Use these strategies in your own native language, and abuse or exagerate them when you are communicating in English.

The idea with these strategies is that they give you a simple structure to follow for good, clear communication. The result is more sharing of ideas, more enjoyable conversations and ultimately, more FLUENCY.

1. LISTEN

Listening is not a passive activity. In fact, the term “Active Listening” is the form of listening I´m talking about.

When I really listen to people, I exclaim, “really!” or “Wow!” or just a “hmmmm”.

And sometimes I rephrase what they are saying in a natural way, such as, “So you´re saying…” or “To sum up your last ideas, you think…”

2. ASK QUESTIONS

The next stage in effective communication is asking questions.

What are you questions? Make a list of questions you could ask in almost any conversation: …

Take a look at Scott’s list if you would like: click here

Make your own list. Be ready to ask questions.

3. SHAPE YOUR IDEAS

Expressing ideas is an art.

• Think of your idea as a painting: Where are the “hot spots” – the bright colors – and where are the dark shades?
  
• Is there one main object in the painting or are there many? Let me suggest between 1 and 3, especially in a foreign language.
• What´s the texture of the painting? What´s the feeling? Is it funny, serious, informative..? What feeling do you want to communicate?
• Keep it simple. Paint like a child. Enjoy simplicity!

These are ‘la creme de la creme’ of communication strategies for me. But let me ask you this: Do they work for you?

Feel free to comment and add to any of these ideas on this blog, or send me an email at:

info@barcelona-ingles.com

These ideas can help you create good habits and break old, ‘bad’ habits.

3 ways to good habits in accuracy

1. Identify what you like about English.

When you identify what you really like about English, you build enthusiasm for learning. Enthusiasm is energy. You need energy to change.

2. Find a way to transport yourself into English. Be IN English! THINK in English!

Put on a pair of dark glasses when you are thinking, writing, reading or listening to English, but them on. Or imagine that you have them on.

The idea here is to really feel that you have gone into another world – in this case, an English world. Use your imagination. How do you feel as an English speaker? How do you see yourself? How do you see your surrounding?

some specific grammatical differences to how a native English speaker sees the world is:

everything is divided into COUNT and NON COUNT nouns. – which is why we have MANY and MUCH…

we have irregular plurals: PEOPLE, MEN, WOMEN, CHILDREN….

3. Write, write, write. Do free writing for 5 minutes per day.

This will help with fluency too, but the intention of this free writing is integrate what you already know.

Here is a way to do this:

• Select 3 words, phrases or even a verb tense to use in the writing
• Take a minute to imagine a context you can you them in
• Then write for 4 minutes without stopping. If you can use them all, great. If you only use 1 or 2 that’s fine too.
  
• Then read what you wrote. Give yourself 2 pieces of positive feedback. “It’s funny. It’s long…”
• Now reread it and check to see if the new phrases are used well. If it feels right, that is good enough. If it doesn’t feel right, and you really want to be sure, then check www.wordreference.com or google it.

That’s all. You can keep it or throw it away. All that matters is that you do it. and keep doing it.

Soooo… to summarize, in order to make real lasting changes to our accuracy in another language, we need to answer these questions:

• What do I like about the language? What is motivating me to learn it?
• How can I best put myself IN that language (and have as little influence from my own language(s)?
• How can I PLAY (instead of work) with the structures so that I really learn them?
  

Feel free to comment on these ideas or to add any ideas. Comment on this blog, or send me an email:

info@barcelona-ingles.com

This is a selection of what I am learning from Gitomer’s The Little Black Book of Connections

5 Things about Connecting

1. Every person is a connection.

Maybe not the one you need right now, but he or she is a connection. Before having a conversation with a person, realize that this person may lead you to the treasure – or they may give you a map – or they may know someone (who knows someone…) who can help in some way.

And connected to this is to understand what your intention is in connecting. “The less you focus on your motive to meet, the more likely it is that your connection will be successful.” Gitomer 28

2. Stick yourself out there.

This is a phrase from Scott the name tag guy, and it communicates the idea of risking something. Turtles stick their necks out at great risk to their lives, yet they would move if they didn’t.

