I Understand English, but I Can’t Speak It! | 7 Fluency Tips

Have you ever wondered why you can read English,  you can even listen to English, but you cannot  

speak English fluently? Paula an English learner  that watches our videos left us this comment on  

one of our lessons. We understand that if this  is your case you're frustrated. After all, who  

wants to learn English if not to speak it. Here at  RealLife English we’ve helped thousands of English  

learners just like you overcome their fears and  limitations, connect to their deep desire of why  

they’re learning English, and transform themselves  by becoming confident, fluent English speakers who  

can connect with anyone in the world. Each of  these people’s stories are different, but we  

recognized some patterns. I’d even go so far as  to name the villains in their story! These are:  

shyness ,forgetting words, lack of opportunity.  In this lesson, we'll uncover the truth behind why  

you can understand more than what you can actually  speak in English. Also, I’ll give you 7 tips on  

what you need to do in order to overcome shyness,  leave the problem of forgetting words behind,  

and find opportunities to speak English. Before we get into the lesson,  

here at RealLife English we would be honoured to  accompany you on your journey to English fluency.  

Let’s go on this adventure together. So, please,  like this video and hit the subscribe button; this  

way, you’ll probably notice the next video that  we upload. However, if you don’t want to leave  

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With that said, let’s get right into it: why  can't I speak English as well as i can listen?

The main reason why that happens is because  of what is technically referred to as memory  

recognition and recall. Turns out, recognizing  is much easier than recalling. Broadly speaking,  

this means that when you listen to English, you’re  basically recognizing the words that you hear.  

When you speak, on the other hand, you need to  recall or remember words in order to produce  

a message. This takes more effort to do. Imagine this. You’re in your car driving  

to work, to the gym, or to any place that you  regularly go to. When you look out the window,  

you can recognize where you are. You’ve seen  that building many times, and that house,  

and that square. You see, recognizing  takes very little cognitive effort. 

On the other hand, recalling is  much more heavy duty or intense.  

If I asked you to think about each house in the  right order_ that you pass by on your way to work,  

you can probably very easily think about  the house that’s right next door to yours,  

and the next one. But as you try to recall the  houses that are further and further away from  

your house, it becomes more and more fuzzy.  Recalling requires tons of mental effort! 

This is what speaking is. It’s a very dynamic  activity that requires you to integrate everything  

that you know about English: vocabulary,  grammar and pronunciation to produce sounds.

Listening is a passive skill, while speaking  is active. To go further, we can classify  

the four basic English skills into 2 groups.  Listening and reading are receptive skills,  

while speaking and writing are productive skills. What all of this means is that your receptive  

skills are always going to be more developed than  your productive skills. In fact, it doesn’t make  

sense for it to be the other way around. Having said that, the frustration that so  

many of you have still isn’t any less of  an issue when you know all that, right?

You still feel that you can’t  speak as fluently as you’d like;  

you still freeze and get scared when  speaking. Many of you don’t even have  

opportunities to practice speaking.  These three villains have gone nowhere! 

Later, I’m going to give you specific tips  on how you can overcome those problems.  

However, the root of the issue, is probably that  you’re not getting enough practice speaking.

A scholar recently argued  that in the language classroom  

there should be more focus on  speaking practice, she said:

“It’s not surprising that practicing  talking can make you better at talking.” 

Let’s take a look at the three  essential activities that you need  

to master the English language or any language.

The first one is exposure. This is a  non-negotiable, as we like to say, so you _HAVE_  

to get it. The more exposure to the language you  get, the better off you’ll be. In today's world,  

this is really easy to get. You get exposed to  English by reading, watching Netflix, playing  

video games in English, by listening to music  and podcasts. There’s never too much exposure.

Stephen Krashen is famous for his input  hypothesis, in which he states that you  

acquire language through exposure and that you  learn by studying. And he says that acquiring  

is better than learning. Acquisition is great!  But I also do think that you need to set aside  

some time to learn, if you want to make some  serious progress in your English. That’s the  

next essential activity. Focused learning. This  is when you deliberately learn some aspect of the  

language, whether this is something about grammar,  meanings of words, or how to pronounce words.  

