By Robby
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– Video Transcript Below –
Hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog!
Today’s video topic is IMPROVISATION.
And let me tell you right off the bat that I’m not talking about the kind of improvisation whereby you would be coming up with random things to talk about.
I’m talking about the kind of improvisation where you know exactly what you’re talking about, you know the direction you’re going but you’re improvising within your speech. So basically you’re improvising as you’re going along.
You know the main things you’re going to touch upon but you haven’t planned out your speech down to a T which means you haven’t planned it out to the very detail.
And that’s exactly the way I’m speaking now! I know what my main topic for today’s video is, I know the main points I’m going to touch upon.
First of all, I was going to introduce the video as I normally do by greeting you guys and then next thing I was going to say what improvisation I’m not talking about.
And then I was going to say what improvisation I am going to talk about and so on and so forth. So basically I know all the main things I’m going to touch upon but I haven’t planned my speech out down to the very word.
And that’s how native English speakers would obviously speak! And that’s how you would speak in your native language. You improvise the whole time.
There’s Not a Great Deal of Improvisation When You’re Not Fluent Yet
And obviously in the early stages of developing your fluency you wouldn’t be able to improvise to a great degree, to a great extent.
Improvisation does come into play obviously at all times, even beginner English students when responding would say something that they wouldn’t have prepared a minute beforehand, if you know what I mean, right?
But what I’m referring to in this video is the importance of you being able to say things that don’t require any advanced planning whatsoever. Okay?
True Improvisation Is When One Word Leads to the Next Automatically
Basically the very concept of one word leading to the next word, one word leading to another, right? This concept is very important because that’s pretty much the only way you can become fluent English speaker.
Train yourself to say things not necessarily very fast because sometimes it can have a detrimental effect on your fluency when you’re trying to speak very fast. Quite the opposite might happen.
You Don’t Have to Speak Fast to Improvise!
You get tongue tied and you can’t say a thing. You may want to read this article where I’m analyzing this issue and telling you how to counteract your desire for faster speech.
Especially considering that many of us foreigners kind of try to compare our speech with that of native English speakers and then we’re trying to match their speed. And obviously more often than not it’s not even possible, right?
So basically I was saying that it doesn’t necessarily have to happen fast but there would be a certain flow to your language, right? So one word leads to another and that’s how improvisation occurs.
Collocations and Improvisation Go Hand in Hand
And obviously this is where the very concept of collocations, word combinations manifests itself to a full extent. Basically improvisation can only occur when certain words are linked in your brain. So basically you’re saying one word and it automatically pulls the next word out of your mouth, so to speak, right?
And needless to say full improvisation is only possible when you’ve contributed a great deal of practicing in your daily English fluency improvement routine. You’ve been doing that day in day out, week in week out, month in month out, year in year out and only then you can hope that one day you’ll be able to start improvising just like a native English speaker when speaking in English.
I’m not saying you have to spend your entire life aiming for that level, right? All I’m saying is that hard work eventually is going to pay off and provided that you’ve been doing plenty of spoken English practice on a daily basis, one day you will definitely reach the stage where you can improvise when speaking.
And I’m telling you guys, the feeling is incredible. Basically it’s when you don’t have to think about what you can say next, is just that the words come out your mouth by themselves!
Improvisation Comes in Really Handy When You Lose Your Thread of Thoughts
And here’s another aspect of when improvisation comes in really, really handy. Say for example you’re saying something and then you kind of lose the thread of your thoughts for a split second and that’s when we foreign English speakers would typically have those terrible fluency issues.
We would get tongue tied, we’d get the brain freeze, we blank out, we don’t know what to say just because our speech encounters an unexpected turn. Basically we were saying something and then we’re not sure of what follows next, right?
And that’s when improvisation is really good. Because that ability to improvise allows us to continue the speech, if not in the tracks that we intended it to go but at least we can start a new thought or continue the same thought in new tracks, so to speak, if you get the drift, right?
And I’ve been doing that time and time again in my English Harmony videos even today, right?
I probably didn’t even plan to touch upon certain points as I was speaking but it’s just that one thing leads to another. So it kind of goes against what I said in the very beginning of this video that I’m not really talking about one’s ability to come up with random things, but still I think you get the drift, right?
I’m talking about the kind of improvisation in this video where one word leads to another, one thing leads to another, right? So you’re saying something and then quite automatically you’re saying another thing and another thing and you might end up speaking about something that you actually didn’t intend to talk about in the first place before you opened your mouth.
And that’s the kind of improvisation I keep actually talking about in my videos. Yep, I’ve mentioned the whole concept of improvisation time and time again, it’s just that I’ve never actually elaborated on it and this is the video where I decided to talk about it in a little bit more detail.
There’s No Shortcuts – Just Hard Work!
And really guys, there’s no secret to it.
There is no shortcut.
There is no silver bullet, so to speak.
You can’t somehow magically develop your ability to improvise within a very short space of time. All you’ve got to do is you’ve got to put in long hours of practice and learn all these English idiomatic expressions, sentence structures, grammar structures and speak and speak and speak again and again and again.
And that’s how you develop your ability to improvise basically. That’s all there is to it, right?
So if you have any questions, just like always, I’m going to tell you, please publish your comments and questions in the comments section below. And thanks for watching this video and chat to you soon again! Bye bye!
Robby
P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!
P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!
P.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out the English Harmony System HERE!