Wednesday 6 January 2016

12 Ways to Improve your Speaking.




Speak..!!! It sounds obvious but many learners revert to their native language as soon as they leave the classroom.
Yes, you know who you are.

Mimic... Learning phonetic symbols and using them to find how words are pronounced is very good but it is difficult to remember each word individually.  Try to copy the sound of English paying particular attention to the stress and intonation. I have heard learners imitate English people as a joke and their English sounds much better.

Get stressed... English is a stress-timed language in which syllables are stressed at approximately regular intervals. Unstressed syllables are shortened to fit this rhythm (this makes the English language good for rock and pop music).
Listen to the rhythm and mimic it.

Listen to English music... This is again another good way to get the rhythm of English into your head.

Stress the important words... Remember that the stress in a sentence generally falls in the important words- verbs, nouns, negative auxiliaries and modal verbs, adverbs and adjectives, the subject and object of the sentence. Unstressed words are normally- auxiliaries, modal verbs, prepositions, pronouns and connecting words like ‘and’. By stressing the normally unstressed words (changing the intonation you will give your sentence a different meaning.

Record yourself... Most people find this embarrassing at first but it gives you a very good idea of how you sound.  This type of feedback is very useful.

Compare yourself with English speakers... You can find examples of people talking on the BBC iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish Listen to a few sentences.  Record the sentences saying them yourself. Then compare your recording with how the person on the recording sounds. Try to get your English to sound similar.

Read and listen. The more English you are exposed to the more it will become instinctive. Remember though to read and listen to things that are not too high for your level or you will lose interest.

Develop intra-personal dialogue. 
Put simply, practice things in your head. When you are on the bus or walking somewhere rather than listen to music or texting friends, have a conversation with yourself about a particular topic-maybe what you can see (good for practicing present simple and continuous), or the weather ‘It’s a nice day, isn’t it? I was going to stay home but maybe I’ll...’ Better to do this in silence or you will find people looking at you strangely!

Learn jokes and practice telling them with correct stress and intonation. To tell a joke well you have to make it sound like an interesting story and to do this you will have toconcentrate on using good stress and intonation. You can also learn jokes that use a particular tense or structure and this will help your grammar too.

Start an English club. Get together with your friends, classmates and any English speakers you know (you could also do a language exchange with them)for conversation. Try to pick a topic beforehand. Introduce new vocabulary relevant to the topic and think about the main tenses and structures you will need.

Don’t worry about making mistakes. Making mistakes is part of the learning process. If you are learning or practicing something new, then you want to be fairly accurate. Then you can ask your teacher, friends or class mates to correct you but if you are having a conversation you can concentrate on fluency and not worry about errors. 

Remember:  If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not doing anything.’  - John Wooden.

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