The 4S Rule: Double Your Speaking Ability Instantly

By following the 4S rule, you can double your speaking ability right now. You don't need any new vocabulary. You don't need to fix pronunciation. You don't need better grammar. All you need to do is follow the 4S rule, which we'll now describe. First, try to understand this sentence.

SpeakingEnglishumtoofastmakesumithardumforpeopletoumunderstandyou.

Confusing, isn't it? Well, your English might sound like that. Let's take a closer look at the sentence. We'll see how to double our speaking ability without learning any new English:

1. Slow

Let's slow down a bit:

Speaking English um too fast makes um it hard um for people to um understand you.

See how we made it cleaner just by separating the words clearly? The same thing happens when you speak. Already you have improved. Why does this work?

It has to do with how we hear language. When you hear a foreign language, you don't know when one word ends and the next word starts. It just sounds like noise. The same thing may happen when you speak English. People will have a hard time hearing the boundaries between your words. You can make this much easier by just slowing down!

2. Short

The next way to improve your speaking is to keep it short. How do you do that? By splitting a sentence into phrases that you can handle:

Speaking English too fast um

makes it hard um

for people to understand you.

Now we have three small phrases. Each phrase by itself is easy for you. Notice that there is still one problem. Between the phrases we still have "um." "Um" is very distracting. It takes all the attention from the real words. Replace it with silence. This might feel strange to you, but a 2-second pause is absolutely fine. It sounds intelligent, unlike "um." In fact, broadcasters use pauses frequently. (The also talk much more slowly!) Try saying the sentence this way:

Speaking English too fast

[silence]

makes it hard

[silence]

for people to understand you.

This sentence will sound much better to the listener.

3. Stress

Look at the sentence again:

Speaking English too fast makes it hard for people to understand you.

The bold words are the important words in the sentence. If you only say, "Speak English fast hard understand," people will probably know what you mean. So what should you do? Stress those words. Make them strong, slow, and clear. Make them stand out from the other words.

4. Simple

In most cases, you can probably find a short cut to make the sentence simpler. One way is to cut it into two sentences. This reduces the grammatical complexity of the sentence. For example, we can simplify

Speaking English too fast makes it hard for people to understand you.

by doing this:

Don't speak English fast. People can't understand you.

We eliminated 33% of the words. We also eliminated "makes it," "for," and "to," which means we don't have to think as hard. The second version is much simpler. You will speak more comfortably as a result. People will be able to understand you better.

So that is the 4S rule. If you follow it, your clarity will improve by 100% instantly. Give it a try!