How to Speak English Fluently: 7

Golden Tips (For FAST result)

Have you been learning English for years, but still cannot speak easily and fluently?

3 Steps to Stop Translating in

Your Head and Start Thinking
in English
“When I speak English, I tend to translate words from my native language in
my head and it takes me a lot of time just to speak a simple sentence.”
Does this sound familiar to you?
If you want to speak English fluently and naturally, you need to stop
translating in your head and learn to think in English.

Why translating in your head is a BIG

problem
Translation needs time.
It takes you double time for processing information and looking for equivalent
words or grammar structures to say in English.

That’s embarrassing sometimes.

Just imagine in a group discussion or business meeting for example,

everybody takes turns to talk. And when it comes to your turn, you keep silent
for a couple of minutes since you need time for translating from language to
language.

People are not patient enough, you know.

Or even if they’re patient to wait for you, emergencies don’t wait.

How can you get your message across as quickly as possible in such urgent
situations?

Translation doesn’t successfully convey the messages.

Languages are different.

There are words, slangs, and idioms in English that you can’t find any
equivalent language unit in your mother tongue.

English grammar rules are unique as well. The order of words, structures,
senses underlying each structure, etc. aren’t the same.

Even when you can find similar words or structures to translate, they may not
transfer 100% the speaker’s message.

Mistranslation is another issue.

It happens when speakers don’t have good knowledge of English or their first
language.

And really bad effects can be caused from mistranslation.

For example, second language learners often mess up between

“leave” and “abandon” although they mean totally different things
in English.
Let’s talk about a very famous incident that you may know.

In 1977, when the president of the US traveled to Poland, he had a

speech to the Polish in front of the media. His idea of “when I left
the US, ...” was translated into “when I abandon the US, ...”.

The incident was then spread rapidly to both countries.

And you know the consequences, right?

The incident then became a funny story for media in both countries.

Now you see translation just makes things more and more
complicated.

Steps to communicate the messages and time you need to process

information are doubled. And you take risks when translating due
to the translation errors.

Learn to Think in English with these 3 Steps

I’ll go through steps that train your brain to think in English.

Yes, I know that you think it’s difficult.

But actually, it may only be hard at the beginning. Once you get the
right method, your worry will disappear.

You will soon find yourself thinking in English naturally.

Step 1: Think in words

Think small first. I mean think in words, only simple words.

Be patient. Don’t rush. You don’t need to.

Let’s make the learning process of a second language like your first
one.
The learning of your mother tongue starts with simple words like
mom, dad, grandpa, grandma, table, chair, dog, cat, pink, blue, and
so on.

Just try doing this in English. You see things in your daily life, and
you say them in English. Forget your mother tongue. Try to say
everything you see in English, only English.

Later, in a conversation, the image or visualization of a real table

will directly remind you of the word “table”.

Thinking and saying words in English connect the images and the
words together. That helps you respond quickly when you speak.

So, you don’t need to recall the word in your first language and then
again look for a similar word in English.

Step 2: Think in sentences

Now after the word level, move on to sentence level.

This step needs more time and effort. But it’s worth it.

Don’t worry. Start with simple and short sentences first like “it’s a
table.”, “I have a table.”, “the table is blue.”, etc.
Just do it step by step and day by day. When you’re comfortable
with four-word sentences, try longer sentences. Let’s say “my table
is bigger than yours.”, “the table is next to the bookcase.”, “there is
an apple on the table.”, etc.

The idea is to start with small pieces of language, and them make
them bigger and bigger. Don’t jump to long and complicated
sentences if you’re a beginner. Otherwise, you’ll be let down.

Now you’re much more familiar with the process, aren’t you?

Step 3: Think in conversations

Keep moving forward. Try to combine sentences into short talks.
First, Make conversations with yourself
As you’re not confident enough, start to talk with yourself first.

Some suggested topics may be your daily activities, family, friends,

school, dream, favorites, and something similar.

It doesn’t matter how long it is, make sure that you can express a
complete thought.

It’ll make more sense if the practice is done regularly on a daily

basis.

While you’re doing housework, practice talking about activities

during the day.

While you’re waiting at the airport, practice talking about how your
flight might be.
While you’re outside for exercise, practice talking about what the
weather is like today.

