Why don't I speak it?

February 6th, 2017

The most common remark we hear at our intake interviews with language learners is without a doubt the fact that despite all the hours they've dedicated to their language study, their speaking just doesn't seem to improve. Curiously, most people tend to believe that they are the only ones suffering from this 'curse', while it's by far the most common problem among language learners. So the question is, WHY DON'T YOU SPEAK?

The explanation is quite trivial, actually. Every sentence in every language is a combination of a certain GRAMMAR STRUCTURE (or pattern) and the WORDS (or expressions) you wrap it with:

I live in Barcelona. I have lived in this city for 3 years. My husband likes motorbikes. Do you like motorbikes?

YOUR ABILITY TO SPEAK A FOREIGN LANGUAGE EQUALS YOUR ABILITY TO QUICKLY PRODUCE THE NECESSARY STRUCTURE (and add the right words) when having a conversation! Speaking, unlike reading or writing, happens at high speed, which means you don't have the time to stop and think about the sentence you need to make. Basically, your mind needs to unconsciously produce the relevant structure for each grammatical context.

This ability to produce the right structures at high speed is your set of SPEAKING REFLEXES that have to be trained through appropriate speaking exercises. Ideally, these exercises have to progressively take you through several stages of assimilating a new grammar pattern:

As we know from experience, with each stage learners start making more and more mistakes. The reason is simple – this sequence takes them from controlled (= easy) to semi-spontaneous (= doable) to spontaneous ( = difficult) speaking, and each stage will challenge their speaking reflexes further and further. But this is precisely why it's so important to progressively go through all these stages.

Some methods are based on parrot-like repetition and never take learners past the first stage which means that while they might be helpful in letting students figure out the language patterns, they are likely to fail when it comes to teaching people to THINK IN THE TARGET LANGUAGE. Other methods do not train these speaking reflexes whatsoever, assuming that once people have done enough gap-fill exercises, they will be able to correctly apply the new structure in their speaking, as if speaking a language were a natural reward for spending hours studying it. Sadly, this is just not true! Unless you make a conscious effort to analyse and assimilate the new grammar structures, fluency might never come.

A piece of advice we could give to all language learners is therefore to start PAYING ATTENTION to the grammar structures the language consists of, then practise those patterns orally (and in writing) as many times as possible and finally apply these patterns to talking about specific life situations that are most likely to trigger the use of the target structure. Additionally, since class time is always limited, to maximize the speaking practice of each structure, learners should rehearse it mentally, which is just as effective as doing it orally in class. Ideally, whenever you learn a new structure, you should make 20-30 sentences with it in your head, while you are walking, cooking, cleaning, driving or doing a similar automatic task. This will dramatically boost your ability to extract that structure when speaking, which in turn will visibly affect your overall fluency.

In conclusion, speaking fluency in a foreign language is not a miracle, but neither is it a direct result of some types of language study (i.e. gap-fill exercises, reading, listening, writing and even some types of speaking). What you need is a language-study system that is designed to help you acquire and firmly assimilate the patterns of the language.