There are two parts to sticking yourself out there: risk and walking your talk

Connecting – or networking – is about taking risks. the biggest risks are rejection and failure.

Walking the talk of connecting means doing all these activities Scott mentions in his list called 53 things for networking. They are activities like: make one telephone call a day just to connect. make one business meeting a week. Go to one conference a month. Be realistic. Start slow. But go. Walk your talk – that is, if you are really talking about networking. When you find someone you would like to connect with further, stay in touch.

“Staying in touch is more important and more valuable than making the initial connection.” Gitomer 30 So, once you make a connection, don’t let go. Stay in touch. Find a way of staying in touch that adds value. Give something away for free – normally it will be your ideas.

3. Be real. Be yourself.

Take a genuine interest in people even if they don’t take an interest in you. Find something in common with this person within the first 10 minutes or less. Remember, your intention is only to connect. Let’s say you can find common ground in the first 10 minutes. The next thing you can focus on is what you can give. If you can give something to them, then they are a thousand time more likely to want to give back to you.

4. Give it away for free.

Find out what you can give away for free. Then try giving it away. See what happens. Scott gives away free ebooks as do many other people.

5. Be prepared. Look the part.

Spend time on your image. What is it? Spend time on the questions you would like to ask. Brainstorm answers to questions you think they could ask.

So now, ask yourself, “What’s one thing I can use from this. Then try it. Today. Tomorrow. See what happens.

They say: I want to speak English – I want to speak English FLUENTLY.

So, what is a definition of FLUENCY:

FLUENCY is an ability to speak a language comfortably and confidently. Fluent is related to the word flow, so fluency is the ability to continue the flow and the ideas of the conversation.

Fluency is: continuous, clear, ideas communicated simply in the language

Fluency is not:  stopping and starting, distracted and confusion, a translation of another language

OK. That is the definition. So…

Fluency: How can we get it?

let’s imagine you are a profession in Barcelona. It’s December 2008. You have personal and work responsibilities. You don’t live with an English speaker. Maybe you have almost no contact at all with this wonderful language.

What can you do?

1. Love speaking this language.

Or learn to love it. If you don’t really love it, then you aren’t really ever going to be motivated to speak it.

2. Think and speak to yourself in English.

You must guide yourself though. Let’s take some contexts:

Context 1: you are on the metro… you look at a person and think: Who is this person? Imagine, where did they grow up? What did they like doing as a kid? When did they move to Barcelona? How old are they? What kind of job to they have now. describe it. imagine. imagine. Where are they going now? Where will they go later? Be silly, funny, have a sense of humor and “morbo” even for a person who looks like they have neither.

Context 2: you are in the shower. the bathroom door is closed. or almost closed. You start talking to yourself.  What did I do yesterday? where did i go? Where did my Mom/Dad/brother/sister/… go recently? stay in one time zone if you like. don’t move too much between tenses. remember, you are going for fluency

3. Record yourself speaking on an iPod or MP3.

Listen to it 1 time. then delete it. Make a few observations:

What is the thing you like the most about your Engish?

What is one thing you can change?

4. Write. Write. Write.

Write for 5 minutes without stopping. if you are writing and can’t think of what to write just start writing “i don’t know what i want to say…. i don’t know what i’m writing about…. i only know i’m writing because Rachel says write for 5 minutes per day.” That was at least 1 minute.

5. Video yourself speaking on you digital camera.

Look at it one time with the sound off. What do you look like speaking English? Do you have an image of yourself as an English speaker? What is it?

Do at least one of these at least once a day. Give yourself 1 month of consistancy. Then start to evaluate your change in Fluency. I use a scale of 0-10. 0 is no fluency. 10 is a non-native English speaker who can communicate ideas comfortably, consistantly, confidently.

Ask yourself, “Which one works for me?”

