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!