While you’re on the bus, practice talking about the traffic today,
something like “Oh no, the traffic was terrible today. I got caught in
a traffic jam. I had to wait hours in a long line of cars and buses.
That was annoying.”

And so on.

Just make the best use of our time. Keep your mind busy with
thoughts in English.

Take all the opportunities to think in English.

If you want to make it a habit, there’s no way except for practicing it

on a daily basis.

Once your brain is successfully trained, you can speak

automatically, naturally, and fluently.

Finally, Make conversations with others

Yes. It’s time to interact.

Interaction with others may be challenging at first, but it’s very

useful for training your brain to think in English.

The final outcome is still the ability to come up with ideas and react
to others in a short time.

If you’re still not ready for real-life situations, practicing with a

partner may help.
Making use of language expressions formed at the previous stage is
recommended.

For example:

Teacher: Mark, why are you so late?

You: Sorry, teacher. The traffic was terrible. I got caught in a traffic jam.
You see?
Recycling is always good. You already prepared a range of
expressions concerning different topics. And you can totally use
them again and again. Just adjust a little bit to fit with the
situations.

Be patient and follow the instructions step by step. Conversations

will go as smoothly as you wish for sure.

Some More Helpful Tips to Train Yourself to

Think in English
Learn phrases for specific purposes/ situations

You use different expressions for different purposes of

communication. Classify expressions according to their functions to
facilitate your thinking process.

Let’s say, for talking about likes, there is a variety of expressions.

I like/ love/ enjoy …

I’m interested in ...

I’m a big fan of …

I’m crazy about …

I’m mad about …

I’m keen on ...

That’s the method to help you think fast and speak natural English.

Use English - English dictionary

Using a bilingual dictionary just encourages translation.

Put that away. Start using an English - English dictionary.

Everything will be explained in English and English only.

You know why?

- Bilingual dictionary interferes with the thinking in English

process. It breaks the rules of “English only” and negatively changes
the habit of thinking in English words, sentences that you’ve spent
time practicing.
- Monolingual dictionary gives you double practice. What you really
need is the English input. You learn more vocabulary and grammar
points reading English definitions. It’s also a strategy to train your
skills of reading and processing information in English.

- You get more information with a monolingual dictionary. Usually

the synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation, and usages of words will
be mentioned in an English - English dictionary; so you can get
more knowledge of the words.

Predict and imagine the situations in advance and when

talking
Prediction and visualization are really important. The purpose is for
preparing the language in your head in advance.

Imagine what the situations will be like and prepare the language to
be used.

Predict what the speaker is going to say and think ahead what you
are going to say.

When the situations happen, just pick up the language you already
prepared. That’s easy.

Learn deeply
Yay! This is the very last one.

Learning deeply means repetition and reinforcement.

The only way to do this is to learn one word or expression many
times, repeat them over and over again.
Language learning is habit-based. If you learn something many
times, links between neurons will be steadily strengthened. The
process happens inside your brain.

Learning words, expressions, etc. deeply helps you speak English

effortlessly without any hesitation.

In conclusion, learning to think in English is the best thing you can

do if you want to speak English fluently, naturally and
automatically. Try to apply these above 3 steps process and you will
be surprised with your English fluency after a short period of time.

What are your best tips to train yourself to think in English? Please share with us in
the comment section below

How to Improve Your English

Listening Skills?
Listening is one of the most difficult skills when it comes to learning English,
especially for beginners.
If you still struggle with this important skill, keep reading on. In this post, I’m
going to show you some mistakes most people make when learning English
listening and how to improve your English listening effectively.

Why Is Listening Skill So Important

When Learning English?
English teachers consider listening the very first skill to be taught, followed by
speaking, reading, and writing. Listening gives an important input to second
language acquisition. It can also determine the development of the other three
skills.

The learning of other skills starts from hearing sounds like the way babies
acquire their mother tongue.

No listening means no input. No input means nothing stored in your brain.

And that means nothing will come out when it comes to speaking, or no
output.

So without listening, you can do NOTHING. Definitely.

Now you know the importance of listening skill in learning English; so, you
decide to start doing something right away. But how?

To find out the best listening methods, it makes sense to examine some
common challenges in the learning process.

