Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World

Language Social Networking
As well as the Fluent in 3 Months forum, which is one of the most
encouraging and active language learning forums online for those with a
spoken focus in language learning, you can try How-to-Learn-Any-
Language.com for a more technical focus, or search for forums specific to
the language you are learning.
Whatever you do, don’t take on this language learning challenge alone!
When you see others struggling at the same level as you, they can be
comrades to relate to. Others ahead of you can give you the advice you need
to solve a particular problem you may be having right now, and you can feel
proud of your level by helping those a little behind you.
Engaging in forums, such as those mentioned previously, commenting
on blogs, tweeting, joining Facebook groups, and generally discussing
language learning in any online community can give you what you need and
help you understand your current problems.
As well as this: never forget in-person meet-ups!
Conversational Connectors
Anthony Lauder, a Brit living in Prague who reads my blog, introduced me
to a great way to learn essential vocabulary. Conversational connectors help
your side of the conversation expand beyond single-word answers.
As you can imagine, if someone asks you a question, you may only be
able to provide a single-word answer, which abruptly ends the flow of the
conversation. I might ask you how old you are, and you could say “Thirty-
one” or “Thirty-one. You?” Or I might ask “How are you?” and you could
say “Well” and feel bad that you are providing such short answers.
Conversational connectors are words or set phrases you learn in advance
to help a conversation flow much more smoothly. These not only add buffer
to a conversation, so you are speaking more, but they also help the other
person feel like he or she is not doing most of the talking.
The initial examples Anthony gave me that can be applied in a versatile
manner were to answer the two questions “How is your food?” and “Where
are you from?”

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He suggested that we answer the first not with “Good,” but with
“Thanks for asking. To tell you the truth, I must say that the food is good.
Let me ask you the same question: What do you think of your food?” And
answer the second not with “England” but with “To tell you the truth, I’m
from England. Thanks for asking. Let me ask you: Where are you from?”
As you can see, we are using the exact same connector phrases, which
are not directly relevant to the current conversation but are very effective in
keeping the conversation flowing and establishing intimacy.
There are quite a lot of different conversational connectors you can
learn or come up with yourself to fill otherwise silent moments in a
conversation or expand on very short answers. In English we have many
“filler” words, like “you know,” “well,” “so,” which don’t actually add any
information to a sentence, but they make the interchange sound more
relaxed. I always try to learn these as soon as possible to help with my
sentence flow.
Anthony came up with the examples below, and as such they are
sometimes more relevant to him (for example, he refers to what his wife has
said). You can easily imagine similar phrases yourself that will be useful in
keeping your conversation flowing with more than single-word answers. I
would recommend you take this list and add in one or two examples of your
own that you might use in that situation. Then translate them to your target
language and learn those words as early as you can, since this will enable
you to keep conversations flowing, even as a beginner.
To help you, I’ve provided translations of these examples in more than
two dozen languages at fi3m.com/connectors.