Of the four skills needed to learn a new language, speaking is perhaps the one that requires the most effort. It is one thing to listen and understand, or to write and read, but it is quite another thing to speak to a native speaker without fidgeting and without having your brain blocked.
Steps
Part 1 of 3: Improving Your English at Home
Step 1. Register
When you are alone, there is no reason to be nervous. You can let your thoughts flow freely, so start recording now while speaking in English! It's the right way to get better fast. Find an audiobook or video online and try to mimic pitch, expression, and rhythm. Now, does your English still sound like it used to?
Alternatively, you can record yourself reading a book - you'll be able to listen to yourself (which is surprisingly hard to do in real time) and pinpoint your weaknesses and situations where you tend to slow down or have more difficulty. Once you have listened to it again, register again and you will notice how much you have improved
Step 2. Read aloud
If your hands are busy and you don't have a tape recorder, simply read aloud every day for at least 15-20 minutes. You will get used to speaking for longer, and forming long sentences will no longer be a big problem. Plus, you'll come across new words to add to your personal vocabulary.
It is advisable to choose dense readings of dialogues: the language in this type of texts will be much more realistic and simpler. After all, dialogues are conversations. Being able to read poetry is useful, but developing the ability to have a conversation is even more so, isn't it?
Step 3. Listen to mp3s, podcasts and news
We live in a decidedly digital era: even if you don't think you have native English speakers at your disposal, in reality you do. Scientific American, CBC, BBC, and Australia's ABC Radio are great to start with, but there are tons of podcasts to choose from, even official news podcasts from around the world, and the best part is you'll hear English. clear and with more or less generic accents.
An added bonus? You'll have more (and interesting) topics to talk about in English! By listening to different news, even if you simply repeat what you hear (after all, only you will know!), You are basically improving your English by increasing your knowledge. Two birds with one stone
Step 4. Listen to music too
Okay, it's not exactly like listening to news, podcasts, etc., but it's still great exercise. Just make sure you are making an effort to actively understand what you are hearing. Search the lyrics on Google and sing too!
It is certainly better to choose songs that are a little slow, at least at the beginning: practice choosing one song a day, until you have learned almost all of it and until you understand the meaning of its words. In addition, you will learn many idioms and even a little "slang"
Step 5. Watch TV, especially original language movies
A fundamental part of speaking is undoubtedly listening: for this reason, an effective way to attend a conversation without actually participating in it is undoubtedly to watch TV and films in English. If you really have to, turn on the subtitles… but if you can, hold on!
Movies are a great tool because you can watch them multiple times - the more you watch them, the more words or phrases you can understand. At the same time, TV also has its effectiveness, as we tend to become attached to the characters and quickly get used to the way they speak and the peculiarities of their speeches
Step 6. Tell your world
As you go about your day, talk to yourself. What you are doing? What do you feel? What do you see, taste, smell and hear? What are you touching? What are you thinking about? Right now you are reading wikiHow. You are (probably) sitting in a chair. Maybe you are listening to some music, or you have the TV on in the background. The possibilities are endless.
Think about the future and the past as well. What will you do later? What did you just do? You will need to think in English to improve your English significantly. The more you think in English, the faster you will be able to express yourself
Part 2 of 3: Improving Your English Through Other People
Step 1. Imitate the rhythm
Each language has its own peculiar musicality. You can master grammar perfectly, but if you don't have the rhythm your English will never sound like a native speaker. Therefore, even if you are conversing with people who speak English or are simply watching TV, observe the emphasis, the intonation, the emotion of each sentence. How well can you imitate what you feel?
In each sentence, there are parts that are longer, or that must be pronounced with a higher pitch and volume. For example, "rock and roll" when pronounced "rock AND roll" will sound really weird. But "rockin roll" sounds a lot more natural. This is the icing on the English cake
Step 2. Also pay attention to the movements of the mouth
Just as each language has its own musicality, it also has a tendency to use certain specific mouth movements. Technically, you may be able to produce a perfect sound, but if your mouth doesn't move right you will only produce an incorrect sound. It's all about knowing how to use your tongue and lips!
Of course, you can't block someone while they're speaking to see exactly what their language position is, but that's something you can notice in your own language too. If you hear someone say a word and can't imitate them, experiment! Maybe it is enough to simply put the tongue a little higher or lower … surely somewhere in between
Step 3. Use a notebook as your pocket vocabulary
Whether you're talking or listening to a conversation, if you hear a word you don't know the meaning of, write it down and look for the meaning (you can spell it, right?). Instead of finding yourself in the middle of the night thinking “Oh no, what was that word?”, Just flip through your notebook to remember it. Boom. Learned!
