Need to Practice to Think

Last night, before going to sleep, I started to watch a YouTube video by an English teacher on the topic of how to speak English continuously without getting stuck. Although I was intrigued by the subject, the video was around an hour and a half long, and I fell asleep right in the middle before I could hear any practical advice from the speaker.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that I’m far from fluent in English, and I would love to be able to speak continuously without pausing to think about what to say next.

On this front, I am currently facing a few difficulties, which I’d like to explore today.

First, I still tend to get confused with a few grammatical points in English, especially those related to the usage of the definite and indefinite articles, and the singular and plural forms of nouns, which do not occur in Japanese, my native tongue. I constantly ask myself whether I’m saying a particular sentence correctly, often fighting the urge to consult the dictionary, which inevitably slows down my speech.

Second, while I do possess an extensive vocabulary in the form of passive knowledge, when it comes to expressing myself, it takes time for me to access that knowledge and find the right words to say, especially when I’m trying to use advanced vocabulary.

However, I believe that the most important factor that hinders my spoken fluency is the fact that I am lazy by nature in terms of thinking, and tend to save brain energy by not forming strong opinions about most things in life. Even when I’m speaking in Japanese with my dad, I often find myself talking in short, choppy sentences, and jumping mid-sentence from one topic to another in a completely whimsical and haphazard way.

Granted, I talk to my dad on the phone mainly to relax, relieve stress, or joke around, so there’s no need to try to speak coherently, but it definitely doesn’t make for good speaking practice.

While it’s tiring and impractical for me to feel strongly about everything that happens around me, going forward, I might consider doing some practice to think about certain issues - for example, by expressing how I feel after reading a newspaper article, instead of hurrying on to read the next one in a mechanical and unthinking manner.

By the way, some academics say that in order for you to be fluent in a foreign language, you need to be fluent in your mother tongue to begin with, claiming that your proficiency in your second language can never exceed that of your first language. According to this theory, I need to practice speaking in Japanese first.

However, I don’t quite agree with this assertion. Since my aim is to become fluent in English, I believe I can jump straight into speaking practice in English, without taking the circuitous route via Japanese. As a case in point, here's an interview on YouTube with a Japanese lady who was born and raised in Japan, and yet became more fluent in English than Japanese by dint of diligent and intensive learning. She now speaks English like a typical American. 

At the end of the day, it’s a great amount of hard work that counts when it comes to developing fluency in a foreign language. I’ll continue putting in the effort to achieve my ultimate goal.