5 Reasons Why You Still Struggle With

Your English Listening
There are different factors that prevent you from perfecting your listening
skills. Here are 5 main reasons:

1. Limited vocabularies
Lack of English words is probably the number one reason why you cannot fully
understand what you hear. Languages are formed by words, so without words
you can do nothing. If the number of unfamiliar words is too big, it may be
hard for you to understand the given message.

Another case, which even hurts you more, is the fact that you know the
vocabularies, yet can’t recognize their meanings while listening.
That usually happens because you learn new words by your eyes, not your
ears. You have learned the word only in its written form but have missed the
“sound” form.

Besides, sometimes you know the words, but it happens that you don’t hear
them very often, so you fail to recognize the words immediately. You usually
need some pauses to recall memory about the words instead.

And after that, you realize that you’re still stuck there while the listening ended
just a minute before.

2. You try to understand every single word.

This is a wrong mindset almost everybody has. English learners tend to think
that in order to understand the whole listening, they have to know the
meaning of every single word.
If you try to understand every single word while listening, when you don’t
know a word, you tend to stop for a while to think, which affects the whole
listening process.

You’ll miss the rest of the listening since your mind is busy thinking about
what’ve gone. It’s a very common mistake that many English learners make.

When you learn English or any other languages, you have to accept the fact
that you cannot fully understand every word all the time, as there will arise
new words every time you listen. Agree?

How do you deal with this?

Based on the key words, prior background knowledge, and linguistic context,
you can definitely comprehend the given message.
That’s to say that in order to comprehend listening, you don’t need to manage
to know the meaning of every single word.

3. Unfamiliar grammar structures

Since you’re learning English as a second language, its grammar structures are
new and strange to you. You won’t know it well because it isn’t what you’re
used to in your mother tongue.

Although grammar isn’t the very first thing in learning English, it has its place
in listening. Without understanding grammar rules, listening may be hard. It’s
even harder if you’re a beginner.

You may have difficulties comprehending the listening since you’re not
familiar with the way words, phrases and sentences are organized.

Let’s take a simple example. You’re sure to know the words: long, airport, take,
how, aren’t you? Let’s say if they’re put together like this: How long does it
take to get to the airport?
Even if you know all the words in this sentence, but you don’t know the
structure “How long does it take to (do something)?”, you cannot understand
its meaning.
Listening is a receiving language processed through the ears. While listening,
you become a passive information receiver. You have no idea what will come
up next.

If you don’t know that language organizational structures well, how can you
understand or fully understand the given message?

4. Different accents
The world now is more open. Every country speaks English with a unique
accent, which changes the term from world English to world Englishes.

Research has shown that 66% of English learners consider accents one of the
biggest factors affecting listening. There may be different ways of pronouncing
the same word depending on where the speakers are from.
If you speak American English, it won’t be easy for you to listen to Indian
English or other non-native accents. The reason is you fail to recognize the
sounds; or even when you can identify the sounds, it takes time for you to
think about what it means; so, your communication may be slowed down.

5. Limited background knowledge

Background knowledge includes understanding of many fields: sciences,
culture, economics, politics, religions, art and so on. Among all, cultural
knowledge is the most important since it strongly affects communication.

Have you ever experienced the situation in which you can hear every sound in
the conversation, yet fail to understand the speaker?

That’s caused by the mismatch in culture. Culture and language are connected.
They can’t exist without one another for sure. Differences in culture cause
misunderstanding not only in listening but also in other aspects of English
language.

Cultural background knowledge plays an active role in English listening. You

may talk to people coming from different backgrounds. How you understand
their culture influences the way you interpret the message received through
listening.

Listening materials may deal with any area of life. Existing background
knowledge helps listeners with prediction and meaning interpretation.

How to improve your English

listening?
Based on the problems listed above, there arises some solutions to better your
English listening skill as follows. Just sit down and relax, because you
definitely don’t need to keep the textbooks by your side.

*1. Improve your Pronunciation

Yes, the very first thing you must do is to improve your pronunciation. The
correct way to perceive the sounds will lead to good results in hearing the
sounds.
That’s right. Let’s say if you pronounce the word “environment” exactly, we
mean, with appropriate phonics, stress and intonation, you’ll immediately
recognize that word in listening. This rule is used for the sentence level as well.

I know you’re tired of boring pronunciation classes when the teacher just asks
you to listen, look and imitate each sound such as /e/, /æ/, /t/, /u:/ like a
parrot.

You’re sure bored to death, I know. You can completely change your learning
style.

