In the initial days, I
didn’t exactly know how to use it. However, some odd months later, I got the
idea and kept on using it to the fullest. The English that I have today is the
outcome of surfing the English videos uploaded in YouTube all these couple of
years. My current English for me is gratifying, though some of my friends find
it awesomely beautiful. Here I am in support of the ‘good ’one in the sense
that learning process never stops. As the saying goes learning begins from
cradle and lasts till grave. So my English learning through YouTube surfing
could by no means be an exception provided that I had in one way or the other
fallen in love with it. Once in love, forever in love. I think I developed this adage. To be honest,
surfing YouTube videos time and again became my forte and I’m damn sure it will
go on till my last breath. Maybe this is because of my sacred love for it. The
moment I log it on I feel as if I’m breathing. Thus I’m deeply grateful to three
former PayPal employees Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim
who fathered it in February 2005.
The point I want to make
is YouTube for me was the best way to learn English however there are a lot of
means available these days. So choose whichever you think the best. Truly
speaking, my passion for YouTube surfing was and is to expand the storage of
vocabulary and to polish the fluency in speaking English. Hence my penchant for
YouTube surfing gives birth to this article.
As I believe fluency in
English is the key and the bread and butter of many people around the world which
enhances for personality development, this article will keep the fluency along
with body language as well in the center and proceed ahead. Fluency in English
is one of the important features of language to be developed. The term fluency
is simply defined as a property of a person in a language. This means Fluency
is a speech language pathology which means
the smoothness or flow with which sounds, syllables, words and phrases are
joined together when speaking quickly. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary
‘fluency is the ability to speak easily and smoothly: especially the ability to
speak a foreign language easily and effectively and the ability to do something
in a way that seems very easy’. Considering this it can be said that fluency in
English is the ease and smoothness of speaking. And if one talks about language
the speaking skill is considered a lot than other skills such as listening,
reading and writing. Stressing much on this feature of langauge, Brumfit (1984,
p. 56) felt that fluency meant, "to be regarded as natural language use. I
entirely agree with this statement and further endeavor to quote the following
saying regarding fluency:
If
you do not breathe, there is no air.
If
you do not walk, there is no earth.
If
you do not speak, there is no world.
Generally, we need to make
our fluency a comfortable one so that the communication moves ahead between the
parties (encoder and decoder). It gets matured through simple day-to-day tea
talk to public speaking. Likewise we have to know the organization,
pronunciation, word use, body language etc. Here I am pinpointing some of the
important guidelines for a better YouTube suffer for developing fluency in speaking
English.
a. Technical
Qualities
Technical qualities refer
to the overall qualities of the videos available in YouTube. This includes the
clarity, the video resolution, sound effect etc. As suggested by Mullen &
Wedwick (2008) and Trier (2007), quick access to the vast quantity of video database
provides great opportunities in enhancing learning. The video clips downloaded
from YouTube or other similar websites are very educational and practical to
use. For instance, in the technical dimension, about three quarter of the
participants strongly agreed that the online videos clips are high in quality.
According to Hubbard (2009) attributes like good sound and visual are very
important in aiding learning and sustaining the interest of learners. Thus, the
quality of freely available YouTube videos is good and learners can be
benefitted from them without much problem.
b. Content
Focused
The content of selected
video clips not only meet the needs of individual learners but also are found to
be rich in content which are presented attractively and effectively. Regarding
this Muniandy & Veloo (2011, p. 177) conclude that “the claim of many users
and researchers on content of video clips uploaded online are indeed presented
in a dynamic way that can enhance mastering of English language among
students.” This is highly concerned with the language used is appropriate or
not, the language used is conversational in nature or not, the videos scaffold
constructive learning or not etc.
c. Engaging
The next important this
that a learners should consider while surfing YouTube is whether the videos can
engage learners or not. Mostly the content of online video clips are indeed
engaging and could help learners to be more focused. At the same time one
should consider the following things in his/her mind i.e. whether the contents
of videos are attractive or not, either they are well organized or not, whether
the duration of the videos are appropriate or not, is the content easily
understandable or quite difficult.
d. Optimistic
Attitude
The term optimistic
attitude refers to the positive expectancy that one gets after surfing the
videos in YouTube channels. Frankly speaking the learners themselves should be
very optimistic about the outcome of surfing the video clips. To this one
should be sure that they learn something and the reforms will take place. Thus
optimistic attitude and keenness is also a strong indication so that the
learning goes at pleasant manner and becomes strong one near natural future. To
this, the criteria to be considered are; whether the video more interesting or
not, whether the videos can capture and retain ones’ attention or not, can the
videos generate new ideas or not.