In order to learn a language well, you need to  dedicate some time to learning it conscientiously.  

In my opinion, at a beginner  and early intermediate level,  

as little as 2 hours per week is going to be  enough to move you forward in your learning.  

But the more time you can dedicate to your  learning, the better off you’ll be, of course. 

Finally, you need practice to help you  really learn and make w hat you learned  

deliberately yours, or even what you acquired  by being exposed to the language. This is why we  

always say use or lose it. If you don’t put into  practice what you’ve learned, you will forget it.

Now, how this looks in the span of  a week might be something like this:  

As we said, you could do focused learning 2 hours  per week. Maybe up to 5 depending on how much time  

you have. As for exposure it’s hard to quantify,  maybe you read here and there, listen to some  

English at different moments in your day, etc. It  can very easily amount to several hours per week.  

So, let’s say that that’s 20 hours per week.  Then, what you really don’t want to neglect is  

the practice part. You never want this to be less  than the time that you spend on focused learning.  

When I say practice, I mean the productive skills  of writing and speaking that we saw earlier.  

Ideally, practice should be at least 3 times as  much as focused learning. As I said, that’s how  

you solidify what you learn or even acquire. Now, you can look at that in terms of those 3  

activities. But you can also simplify it quite  a bit and come to the realization that when  

you welcome English as a part of your life,  rather than accept it as something that you  

have to study, you will always be getting the  exposure, learning and practice that you need.

We always say don’t just learn English, live it. And that’s exactly what we want for you:  

to have the opportunity to live your English.  That is why we have created a tool that will  

be incredibly valuable for you if you  want to become a fluent English speaker.  

We’ve recently launched the RealLife English  Podcast and Speaking App, which will give  

dedicated learners, just like you, the  opportunity to speak English with other  

learners from around the world, at  the touch of a button, for free.

Download this app now, and don’t miss  the opportunity to take advantage of  

this amazing way to connect with people from  all over the world and practice your English! 

If one of the reasons why you can’t speak  English as fluently as you want is because  

you don’t have opportunities to practice it,  I hope our app will solve that problem. Now,  

how do we solve the shyness  problem? Or forgetting words?  

Maybe you can relate to what this other  subscriber commented on one of our videos:

So, I’ll give you 7 tips that combine  learning and practice that will help you be  

more confident in your speaking.

Imitate away The thing is we’re naturally inclined  

to copy what other people do. As this article  puts it imitation is at the heart of being human.  

When we imitate others, we’re learning  from them, copying what works for them.  

It activates the watch and  learn part of our brain.

What this looks like for you as an English  learner is using a model English speaker.  

It could be a more experienced English  learner or a native English speaker.  

Imitate what they say, and how they say it.

The idea is that you explore, play, listen  and repeat. Activate your curiosity for sounds  

and words. If there’s a particular word you  imitate but that you don’t know the meaning of,  

go ahead and look it up. This over time  builds up and that’s how you make progress. 

Learn chunks We covered this in detail  

in a video we titled: The #1 Key to Advanced  Fluency: Word Chunks. You can watch it here.

But to give you a summary, word chunks  

are a sequence of words that come naturally  together to express an idea. For example,  

when you first learned "Nice to meet you",  you didn't study each word in that sentence.  

You simply learned them all together, and even  the answer, "Nice to meet you, too!", right?

Well, don’t just stop there  and continue prioritizing  

learning chunks over learning single words.  Chunk learning is extremely valuable because. 

It helps with fluency. Various research studies  have found that more fluent speakers are able  

to speak faster and with less hesitation  due to the effective use of chunks. 

It helps idiomaticity. The use of chunks  can help students appear as idiomatic  

language users - by that we mean they can  use expressions that are natural and correct. 

