You may know someone who doesn’t have a wide knowledge of English but who can continue a conversation fluently.  What is their secret?  Thinking in English is the key to fluency and this module takes you through the 3 main steps in mastering this skill.

Many speakers at Intermediate level and sometimes higher translate their message word by word from their first language when speaking. This slows down communication, creates hesitation and uncertainty and results in unnatural English.

The secret is using smaller parts of meaning that are easier to ‘think in English’, and then combining them to express a single idea. This is called ‘chunking’- there are typically three chunks per idea (or sentence). For example, one chunk could be a signal phrase like ‘to be honest’ or ‘for example’ (these phrases contain information about the attitude or intention of the speaker). A second chunk could be ‘I haven’t finished the report’ and a third ‘but I’ll do it now’.