Mind you, speed does not necessarily mean fluency. Speed training though leads to fluency. Now why am I saying this? It’s based on a simple premise (idea). Aim higher to achieve high aims. There’s more to it though.
Speed speech training involves achieving a certain degree of control over your muscle movements as well as helps you to memorize and thus remember larger chunks of sounds which naturally represent thoughts. Please DO NOT BE CONFUSED between speaking fast and TRAINING to speak fast as there is a big difference between the two. I’m not telling you or recommending you to speak fast especially in a foreign language such as English. I AM recommending you to PRACTICE speaking fast for the sake of improving fluency and aquiring more flexibility and control in the mouth area. What I’m arguing is that in the process of doing that (practicing speaking fast), your brain gains the ability to process the language quicker in both production (speaking) and perception (listening). Listening, as I always say, is key to improving in any language, native or foreign. So if you train yourself to produce the English sounds faster, your brain will find it easier to process or decode them when produced by native speakers.
That is one of the core principles of the ELIT method which has inarguably achieved outstanding results for many of my students over the past 7 years. Unfortunately, that is not a very easy task to do for most English learners as it truly requires the famous 3Ps that all my students have heard me shout about, Patience, Passion and Practice…well and Patrick :). It would be ludicrous to claim that it can’t be done without me, but I can confidently say it would be DARN difficult.
Ok. So what does speed speech training involve? Well, first and foremost, it involves mastering the use of the main elements of the natural spoken English. These are the ones you see on my homepage, but let’s just list them as follows:
1-Consonants
2-Vowels
3-The Schwa sound
4-Word linking
5-The [t] pronunciation
6-Rhythm
7-Pitch
I would however stronly recommend that you focus on 3 and 4 as they are inherent in speed training.
If you haven’t seen the schwa clips yet, watch them NOW.
That’s it for now folks, stay tuned.
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