Similarly, As the saying
goes ‘the better learners today are the better teachers tomorrow, as a learner
one should keep the above mentioned things to strengthen his/her fluency in
speaking English. There is a belief based on research findings that the more one
use video clips either from YouTube or any other online sites the better the
fluency s/he develops. And the ability they earn woks as a mechanism in their
future teaching. This can be their public image among the learners they deal with.
Likewise, I think it
would be better if I mention some of the links of YouTube videos I went through
and visit these days too in timed conditions for developing fluency in English.
One of the effective video clips I went through in the beginning days was ‘Learn How to Speak English Fluently and Confidently’(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va8ESm0tQCI).
This was a tutorial like video clips that added some skills of speaking
fluently on my side. The clip suggests that the more one listens the better he
speaks. Similarly, a video clips entitled ‘Fluency in English’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_uTu3dGI84)
talks about the suprasegmental features such as stress, length, rhythm, tone
etc. in a practical basis. The video further suggests that practice and
practice until one gets what he wanted to get is the key thing in developing
fluency in English. The other effective video clips that taught me a new kind
of lesson was ; ‘How Do You Speak
English? Speaking Exercises To Improve Your Fluency in English’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKuu3Wwr_3g).
The nice belief I learnt through this video was to develop fluency one need to
speak as s/she sings a song in his/her native tongue. Regarding this ideas, here
I would like to connect one my Gurus suggestions that if one needs to be a good
speaker in English s/he needs to speak it as s/he speaks Nepali.
One of the major problems
in teaching students I have noticed is how to make the talk (teacher talk) comprehensible
to the learners. Traditionally, the input, the subject matter in general, had
been directly translated into the students’ mother-tongue. Teacher used to be
like a bilingual dictionary having meaning of one word into two languages. The
job of students was not to exercise mentally to extract the teachers talk but
to memorize and repeat spelling and meaning time and again to form habits. But,
at present this approach has become obsolete. Now, the main objective of teaching
speaking skills is to make students able to make teacher talk as comprehensible
as possible so that the learners can themselves be familiar with the content
delivered in different contexts. So, a teacher needs to use numerous ways to make
input comprehensible so that the pattern of rote learning gets avoided.
The
biggest problem with developing fluency in speaking English is that what has
been learnt today is often forgotten tomorrow. Hence, to speak smoothly the
smart usage of vocabulary is also important which can also be possible through
English videos. To this one should surf the videos in an appropriate time
interval considering ones timed condition. Similarly, to boost the fluency in
speaking, it is advisable not only to revise the video clips periodically but
also start each day with a new clip and practice and imitate it throughout the
day. Additionally, it is most necessary to develop the habit of making casual
talks with the friends. Frankly speaking, for me, to develop my fluency in
speaking I didn’t felt hesitation to make talks in English with a tourist from
core English speaking countries to varsity teachers from home and abroad either
through online video calls or the face-to-face context-specific conversation.
In
conclusion, I feel myself proud for developing an adage that the enormous
number of video clips available online or offline can be a gateway to kiss the
heart of success in developing fluency in speaking English. And the one more
important thing is, one need to be careful to select the appropriate clips
based on his knowledge and understandings in English so that the pace of his/her
making fluency in speaking English gets matured in a natural way. And this becomes one’s bread and butter in his
career forever.
Before
I wind up this article, I would like to go back in retrospect to decide whether
she was the best friend or the Laptop with network access. Now, I guess the
latter is the best because YouTube is there forever.
References
Brumfit,
C. (1984). Communicative methodology in language teaching: The roles of
fluency
and accuracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
Hubbard, P. (2009). A general introduction to
computer-assisted language learning.
In
Japan. Retrieved on 11th
Feb, 2011 from http://www.robon.org/gary/captioning
Mullen, R. & Wedwick. (2008) Avoiding the
Digital Abbys: Getting Started in the
Classroom
with YouTube, Digital Stories and
Blogs, Vol.82 (2), 66-69.
Muniandy,
B. & Veloo, S. (2011). Managing and
Utilizing Online Video Clips for
Teaching English Language: Views of
TESOL Pre Service Teachers. 2nd International Conference on
Education and Management Technology. IPEDR vol.13 (2011) © (2011) IACSIT Press, Singapore.
Trier, J. (2007). “Cool” engagements with
YouTube: Part 1. Journal of Adolescent
and Adult Literacy 50:408–12.
