Making the application

I assume that you are a college student or a young professional and that you are highly motivated to learn to speak English fluently.

You will do much better if you seek ways in which you can speak English correctly from the very beginning. Strike a careful balance between free speech and forcing yourself to follow a pattern of correct English use. Do everything in your power to use English correctly.

In the early weeks of English study, this may require that you spend more time repeating recorded Spoken English Learned Quickly exercises than in trying to engage in free speech. Later, however, you will need to spend a great deal of time talking with others.

Nonetheless, every time you encounter new syntax in English, use controlled language drills long enough so that your mind becomes thoroughly familiar with correct sentence structure and pronunciation. If you are using the Spoken English Learned Quickly lessons, repeat the exercises until you can say them quickly and accurately with perfect pronunciation.

As you progress in your English study, begin reading English newspaper articles aloud. Look for examples of new vocabulary and sentence format. Mark the sentences, verify the vocabulary, and then read—and repeat from recall memory—the sentences aloud until they become a part of your speech.

Controlled language study

The better alternative is to derive all initial spoken language study from audio recorded materials which contain perfect syntax, perfect use of the verb, and perfect pronunciation. This sounds restrictive, but, in fact, it can be done with the Spoken English Learned Quickly lessons.

Say, for example, that during the first two weeks of English study, you used only the Spoken English Learned Quickly recorded exercises. You would repeat the recorded lesson material which was accurate in every detail. For the entire instruction period, you would work by yourself while repeating the exercise sentences hundreds of times.

Needless to say, in two weeks' time, you would have spoken English correctly far more than had you been passively sitting in a traditional English class. But more to the point, everything you would have learned would have been correct. Your syntax would have been correct.

Your use of the English verb would have been correct. And, as much as possible, your pronunciation would have been correct.

To continue the example, say that it was now time for you to begin trying free speech. Yet, we still would not want you to make mistakes. Consequently, all free speaking would be taken directly from the many sentences you would have already learned.

Your teacher would ask questions from the Spoken English Learned Quickly exercises so that you could answer in the exact words of the sentences you would have studied. Subsequently, you would be given questions to answer which would use the same structure as the sentences you already knew, but now you would substitute other vocabulary words which would be in the same lessons

four simple rules you must follow when you are learning to speak English

There are four simple rules you must follow when you are learning to speak English:

1. To learn to speak English correctly, you must speak it aloud:

It is important that you speak loudly and clearly when you are studying spoken English. You are retraining your mind to respond to a new pattern of proprioceptive and auditory stimuli. This can only be done when you are speaking aloud at full volume.

One of the reasons that your English study in school required so much time while producing such poor results is that none of the silent study did anything to train your tongue to speak English.

2. To learn to speak English fluently, you must think in English:

The proprioceptive sense is not all that you are retraining when you learn spoken English. There is cognitive learning (memory) which must also take place. Grammar-based English instruction has emphasized cognitive learning to the exclusion of retraining the proprioceptive sense. Nonetheless, cognitive learning is an important part of learning to speak English fluently.

For speech to occur, your mind must be actively involved in syntax development. The more actively your mind is involved in spoken English, the more effective the learning process becomes.

However, just as you will hinder proprioceptive training by trying to study silently, so you will also limit cognitive learning by reading from a text rather than constructing the syntax in your own mind. If you are studying English with Spoken English Learned Quickly, you may use the written text when you first study a new exercise. However, after repeating the exercise two or three times, you must close the text and do the exercise from recall memory as you listen to the audio recording. You must force your mind to think in English by using your recall memory when you are studying spoken exercises. You cannot read from a text.

I will come back to this later in Chapter 5: Selecting a Text, because there will be times when reading from a text such as a newspaper is an effective language learning tool. But when you are doing sentence responses with recorded exercises, you must force your mind to develop the syntax by doing the exercise without reading from a text

.

You are not thinking in English if you are reading. Making your mind work in order to think of the answer is an important part of learning to speak English.

