Excerpt from Prof. Kev Nair's Fluency Development Course

http://www.fluentzy.com

'Speech' comes first, and 'writing', only next

You know, the first thing you should understand about a language is this: A language has two sides, like a coin. Yes, two sides. A 'spoken' side and a 'written' side.

Listen. Doesn't a child learn to speak long before it sees writing? Hadn't people been speaking, long before writing came? So isn't one thing clear -- that the 'spoken' stage of a language before the 'written' stage? Isn't this also clear -- that 'speech' and 'writing' are different things, and aren't to be looked at or learnt in the same way?

This is true about any language. It's true about English, too

Don't you get one thing now? Don't you see why most non-native speakers of English find it hard to speak fluent English?

Non-native speakers learn English the 'wrong' way

By 'non-native speakers of English', I mean people for whom English is not their first language or mother-tongue, but a second language -- or just a foreign language. You see, for people in India, English is a foreign language -- but it's also a second language. For people in several other countries, English is simply a foreign language, and not even a second language.

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 the 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've 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 'soken' 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 kearn 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 on thing. It has bee 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, and not as applied to speech itself.

Is there any wonder fluency has eluded you so far?

So I want you to understand on thing here and now: When they speak spontaneously, fluent 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 are not derived from the written style.