Fluentzy®: Contents of the English fluency self-study course
A set of English fluency-building books. By Prof. Kev Nair.
Ideal for use as a course of self-study:
The Fluency Development Course™
There are a total of 20 short books in this set of books. These are a series of short books written by Prof. KevNair on how to build fluency in English. Here are the titles of these 20 self-study books:
• B1: Idea units & Fluency. (ISBN: 978-93-81424-00-1). (Crown 1/8, Pages 104).
• B2: Speech Generation & Flow Production. (ISBN: 978-93-81424-01-8). (Crown 1/8, Pages 112).
• B3: Teaching your Tongue & Speech Rhythm. (ISBN: 978-93-81424-02-5). (Crown 1/8, Pages 112).
• B4: Key Speech-initiators & Speech-unit Patterns. (ISBN: 978-93-81424-03-2). (Crown 1/8, Pages 127).
• S1: Fluency in Functional English (Part 1). (ISBN: 978-93-81424-12-4). (Crown 1/8, Pages 110).
• S2: Fluency in Functional English (Part 2). (ISBN: 978-93-81424-13-1). (Crown 1/8, Pages 101).
• S3: Fluency in Telephone English & Sectoral English. (ISBN: 978-93-81424-14-8). (Crown 1/8, Pages 103).
• B5: How to Deal with Hesitation. (ISBN: 978-93-81424-04-9). (Crown 1/8, Pages 114).
• B6: Oral Training in Fluency Vocabulary (Part 1). (ISBN: 978-93-81424-05-6). (Crown 1/8, Pages 122).
• B7: Packing of Information in Speech. (ISBN: 978-93-81424-06-3). (Crown 1/8, Pages 105).
• B8: Impromptu Speech-flow Techniques. (ISBN: 978-93-81424-07-0). (Crown 1/8, Pages 112).
• S4: Fluency Building and Mouth Gymnastics. (ISBN: 978-93-81424-15-5). (Crown 1/8, Pages 105).
• S5: Fluency in speaking about people. (ISBN: 978-93-81424-16-2). (Crown 1/8, Pages 107).
• B9: Fluency in Asking Questions. (ISBN: 978-93-81424-08-7). (Crown 1/8, Pages 103).
• B10: Oral Training in Fluency Vocabulary (Part 2). (ISBN: 978-93-81424-09-4). (Crown 1/8, Pages 105).
• B11: Fluency & Moment-to-Moment Speech-production. (ISBN: 978-93-81424-10-0). (Crown 1/8, Pages 103).
• B12: Oral Training in Fluency Vocabulary (Part 3). (ISBN: 978-93-81424-11-7). (Crown 1/8, Pages 107).
• S6: Fluency in Topicwise English (Part 1). (ISBN: 978-93-81424-17-9). (Crown 1/8, Pages 103).
• S7: Fluency & Pronunciation. (ISBN: 978-93-81424-18-6). (Crown 1/8, Pages 105).
• S8: Fluency in Topicwise English (Part 2). (ISBN: 978-93-81424-19-3). (Crown 1/8, Pages 104).
NOTE: The ISBNs listed above are of the paperback version. To see the ISBNs of Ebook version, click here. The contents of the paperback version and the Ebook version are identical.
Book B1: Idea units & Fluency:
Importance of theory. Importance of oral practice. How to do your study. Non-detailed study. Detailed study. Learning in bursts. Do a lot of general reading. Ordinary novels suit fluency-building best. Recommended reading. You need a good dictionary. Avoid bilingual dictionaries. Avoid high-sounding and rarely-used words. What dictionary should you buy? Fluency, only through idea units. ‘Speech’ comes first, and ‘writing’, only next. Non-native speakers learn English the ‘wrong’ way. Learning words alone won’t help. Bite-sized pieces of ideas. How does natural speech come out? What does natural speech come out in? Let ready-to-assemble units do your work for you. Idea units: Your key to speech and fluency. ‘Idea units’ of speech, and “sentences” of writing. How context helps the speaker. Importance of context. Types of idea units. Word knowledge and word mastery. Why can’t we speak in ‘sentences’? Just a little at a time, and not a mouthful. Strands of information. Length and shape of idea units. Points for dividing speech. Guidelines for dividing speech into idea units. Embedding and lining up. Roundabout connectivity. Straight connectivity. Speak in idea units, and not in sentences.
