ESL Discussion

        Most non-native speakers of English find it hard to speak English fluently, because they can't learn English the way they learn their first language. You see, they're born and brought up in a country where English is not spoken as first language. And so they can only learn English in the wrong way: In a way that is just the reverse of the natural process of language acquisition. Haven't we seen just now what the natural way is? haven't we seen that the natural way is to learn to speak first, and then only to learn to write? But most non-native speakers of English don't have the opportunity of learning English in that way.

         So you see, as a non-native speaker of English , you've been learning English in the 'non-natural way-in a way that's opposite to the natural way of language acquisition. You have been learning to write English first, rather than to speak it. That's what you've been doing at school and college. You've been learning to produce written English. And the methods you had to follow never fully made you understand this: The 'spoken' style is quite different from the 'written' style.

        You see, the spoken word is the basis for the written word, and not the other way round. And so spoken English is more fundamental than written English. But the non-natural way in which you had to learn English planted the wrong notion in your mind: A  wrong notion that things are the other way round-that written English is more fundamental than spoken English.

         So the result is this : You're now steeped in written English. And your written English orientation has been preventing you all along from understanding one thing. It has been preventing you from understanding that spontaneous speech has to be composed differently- that is, in a way quite different from the way writing is produced. Result? You always try to speak the way you write. And you do this by trying hard to follow principles of grammar and usage as applied to writing, not as applied to speech itself.  

       Is there any wonder fluency has eluded you so far ?

         So I want you to understand one thing here and now; When they speak spontaneously; fluent speakers/native speakers apply principles of grammar and usage in a way that is different from the way they apply those principles when they write. And the spoken style has a number of devices and conventions of its own, and these devices and conventions are not derived from written style.