But how?

We’re so lucky to live in the age of information technology thanks to the

internet. Let’s take full advantage of this development.
Learning pronunciation may be done indirectly by watching Youtube films,
news, broadcasts, or thousands of videos available on the Internet.

While watching, just notice the way the speakers move their mouth and lips,
take notes, and repeat again and again; continue doing this for months and
you’ll be surprised at your improvement.

*2. Listen everywhere, all the time

Of course, to improve listening, you have to listen; listen unconsciously and
listen all the time. Just listen while you’re doing some work-out or housework,
taking a shower, gardening or moving on the bus.

There are many types of listening: podcasts, news, songs, audiobooks and so
on.

Never stop listening. Just absorb yourself in English listening as much as

possible. This method is called extensive or passive listening. There are at least
two benefits you can get from this.
Passive listening familiarizes your ears with the sounds, stress, and intonation.
In other words, that’s an ear training. When your ears get used to the sounds,
you will gradually listen better.

Another advantage of extensive listening is your vocabularies will be enriched

steadily. The more you listen, the more vocabularies you know. The more
vocabularies you know, the more comprehensible input you have. The more
input you can build, the better your listening will be.

Start listening to what you’re inspired and interested in first, then extend to
other areas. That gives you a lot of motivation.

Reading various materials is also recommended to broaden your language

input and general knowledge, which makes listening much easier.

Repeat this step every day for months until it becomes your daily routine. Your
ears need time to get familiar with a totally new language. Remember “practice
makes perfect”.

*3. Watch English movies with subtitles

Is it your favorite? I hope so. Watching movies may be relaxing, but you have
to follow the suitable steps.

Why should you watch movies?

Suppose that you can choose between learning listening by textbook, tape, and
movies? Which one do you prefer? Movies are much more enjoyable, aren’t
they?

Once you’re keen on something, you pay a lot of attention to it and engage in
it. That’s the reason why you listen better.

Movies model real life situations; so, movie language is natural, authentic, and
closer to you than textbook language. Language in movies gives you some
comprehensible input to listen better in real life.

Watching movies helps you learn phrases, vocabularies, grammar and

pronunciation (They’re called input). More importantly, they are put in social
contexts, so you may receive input while doing some mental activities like
guessing, predicting, anticipating, inferring, which makes listening smoother.

Just one thing I want to emphasize, watching movies is an easy way to

enhance pronunciation. You may not recognize, but you’re learning it
indirectly. Pronunciation is very important in listening since it decides if you
recognize the sounds or not.

For listening, there’s no need to go to pronunciation class for intensive

learning. Just keep on what you’re doing, and you’ll see the improvement.

Why movies with subtitles?

Reading and listening at the same time may help as well since it combines two
senses: seeing and hearing. Reading or listening alone may take more time for
comprehension than doing two at the same time. Words coming to your eyes
and sounds coming to your ears will promote your comprehension.
In case you miss a point in the movie, you don’t need to pause or go back
again. The subtitles are there to help as you read along. But don’t rely too
much on words since you watch movies to improve listening skills, not
reading.
If you don’t like movies, that’s ok. Try watching TV shows in English.
Beginners should choose kid programs. Kid language is more simple and
demonstrated with colorful images. You can listen while visualizing things,
which supports the listening process a lot.

Some classic English television shows to practice listening are:

- “Friends”

- “How I met your mother”

- “Extra”

*4. Practice speaking with foreigners

These two strategies above are called passive listening. Now it’s time for active
listening when you listen and take actions based on what you’ve heard.

In a conversation, you have to listen and respond. Listening with interaction

or actively engaging in the dialogue is actually much more exciting than just
being a passive listener and letting the insiders lead you to anywhere they like.

Speaking and listening at the same time makes you an active listener. You’re
trained to listen with some mental activities processing in your mind.

While listening, you may judge the speaker, predict what he/she is going to
say, analyze, and synthesize the given information. Those are good strategies
for listening activities.

Listening and speaking always go together. If you can say a sound, you’ll be
able to hear it better. That’s always true. It’s perfect if you can speak to native
speakers since you can learn standard English from them.
And to deal with unfamiliar accents? Of course. Communicating with
foreigners from different countries helps you with the ear training. Once you
recognize various accents, you can listen better.

