What’s stopping us from speaking fluently?

In order to answer this, it’s actually easier to think about when our spoken Spanish is at its most fluent.

If you’ve had an evening speaking Spanish, you’ll no doubt have found that your Spanish miraculously improved after a couple of cervezas or copas de vino.

Why?

Alcohol lowers our inhibitions, and it’s actually our inhibitions which are the major impediments to our fluency. Having a drink or two puts you at ease and generally creates a lower pressure atmosphere, which both increase your fluency as well.

Of course, we don’t have to resort to alcohol to improve our fluency! To improve fluency, we should look to remove these impediments, and try to lower our inhibitions. Spoken fluency comes from a relaxed state – as a result of lowered inhibitions, lower pressure interactions, and a general sense of ease.

What gets in the way of relaxed conversation?

Barriers to relaxed conversation can be either external or internal, and are different for everyone. See if any in the following list ring true for you:

You worry about what other people think

Especially if you are looking to impress with your Spanish, this creates additional pressure. It’s natural to want to give our best impression, and if we don’t get to show off our best Spanish it can be particularly frustrating. This mindset leads to higher pressure and performance anxiety – exactly what we should be looking to reduce.

You worry about making mistakes

Related to the previous point, a symptom of this can be seen in continuous pausing and self-correction. If you constantly worry about making mistakes, this means you are more focused on speaking Spanish well than on actually getting your point across. To increase our Spanish fluency, we need to focus more on our message, rather than how we are saying it.

High pressure situations

Imagine chatting to an old friend over a couple of drinks in Spanish. Now, imagine giving an impromptu speech in Spanish in front of 200 people. Where would you be more fluent?

These two situations represent two extremes, but all of our interactions contain a certain amount of inherent pressure, which can be an aggravating factor in your Spanish fluency (or lack thereof). While this is partly out of our control, the way we react to situations, our general state of relaxation, and even conversation preparation can help here.

All of these represent barriers to the performance aspect of speaking. Of course, our spoken Spanish is tied to our overall level of Spanish – we need to take an integrated approach as we learn.

How to increase your spoken fluency in Spanish

Now we’ve examined a few causes for a lack of fluency, let’s look at a few strategies that we can use to help out during the performance of our speaking. There are things we can also do before we speak, and a few tactics to use when we are in the middle of conversations.

Things we can do before we speak:

Prepare and memorise common phrases

Much of the language which we most often use is hugely unoriginal, and by considering a few common questions you can prepare some phrases in advance. Practise these enough, and they’ll become automatic when you’re in the middle of conversations. Imagine these as a reflex – a response that you can give automatically, that doesn’t require too much creative thought (ie, re-inventing the wheel), and that can fit multiple situations. Conversational fillers work well here, and can create an impression of fluency.

This idea was taken further by writer Boris V. Shekhtman in his book “Improve your Foreign Language immediately”, with his concept of “language islands”. Imagine speaking a foreign language to be like swimming in the open sea. It requires continuous effort, and there is the constant risk of drowning (ie, giving up!). A language island is an area we can rest up for a while – these are the pre-prepared topics that we have available to us, and that we can use to rest from constantly having to string together Spanish words and sentences.

Here are a few highly common situations where language is very formulaic, where you don’t need to be particularly creative, and where you can build your “language islands”:

• The beginnings and ends of conversations. Learn a few different ways to say “hello” and “goodbye”, along with “how are you”, and “nice to see you” type phrases. You can always check our 95 beginners Spanish phrases for some inspiration.
• Transactional phrases. Ordering food, asking for the bill, asking for directions – these are all specific requests for information, and are usually very formulaic. We’ve put a collection together for you: Spanish phrases for tourists
• Your “autobiography”. When meeting new people, you’ll always be asked certain questions about how long you’ve been learning Spanish, where you live, what you do, and so on. Having a few of these answers up your sleeve will help you relax during the early parts of a conversation.

Listen to and take note of common phrases from native speakers

Building on the previous point, if you can build your “phrase bank” from answers you often hear from native speakers, this will help you become even more secure in your conversation, safe in the knowledge that you’re using authentic, natural Spanish. Listen to the way that they answer formulaic questions such as ¿cómo estás?, or ¿qué haces?, and pay attention to the beginning and ending of conversations, which tend to use very common patterns.

Practise conversations on your own, in advance

I wouldn’t recommend this for general chats, but if you know that you are going to be in a specific situation it’s worth considering what kind of vocabulary you are missing and need to know. Imagine you are going for a job interview, or attending an event on a certain topic. Each of these situations have their own vocabulary and phrases, and by “practising” a conversation in advance, you can start to prepare some phrases and vocabulary to use.

In a recent episode of “Reaching for Words”, I chatted with Luca Lampariello (who speaks 13 languages) about how he practices conversations on his own.

Visualise yourself in a conversation

I’ll be honest, I haven’t tried this technique, but know some people who swear by it. It’s particularly useful if you struggle with confidence in a conversation:

1. Sit down, make yourself comfortable, and imagine yourself in a conversation. Add as many details as possible: who are you talking with, where are you, and what are you talking about? Feel free to use conversations you’ve had before, if this makes it easier.
2. Imagine yourself in that situation, calm, relaxed, and able to express your ideas fluently. Resolve to carry this emotional and physical state into your next conversation.
3. Repeat the above steps as many times as necessary – this is a good exercise to practice if you are facing high pressure conversational situations, and know about them in advance.