WHY YOU NEED TO WORK TOWARDS FLUENCY

Try and tell your language teachers that your goal is to be fluent. We know how they'll react. They'll be tongue-tied for a second or two. Then doubt takes over: what exactly does it mean "to be fluent"? They'll quickly if unconsciously scramble up a definition in their mind and then conclude, silently: how the heck do you ever think you can be fluent? You don't live in Italy--or whatever country you are studying the language of. Therefore, no fluency is ever possible for you. That's what they think, but that isn't what they are going to tell you. What they are going to tell you is: "Well, before you start thinking about fluency, you need to focus on grammar first. You need to know the grammar super well, get good (meaning C1 level--they're obsessed with levels), know the verb tenses, practice practice practice on books, fill in blanks for years on end, and only then can you start thinking about fluency."

Granted, grammar, vocabulary, verb conjugations, pronouns, etc. are of the essence, but working on these does not rule out working on fluency at the same time. Truth is, it's not rocket science, but they just don't know how to teach it.

The secret is repetition and memorization. So here's a habit that you can introduce in your routine. When you sit down to practice you need to decide: what am I going to practice for right now? Speaking? Writing? Listening? Reading comprehension? Reading skills? All of the above is important, and you need to work on all these. But work on each separately, at least initially. When speaking is your focus for a specific practice, then drop pen and paper and just focus on speaking. Everything you read or say in Italian--or any other target language for that matter--you must do ALOUD. Your phonatory apparatus must be involved at all times. If you want to learn to speak and become more fluent, you need to speak. There's no way around it. You wouldn't warm up for a rugby match doing pirouettes, would you? When your mouth, tongue, teeth, upper and lower palates, trachea, uvula are involved, you are automatically establishing muscle memory. You cannot skip this. If you keep it all in your head, then it stays in your head. It's that simple.

If you do this, you will quickly see improvements. Do it from lesson one. You'll soon feel more comfortable and at ease when speaking. Words will come up more naturally during conversation. You'll overall start feeling something is changing, and some sounds you were struggling with will finally unlock.

Let's be clear, there's nothing miraculous here, and it takes work and dedication. A lot of it. But I promise you it's going to pay off.

You can start with this very simple exercise.

Take a couple of minutes a few times a week to say sentences aloud using the following structure:

Questo/-a + 'è' + noun +'molto' + adjective.

Use this structure to describe aloud what you see around you. As you can see, you're only going to utilize singular forms, so focus on one object at a time.

Say sentences aloud back to back. Do not let yourself think for too long. Whatever you see, you isolate it visually and describe it right off the top of your head with a sentence. Do it for two minutes, then take a one-minute break, then go again one more time.

If you can do this exercise four or five times in a week (five minutes each time), you will see that after a week you will be able to use the above structure naturally, comfortably, and without getting stuck. Not only that. From there on out you'll feel more confident when using the definite adjective/pronoun 'Questo', you'll practice noun-adjective agreement, and you'll work on the use of the adverb 'molto' before an adjective. In other words, you'll be building up better skills for much more than just this structure.

Below are some sample sentences you can model yours after:

E.g.

Questo è un albero molto alto.

E.g.

Questo è un parco molto affollato.

E.g.

Questa è una macchina molto vecchia.

E.g.

Questa è una torta molto dolce.

After practicing for a few days, you can add the plural forms to the same structure and alternate in no specific order sentences both in the singular and plural form. When you feel you've become fairly fluent in that too, you can add the use of 'quello' for all objects that are a bit farther from you and keep 'questo' for objects that are a little closer. Do it until you can switch from one form to the other quickly, comfortably, and easily--or, in other words, fluently.

I hope you find this practice useful, and I hope it's going to open the gates to a new way of approaching your language learning.