3 Easy Ways to Improve your Fluency for IELTS

“Hey, Keith, why am I not fluent in English yet?”

Mmm… good question and many students ask me this question.

So today, I wanted to tell you why I think you may not be fluent in English yet

and what you can do about it, right?

Let's get into it.

Hello and this is Keith.

If you don't know me, I run the website The “Keith Speaking Academy”

Here to help you speak better English, give better answers and get a higher score

on the IELTS speaking test.

And today I’m going to talk about “Fluency” with you.

It's one of the 4 pillars of IELTS speaking.

It represents 25% of your mark.

You need to get good fluency but it can be frustrating,

working and working on fluency and not seeing the results.

So today, I’m going to talk about that

and some things you can do to improve your fluency.

Stick around to the end because I’ve got a surprise piece of breaking news for you.

Okay, let's begin.

So first of all, right, some people think that the four skills:

fluency, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, that they're separate.

And if you look at the Band descriptors,

it will encourage you to think they're separate

because they're evaluated separately, right?

Now that's true.

However, they are not separate.

They are all very closely interconnected or interlinked.

One thing affects another.

So whilst you can work on your fluency

because they're connected to everything else, you need to be working on everything

as a whole.

But let's break down fluency a little bit, right?

So what influences fluency?

Well, let's think about it first of all.

As you're speaking, right?

Finding the right word is gonna affect your fluency.

Your vocabulary.

If your vocabulary is not big enough or you're trying to use difficult words,

you don't fully know or you're confusing different word families,

you know, economy, economic, economist,

then that affects your fluency.

So vocabulary is directly affecting your fluency.

How do you solve that?

Well, the first thing is to start activating your vocabulary, right?

It's all well and good reading vocabulary

and getting it into your head but if you're not speaking it out, and activating it,

it's not going to come fluently.

We have two kinds of vocabulary passive and active.

Passive are the words you recognize and you can read.

And if you hear them, you know them.

But you may not be able to use them.

Active vocabulary are the words that have gone from passive to active

and you can actually start using them correctly.

So getting as much vocabulary as you can into your active pool, if you like,

is really important.

So you can start using it and that builds up your fluency.

So here's a key tip for you.

Although you've got lots of passive vocabulary,

if you don't feel comfortable or you're not sure how to use it,

don't use it in the test!

Because if you get it wrong, your vocabulary score comes down

and also your fluency will come down because you can't use it properly

or fluently.

So focus on your active vocabulary, that you're really comfortable with

to get a good scoring vocabulary but a better score in fluency.

That is tip number one.

So your next question is,

“All right, Keith, how do I activate my vocabulary?”

well, I have done videos and live lessons on this

but one of the basic things you do is repetition, right?

You repeat words and phrases in context

and actually practice using them in different contexts.

There is research that shows you need to see the word

in 4 at least 4 different contexts and to be using it

in at least 3 or 4 different contexts before it becomes active.

Which means you can really, you really know how to use it.

So practice repeating the words in different conversations, different answers,

different contexts, right?

Make sure you're not memorizing your answers

and so only using words in one context.

That is not good, right?

Be flexible.

Use it in different contexts.

Let's move on and talk about other factors that influence fluency.

Similar to vocabulary, grammar, right?

When you're speaking and you're thinking about the correct grammar,

“Is it I go, I went, I went to, I’ve been, I have, I has/have been to”

as you're thinking about grammar,

that affects your fluency as well as you just saw.

So, how do you solve that?

How do you automate your grammar?

Which is what you want because if you can automate your grammar,

then you're going to be just speaking more fluently.

Think about the basketball players, right?

Think about Magic Johnson or you know,

I don't play basketball.

So I don't know the famous names

but, world-famous basketball players what do they do?

They bounce the ball and they shoot, they bounce the ball and they shoot

and they spend hours shooting, practicing, repeating and repeating

until they automate the move.

Because on the court, when they're playing, they haven't got time to think.

They need to be automatically shooting, passing.

So all of that has to be automated.

Well, guess what?

It's the same with speaking English.

If you can automate the grammar,

you can just use it much more fluently and focus on ideas

and fluency when you're speaking.

Next question,

“Keith, how do I automate my grammar?”

Well, similar to the basketball player, intense repetition.

In fact, I have something called “The fluency gym”, right?

If you've seen it on my website, go and check it out.

The fluency gym is about intense repetition.

You're taking some grammatical structures

and repeating them again and again and again

until you automate them and become much more confident with them.

Use it automatically,

you can then start focusing on ideas and fluency and maybe pronunciation.

And another thing connected to both vocabulary and grammar, right,

is that a lot of students focus on vocabulary on individual words.

And, so they are putting the words together more slowly

and with more hesitation.

Tip number two:

is I think you need to change that focus from words to phrases.

I often call them chunks.

In a recent interview with the polyglot, Steve Kaufmann, we talked about phrasing,

which is the idea of thinking about phrases of language.

3 or 4 words together, rather than individual words, right?

Simple example.

Here's a chunk of language.

To be honest, I think…

now, if I’m thinking of words “to be” plus the adjective, “honest”

I’m thinking of three words.

I’ve got to think a lot.

“To…be…honest…”

but if I think of a chunk or a phrase “to be honest”

which is actually just one sound, if I can automate that,

then that's going to help my fluency because I don't need to think.

To be honest, I think it's great.

Focusing on chunks and phrasing is much more important than individual words.

Let's take a simple example.

Take the question, do you often go on picnics?

Hmm… well, to…be…honest…., not so many? Much? Much, much.