How to find a native English speaker to practice Listening and

Speaking for FREE?
That’s the question you may wonder, right?

Let’s join the language learner community all over the world by actively
participating in activities on language exchange websites.

Keep in mind that you’re not alone. Your fellows are there waiting for you. Just
come and say “hello” to them. You can support each other in learning a new
language.

Some suggested language exchange websites:

1. mylanguageexchange.com
2. conversationexchange.com
3. www.language-exchanges.org
4. www.speaky.com
5. www.interpals.net

*5. Combine English listening and reading

This is a dual training, which benefits two skills at once.

There are two ways to do the training. Listen and read along at the same time
(shadow) if the listening is short and familiar to you; or listen, pause, then
read again if the listening is long and complicated.

One of the materials you can use is movie or video with subtitles. But this
time, you need more intense practice. No attention to the social context is
needed; focus on the word or sentence level instead.

Everything will work well with shadow technique. It’s especially a great
technique for practicing pronunciation.

Just watch a scene or a two-minute video many times, repeat after the
actors/speakers many times until you can “shadow” at the same time as the
actors/speakers without pausing.

Now it’s time for speaking. You turn off the subtitles. Just watch and “shadow”
the actors/speakers; try to imitate their movements and facial expressions.
Pronunciation will be improved a lot, leading to progress in listening.

There are many other ways to apply this technique. After reading a book, you
can take advantage of the audio file of that book. Follow the shadowing
technique, then listening will become easier and easier.

*6. Practice deep listening

What does it mean by deep listening?
It means to listen attentively and repeat listening again, again and many,
many times. Do it four or five weeks until you’ll never forget it. Make it a habit
because language is both a cognitive and habitual construction.

Listening to the same thing many times strengthens your memory concerning
vocabularies, phrases, structures, or pronunciation.

Listen again to what you’ve listened before in the passive listening stage. Now
you listen to it many times attentively day by day. You will be amazed at your
listening progress. You can recognize every word, phrase, and sentence fast,
easily, and automatically for sure. That’s a huge improvement, huh?

Another question coming to your mind may be, “How can I choose great
materials that fit me?”

The key is simple.

Rule 1 is to choose something that you love or at least are interested in.
Rule 2 is not to choose too complicated materials. Provided that you
understand at least 70-80%, that will be fine.

Conclusion
The simple learning approach that will GUARANTEE your success is to “make
it so easy you can’t say no”. Start really, really small, and then make the
listening activity a habit.

People have tried, and most have succeeded. I do believe that they work out
for you, too. Follow these tips, and you’ll see how fast and greatly your
listening will be improved.

What are your best tips to improve English listening skills?

You are not alone!

Many people have no problem with reading or writing skills, but when it comes to
English speaking, they just feel embarrassed and get stuck.

In this post, I would like to share with you 7 practical tips that will help you improve
your English speaking fast.

1. Learn phrases, not single words

Learning separate words is a very common mistake learners usually have. And of
course, it’s not an appropriate method to learn any language, not just English.

I’ll show you why.

Knowing the meanings of words is useful. But knowing how to use them in context is
even more important. I mean the collocation in English.

Have you ever wondered why we say “take a picture”, not “do a picture” or “make a
picture”?
It deals with the combination of words. Thinking about what goes before and after the
keywords may take time. It interrupts your conversation as well.
Learning phrases seems like the smart way, since once you’re familiar with the word
chain, you may speak naturally and automatically; so, your communication may go
more smoothly.

It’ll take you less time to think if you learn phrases instead of words.

Let’s say we use English in thousands of daily-life situations, for example for
greeting, suggesting, apologizing, thanking, inviting, complaining, complimenting,
and so on.

Each English expression has its own language function. To suggest something, you
may use “why don’t we…?” or “what about…?”, “Let’s…”, etc.

You will surely know “why”, “don’t”, “we”, but when they’re put together, the
meaning is very different. How can you listen and speak well if you just learn
individual words?

Learning phrases helps avoid mistranslating. It’s a bad habit that English learners
usually think in their mother tongue and translate ideas into English.
But you know, languages mismatch. Mistranslation is possible to happen when
learners just learn words and put them together following the order in their own
language.

A very common mistake is instead of saying “a green house”, beginners in some

countries tend to say “a house green” since they apply directly the grammar rules from
their first language into English.

That’s to say learning phrases is somehow learning grammar.