Then try it, and send me your observations, feedback or comments.

1. They are un or under prepared
2. They have fear of rejection
3. They have a limited self image and/or low self-esteem

So what to do… well, like learning to swim or ride a bike, it’s about taking these on… dealing with them.

1. Take time to prepare – visualize myself out there – giving a seminar – totally prepared. what makes me prepared. what do i look like?

2. Bask in the joy of acceptance. and the theory that every NO gets me closer to a YES

3. Remember, we are all little living breathing creatures on this planet – some richer and well known than others, but all basically mortal with limitations. “Imagine how you will feel when people acknowledge you, congratulate you and show their appreciation of you.”  Gitomer (Little Black Book, pg 65)

1. Listen – i mean really listen when people speak with you

2. Learn how to ask questions – be an expert in asking questions even if you are not an expert on the topic

3. give it a way for free – whatever ideas you consider most valuable – give them away – they will come back

4. Treat everyone as a link to someone/place else – some people are  more than others – play the believing game

5. Blog – stick yourself out here

1. Listen to people speak the language.

Listen to the radio, watch TV, YouTube, movies, or just people around you who use it. Notice how it sounds – learn to listen. Imagine yourself imitating a phrase.

2. Listen to yourself – can you hear what you are saying?

After learning to listen to and imitate others, the most effective strategy for Accuracy is self-correction.

Most of my clients say they can’t self correct. OK. I’ll teach you. Write for 3 minutes about what you did yesterday. Now just correct the verbs. If you have any questions, look on www.wordreference.com for help.

See, you can correct yourself. All you need to do is focus on one element in the language. Don’t worry about the rest now. As a tennis coach will say, “watch the ball!”  In this case, the ball is the verb. Later the ball can be prepositions, or irregular plurals or phrasal verbs. Just focus on one thing. Then you can self correct.

3. Remember, there are different concept in another language.

“PEOPLE” “ARE”… we are individualists – as opposed to collectivists

4. Ask yourself questions – what is one thing you would like a clear understanding of?

5. learn to correct yourself – self correction is the best way i know to accuracy

and as always it always help to notice if you are enjoying this process. in the long run, it leads to more connection

5  Important Ideas for much more Speaking Fluency

1. Prepare what you are going to say.

Even if it is the 2 seconds while you say, “soooooooo, i mean…”. If you have time, make a picture in your mind – or a list, or a chart. Prepare a mini Powerpoint presentation in you mind.

2. Go slow. (or should I say, “slowly”

Think fast, but speak slowly. Give yourself time to find the words. Use filler words such as, “So, OK, anyhow, well, let’s see, I mean…”

3. Simplify your idea and use the language you have to express it.

You can´t use what you don´t have, so don´t try. If you can´t remember the word… find a simpler one – or a wrong one that will work. later you can change it.

4. Stay in the language.

This means, DON’T TRANSLATE. DON’T EVEN BEGIN TO TRANSLATE. IF YOU FIND YOURSELF TRANSLATING. STOP. TRY AGAIN.   just think in english. i realize it is easier for me to say, but this is what i do in spanish, catalan, french and 20 years ago, in german

5. Enjoy the experience – even LOVE the experience of speaking in a different language.

Speaking another language is a deeply enjoyable experience, but as adults, we can easily turn it into a stressful and discouraging experience. It’s also easy to feel stupid or even childish if we can’t express ourselves as we can in our native language. Sometimes we can get so nervous it feels like a life or death experience. It’s not. It’s really just a game.

Look at language learning from the perspective of a kid. They play with each language they speak. They learn constantly. They find ways to communicate when we don’t understand them.

So, let me ask you, “How can you become fluent in English?”

Let me suggest this. Try playing with English for 5 minutes a day. Speak or write for at least 5 minutes. Find a way to enjoy the experience. Don’t worry about accuracy – all the grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation… just focus on the idea and enjoy it.

Then write me what your comments, feedback and ideas on this.

info@barcelona-ingles.com