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Foreign Language Learning: How To Improve Your Fluency

Tips on how to become more fluent and improve in speaking exams

Date : 18/04/2016

Author Information

Chloe

Uploaded by : Chloe
Uploaded on : 18/04/2016
Subject : Spanish

How to improve your language fluency.

Speaking exams have never been pleasant experiences, but for many people integral to the reason that they are studying a language in the first place to be able to speak it! Here s how to improve your general fluency and therefore sound more natural in an oral exam.

Know your language. How well you know the vocabulary, verbs, opinion phrases etc. is fundamental to how quickly you can access them in your memory bank and therefore how fluent you can become.

Practise practise practise! Not just potential questions that may come up in the exam but speaking in general. Enlist the help of a friend or a native who speaks the language you re learning so that you can practice your spoken language in person. Try to find a native speaker who is interested in improving their English. This is a cheap way to get tuition as you can meet them for an hour a week, spend half an hour chatting in English and half an hour chatting in the language, it is mutually beneficial and also very sociable.

Listen to native speakers and take note of what they use as fillers. These are those words that don t really mean much but fill the time in which we are thinking of what to say next. In English they would be such words as um well er like to be honest at the end of the day etc. Ask your tutor for some pointers as to which ones to use in your language and practise using them as much as possible. This will help you sound more like a native speaker and therefore more fluent.

Do not be tempted to pre-learn word-for-word answers to set questions. This will sound very scri pted and unnatural and you will lose marks for it. Instead try to learn key phrases that could be used in a variety of different contexts/topics and get used to using them off the cuff. Examples of these could be on the one hand and on the other I really like . because it fascinates me etc.

Do not get hung up on making mistakes, as this will hinder your levels of fluency. If you hesitate too much or keep correcting yourself, you will not sound natural. You have to be prepared to lose your inhibitions and just go with the flow. You are bound to make a few mistakes when speaking in a foreign language and this is allowed even for an A* candidate at A level. The best advice is to try to forget your nerves, forget you re being marked and just speak as fluently and naturally as you can!

Remember that fluency is a subjective thing, and one that can always be improved upon. Passing a speaking exam at any level is just one step in a very exciting journey of language learning! The single most important point to remember is that the more you speak the more fluent you will become.


This resource was uploaded by: Chloe