• “Idea Units & Fluency gets your fluency-building efforts off to a no-nonsense start in the right direction, so that you don’t have to worry about any wasted efforts.” – The New Sunday Express.
• “Idea Units & Fluency tells how units of idea help speakers achieve fluency.” – THE HINDU.
Book B2: Speech Generation & Flow Production:
Speech-generation Technique. Learning by heart is NOT a solution. Generative Feature & Generative Structures. How does the Generative Feature work? ‘Generation’ through ‘substitution’. How to become skilled at substitution. Core words: Words of the most general utility. Neutral and non-neutral vocabulary. Formal vocabulary. Informal vocabulary. Slang. Fitting vocabulary items into General Structures. How to master the speech generating skill? Generative Structure drills. Spare-parts for speech generation. Naming Part. Action Part. Descriptive Part. Circumstance Part. Flow-production Techniques. Word-junctions. Junction practice. Mixed material for flow-practice. Informal vocabulary.
• “Speech Generation & Flow Production shows how the principles of speech generation can help you keep up an easy flow of spontaneous speech.” – The New Sunday Express.
• “Speech Generation & Flow Production demonstrates how speech is produced spontaneously.” – THE HINDU.
Book B3: Teaching your Tongue & Speech Rhythm:
‘Teaching’ your ‘tongue’. Important principles of description. Descriptive principle. The way to teach your tongue. Word List. Rhythm and flow of speech. The syllable. Two groups of words. The way the English language flows. The way other (= non-English) languages flow. Uniform stress. Uniform time distribution. Let English flow the way English should flow. Up and down movement. Syllable stress. Polysyllabic words. Monosyllabic words. Weak function words. “Schwa”. Neutral function words. Guidelines. Limited freedom. Shortened forms. Foot and rhythm. The fundamental principle of English rhythm. Beating the rhythm. The silent stress. Unstressed syllables at the beginning of ‘words’. Speed of speech. Frequently-used polysyllabic words. An important exercise. Questions for Practice. Importance of the drill with word groups. Two important exercises.
• “Teaching your Tongue & Speech Rhythm deals with how to train your speech organs and reach higher levels of fluency.” – The New Sunday Express.
• “Teaching your tongue & Speech Rhythm shows how speakers can train their speech organs and achieve the characteristic English speech rhythm.” – THE HINDU.
Book B4: Key speech-initiators & Speech-unit Patterns:
Key speech-initiators. Basic speech-initiators. Advanced speech-initiators. Everyday speech-initiators. Why’s the word group-repetition drill so important? Key phrase patterns. Action patterns & clause patterns. Link verb patterns. Intransitive verb patterns. Simple monotransitive verb patterns. Complex monotransitive verb patterns. Ditransitive verb patterns. Naming patterns. Rhythm drill. Short responses. Negative meaning. Fluency nucleus. Chats and serious conversations. Long sequences and short sequences. Short sequences. Long sequences. Level of fluency.
• “Key Speech initiators & Speech unit Patterns, helps you master speech-initiators and speech-unit patterns quickly and easily.” – The New Sunday Express.
• “Four books in the series concentrate on how to compose speech and speak at the same time.” – THE HINDU.
Books S1/B13 & S2/B14: Fluency in Functional English (Vols. I & II):
How to use English to express 175 everyday communicative functions. How to express ability, admiration, agreement, appreciation, approval, certainty, condolences, gratitude, intention, likes, likelihood, possibility, preference, prohibition, reluctance, satisfaction, good wishes, wants, wishes, etc. How to express anger, annoyance, disappointment, doubt, fear, hope, indecision, indifference, irritation, pleasure, regret, sarcasm, surprise, sympathy, worry, etc. How to use English to accept something, admit something, advise someone, compliment someone, congratulate someone, contradict someone, criticize someone, deny something, forgive someone, offer, accept or decline help, make an invitation, give an opinion, praise someone, reassure someone, report progress, refuse a request, make a suggestion, threaten to do something, etc.
• “Two volumes of Fluency in Functional English help speakers achieve the skill of being able to say the right thing in the right social and career contexts.” – The New Sunday Express.
• “Two volumes of the title Fluency in Functional English are meant to equip speakers with the skill to say the right thing in the right social context.” – THE HINDU.
Book S3/B15: Fluency in Telephone English & Sectoral English:
Fluency in Telephone English. Guidelines for making a call. Guidelines for answering a call. Telephone word groups. Word groups for use while making a phone call. Word groups for use while answering a phone call. Word groups to speak about telephoning in general. Fluency in Business English. Fluency in Banking English. Fluency in Travel English. Speaking about Food and Drink. Everyday politics.
