Fluency Fluency refers to your ability to speak both continuously and effortlessly. This can be achieved by avoiding the following: Frequent repetition

Feature of fluent speech
Fluency is to some the holy grail of learning a language. However, it can be an elusive concept and different people see fluency in different ways. But what is fluency after all? And most importantly, how can teachers help learners speak more fluently?
Fluency
Fluency refers to your ability to speak both continuously and effortlessly. This can be achieved by avoiding the following:

• Frequent repetition: Repeating words or short phrases in the middle of sentences can have an effect not only on your fluency but also on the sentence structure of your ideas. Here is an example of what you should avoid doing:

Want to keeplearning?
This content is taken fromMacquarie University online course,
Practise your PTE Academic Speaking Skills
View Course
Audio

• Unnecessary pauses: Pausing becomes unnecessary and affects the flow of an idea when it occurs at inappropriate times. For example:

Audio
Notice how the pauses affected the flow and clarity of the adjective + noun pair (i.e. average consumption) in the first instance, and the noun phrase (i.e. consumption of meat in two countries) in the second.

• False starts: This is when you begin speaking and abruptly decide to change it before you complete your idea.

Perceptibility of phonetic features in fluent speech
Abstract
A series of experiments examined listeners' ability to detect mispronounced words in a short story. Mispronunciations were produced by changing a single consonant segment in a word to produce a (phonologically permissible) nonsense word. The results of six different experiments showed that prestressed work-initial stop consonants are more perceptible than other consonants. For example, mispronunciations produced by changing the voicing of a word-initial stop (e.g., "boy" to "poy") were detected about 70% of the time, while changes in voicing of a word-initial fricative (e.g., "voice" to "foice") were detected about 38% of the time. Mispronunciations produced by changing the place of articulation of a prestressed word-initial stop were most detectable of all (80% to 90% detection) for three different speakers. A change in place of articulation of a word-initial stop (e.g., "baby" to "daby") was detected as often as a change in both place of articulation and voicing (e.g., "baby" to "taby"). Finally, it was found that a mispronunciation was detected about twice as often in word-initial than in word-final position in one syllable words for both stops and nasals. The results suggest that listeners pay special attention to word-initial stop consonants in natural continuous speech.
Pronunciation in formal settings
Tips to improve your English pronunciation:
Here are 4 tips that should help you perfect your pronunciation of 'formal classroom setting':

• Break 'formal classroom setting' down into sounds: say it out loud and exaggerate the sounds until you can consistently produce them.
• Record yourself saying 'formal classroom setting' in full sentences, then watch yourself and listen. You'll be able to mark your mistakes quite easily.
• Look up tutorials on Youtube on how to pronounce 'formal classroom setting'.
• Focus on one accent: mixing multiple accents can get really confusing especially for beginners, so pick one accent (US or UK) and stick to it.

To further improve your English pronunciation, we suggest you do the following:

• Work on word/sentence reduction: in some countries, reducing words and sentences can be seen as informal but in the United States, it's completely normal and part of everyday conversation (eg: what are you going to do this weekend → what you gonna do this weekend). Check out gonna and wanna for more examples.
• Work on your intonation: stress, rhythm and intonation patterns are not easy to master in English but they are crucial to make others understand what you say. It's what expresses the mood, attitude and emotion.