Can one become fluent in speaking English within 6 months?
Can one become fluent in speaking English within 6 months?
Yes, anyone can be fluent in English in 6 months if you follow these tips:-
- First of all stop being intimidated by English . Remember English is just a language like many other languages.
- Follow the way a baby learns her mother tongue: By being surrounded by the language all the time. So surround yourself with ENGLISH for some months. Create an environment around you. The question is how you would do that?
- To be fluent in English you would need to divide your activities in five parts: READING, LISTENING WRITING ,SPEAKING AND MOST IMPORTANT: THINKING.
- You need to feed yourself English in order to spit it out ( I mean to speak)
- Make sure you focus on Listening part first. Watch English movies with subtitles. ( 1 movie per day at least). Subtitles will give you more clarity of the spoken words.
- Listen to English news . In the beginning you may find it boring and intimidating and difficult but believe me, watching or Listening to news will give you better pronunciation . Moreover the vocabulary used in news will be totally different from the one used in movies. You will understand words in proper context .
- Listen to English songs ( even if you don’t understand). Remember the motto is to surround yourself with the language. It also makes you feel cool…
- Download some cool ENGLISH listening and speaking apps. There are plenty available today.
- Then focus on the reading part. Start with simple stories or novels of your preferred genre : romance, drama, thriller , sci-fi, mystery or whatever sustains your interest .You can also read self help or motivational stories. Fiction or nonfiction . You may read autobiographies. My personal favourite is : My journey by Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.
- Do read newspaper daily for obvious reasons. Newspaper will not only keep you abreast with the latest happenings but will also give you different type of languageskills related to politics, finance,sports, entertainment etc . This will also enhance your ability to have viewpoints.
- Don’t get stuck with reading n listening.: Practice what you learn .
- Try short sentences . Try your ENGLISH in shopping malls or restaurant or while buying tickets or buying pizzas or burgers. You may speak wrong but nobody there would laugh at you because you are the King : Customer. This will take care of your initial inhibition.
- Form a group of friends with common interest of learning English. You can try your newly acquired vocabulary or sentences with them .
- Then comes the writing part. You may try and write daily journal or diary .
- You may write easy topics in the beginning eg you may write about : what makes you happy,sad ,angry etc. This will help you articulate your feelings better.
- Last but not the least comes : thinking in English. As we all know that our mind never ceases to think even for a minute, why not take advantage of this. Whenever you are alone just be conscious to think in English. If you are just sitting in your room, look around and think : ok,there is a book lying here,there is a green mat ,there is dust on the table … blah blah blah.
- The point is to make yourself think in a different language ( which of course you want to learn) . Thinking in that language will cut down your TRANSLATION time and you would be more fluent in English .If you will keep on translating every sentence then it would hamper your fluency and of course confidence.
- You can even think in English while going to work ,while cooking : I m boiling water,now I will add tea leaves, now I will measure sugar etc. The point here is to keep the language in the ON mode all the time.
- Do not bother to follow all the tips . Just follow 2–3 which you find interesting.
- Do practice practical GRAMMAR but do not get into the depth of it . Remember, a baby doesn’t learn the grammatical rules first to speak the language. Later on you can have a deeper understanding but Do Not Get Stuck with the rules.
- I know it was a long post ,thanks for sticking till the end. But all this is practical advice and sharing from my personal experience.
- Thank you . Be Focused and determined . English is just a Language .