3 Ways To Improve Your Speaking

There are some extra, fun tips in this lesson! So watch to the end to get some of my practical tasks that will help you move forward and start speaking English with confidence!

1. METHOD 1: SPEAK OUT            

What do I mean by ‘speak out’?

In order to become fluent, you need to make your knowledge of English come out through your mouth.

You need to take your passive knowledge of English and make it active.

If you live in an English speaking country, you have the perfect opportunity to do this.

Here are my tips:

– Go to cafes and public places.
Chat to the waiters, waitresses and customer service people. Ask them questions such as:

> How are you today?
> Nice day today, isn’t it?
> What do you think of the weather?
> How’s your day going?
> Got a busy day today?
> How was your weekend?

Give it a try! You might just have a short chat (they might be busy) but at least you have some interaction in English and this can help give you confidence.

Just start with these small actions.

But Nick! I don’t live in an English speaking country? What can I do?

If you don’t live in an English speaking country (or somewhere you can access people who speak English easily).

Here are my tips for you!:

– Talk to yourself (in English)

Practice speaking all your thoughts out aloud. Please don’t worry about making mistakes or getting it absolutely correct. The point of this exercise is to train yourself to actively use English as much as possible. You need to make speaking English as natural to you as brushing your teeth in the morning.

Make it a part of your daily routine and then, when you go to speak English in conversations, it will feel more familiar to you.

– Use Fluency Topic Cards

Use cards with a variety of different conversation topics. Such as:

The weekend
Travel
Bad experiences with food
My family

And so on..

Time yourself to speak on a topic for 2 (or more) minutes. This means no stopping! You have to keep talking on this topic until your alarm goes off.

Tips: Start with 1 minute and add a minute each week (or month). Build up to 2, then 3 and 4 minutes and more!

Fluency Topic Practice Exercises:

– Practice using new vocabulary in the fluency exercise. Write down 6 new words you have learned recently and try to use them in the 2 minutes.

– Practice using a variety of grammar tenses in your 2 (or more) minute fluency task. Start with one tense first, for example: Present Simple tense to talk about your daily routine, facts about your family or your hobbies. Then the Past Simple to talk about special memories, your last weekend or holiday. Then build up to combining these tenses together.

If you are a higher level, choose three tenses (for example: present simple, past simple and present perfect) And try to use all of these together in your fluency topic exercise.

Get My Fluency Cards

2. METHOD TWO: COPY / IMITATE NATIVE SPEAKERS

Listen to and copy native English conversations. 

If you’re in an English speaking country, take the opportunity to practice speaking to native speakers. When you’re talking to an English speaker, copy what he or she says. Really! Just repeat the sentence back to them. This can actually show you are listening and acknowledging what the person is saying. It can show you’re engaged in the conversation. (It will only sound strange if you do it too much – but! – just be honest and say you are practicing your English) 🙂

Listen to recorded conversations. You can find examples of theses on my site here

Listen to short stories. Try one called “Tom’s Weekend” here

Do listen and repeat exercises. Check out this audio lesson on the topic of TRAVEL. In this lesson you can learn common phrasal verbs to talk about travel. Move down the page to practice using these phrasal verbs in sentences with the listen and repeat exercise.

SOME HOT TIPS:

*Slow down. Slow down your speech first to become more aware of your pronunciation and grammar errors. When your English becomes clearer, you can start to speed up.

*Read aloud. Practice reading texts aloud. Using your English and speaking it aloud like this brings all the active skills together. When you read aloud you are practicing your speaking, pronunciation, reading and grammar all together and you’re picking up (learning) new vocabulary at the same time. 

But how do I know I’m doing it correctly?

Of course you may not be able to get feedback on your speaking this way.  

The point of reading aloud is to make your passive knowledge of English more active and it creates a habit of using English.
When you read out aloud like this, you’re training yourself to use English more often and to actually say the words.
The more you do this, the more you will feel confident when you speak in conversations.

3. METHOD 3: CHALLENGE YOURSELF    

To make big changes or steps forward in something, it’s important to get out of our comfort zone. 

You need to put yourself under pressure. Do something that is a little bit uncomfortable for you to do with your English. 

Motivate yourself by choosing a short term goal. So in the next 6 weeks from now, choose something different to do with your English. Something you haven’t done before. 

Here are some suggestions:                                                        (Photo by Ian Froome)

– Join a public speaking group (such as a Toastmasters group)

– Join a hobby group. (you can find some on meetup.com)

– Plan to have a 3 minute (or more) conversation with a native English speaker on a topic that interests you.

– Plan to take a trip overseas to Australia (Yes!), or England, Canada, the US or anywhere that you can use your English.

– Make an English speaking video.

Talk about your hobbies or passions, something you are interested in. Post this online! Put it on YouTube, or on Facebook (join my Private Facebook group where you can do this). Just challenge yourself to do this in 6 weeks from today!

– Join a beginner’s acting class.

Even if you don’t want to be an actor, these kinds of classes can take you out of your comfort zone and give you a lot of confidence, especially to speak and communicate. You can read plays and scripts, memorise dialogue and practice scenes with other actors. What a great, fun way to become a more confident speaker and improve your English!

Let’s do this! Commit to this short term goal now. Today! Tell yourself that 6 weeks from now, you will do this thing. Put it in your calendar. Do it now (I’ll wait) 😉

Tell me which action you are going to choose for your goal. Tell me in the comments below.

Here are some quotes to get you motivated:

“The future depends on what you do today.” Ghandi

“Don’t wait until you are ready to take action. Instead, take action to be ready”.  Jensen Siaw