It sets you up for further learning. For example,  when you learn a word chunk with the word way,  

you’re more likely to learn other chunks, by  just changing a word. For example, “on the way”  

means something is coming (ex:  "there's more snow on the way")  

Now, you can replace “on” with “by” and you  get “by the way.” Then there’s more chunks  

you can play with: when you say I’m on my  way, or no way of… as in no way of knowing,  

no way of telling, etc. One chunk can help you  get the foundation for subsequent learning. 

Be proactive By this I mean put what  

you’ve learned into use immediately. If there is  one thing your brain enjoys, it is feeling useful.  

Our brains dislike storing information that  we don’t use. (Maybe that’s why you keep  

forgetting the English words you tried learning  yesterday!). As we always say, use or lose it.  

You can come up with sentences where you can  use a new word or chunk that you’ve learned.  

If English is already integrated as a part of your  life, you’ll find the opportunity to use that new  

learned word soon enough. Be an actor! 

Think about what an actor does. They read a text,  memorize it, then internalize it and then they  

repeat it. They use emotion, exaggeration,  repetition and practice. These are awesome  

things you can integrate in your English practice.  You’re probably used to sounding a certain way in  

your native language, but don’t be afraid to  add new layers to your voice. If you’re shy,  

this will definitely help you to embrace a new  way of speaking that pushes through that shyness. 

Get feedback (from others too!) That’s right. Your feedback or the self-monitoring  

over your speech is essential. Hear yourself.  Listen to how English sounds when you speak it.  

Notice when you get stuck in a certain idea and  don’t know how to express it correctly. Or when  

you realize you don’t have the words you need to  say something. Then, be proactive and Google them!

Talking alone and recording yourself can be a  great way to give yourself feedback. When you  

do this, you’ll notice that the first thing you’d  be inclined to talk about is your own life. So,  

go for it. A student of mine told me he’s been  narrating his life or how his day went for years,  

and that he finds it interesting to  listen back to old recordings as it  

feels like a trip back in time and he can  notice how much his English has improved.

Then, there are two other types of feedback  that you can get. You can get direct feedback  

from a more experienced learner, a native  English speaker or even a peer, someone who’s  

in a similar stage in their learning. Ask them  about what they think about their honest opinion  

on how you’re speaking. Sometimes you might need  to hire a teacher to give you more qualified  

advice and also to actually give you feedback.  If you rely too much on a friend, this person  

might feel uncomfortable pointing  out what you need to improve.

The other type of feedback that you can get  is indirect feedback. This requires you to  

be willing to speak English with others. The way  this works is that you have to pick up the signals  

other people give you when you’re speaking. When  you try to say something, does the other person  

understand you without any effort? If the answer  is yes, great. You can be fully confident you can  

file that sentence away as correct. But, if the  other person is unsure what you mean, use it as a  

sign that you could reflect on whatever you said,  how you said it, and how you could say it better.

My last tip is: Or as Ethan would say: Do what you gotta do 

This is a bit like the “be proactive”  tip I just gave you. However,  

it’s more about the realization that you  have to take responsibility over your own  

learning. A teacher can help. I can help to  guide you in certain aspects. But you’re the hero  

of your own adventure, and you have to figure  it out. You absolutely can if you want it.

If you’re too shy to speak, make a plan  to gradually put yourself in more and more  

challenging situations until you can feel much  better about yourself and about your English.  

You might not stop being shy completely,  but at least you will have made  

enough progress to keep that shyness from  making you pass on valuable opportunities.

If you forget words. It might be because you’re  not putting your English into use. If you don’t  

have an opportunity to practice your English…  Well, once again I will tell you, you can download  

our new app, where you can instantly get connected  to another English learner just like yourself.

That’s it for this lesson! I hope you find  it useful! Remember, it all becomes a lot  

easier when you make English a part  of your life, because at that point,  

you don’t just learn it, you live it and when  you live it fluency will come on its own.