It’s clear now that we should learn phrases, not single words. But HOW?

There are thousands of resources for you to pick up. Just make sure that they’re
authentic, or they reflect real-life language.

In such an Internet era, seeking for these resources isn’t hard at all.

Some suggestions are podcasts, newspapers, stories, audio books, movies, or songs.

Taking notes of the phrases and sticking them somewhere in front of your eyes is also
good for remembering. Seeing the phrases every day may improve memory a lot, even
when you don’t intensely learn them.

When it comes to speaking, the phrases will automatically appear in your mind. The
more input you have, the easier your communication will be.

So study every single word and it’ll lead you nowhere. Let’s study phrase, phrase and
phrase.

2. Pay less attention to grammar

I mean focus on fluency, instead of grammar. Some experts even say you don’t need
to study grammar in order to be able to speak English fluently.
Just look at the way kids learn to speak English. Even though they rarely learn any
grammar rules, their English speaking can be considered fluent, natural like native
speakers.

And the truth is kids acquire language; they don’t deliberately learn language at all.
Kids say whatever comes to their mind and they aren’t afraid of making mistakes.

This principle can be applied successfully to adults.

Grammar is just an aspect of English. There are other things, which are much more
important in speaking.

Focusing too much on grammar stops you from opening your mouth to speak. The
fear of losing face makes you nervous when it comes to speaking.
I’ve seen a lot of English learners who are very excellent at grammar, yet can’t say a
word when it comes to speaking. So, studying grammar doesn’t help.

Why study grammar when you just use English as a tool to get your message across?

So let’s start with simple English, and then make it longer with more complicated
words. And remember that your listener isn’t an IELTS examiner who is going to
analyze your language. Your listener just wants to get your messages.

And you know, they aren’t patient enough to wait for you to go back and forth with all
the grammar tenses in your mind.

There are too many rules to learn in grammar, which can cause obstacles for
beginners. So, the key idea is put grammar aside; speaking will turn out to be less
stressful and more joyful.

3. Listen to more English

The more input you have, the more output you can produce. Listening and reading are
two channels of getting input.
If you want to improve your English speaking, focus more on listening rather than
reading. Learn with your ears, not your eyes.
Listening helps to build up your vocabulary and grammar. Knowledge and
understanding about some topics are also broadened if you often read and listen.

Once again, the materials for input should be authentic. Some easily-found resources I
would recommend are TED talks, BBC English news, cartoons and movies, songs,
audiobooks and thousands of others.

Listening alone doesn’t make you a fluent English speaker; BUT it’s an important
stepping stone for you to move on.
Once you have enough input, speaking is just the last step in the process. When you
listen to correct English sentences, they stay in your memory, and then you will be
able to build similar sentences yourself easily.

4. Practice thinking in English

Are you translating from your mother tongue to English when you speak?
If yes, stop it right now. Start to think in English when you speak English.

Lots of people can listen and understand 99% what the English speaker says but fail to
express a simple thought because they can’t find the right words.

That’s the reason why you have to think directly in English.

I know it may not be easy for beginners since you’re quite new to the language. But
once you’re familiar with the process, everything will be all right.

Thinking directly in English reduces the time to think by half. It takes you double time
when you generate ideas in your first language, and then seek for equivalent words in
English.

Another reason why you should think in English is that there are many words in your
language that you can’t find a translation for in English or the translation doesn’t fully
transfer the sense you want to make.
Mistranslating happens sometimes as well.

These reasons easily lead to communication breakdown for sure.

Now perhaps you are eager to know how to think in English, aren’t you?

Everything needs training, you know.

Start small with common and simple phrases. Do a little English thinking every day
and you’ll be surprised with your output one day. Start with some pieces like “let’s
go”, “dinner’s ready, come and get it”, “good job. You did it”, “come on”, “come in”,
and so on.

Limit translation as much as possible. Start using English - English dictionary. Try to
explain English words using English. That’s a good habit for English learners.

Say them every day while grabbing some new phrases at the same time to see the
progress.
In communicating, guessing what the speaker is going to say next may help. Keep
your brain busy by processing information and preparing what to say when it comes to
your turn.

This preparation gives you more data for the speaking output. This also helps avoid
getting stuck when you can’t think of anything to say in a conversation.