• “Fluency in Telephone English & Sectoral English teaches you how to be fluent over the phone.” – The New Sunday Express.
Book B5: How to deal with hesitation:
Pauses and syllable lengthening. Junction pauses. Junction pauses and grammatical breaks. Spontaneous speech. Non-spontaneous speech. Hesitation pauses. Pause notation. Paracomplex, paraboundaries and parapauses. Minor and major boundaries. Syllable lengthening. Public & non-public and formal & non-formal situations. Speech production and hesitation. Problems causing hesitation. Result of hesitation. Native and foreign hesitation. Native hesitation is a normal phenomenon. A basic reason for lack of fluency. Giving flow to your speech. Preventing foreign hesitations. Dealing with hesitations. Pauses. Hesitation noises. Hesitation fillers. Hesitation caused by 6 Problems. Guidelines. Practice with action word-groups. Questions for rhythm drill. Questions for practice.
• “How to deal with hesitations is a book on hesitation management.” – The New Sunday Express.
• “How to deal with hesitations is a key title in the series. It deals with the techniques of mid-speech hesitation management.” – THE HINDU.
Book B6: Oral Training in Fluency Vocabulary (Part 1):
Training in ‘General Structures’. The way speech gets produced. Framework for speech-production. Shape of speech units. Fluency tools. Repeated exposure. The most important point in vocabulary choice. About words you should master. Objective-based vocabulary-development. The test for word-selection. General structures. Subsidiary word groups. Place-relating word groups. Time-relating word groups. Frequently-used monosyllabic words. Words of the greatest general service. Practice with major word groups. Action word groups. Naming word groups. Phrasal verbs. Phrasal-prepositional verbs. Prepositional verbs. ‘Adjective + Noun’ combinations.
• “The title Oral Training in fluency vocabulary comes in three volumes. They concentrate on training you thoroughly in techniques of vocabulary-manipulation during spontaneous speech production.” – The New Sunday Express.
• “Vocabulary manipulation is another key area in the Fluentzy scheme. Three volumes of the title Oral Training in Fluency Vocabulary are devoted to this.” – THE HINDU.
Book B7: Packing of Information in Speech:
Techniques of information-packing. Subordination and co-ordination. Nature of information-packing and fluency. How to avoid dense packing. Special subordinate constructions. Complex phrases. Pre-modification and Post-modification. Modification and complexity. How to avoid modification. Exceptional cases. Re-reference. Classifying function. ‘Adjective + Noun’ combinations. ‘Noun + Noun’ combinations. Conventional pre-modifiers. Non-specific modification. Intensifiers and downtoners. Fluency and word-modification. How to avoid modification. Intensifiers. Downtoners. How to avoid complexity. Embedded noun-phrases. Specific and non-specific words. Composing speech and speaking at the same time. Mental assessment and planning. Control of speech delivery. Inevitability of loose packing. Speech composition features. Listeners’ point of view. Looseness vs. Conciseness.
• “Packing of Information teaches you methodically how to pack meaning and content into speech the way native speakers of English do.” – The New Sunday Express.
Book B8: Impromptu Speech-flow techniques:
Impromptu word group ordering. Makeshift improvisations. Special ways of word group ordering. Topic–comment arrangement. Comment–topic arrangement. Repeated reference. Self-correction. Arrangement in parenthesis. Fronting. Appended word groups. Fragmentary word groups. Struggle-free speech-composition. Two types of self-imposed restrictions. Inter-related restrictive actions. Two techniques to smooth the way. Use of comment clauses. Comment clauses in statements. Comment clause combinations. Vagueness and Imprecision. Non-occurrence and non-availability of lexical item. Listing. Talking about quantity, number, duration, etc. Vagueness and uncertainty about what/who/where. Quality, description, etc. “sort of”. Vagueness through intensification. Generic use of ‘you’ and ‘they’. Starting trouble. Discourse markers. Discourse markers in combination. Combination of comment clauses and discourse markers. Topic shift. Other topic shift markers. Steadying influence of the hesitation pause. Analyze the texts now.
• “The title Impromptu Speech Flow Techniques helps you learn quickly and easily how to organise word clusters in the most useful and effective way and carry on a spontaneous speech.” – The New Sunday Express.
