English Fluency VS Grammar Rules What's the Best Choice for Communication

In this episode of  English Chill-out! ,  I explain how lexical chunks  have the power to help you master English fluency. I  dive deep into the crucial distinction between accuracy and fluency in advanced English learning. Discover why perfect grammar alone isn't enough and how lexical chunks—like fixed expressions, semi-fixed expressions, collocations, phrasal verbs, and idioms—play a pivotal role in making your English sound natural and effortless. Learn practical tips, real-world examples, and enjoy a touch of humour along the way. This engaging podcast will equip you with the tools to master fluent English and make it your superpower. Stay tuned and chill out with us!


🚀This podcast is perfect for advanced English learners who want to take their language skills to the next level without the stress. Whether you’re intending to take a C1/ C2 Level exam. polishing up for work, learning for enjoyment or travel, we’ve got you covered. 

Transcript

] Hello, and welcome to High Flyer English Chillout. I'm your host, Steve Ellis, and this podcast is all about helping advanced English learners bridge the gap between being accurate and being fluent. Now, accuracy is a solid foundation. It's knowing the right grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. But here's the thing.

Accuracy alone doesn't make you fluent. You might speak with perfect grammar. But if your speech feels slow, unnatural, or overly formal, it's like driving a shiny car with no fuel. It looks great, but it's not going anywhere. Fluency is what makes your English sound effortless and natural. It's about speaking in [00:01:00] chunks, the pre assembled phrases and expressions that native speakers use instinctively.

It's not just about knowing the rules, it's about using the language in a way that flows. What's in a chunk? Well, at the heart of fluency lies the concept of lexical chunks. These are the building blocks of fluent speech. And they come in several flavours. First of all, fixed expressions. Fixed expressions are completely set in stone.

You can't change a single word without making them sound strange. They're often used to serve a clear communicative function. For example, You've gotta be kidding me. At the end of the day, I'd rather not if you don't mind. [00:02:00] These expressions are fixed because they work as a whole unit. And altering them, like saying, You've got to be joking me, instead of, You've got to be joking with me, kidding me, breaks their naturalness.

Semi fixed expressions, on the other hand, are templates. They provide structure, but you can tweak them to fit your needs. Think of them as a blank canvas. For example, It's not worth, verb and ing, It's not worth worrying about it. It's not worth going there. It's not worth watching it. Another one. I'll give you a quick I'll give you a quick update.

I'll give you a quick rundown. If it hadn't been for followed by a noun and a clause. If it hadn't been for the rain We'd have made it on time. [00:03:00] If it hadn't been for Jim, we'd never have completed the project. These are incredibly powerful, because they allow you to adapt your speech while keeping the flow intact.

So now, moving on to idiomatic chunks. First we have collocations. These are words that naturally go together, forming patterns that sound right to native speakers. They can range from simple pairs to longer combinations. So, simple pairs, we'd say heavy rain. We don't say hard rain. We reach a unanimous decision.

We face mounting pressure. We take full responsibility. What's tricky about collocations is that learners [00:04:00] often substitute words that seem logical But aren't correct. For example, a learner might say, make responsibility instead of take responsibility. That's a very elementary mistake, isn't it? Phrasal verbs.

Phrasal verbs are a huge part of fluency because they're so common in everyday English. These are combinations of a verb and one or more particles. Up, out, off, the prepositions or adverbs that often have idiomatic meanings. So, we call off a meeting, we cancel it, bring up, to mention, he brought up such and such a point at the meeting, to run out of, to have none left, oh, we ran out of petrol on the [00:05:00] motorway, oh, we've run out of tea, Can you go down to the shop and buy some?

Phrasal verbs are both versatile and challenging, because their meanings aren't always obvious from the individual words. For instance, pick up could mean to lift something, to learn something quickly, or even to catch a cold. I picked up a cold. The phrasal verb to put up with means to tolerate, and it's usually used in a negative way.

Kids, keep the noise down, I can't put up with it. Or maybe you can't put up with the noise the neighbours are making upstairs. And then we have to put up. Supposing someone says, Oh, when you're in town, I can put you up for the night. Put you up simply means [00:06:00] I can give you accommodation. And finally, idioms.

These are fixed expressions with meanings that aren't literal. They add colour and personality to your speech, but they can be tricky for learners. Some examples. A blessing in disguise. Something good that seems bad at first. Throw in the towel. This comes from boxing, where a boxer's manager would throw the towel into the ring to signify that his boxer had had enough and he wanted to stop the fight.

To get cold feet means to suddenly feel nervous or hesitant. Let me stress, it's important to teach idioms that are actually useful. I'll give you a good example here. A well known idiom is It's raining [00:07:00] cats and dogs. Meaning, It's raining very heavily. We never use it. And it's one which drives me mad.

There's another idiom. Drives me mad. Sends me crazy. Raining cats and dogs, we just don't use. We might say, it's pouring down, or it's pelting down, or it's throwing it down, but not raining cats and dogs. I always think of this one as an example because when I worked in Turkey, the principal of the school couldn't speak a word of English.

The only phrase he knew was, it's raining cats and dogs. So, whenever it rained, he'd grab hold of me, he'd collar me and say, Steve, it [00:08:00] is raining cats and dogs, ha ha ha ha. He used to find it highly amusing. So every time it was raining, I used to try to avoid him. I said he used to collar me. That's, uh, another idiom.

To collar me. You know where your collar is? The top of your shirt. It suggests someone getting hold of you by the collar. But when it's used idiomatically, We don't mean it literally. It means they grab hold of you. They want your attention. Let's talk about accuracy versus fluency. So why doesn't accuracy guarantee fluency?

Well, let's break it down. A learner might produce grammatically perfect sentences. Like, I'm feeling really frustrated. Whereas a native English speaker might say, I feel at the end of my [00:09:00] tether. A learner might say, I don't think I'll go to the party tonight. A native English speaker might say, I think I'll give the party a miss tonight.

So fluency is about using natural phrasing, adapting to real life contexts, and sounding effortless. So this is where lexical chunks come in. Instead of constructing sentences word by word, fluent speakers pull entire chunks from memory. It's faster, more efficient, more native like. Let's talk about the lexical approach.

The lexical approach was a book by Michael Lewis and popularised by him. And it emphasises that language is made up of chunks, not just grammar. Interestingly, native speakers don't learn [00:10:00] these terms at school. Most people don't know what a collocation or a phrasal verb is. I just used them. I didn't learn what a phrasal verb was until I actually started teaching English.

And even though collocations were mentioned in my training, they weren't explained in depth. As I say, phrasal verbs weren't mentioned in training as well. So I had to find out what they were. What we were taught at schools were parts of speech, adjective, nouns, verbs, and so on, and adjectival clauses and adjectival phrases.

We used to do something called parsing, parsing sentences, where we'd split them up into the different constituents. Useful for writing essays, maybe, but not for conversational fluency. And you know, we [00:11:00] didn't even learn verb tenses, and this is probably true in your own language as well. I didn't learn what the past simple is, or the present perfect and the other tenses, until I was learning French.

We just had no need to learn them at school. So, wrapping it all up. Fluency is about much more than accuracy. It's about mastering lexical chunks. Fixed expressions, semi fixed expressions, collocations, phrasal verbs and idioms. And using them naturally in real world conversations. And in this podcast, we'll be diving deeper into these chunks, exploring how to use them in context, to help you build a toolkit for advanced English.

And along the way, we'll keep things relaxed with plenty of practical examples. and a touch of [00:12:00] humour. So throughout, we'll chill out, stay tuned, and let's make fluent and natural English your superpower. This is Steve, signing off. Bye for now.