Can't Express COMPLEX IDEAS in English? Learn the 5 SKILLS You Need

Have you ever felt that even though you can  perfectly use your English to talk about simple

stuff, you actually tend to struggle when you  need to express more complex ideas, particularly

when talking to your professor, boss, or in formal situations? I actually suffer from

this with my Portuguese! And truth be told, that’s a challenge even for me in English. I’m sure it’s

not easy for you in your native language either! So what I mean by all this is that you can talk

about things like your daily life, free time  activities, shopping, food and drinks, etc. That's

relatively easy, right? However, there are times when  you need to actually organize your thoughts and

formulate more complex ideas. As I said, this can  be a challenge in your native language, so imagine

how much more difficult it can be in English! A  situation like this can make you feel that you

don't have the right words and you'll probably  start making a big effort to remember other words.

Your confusion and nervousness rises! When you  finally have a go at saying what's on your mind,

you get kind of sweaty and you doubt yourself! You  might even feel like Mary who says "Sometimes

it's hard for her to organize her ideas without  sounding unintelligent". Well, don't worry. I'm here

to help you take a step back and see what's  going on. We're going to break down the five

different abilities that when you make progress  on them, you can transform your English, and take

it to the next level, and be totally comfortable  in expressing anything that's on your mind. But in

case we are meeting for the first time, I'm Ollie   and I'm here to guide you beyond the classroom

to understand fast native speech, be understood  by anyone and connect to the world! So join

Priyanshi who says that she "Has achieved fluency  by making our lessons a part of her daily routine."

All you need to do is hit that subscribe button  and the bell down below so you don't miss any

of our new lessons. In this lesson we'll talk about  the five abilities that allow you to speak English.

They’re range, accuracy, fluency, interaction and coherence. And if you can speak English - and

I'm sure you can if you're watching this video - you  already have these five abilities. So it's a matter

of improving on these. It's going from this to this.  This information is inspired by years of research

done in the field of second language acquisition.  These five abilities are what the Common European

Framework of Reference for Languages uses to  assess a person's spoken language. So let's talk

about the first one: Range is on a very basic  level your repertoire of words and phrases. Meaning

the vocabulary that you know and can use at any  given moment. When you were just starting to speak

English, your range only allowed you to communicate  limited information in simple everyday situations.

You then get to a level where we say you can get  by in English. This means that you can communicate

in a wider variety of situations. If you are  in an English-speaking country you don't need

a translator to follow you around to help you  communicate. You can do it yourself and relatively

well. However, when it comes to expressing more  complex ideas, be it in a university tutorial,

at work, or even at the bank, you need to have  enough range of language to be able to give

clear descriptions, express your opinion on  general topics, have a certain flexibility

in your use of language that allows you to express  subtleties, and more precise ideas. This paragraph -

which by the way is on a very random topic - is a  good example of using a wide range of language.

"What's the question? Do I have any obsessions? Well, I don't consider them obsessions, but i

do have a habit of organizing myself in ways  that other people might consider obsessive.

The other day I walked into a friend's  apartment where I was staying for a week or two,

and instantly alphabetized their collection of  CDs. If I was going to be there and I needed to

find a piece of music, it just meant that it would  be a lot easier to find if it was alphabetically

organized. Do you see what I'm talking about? If  someone who I know is an English learner and they

write "I do have a habit of organizing myself in  ways that other people might consider obsessive."

I'll instantly know their English is very advanced  because of the range of language they're using.

Now, how can you achieve that, you might be asking?  Well, I'll try to be specific because I could tell

you that reading is the best way to improve your  range of language. That's great advice, but it's

also true for the other four abilities we still  have to get to. Well, something that will broaden

your range of language is knowing synonyms. When  you look up a word in the dictionary, check out

the synonyms. Most dictionaries have a section  at the back called thesaurus, which focuses on

alternatives to a given word. Over at our Learn  English with TV Series Channel, we've done many

lessons with alternative ways to say very common  words. For example, other ways to say "I think"

or alternative ways to say "I'm sorry", among others . Another essential tip is recognizing collocations.

When you learn a new word, don't just stop  there, check as many of the words that are

associated with that new learn word as possible.  We got you covered here as well with one of our

recent lessons that teach you how to learn with  vocabulary chunks. By the way, that's the first of a

few recommendations I'll make in this video, so be  sure to check out the links in the description of

this video. Another key aspect of developing a wide  range of language is knowing idiomatic expressions.

They're extremely useful for adding color to your  language and expressing finer shades of meaning.

