As you continue to learn English, you realize the importance of having real English conversations
with someone.
But English conversations, especially with native speakers can be a little bit stressful.
They can make you nervous, they can even make you a little bit afraid or scared, and so
sometimes we avoid having real conversations.
Well, in this English lesson, I'm going to give you five pieces of advice.
I'm going to give you five tips, things that you can do to get ready to have excellent
English conversations with native English speakers.
The first thing that you need to do to be ready to have good English conversations is
to develop your English listening skills.
You should be doing a lot of English listening practice.
When I've talked to people who are learning English, they often mention that they are
nervous or afraid to have a conversation with a native English speaker because they are
worried they will not understand what the native speaker is saying.
So it's vitally important that you spend time watching YouTube videos, watching English
reality television, listening to English podcasts.
You need to have your English listening skills at their best so that when you do have a conversation
with a native English speaker, you don't have to be nervous, you don't have to be afraid
that you won't understand what they are saying.
So practice those listening skills.
That is the first and probably one of the most important steps that you can take in
being just a little more calm when you have an English conversation.
The second thing that can make English learners a little bit afraid or stressed about having
a real English conversation is the fear that they might mispronounce some words, the fear
that they might say some words and someone might think it sounds funny or they might
say something wrong and someone might laugh at them.
So the best way to avoid this is of course, to practice your pronunciation.
You need to take time each day to say words out loud in English.
You don't have to have a conversation in order to practice pronunciation.
You can read out loud, you can repeat what you hear in a video or on television.
There are many things you can do to start to exercise the muscles of the mouth, to exercise
the tongue and to form the words properly, so you need to do this.
This is the second thing that will really help you because if you know your pronunciation
is getting better and better, you are more likely to be calmer when you do have a conversation
with a real English native speaker.
A third thing that you can do in order to put yourself at ease when you know you're
going to have an English conversation is to think about really good questions to ask during
the conversation.
You should always go into an English conversation with questions so that you can keep the native
speaker talking as much as possible, especially if you are a beginner.
When you are a beginner, your goal in any conversation is to ask questions so that the
native speaker keeps talking.
Eventually when you are more advanced, you will be talking more, but at the beginning
you should do things like this, if the native speaker says that they just saw a movie, you
should right away ask what movie did you see?
You should also ask, when did you see the movie?
Did you like the movie?
What was your favorite part of the movie?
So whenever you can ask a question, it gives you time to then pause and listen again while
the native speaker is talking.
So you should always think about what question can I ask this native speaker.
That's your third tip.
A fourth thing that you can do to just help you be ready for an English conversation is
to make sure that you are expanding your vocabulary in a lot of different directions.
Just because you like reading or just because you like movies, doesn't mean that all of
your vocabulary should relate to those two things.
You should make sure that you are aware of vocabulary in other areas as well.
Even if you don't like sports, you should learn vocabulary for different sports.
Even if you don't like travel, you should learn vocabulary for travel.
Even if you don't like food, you should learn a lot of vocabulary for food.
So what this does is it gets you prepared ahead of time.
It allows you to have a solid foundation of vocabulary in a lot of different areas because
one of the things that I know English learners have told me that makes them nervous about
having a conversation is if the conversation topic goes in a direction where they don't
know any of the words.
I know someone once said to me, "I was having an English conversation with someone and they
started talking about sports, and I didn't know any of the words that they were using
and I didn't know how to participate in the conversation."
So expand your vocabulary, not just in the directions that you like, but in every direction.
Broaden your vocabulary as much as possible.
That's number four.
The fifth piece of advice that I'm going to give you is this, be honest.
Be honest with the native speaker that you are having a conversation with.
Just tell them that you are a beginner, that you are just starting to learn English.
Tell them that you are at the intermediate level, but that you still sometimes have trouble
understanding.
You might be surprised, first of all, how nice people are.
And secondly, you might be surprised how much easier it will be to have a conversation with
them.
I know for myself, when I was speaking French with someone, if I told them I was a beginner
or intermediate, they would certainly be gracious and helpful and explain things to me really,
really well.
So be honest.
Just tell them.
And secondly, be ready to ask them to repeat themselves in really polite ways.
So make sure you know phrases like, I'm sorry I didn't quite catch that or excuse me, I
didn't quite understand that last sentence, or could you repeat that please?
So learn those really nice ways to ask someone to repeat themselves and I think that you
will have amazing English conversations going forward.
So I know I said five, but here is a sixth tip for you, you need to be brave.
You need to have courage in order to get ready for and have great English conversations.
As you learn English, this is vitally important to your progress.
So I really hope that you can be brave, i hope that you can have courage and I hope
your next English conversation goes really, really well.
Thank you so much for watching.
If you have time, why don't you stick around and watch another video?
Bob, the Canadian here.
Have a great day.