3. The more you speak English aloud, the more quickly you will learn to speak it fluently:

Proprioceptive retraining is not instantaneous. It will require a great deal of repetition to build the new language patterns in your mind. As these new patterns develop, there will be progression from a laborious, conscious effort, to speech which is reproduced rapidly and unconsciously.

When you speak your first language, you do so with no conscious awareness of tongue or mouth position and the air flow through the vocal cords. In contrast, it requires experimentation and conscious effort when you first attempt to make an unknown discrete sound in English—this single sound, usually represented by one letter, is called a phoneme. Some new sounds will be relatively simple for you to make. Others will be more difficult.

To add to the complexity, each phoneme has other phonemes or stops adjacent to it which change its sound slightly. (A stop is a break caused by momentarily restricting the air flow with the tongue or throat.) For example, the simple English sentence, "Why didn't that work?" may be difficult for you to pronounce if your language does not use the English "th" sound. But it may give you difficulty for another reason as well. There are actually two stops in the sentence. When properly pronounced, there is a stop between the "n" and "t" in "didn't" and another stop between the final "t" in "didn't" and the first "t" in "that." Even though the sentence may be said very quickly, the two stops would make it, "Why didn / t / that work?"

Your objective is not to be able to write the sentence, "Why didn't that work?" accurately in English. Your goal is not even to be able to say it just well enough so that someone could figure out what you meant. Your objective is to be able to say, "Why didn't that work?" so perfectly to an American that she would think she had just been asked the question by a fellow American.

That degree of perfection will require thousands—if not tens of thousands—of repetitions. Therefore—to be somewhat facetious—the more quickly you correctly repeat a particularly difficult phoneme ten thousand times, the more quickly you will be able to use it fluently. That is what I mean when I say, "The more you speak English aloud, the more quickly you will learn to speak fluently."

4. You must never make a mistake when you are practicing spoken English:

When you are learning spoken English using the Spoken English Learned Quickly method, you are strongly reinforcing the learning process each time you speak. However, when you construct a sentence incorrectly, you have not only wasted the learning time used to construct that sentence, but you must now invest even more time in order to retrain your mind, mouth, and hearing in order to construct the sentence correctly. The more you use a sentence structure incorrectly, the longer it will take for your mind, mouth, and hearing to identify the correct syntax.

Ideally, if you used only correct syntax and pronunciation, you could retrain your speech in considerably less time. Consequently, you would learn to speak fluent English more quickly.

Yet, before you conclude that this would be impossible, let's look at a way in which it can actually be done using the Spoken English Learned Quickly language course. (Well, it can almost be done!)

Traditional English study:

Traditional methods of teaching English attempt to engage the students in free speech as quickly as possible. Though the goal is commendable, in practice it has a serious drawback.

A beginning student does not have enough language background to be able to construct sentences properly. More to the point, the instruction program seldom has enough teachers to correct every student's errors. Consequently, beginning students regularly use incomplete sentences having incorrect syntax and verb construction.

The instructor often praises them for their valiant effort, in spite of the reality that they are learning to use English incorrectly. The student will now need to spend even more time relearning the correct syntax.

Effectively learn spoken English

Grammar-based English language instruction teaches as though spoken English is primarily a function of memory. Consequently, grammar-based English lessons emphasizes non-verbal (written) studies of grammar, writing, reading, and listening.

All of these activities may increase recall memory for written examinations, but they have little benefit in teaching you to speak fluent English.

The only way you can effectively learn spoken English is by using spoken English as the method of instruction. All of your study (including English grammar) should be done by speaking English at full voice volume for the entire study period

multiple areas of skill working cooperatively in real time

In as much as spoken English involves multiple areas of skill working cooperatively in real time, it is mandatory that effective spoken English teaching methods simultaneously train all of these areas of speech. This is shown in

It is the important area of the proprioceptive sense which has been most overlooked in current grammar-based teaching methodology. When any student over the age of about 12 attempts to learn a spoken language, his or her proprioceptive sense must be consciously retrained for all of the new sounds and syntax.