5. Talk to yourself
Needless to say, self-practice plays an important role in learning a foreign language.
You need to prepare yourself first before you happen to talk with others in a foreign
language.
The more you practice, the more comfortable you’ll feel when using the language.
Just like your mother tongue, you were born with it, so speaking isn’t a big issue for
you.

The idea is to just try to familiarize yourself with English.

HOW to talk to yourself?

There are a lot of ways. Choose the most common situations in your daily life so that
you may have real contexts. You may talk about your hobbies, family, favorites,
school, holidays, or jobs.
When you’re at home alone, stand in front of the mirror and practice. It’s better if you
can use some body language along with the talk.

When you’re on train or bus, talk to yourself or just think of something to talk about
when you’re in such situations.

When you’re doing some housework, talk to yourself. Try to maximize the amount of
speaking every day.
In daily life, there may arise new situations that you haven’t experienced before.
Think of something you may say in this case. Later when you encounter the situations
again, you can find yourself ready to communicate.

Before bed, try to summarize what you have and haven’t done during the day and talk
about the plan for tomorrow. That really helps.

6. Expose yourself to English speaking environments

Talking to yourself may be not enough.
Joining English-speaking clubs, speaking English with friends, making friends with
foreigners, or getting involved in any place where English is used to communicate are
recommended.

What you need for your speaking skills is a daily practice. Make it a habit. Your
speaking won’t get better if you just take the input and leave it there without any
output.

After all the preparing of self-practice, the environment for the language to be spoken
out is necessary.
Just be aware that everything has its beginning. Speaking English as well.

If you don’t open your mouth to say a word, you’ll never be a good English speaker.
If you want to speak fluently, you have to force yourself to speak first. Gradually
you’ll become more fluent.

Just remember “practice makes perfect”.

7. Learn deeply
You can’t speak English easily and fluently when you don’t remember words, phrases
and sentence patterns instantly.
A common issue of English learners is that they only try to learn as many language
items as they can, yet never review them later on.
A study has shown that people forget 40% of what they learned in 20 minutes, 77% of
what they learned in six days and 90% after one month.

As you can see, our short-term memory can’t store things for so long. When you don’t
spend time memorizing things, they will fade away from your memory easily.

What you need to do is to turn the language from short term to long term memory. So,
when it comes to speaking English, you can recall what you have learned immediately
and automatically. In other words, you can speak English fluently.

Have you ever heard a saying that repetition is the mother of learning? That means
everything can be learned through training, and English speaking is not an exception.

What does that mean by learning deeply?

Well, learning deeply means you repeat something many, many times over again until
you master it.

For example, today you learn a phrase: “work out”, which means to train the body by
physical exercise. You have repeated the phrase a few times and made different
sentences with the phrase. You think you’re done with this phrase and move on to the
new one?
Not yet!

That repetition is not enough. Tomorrow you have to review the phrase, make
sentences, use it in speaking or even writing all over again.

One week or two weeks later, you still do the same until you can use the phrase
automatically without thinking. That’s when you’ve mastered it.

As a result, when you need to use this phrase, it just comes out automatically and
instantly.

Learn Deeply With Shadowing Technique

Shadowing technique is a method that will help a lot when you learn English
speaking. Trying this technique, you’ll have a chance to practice your pronunciation,
rhythm, and intonation.
Learning something deeply or spending time on it will better your memory with the
words. You can improve speaking very fast from shadowing for sure.

Why? Shadowing helps you not only memorize words, phrases, and sentence patterns,
but also correct your pronunciation and use the words in context.

So, how does Shadowing technique work?

To “shadow” is to repeat what you hear as quickly as you hear it.

The very first thing you need is an audio with transcript.

Then, listen and follow the text once before shadowing. This step is to help you
figure out hard words as well as to understand the context.

You may need to pay more attention to hard words.

And finally, listen to the audio while reading the text with a minimum delay.
Repeat the process many times until you can read it at the same speed as the
track.

Some suggested materials for shadowing include audio books, movies,

podcasts, videos, news, etc., of course with transcripts.

Conclusion
I guess you may feel overwhelmed now since there are many things that need
doing. That’s totally OK. Learning needs time and effort.

But if you commit to put these 7 tips into practice and make it a daily routine
gradually, you’ll soon see significant improvement in your English speaking
skills.

What are your best tips to improve English speaking skills?