But I do enjoy go? Going?

I do enjoy going in out for a picnic sometimes.

Now I’m focusing on words but if I focus on the phrase,

I’ll get something different.

Well, to be honest, not so much.

But I do enjoy going out for a picnic now and again.

Can you hear the difference?

I’m chunking and using phrases.

“Well, to be honest”

“not so much”

I do enjoy going out for a picnic now and again.

It just changes it totally and really, really can help your fluency.

How do you do this? Well...

take the structure I enjoy going out, for example, right?

Just practice substitution.

I enjoy going out.

I enjoy cooking.

I enjoy painting.

Change the last word.

The mistake most people do is that they think of the word and they do this.

I enjoy going out.

I enjoy um.. painting.

I enjoy mmm... cooking, right?

That's not helping because they're thinking and they're causing the hesitation.

So think first, speak second when you're practicing!

Like this.

I enjoy going out.

Painting.

I enjoy painting.

Cooking.

I enjoy cooking, right?

So you're actually saying the whole phrase fluently.

I enjoy cooking.

I enjoy painting.

Without the hesitation.

This is the intense practice of the basketball player.

That's what you need to be doing.

Phrasing really, really important and what's more,

it'll help you with your intonation

if you're phrasing correctly you're more likely to get the good

or correct intonation.

I’m going to talk more about that in a moment

and you will notice by the way, hopefully, you have noticed

the lot of the chunks we use are actually fillers and connectors

which are critical for fluency.

To be honest, first of all,

things like this, right, they are chunks and if you've got those chunks

using them as spoken fillers and connecting your language,

helps a lot with coherence which is key for fluency.

Okay.

Okay, so what else affects fluency?

I mean, we've talked about vocabulary and active vocabulary.

Talked about grammar, right?

And automating grammar to make it automatic.

But also think about pronunciation.

If you can't pronounce sounds and words correctly,

or it's difficult for you, that will affect your fluency.

Likewise, word stress, sentence stress, intonation

are all critical for getting good fluency.

One of the key things, right, between kind of a Band 6 and a Band 7 and 8

is the long turn, being able to speak for a long turn.

A long sentence,

maintaining or sustaining correct intonation and also several sentences,

so you've got coherent development of ideas, right?

That long turn and sustaining intonation.

Pronunciation plays a key role and particularly intonation.

It really is important.

So I think one of the key things that differentiates your 7 and your 8

is the intonation.

It's getting the natural spoken English intonation

and if you can get that up on your pronunciation to a Band 8,

it's gonna help immensely with your fluency.

Now how do you work on intonation?

It's not easy at all but,

I have an idea for you and I’m going to tell you at the end of the video.

I’ve got a quick tip for you, right?

Intonation is to use the “rising-falling” intonation

on some words, right?

The rising-falling intonation is

and we use this like,

“but… and…”

and what it means to the listener is I’m gonna carry on speaking, right?

So don't interrupt me Mr. Examiner or Mrs. Examiner.

For example, “Yes, I agree but…”

“Yes, I agree but…”

and that means I’m going to carry on speaking.

“I couldn't agree more and… I think that"

the and… shows that you're going to carry on speaking.

So it's good, right?

Sometimes to indicate to the examiner don't interrupt me, I’ve got more to say.

Because examiners are notorious for interrupting candidates.

But don't worry about that, really interruption is not a problem.

But getting familiar with these different kinds of intonation

that is gonna up your game significantly.

I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Other things that influence your fluency of course, nerves, right?

If you're nervous, gosh! That can ruin your fluency.

I have done a video about handling nerves in the test.

So go and check out up here somewhere, go and watch that.

The other thing is getting ideas, right?

That influences your fluency.

So it's not just getting the word but getting the idea,

processing the idea and bringing it out through this mouth is also complicated.

So it's all well and good, right?

Now we know the things that influence fluency, right?

We've talked about vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar,

nerves, getting ideas, all of those.

So how can we improve even more on all of those?

Well, this is the thing, right?

So imagine, if you could automate all of the key grammar,

so you don't have to think about grammar in the test?

What if you could move your focus from words to chunks

and give fluent phrasing in your speech?

What if you could perfect your pronunciation,

especially getting natural spoken English intonation

to help you move up to the Band 7 or 8 in pronunciation?

Which also will affect your fluency.

Well, I think I have a solution for you.

Something that can help in a big way and it is something that is based on

the fluency gym,

which you may know if you follow my website or my live lessons,

the fluency gym is a way to help you automate grammar,

to practice vocabulary, work on intonation and phrasing for fluency.

So I’ve developed a course called “Fluency for IELTS speaking”

and it will help you automate the key points of grammar,

it will help build and activate vocabulary

through lots of repetition and substitution drills.

It works wonders for your intonation.

We look at a variety of intonation patterns and you are repeating,

doing that intense basketball practice all the way through.

So there's lots of work to do.

It's not an easy course but the results and the reward

will be significant for your fluency.

Fluency for IELTS speaking, it's coming out very, very soon,

on the 25th of October I’ll be launching it on Udemy.

So keep an eye out

for the links on the website or the Facebook group or here on YouTube,

I’ll be talking more about it.

Maybe it's right for you.

If fluency is an issue for you I strongly recommend it.

If you're happy with your fluency, don't do it, you probably don't need to.

But it's there, I hope it can be a big help.

Great.

Thank you very much for watching this video!

I hope there's lots of ideas to get you thinking about fluency.

If you've liked it, leave a comment below.

Remember to subscribe to the channel and I will see you soon.

Take care now!

Bye-bye!