Furthermore, to properly retrain the proprioceptive sense of the mouth, the combined feedback from the mouth and hearing must be simultaneously processed in the mind. Simply said, the student must speak out loud for optimum spoken language learning.

Without simultaneous involvement of all skill areas of speech, it is impossible for you to effectively retrain your proprioceptive sense in order for you to speak fluent English. Yet, this is exactly what grammar-based English instruction has traditionally done by introducing grammar, listening, writing, and reading as segregated activities. It is not surprising that you have studied English so long in school without learning to speak fluently.

Grammar-based instruction has hindered English learning by segregating individual areas of study. This segregation is represented in Figure 6. Grammar-based English training has not only isolated proprioceptive training areas so that it prevents simultaneous skill development, it has replaced it with visual memory training by using written assignments. Grammar-based language instruction teaches English as though spoken English was an open-loop system. The result for the student is that, gaining English fluency requires far more study time, pronunciation is often faulty, and grammar becomes more difficult to learn.

The best way to learn English

Two skill areas must be emphasized if you want to learn to speak English fluently. The first is memory (which is involved in both vocabulary and syntax) and the second is proprioceptive responses (which are involved in both pronunciation and syntax).

You may be able to learn simple vocabulary-related memory skills with equal effectiveness by using either verbal or visual training methods. That is, you may be able to learn pure memory skills equally well with either spoken drills or written exercises.

However, it is impossible for you to retrain your proprioceptive sense without hearing your own voice at full speaking volume. Thus, in my opinion, it is a waste of your time to do written assignments for the purpose of learning spoken English.

Surprisingly, it will take far less time for you to learn both fluent spoken English and excellent English grammar by studying only spoken English first, than it will for you to study written English grammar lessons before you can speak English. This does not mean, however, that grammar is not a necessary part of spoken English instruction. It is impossible to speak English—or any other language—without correct use of its grammar. My statement simply means that the best way to learn English grammar is through spoken English exercises

learning English as a new language

If you are learning English as a new language, all of its unique sounds and syntax must be learned. This is much more than a memory function involving just your mind. Each of these new sound and syntax patterns requires retraining your entire mind, the nerve feedback in your tongue, mouth, and breathing (which is proprioceptive feedback), and the auditory feedback (your sense of hearing). Even English syntax is dependent on your proprioceptive sense.

Read two or three sentences written in your own language. Read it entirely in your mind without moving your lips. You may even speed read it. Now read the same sentences "silently" by moving your lips without making any sound. Your mind will respond to the first way of reading as simple information which is primarily a memory function, but will respond to the second way as speech because of the proprioceptive feedback from your mouth.

Did you also notice a difference between the two readings in terms of your mental intensity? The first reading would elicit the mental activity required when you do a written grammar-based English assignment. The second would result in the same kind of mental activity required when you study English using spoken drills. How quickly you learn to speak fluent English will be directly proportional to your mental involvement when you study.

Calibration.

In human speech, the mind must constantly monitor the feedback information from both the speaker's own hearing and the proprioceptive senses which enable the mind to control muscles and create the desired sounds. Thus, the speaker is constantly "calibrating" the feedback to control speech. To change a tense, the speaker may change "run" to "ran," or change the person from "he" to "she," and so on. These "word" changes are achieved by precise control of the muscles used to produce speech.

We "calibrate" our speech frequently as we talk. This is why we can misuse a word, verb tense, or some other part of the initial sentence, and still make corrections in the remaining words of the sentence so that the listener does not hear our mistake.

Thus, in Figure 4, human speech is represented as the interplay between the mind, the mouth, and its related organs (represented in the figure by the tongue), two feedback systems, and conscious calibration as the speaker constructs each sentence. In addition, calibration is continuously taking place within the control center—the mind. However, because it is acting on feedback from hearing and the proprioceptive senses, I am showing calibration as acting on the source of the feedback.