Take a look at the use of an idiom in this  sentence, example: "We need to get the ball

rolling to prepare our presentation. It needs to  be ready for the meeting next week!" You'll learn

tons of idioms and expressions by listening to our  Podcast! If you haven't checked it out before, you

could get started with the episode where we went  over Weather Idioms to Use in Daily Conversation.

Download the RealLife App today from the google  play or apple store and start listening! Having a

good range of language also means that you can  differentiate and appropriately use different

registers. That is, formal, neutral and informal  language. Even slang, if the linguistic context

calls for it. So, you have to cultivate a mentality  of curiosity and exploration through the language.

If you do this, little by little you'll be able  to formulate ideas and convey finer shades of

meaning precisely. Number two: Accuracy. Accuracy is  your ability to organize the words you know into

sentences. When you need to express complex ideas,  you'll need the knowledge of how to put together

complex sentences in order to be understood. Let's  go back to your earlier stages of English learning.

When you were beginning to speak in English, you  could only use some simple grammatical structures.

If someone asks you “How do you feel  about having your English corrected?"

You could say "I accept it. And I learn from my  mistakes." At this early stage of your English

language journey, you probably hadn't internalized  some rules. Maybe you even relied on memory at

times, which is common at this stage. So, you could  express some ideas, but with many restrictions

on the implications of what you would like to say.  Then, as you progress in your language development

your accuracy improves. This is an example of  how someone might answer that same question.

Focus on the accuracy displayed in this response:  "Well, it hasn't happened much lately, but I don't

mind, because that's how we learn, you know, we learn  from our own mistakes. Sometimes when I'm tired, I

might make a mistake with the third person form,  you know, but usually people are quite tolerant.

And sometimes I catch my own mistakes, so I'm able  to correct myself." There are certain grammar topics

that a lot of learners fear! I can totally  understand you because I go through the same

in both spanish and portuguese. I really find the  subjunctive in these languages hard and a strange

concept to understand. Some of the grammar  topics that my students often struggle to learn

completely are verb tenses. There are 12 tenses in  English, but not everybody can use all of them in

conversation. We recently made a video in which we  used a chart which we call the tour of the tenses.

If you're interested in learning this, I recommend  you watch it. The link is in the description below!

The other difficult grammar topics for learners  are: the conditionals, the passive voice, compound

and complex sentences, connectors, gerunds  and infinitives, and the list goes on. You can

acquire these concepts from being in contact and  being exposed to the language, but you also need

to set aside some time to deliberately learn  and practice the more difficult grammar points.

You have to bite the bullet and do it, as we say.  Writing can also be a fantastic way to improve in

this area because when you're writing you tend  to pay more attention to things like sentence

structure, word choice, and things like that. As you  focus on those things, and especially if you ask

your teacher or research when you have questions,  you will little by little tune your accuracy.

The next one is Fluency. And in this context  fluency refers to your ability to speak smoothly

and freely without the need to pause and think  about the grammar, the vocabulary or pronunciation

that you need to communicate. This is a little  different from accuracy because you can be fluent

but have very little accuracy. But be careful! Because worrying too much about accuracy could

cause you to think too much about formulating the  perfect sentence in your head before saying it,

which would make you take really long pauses when  speaking. If you care too much about accuracy, you

might be too scared of making mistakes which  could lead to making you not speak at all. Here

at RealLife English we always say "I'd rather  speak and make a lot of mistakes than never

make mistakes because I don't even speak". But, when you work hard to improve your accuracy,

your fluency, and your range of the language of  course, the results will later speak for themselves!

So, what are some specific things you can learn or  some activities that you can engage in to improve

your fluency so that you can express yourself  smoothly, spontaneously, and almost effortlessly?

Well, hopefully this won't disappoint you but  there is really no secret. Fluency just comes

down to practice. Much more so than the other  two abilities we've seen so far, range and

accuracy. Now, there's no way around it, you need  to put yourself out there and start speaking

the language as much as possible. And here at RealLife English we've developed the ultimate resource

for you to do exactly that. It's the next best  thing to living in an English-speaking country:

On the RealLife App you'll be able to connect  with people from all around the world and start

practicing your fluency, accuracy, and range today! You can download it from the Google Play Store,

Apple App Store, or down in the description below there is a link. As I said, practice is the most

important thing to improving your fluency, but  there are also a few specific things you could

also know that will help you. Knowledge about  connected speech, which is the way fluent speakers

cut, link and reduce their words, is going  to be immensely helpful. And fortunately,

Ethan made a great lesson on that called "The  Secret to Understand Fast-Speaking Natives."

