Start Here: 3-Steps To Improve Speaking Fluency In English

Sometimes getting started is the hardest part, isn’t it? It happens to me often too. I remember times when I want to start working. I’m super motivated to do something. I sit down, very eagerly. Then…I’m frozen! I can’t move because I don’t know the first step to take! Has that happened to you?

Well, the same is true with language. I’m currently learning Turkish and reclaiming my French. I want to speak fluently. You do too. You certainly want to reach speaking fluency English. So, what can you do?

In this blog post I will cut through the confusion and help you finally start talking.

In episode 68 of my podcast, I gave you all of the juicy secrets to reaching your highest English speaking proficiency. You can listen to that episode below.

I kind of hinted at this before in my classes and in episode 50 of the podcast. However, I didn’t give a lot of detail. I’ll finally give those helpful tips right now.

Start at the Beginning

The first and most important thing you must do is to create a goal for yourself. Speaking fluency in English depends on this.

I’ll help you. Your goal has to be specific. It must also be realistic. Many of you suffer from unrealistic ideas about your English. I’m sorry, but many of you will not sound exactly like a native speaker of English. Not only will you not sound like one, that’s a terrible goal to set for yourself. Don’t make this your goal

To set your goal, there are three things you must ask yourself:

• what are you trying to do?
• why are you trying to do it?
• how are you going to do it?

I’ll explain a little bit more below. You will also see an example of a good goal.

1. What Are You Trying to Do?

In episode 68, I used the analogy of an archer to help you see my point. It was a very good analogy if I may say so. Lol!

Your goal has to answer the question. For example, I want to speak fluent English. That’s a great goal! Let’s add to it in the next sections.

2. Why Are You Trying to Do It?

So, in the podcast episode I told you about the archer. The archer was aiming to hit the target—that was the goal. Unfortunately, the archer missed the goal. Why? Because s/he wasn’t aiming at the correct thing.

To add to our example from above, let’s answer the question for #2. Our goal is to speak fluent English. Why are we trying to speak fluent English? This is a great question because it forces you to narrow your choices. Let’s say that we want to speak fluent English for our job. Maybe we want a better job, or to be able to speak to our (children’s) teacher or doctor. Those are terrific answers to this question. They’re terrific because we now have narrowed our reason for doing what we’re doing. We have personalized it. Since we have done this, it will be easier for us to decide how we’re going to do it. We’ll talk about this in our final step.

3. How are you going to do it?

There are plenty of ways for you to choose how you’re going to reach your goal. When you’re writing your goal (which I advise you to do), you can use any method. I personally like Evernote, Google Docs or Sheets, or even notions. These will help you keep track of your goal. Next, you must decide the method(s) you will use. For example, find a speaking partner on iTalki or Interpals. Join a Meetup group. Become a leader in the Living in English: 365 Facebook Group. You could even write down that you will join a course near your home. No course near you? No problem! There are so many fantastic courses online. My Fluency Academy is one of them.

Now that you have 3 perfect steps, get started on that goal!

Conclusion

You have learned 3 super easy ways to improve your speaking. The more you improve your speaking, the more fluent in English you will become. To do this, create a goal. Next, answer 3 simple questions: 1. what are you trying to do?; 2. why are you trying to do it? 3. How are you going to do it?

What’s your goal/ answer for “what are you trying to do?”