words, phrases, and example sentences, and use some kind of Spaced Repetition System (e.g. Anki) to keep reviewing them.
Fluency is harder. First, what does it mean to be fluent?
Last time you were in a shop and the shopkeeper handed you your change, what did you say?
Thank you.
Did you plan ahead? Did you think, "Oh heck. The shop keeper's just given me some change. What should I say now?" Of course not. The words just came to your lips. You were following a script that you'd internalised at a subconscious level. That's fluency.
So you need to internalise more scripts. How are you going to do that? Learn them. Seriously ... that's all there is to it. Just memorise huge chunks of text. Songs, movies, passages from your English textbook, and so on.
In particular, try shadowing. (I.e. speaking in synchrony with the audio version.) At first, do it with the printed version in front of you. Then do it purely from memory. Try exaggerating the accent when you do it, too. It may sound ridiculous, but to native speakers it will sound better than your normal Italian accent.
You'll see the benefits of all this hard work when you're in conversation. Fragments of memorised dialogue will pop into your head exactly when you need them, just like when you said Thank you. to the cashier.
By the way, children do this instinctively. That's why they love to watch the same movie, or hear the same story, over and over again.
- gamegoblin 13y agoIt's nice to hear this from a professional. I am an English speaker who speaks a couple foreign languages. When I am alone in my car, I talk to myself in foreign languages or have mock conversations. I repeat them over and over again. Then in a real conversation, I mix and match large phrases from my vault of mock conversations rather than translate word for word.
- auctiontheory 13y agoWow. When the NSA gets around to listening to their smartphone-recorded tapes of you, they're going to be very, very worried. (Yes, "tape" is a colloquialism - I realize they probably use solid state media.)
- gamegoblin 13y agoActually, one of the most common things I repeat to myself is the first chapter of the Quran (it's only a paragraph) just because I think it sounds lovely when lyrically recited in arabic. So their tapes probably sound something like me talking to myself in French, answering myself in Spanish, and then bursting into a minute of Quranic recitation... Before going full force into computer programming, I was mainly interested in linguistics, and threw myself into learning languages and traveling. So I wouldn't be surprised if my digital communications set off various automated flags, since I chat with friends around the world (Europe, China, Latin America, some in the Arab world, notably Saudi Arabia) on a daily basis in ~4 languages. I hope they take me off their lists when they realize we are just making small talk or discussing English grammar or {{ their language }}'s grammar.
- rmc 13y agoTry exaggerating the accent when you do it, too. It may sound ridiculous, but to native speakers it will sound better than your normal Italian accent. Someone gave me great advice once, they said to pronounce French with a French accent. When you think about it, it's obvious why that results in good spoken French.