Do you think it is enough to write the word in the notebook and find its meaning? Absolutely not! Instead, you will have to commit to using the word you have just learned, otherwise you will soon forget it. So the next day, put it in your speeches. Make it a part of you
Step 4. Take different courses
If you take a class every day, you are doing a great job. You need to breathe English every day. But can there be something even more effective? Of course! Take two courses, so you can always speak English. One could be the classic group course where you learn grammar and all those boring notions, while another could be an individual course that focuses all attention on your way of speaking. Even weekends are days you can use to improve your English!
There are courses to reduce the accent, business courses, courses focused on travel and many other themed courses. For example, if you like to cook, you could take a cooking class (in English). You may even find a gym where you train in English. If you like doing something, you will certainly enjoy doing it in English too
Step 5. Create opportunities to speak in English
To be able to speak English in a way that is much more than mediocre, you need to be in control of your life and force yourself to make English part of it. You need to make sure that it insinuates itself into every aspect of your life, not just at school or a class. How to do? Here are a couple of suggestions:
- Surely you have other friends who study English, right? Well: form a study group. Even if it won't be a group of native speakers, having your mind busy thinking in English is still very useful. You will learn from each other in a pleasant and relaxed study environment.
- Open the doors of your home to foreign tourists looking for a place to stay in your country. You can rely on specialized sites such as AirBnB, Couchsurfing, HospitalityClub, BeWelcome and Globalfreeloaders. Once this is done, you will practically be forced to speak English even in your home!
Step 6. Find friends online
What to do when tourists are not knocking on our door? But it goes without saying: enter a chat room (secure ones, please!). There are so many people who just want to talk. If you find a friend, you can also do video chat sessions with a microphone.
- There are specific chat rooms for practically every topic, so it will be easy to find the one that best suits your interests: do a search and enter one of them.
- Don't like chatting? How about interactive games like World of Warcraft and Second Life? You can create your own avatar and, in the guise of your new identity, increase your skills.
- Find a pen pal! Penpalworld and Pen-Pal are two sites you should take a look at. The person on the other side of the screen is probably looking for exactly what you are looking for.
Part 3 of 3: Training Your Mind
Step 1. Learn new phrases every day
If you don't use your vocabulary book a lot, find a different way to expand your vocabulary. Collect a couple of words from the books you read, from the sites you visit or from the TV, and try to build sensible sentences with them: only in this way will you be able to fix them in your memory!
If you don't use them, you will forget them. Try to catalog all the words in a notebook and get into the habit of leafing through it from time to time: you will have instant flashes that will allow you to remember even the words you thought you had forgotten
Step 2. Learn phonetic writing
It may sound boring, but it's totally worth doing. The International Phonetic Alphabet is a system of symbols associated with specific sounds. If you come across a word you can't pronounce, just search for it and read the pronunciation. AFI (or IPA, from International Phonetic Alphabet) was created precisely for this purpose: you can read the word you need to know the pronunciation and … ta-da! As if by magic, you will know exactly how to pronounce it.
Since English is a hodgepodge of several languages, being derived from German, French and Latin (and 247 other languages), learning AFI is fundamental, much more for English than for languages that are much simpler from the point of view. phonetic like Spanish. Come on, “rough”, “cough”, “through”, how do you do it?
Step 3. Use rewards and penalties
It may sound harsh, but listen carefully: let's say you decide to introduce the rule of speaking only English at the dinner table (great idea!): How long will it last? Not much, probably. But if you introduce some incentive (if we speak English for two weeks in a row, go out for dinner, etc.) or some punishment (1 euro for every time you speak Italian, for example), everyone will be more motivated to speak English.
These tips work great at home, they allow you to speak English as much as possible, but they can also be used in your study group or course. For example, it would be really fun to make sure that the first one in your study group who forgets even for a while to speak English is forced to offer a pizza for everyone
Step 4. Don't think about it too much
When faced with a native speaker, it is normal for your mind and body to freeze, making you forget every word you know in English. You will make a silent scene and you will leave full of despair, vowing never to speak English with a native speaker again. Rest assured that you are not the first and you will not even be the last!
It happens to everyone, sooner or later. Everyone! The only way to overcome this obstacle is to understand that it is not so insurmountable, that it will pass quickly and that no one will judge us for it. English is now so widespread that even native speakers are now used to listening to people of all levels, so remember that you won't tell them anything they haven't heard before
Step 5. Be patient
Above all, remember to be patient. Learning a language is a process that can take years. If you start to feel bad about every little obstacle, you will end up giving up and abandoning the study of the language. So, don't be too hard on yourself. You will learn, trust.
