Teaching English Language Learners Fluency

Is fluency something that one can teach? Sometimes I take it for granted that a quiet person will be unable to be fluent and then I am reminded that language learning and the ability of the person to become an independent speaker can be two separate things. I find teaching the language as interesting as learning how to teach and I am always learning a new approach especially when I am faced with a student who translates as he learns. So I integrated drills into verbal exercises to get the student to accept the new forms as much as he would like to find its equivalent in his own native language. There are always better teaching days and one such day could be when I am faced with a conjugated verb before an infinitive like in, ‘I want to go’. I would go through a series of sentences with want preceding other verbs and then ask questions to elicit an answer with the want followed by the infinitive and an adverb or time phrase. I would test the waters to see if the learner is familiar with other verbs that can be put before infinitives and if not I would back track to go over single verb form uses.

Initially I try not to get into transitive and intransitives unless the course is grammar based. Then I would say that want would act like a transitive in a sentence where there would be a direct object as in, ‘He wanted a book’ and this is how I would present the verb before going into a more complex phraseology as I mentioned above. Other verbs like, ‘The book was read from the beginning’, would be intransitive because the sentence takes no direct object and is completed by an adverb phrase answering the question when the book was read. Obviously the student should know what a direct object is before then, that it is an object directly related to the main action of the sentence. The indirect object, which is always a pronoun, is by contrast in consequence to the direct object and answers questions relative to linking that object to that person or thing. At the same time the student should be aware that not all sentences require objects altogether.

The teacher is encouraged to solidify the learning of the above elements through grammar exercises and role-playing where questions could be asked and answered to get the student to know how to ask for direct or indirect objects. I wouldn’t dwell on what the grammar of those objects and verbs are as much as I would create scenarios where the student every now and then I would point out in a conversation the person used a transitive form or an indirect object. This is especially vital in conversation courses where the student has to build fluency before he clearly understands why he says things the way he does.