"Why am I not able to speak English fluently even though I learned English all through my years at school?".
This question was asked by an engineering student when he lost a campus placement interview simply because he lacked even the basic English skills need for the job.
My answer to him is this: "You learned to speak English in the wrong way, just like thousands of others who have spent a fortune just so that they can speak English without hesitation."
I will explain. Just think of your past when you where in the third grade. How did you learn to speak in English? You were given ( if you had gone to a top class school) word puzzles, vocabulary tests, spelling tests, flash cards showing word pictures and what not. Yes all of them may help you to improve your English.
But will they improve your English speaking skill. No. Why? Since all these methods deal only with individual words. They don't help you to combine these words to form meaningful sentences.
Our brain is naturally programmed to think in terms of 'word groups', and not in terms of individual words. That is because of the fact that our normal conversation revolves around groups of words. We hardly think and speak using individual words.
Then again, our memory is enforced by an association of one idea to another. You must have read about the various memory improvement techniques. They all revolve around one basic idea, commit things to memory by linking individual bits of information together.
But in school, we learn English in an unnatural way. By concentrating on individual words our brain loose their power to link all the words together. Even grammar lessons wont help us to learn spoken English as grammar rules are more applicable to written language rather then speech. We hardly think of capitalization of the first letter of a sentence rule when we speak in English.
So what is the correct method of learning to speak in English? The best method is to learn English by linking words that occur together and using them as a template for your speech.