I'll link it down in the description below.  Something else that's going to improve your

fluency are discourse markers, especially  the ones known as space-fillers or simply

fillers. These words have an essential  communicative function, which is that they

buy yourself some time to think about what you're  going to say next while keeping the conversation

going. Some of these are: "you know, I mean, well, like,  so" or even the sound we make when we're thinking: uhm...

The fourth one is Interaction. And interaction  here is a bit of a fancy word for conversation.

This is different from fluency because when we  talk about fluency we refer to our ability to

speak easily, smoothly, and spontaneously. However,  if you think about it, fluency is all about you,

but interaction is how you invite the other person  to have a conversation. So, interaction entails

speaking as well as listening, and a lot of the  strategies that are at play during a conversation.

An aspect of interaction is one that we at RealLife English give a lot of value to, cultural

fluency. Cultural fluency is how effectively  communicators use the language to connect with

others, how they break and transcend the rules, and  how they feel and flow in communication. The more

you improve on the other abilities (range, accuracy,  and fluency), the easier it'll be for you to be good

at interacting with people. Again, remember when you  were at those early stages of language learning.

Probably you were only able to ask and answer  very simple questions, like "What is your name?"

"How old are you?" "What is your job?" Etc. So, your  ability to interact with people was quite

limited. When you get deeper into  your language learning and become

really good at interaction, you can interact with  ease and you can pick up and use non-verbal cues

and you can use and interpret intonation in  speech. You can take your turn in communication,

cooperate, ask for clarification, understand and  interpret the message that the other person is

trying to say. The most significant thing you can  do to get better at interaction is engaging in it.

This way you learn by experience, by making  mistakes, reflecting on them, and learning

from them. Again, our App is an excellent tool  for that. But, let me also give you some tips on

other specific things that can really help you get  better at interaction. The first one is question

tags. These are the little questions at the ends  of sentences like: "You speak English, don't you?"

"Josh is coming with us, isn't he?" We use question  tags like these to ask for confirmation.

Sometimes we also use them to invite the other  person to make a comment about what we just said,

for example: "It's a nice day, isn't it?" I can't  get too deep into the topic of question tags,

but it is a very interesting topic. We covered it  briefly in a lesson over on the Learn English with

TV Series page where we teach you with the movie  Inception. I'll leave a link for that lesson down

in the description below. But also, let us know  in the comments of this lesson whether you would

like a lesson exclusively on question tags. Another  tip for getting better at interaction is learning

questions for asking for clarification. A strong  sign that you need to improve your interaction

skills is if you always use "What?" when you can't  understand what the other person is saying.

Better options for this are: "Sorry/ excuse me/  pardon?" "Can you repeat that?/ Can you speak slower?"

"Come again?/ Say that again?/ Sorry, can you repeat?" Also, when you're the one speaking and you want

to check if the other person is following you, you  could say: "Do you know what I mean?/ Know what i'm

saying?" We made a lesson about this called "How to  Avoid Getting Stuck in a Conversation in English."

I'll link this in the description below. Last but  not least, Coherence. And coherence is your ability

to organize your message into a well-structured  way so that it's easy to understand. It's how you

can make the relation between your ideas clearer.  This is essential for expressing complex ideas.

Connectors are essential for doing exactly that. There are connectors of: Opinion/

Cause and effect/ Persuasion/ And many more. When you  advance in your abilities to explain complex ideas

you can create a coherent and cohesive message,  organizing ideas in a clear way. Take a look at

these two paragraphs. Even though the first one is  understandable, it lacks a lot of cohesive elements:

"I did it in the past in college. I moved to  Mexico and it was difficult to get a job that

wasn't teaching English. I went back to the US  and took a post-graduate course in translation.

I swore i'd never be a translator. It was  so boring. I kept translating. I eventually

liked it. I wanted to work for myself. It  wasn't a big investment to get started."

Now, let's compare the first paragraph with the  following one. It's a little more complex: "It was

something that I'd done when I was in college, and  when I moved to Mexico, it was difficult to get a

job that wasn't teaching English, so I went back  to the US and I took a postgraduate course in

translation. After taking the course I swore that  i would never be a translator, I thought it would

be so boring. However, I kept doing translation  work, and eventually decided it was for me

as I liked the idea of working for myself, and it  didn't require too much investment to get started."

In this lesson we talked about five abilities that  you need to express complex ideas in English: Range,

Accuracy, Fluency, Interaction and Coherence. Start  speaking today and putting them into practice

on the RealLife App, and remember to click on  the links I left for you in the description on

different lessons on the specific topics, that will  help you improve the five different aspects of

these five abilities. Thank you so much for joining  me today, and I will see you next lesson! Aww yeah!