Book S4/B16: Fluency Building & Mouth Gymnastics:
Fluency through mouth gymnastics. Past experience handicaps advanced non-native learners. Mouth gymnastics. Ineffective methods. Fluency in “wrong” usages is a handicap. Word classes for mouth gymnastics. Knowledge of organs of speech. The vocal apparatus. Word groups for mouth gymnastics.
• “Fluency Building & Mouth Gymnastics deals with skill-building techniques that can really get your organs of speech to overcome the pressures of the English language on them.” – The New Sunday Express.
• “Fluency Building and Mouth Gymnastics helps speakers get their speech organs work smoothly in the way the English language needs them to work.” – THE HINDU.
Book S5/B17: Fluency in Speaking about People:
A person’s “make-up”. Behaviour. Attitude. Intelligence. Personality & personality traits. Feelings & emotions.
• “Fluency in Speaking about People helps you master the semantic and syntactic resources needed to achieve fluency in speaking about people and their behaviour, attitudes, intelligence, personality traits, feelings and emotions.” – The New Sunday Express.
Book B9: Fluency in Asking Questions:
How to make questions. Role of questions. Difficulty in framing questions. Chief reason for the difficulty. Question types. Yes-No questions. Conversion of statements into yes-no questions. Responses to yes-no questions. Negative yes-no questions. Everyday yes-no questions for practice. Wh-questions. Conversion of statements into wh-questions. Advanced wh-questions. Everyday wh-questions for practice. Question-initiator word groups. Declarative questions. Yes-no declarative questions. Wh-declarative questions. Tag questions. Structure. Special cases. Three important points you should remember. Invariant tag questions. Rhythm drill.
• “The title Fluency in Asking Questions is devoted entirely to the role of questions in fluent speech and fluency training.” – The New Sunday Express.
• “Fluency in Asking Questions deals with a tricky skill.” – THE HINDU.
Book B10: Oral Training in Fluency Vocabulary (Part 2):
Reply Expressions. Prompt-response practice. Subsidiary word groups. Manner word groups. Complementation of verbs by prepositional phrases. Prepositional phrases. The lexical bond. Free combinations of verbs and prepositions. Prepositional verbs are not phrasal verbs. Frequently-used prepositional phrases. Generative Structures. Fluency and General Structures. Phrasal verbs. “Adjective+Noun” word groups. Fixed Expressions.
Book B11: Fluency & Moment-to-moment speech production
Life-giving elements of spoken English. A common mistake. Speech-composition features & duration of speech. Spoken English texts. The conversational touch. Directives. Exclamations. Special conversational emphasis. Leaving out words. Comparison. Comparison of qualities and characteristics. Comparison of manner. Phrasal verbs. Adjective + Noun.
• “Fluency and Moment-to-moment Speech Production teaches you in a systematic way the techniques of building speech from moment to moment as you speak along.” – The New Sunday Express.
Book B12: Oral Training in Fluency Vocabulary (Part 3)
Everyday Medical English: Speaking about health and illness. Doctor to patient. Case-taking: Questioning the patient. Examination procedure. Mental examination by doctor. Diagnosis/treatment. Language patients use. General illness. Patients speaking about their mental state. General. Speech initiators in educated circles. How do people judge you? The way to sound educated and cultured. Image-building word groups. Adjective + noun. Phrasal verbs. Everyday questions for practice. Prompt-response practice. Rhythm drill. Final words.
Book S6/B18: Fluency in Topicwise English (Part 1):
Fluency in speaking about a wide range of topics. Driving. Vehicle repairs & maintenance. Clothes. Weather. Money. Entertainment & Leisure.
• “Two volumes of Fluency in Topicwise English help you widen your fluency range. These two books help you master the word clusters that would help you handle important everyday topics with fluency.” – The New Sunday Express.
• “Two other volumes of the title Fluency in Topicwise English cover the word groups that are essential for everyday use.” – THE HINDU.
Book S7/B19: Fluency & Pronunciation:
Pronunciation of conversational English. How to pronounce English like a native speaker of English. Intensive practice.
• “Fluency and Pronunciation helps you get a command of such of those elements of pronunciation as have to do with fluency.” – The New Sunday Express.
• “Fluency and Pronunciation deals with the elements of pronunciation and shows how speakers can master pronunciation through independent training.” – THE HINDU.
Book S8/B20: Fluency in Topicwise English (Part 2):
Good and bad. Farming, agriculture & gardening. Sports & Games. Essential computer English. Crime. Nature. Buildings and Home.