How to Speak Fluent English?

Teacher Rowena

With 25 years of experience in teaching English, I have witnessed many students facing varying degrees of fear and difficulty in learning the language. To enhance the interest and quality of English learning for students, I have published books and developed a method suitable for Chinese speakers called the Double R Amalgam (see www.doubleramalgam.com for details), enabling students to learn English more effectively and systematically.

13 DSE Column

How to Speak Fluent English?

The HKDSE English speaking exam will be held in April, and students generally show a polarized attitude toward this paper. For students who live in an English-speaking environment, the oral exam is a gift, and achieving a good grade is natural. Conversely, for students who rarely have the opportunity to use English, this paper becomes a "paper of death"; even with sufficient preparation, it is difficult to turn the situation around. Some students helplessly give up, believing it is impossible to improve their current level in a short time. Is this really the case? Does it take a decade or more to speak fluent English?

First of all, I can tell you for sure that if a candidate has been learning English for more than a decade and still cannot master the skills of speaking English, it has nothing to do with the English language system itself, but is absolutely a problem of confidence or learning patterns. Chinese people are relatively reserved, and "face" is very important to us, but the fear of making mistakes is exactly the biggest obstacle to learning a language. Many people say that childhood is the best time to learn a language, simply because children lack adult shyness and love to mimic; they follow what others say without a second thought. This is precisely the learning skill that language beginners need to build. If you want to improve your English speaking skills, the primary requirement is not to be afraid of making mistakes.

To improve your level of spoken English, candidates must make more use of their ears, try to mimic as much as possible, and pay attention to changes in intonation. In fact, many people do not pay attention to intonation changes when speaking English, resulting in "Hong Kong-style English." For example, in words like lot [lɒt] and the "lot" sound in pilot [ˈpaɪlət], they use the same pronunciation, yet the phonetic symbols show that their pronunciations are fundamentally different. It is worth noting that if students want to get rid of Hong Kong-style English, they cannot adopt the habitual patterns of Chinese, where they articulate each word distinctly. In other words, the skills required for speaking Chinese and English are different. The former requires clear articulation, while the latter requires syllable coordination.

At a university English exchange gathering, a graduate once told me in distress that she had taken the IELTS exam many times. She was able to achieve quite good results in the reading and writing sections, but no matter how hard she tried, her oral exam results were always unsatisfactory. I asked her to briefly introduce herself in English. As soon as she said a sentence or two, I understood immediately. First, she spoke very loudly, and every English word was articulated clearly and independently. I suggested she try to use the very front of her mouth while speaking, avoid using her throat to produce sound, and slightly lower her volume. She immediately followed this advice and finished the rest of what she had to say. After only one sentence, she excitedly remarked that she felt a difference like never before. Her tongue became relaxed, she could easily link the words together, and her accent was closer to standard English. Therefore, as long as you can master the correct method, improving your level of spoken English is not as difficult as you might imagine.