When children learn their mother tongue, their natural ability to hear and mimic adult speech builds complex proprioceptive response patterns. A French-speaking child effortlessly learns to make nasal sounds. An English-speaking child learns to put her tongue between her teeth and make the "th" sound. A Chinese-speaking child learns to mimic the important tones which change the meaning of words. Each of these unique sounds requires learned muscle control within the mouth.

I make no apology for the intricacy of this explanation. The neurological feedback and resulting control of the muscles involved in speech is extremely complex. The mind is involved in a far greater task than simply remembering vocabulary and organizing words into meaningful sentences.

Real time.

Unlike an open-loop control system, a closed-loop control system monitors feedback and corrects the process as the machine is running. The reciprocal path between the control, the feedback sensors, and the process itself is instantaneous. That is, information is not stored for later use. Rather, it is used instantaneously as the sensors detect it. In this chapter, I use the term simultaneous to indicate real time feedback during speech.

Proprioceptive

Human speech would be impossible without the proprioceptive sense. (Proprioceptive refers to the sense within the organism itself which detects or controls the movement and location of the muscles, tendons, and joints which are used to create speech.) Our mouth, vocal cords, diaphragm, and lungs incorporate thousands of nerve sensors which the brain uses to control the movement and position of these same organs—the mouth, vocal cords, diaphragm, and lungs. Imagine the complexity of pronouncing even a single word with the need to coordinate the tongue, breath control, and jaw muscles. Now multiply this complexity exponentially as sentences are constructed in rapid succession during normal speech.

The meanings of specialized words

The three components of human speech and their primary

functions.

The Organ or Sense	Primary Function(s)	Comments
The mind provides:	1. vocabulary memory 2. partial syntax control 3. feedback coordination 4. calibration by the speaker to give meaning to the sounds	The mind is the storage bank for vocabulary. Memory is also involved in structuring syntax. The mind uses both auditory and proprioceptive feedback to monitor and calibrate speech in real time.
The mouth and related organs provide:	1. sound production 2. breath regulation 3. proprioceptive feedback to the mind in real time which regulates pronunciation and provides partial syntax control	The proprioceptive sense is involved in both pronunciation and syntax feedback. It is essential for speech control.
Hearing provides:	1. auditory feedback to the mind in real time	Auditory and proprioceptive feedback are combined in the mind for essential speech control.

Human speech is a closed-loop system

Human speech is a complex learned skill and is dependent on a number of memory and neurological functions. Speech is a closed-loop system because sensors within the system itself give feedback to the control portion of the system.

The control then corrects and coordinates ongoing speech. In this case, the mind is in control of the closed-loop system, the mouth produces the desired product (speech), and auditory feedback from the ears and feedback from the nerve sensors in the mouth allow the mind to coordinate the speech process in real time.

When you speak your own language, your mind stores all of the vocabulary you need. Your mind also controls your tongue, mouth, and breathing. Your hearing is also an important part of the control because your ears hear everything your mouth says.

Therefore, what you say next is partially dependent on the vocabulary and other information stored in your mind. But what you say next is also dependent on what your ears are hearing your mouth say, and on the feedback that is coming from the nerves in your tongue and mouth.

Because you have spoken your own language all of your life, all of this control is automatic—you do not need to think about it. But when you learn to speak English, you must retrain all of these processes so that they will all work together at the same time.

It is not enough to simply put new vocabulary words or grammar drills into your memory. You must retrain your mind to use all of the new sounds your ears will hear, as well as the new movements of your tongue, mouth, and breathing. Yet, since all of these things must happen together for you to speak fluent English, all retraining of your memory, hearing, and the nerves in your mouth must be done simultaneously.

Teaching Your Tongue to Speak English

Speech is controlled in your mind by feedback from your hearing and mouth position as much as it is from your memory. If you want to speak fluent English, it is just as important to retrain your tongue as it is to train your memory. To be effective, however, you must retrain your mind, tongue, and hearing at exactly the same time because they must work together when you speak English. Why have you studied English so long in school without learning to speak fluently? It is because your teachers have tried to train your mind with written exercises without retraining your

tongue at the same time.