What Does it Mean to Have Good English Fluency?

Being fluent in English means being able to communicate effectively using English. While we aspire to sound like native speakers, unlike them we often do not make English our own. Many times, we don’t enjoy the language and then it becomes a source of stress with its own performance expectations that we set on ourselves.

What works is enjoying it. Getting to know new people, culture and ways of thinking brings us closer to the language we yearn to use. This means that we change as people somewhere. It is not possible to really learn English, without exposure, breeding familiarity and adapting to the ways to which the language is so closely entwined.

Technically, fluency is the ability to understand and be understood by others seamlessly. One can understand you well if you are able to express yourself quickly, clearly and accurately. You can understand it, if you take a deep dive. Exposure builds familiarity, familiarity beckons adaptation. To many improving English fluency means developing self-confidence.

Developing English fluency requires a combination of knowledge and skills in grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary and comprehension.

Build your Vocabulary

. It is important to have a good understanding of the words you are using, as well as a wide range of words to choose from when you wish to express yourself. Hence, building your vocabulary is an essential part of learning English.

The best way to increase your vocabulary quickly is by reading and listening. Reading creative material works better if you are an intermediate level speaker (or any other), because it fires your imagination and evokes emotions. As you get transported into the world of imagination the process helps codify a library of words into your memory representing concepts, feelings, ideas, labels for things and much more. Reading books, magazines, newspapers, and other materials in English can help you learn new words and their meanings.

Pronounce Accurately

Listening helps develop vocabulary as well, whether it is songs, audio books, podcast or dialogue in a movie. Since it is an auditory representation of the words it is also a prelude to speaking. It is how we learn our first words and we do so by imitating what we hear.

Once you know what the word sounds like, you may fail to produce it accurately. This is because the muscles in the mouth and throat region and the neuro-system recruited for speaking are not trained. Imitating the sounds multiple times builds proficiency in pronouncing the words accurately. Good pronunciation is a result of consistent practice as what fires together wires together. Also, your facial muscles, mouth, throat, voice box etc. build muscle memory to deliver a meaningful sounds effectively and with accuracy, till one day speaking English becomes a second nature to you.

Understand what’s behind the words

Knowing words and how to say them is not enough. Language spoken represents meaning. This must be the base of understanding any language and being understood when using it. Thus, language goes far beyond communicating the literal.

We as humans are anything but literal. We communicate much with what we say and a lot more with what we do not say. Communication essentially builds up when we become adept at comprehending accurately what the other person means to say. It is not the language itself but what the language represents that is key.

Often, the differences are subtle from individual to individual, but more pronounced if the two people come from different cultural context even if they speak the same language. Different regions develop their own colloquialisms, accents, words and use specific words or phrases to represent specific shared meaning.

Watching TV shows and movies in English is a great way to get exposure to culture systems in different parts of the world and how people represent shared meaning using language. E.g., In the U.K. when someone asks ‘You ok?’, their greeting is merely a formality. However, in the United States, ‘How are you?’, serves this purpose. No one in UK wants to know if you are Ok and no one in US expects an honest answer when the ask ‘how are you?’. However, in US if they do ask ‘You ok?’ they are concerned, and would love to hear your authentic response.

All in all, the only way to develop comprehension is to expose oneself to as much variety as possible. Exposure to people from different parts of the world going about their lives and interacting the way they do goes a long way to build our comprehension capabilities. Audio, visual and written mediums contribute significantly in giving exposure to us in various aspects allowing us to aculturize, which is key to owning English and making it our own.

Express with Writing and Semantics

Writing also helps one think about how to express oneself in English. While a communication dynamic between people is real time and there is brevity of time, writing does not have such limitations. One can take one’s time to put one’s thought together and express in a coherent manner. One can revise multiple times before one is happy.

While writing is an end in itself and a major part of how we communicate to one another, it helps train our minds to organize language to better express our thoughts and feelings. For instance, if you have ever noticed that someone who is not in a corporate will tend to speak in paragraphs, whilst those who come from a corporate background not only write in bullet points but also speak it!

Organized use of words and expressing oneself coherently allows one to be understood exactly the way one intends. Semantics or grammar plays a very important rule. Grammar is not important to know in itself; afterall babies are effective communicators as well. However, it is vital to know, because we all agree on these set of rules and we exist in a collective where understanding each other is primal to our existence together. Grammar allows complexity of our worlds to reach into the world of others.

Bring it all together

All skills add up for you to speak more fluently over a period of time. Our brains have a way of globalizing skills, and many other aspects work as we practice to lead ourselves to proficiency. The key is consistency. The more we practice consistently and use English, our neurons fire and wire together. Our muscles develop muscle memory. You know you are fluent, when one day you are using English without realizing it and you have said things without having to thought about it.