Hello! This is Jack from tofluency.com. I help
English learners reach a high level of English. Now, in this video I'm going to
give you three tips to help you improve your English, but these tips are going to
be a little bit different;
they're going to be fun to use but also they're going to help you.
So, let's look at tip number one:
Tip one is to use tongue twisters.
Now, these are little sayings that are difficult to say. They are difficult to
say because they use similar vowel sounds or consonant sounds and it's difficult
for your mouth to move in the right direction in order to say these sounds.
So, let's actually practice one.
And what I want you to do is to pause the video after I say it and then repeat.
So, this is going to be fun and we'll practice this a couple of times.
Are you ready? Let's do it! She sells seashells on the seashore. She sells
seashells on the seashore.
Now, what makes this difficult is that you're going from the /S/ sound to the
sound /SH/.
She sells. She sells. So, you can see this is quite difficult to do. So, what you
want doing here is a couple of things: firstly, you're practicing two similar
sounds so that you understand how to produce these sounds.
But secondly, you're also training your mouth in order to be able to use the
correct pronunciation quickly. By making it challenging,
it's going to push you to improve your pronunciation.
Now tip number two is all about how to get more speaking practice. So, I get so
many emails from learners telling me that they don't have anyone to practice
their English with, and I have a solution for this.
There are two main ways that you can do it:
firstly, and this is not going to be available to everyone, is to offer up
your spare room for people to stay.
So, if you live in a city or a town that is popular with tourists, specifically
English-speaking tourists,
then you can sign up for something like Air BnB and let people stay in your house.
Now,
by doing this you're going to get lots of speaking practice because people who
are English speakers are going to come to your house;
ask you questions; they're going to have conversations with you and this is a way
that you can practice in a very natural way.
Also, you're going to make some money from it as well, so this is a way to get
paid for practicing your English.
Now, if you don't have a room available for someone, then you can sign up to
Couchsurfing. Now, what this website is, well, it's very similar to a B&B but in
addition to allowing people to stay with you,
you can also take people out to your favorite places; you can show people
around your town - around your city.
So again, this is another way to meet native or proficient in English speakers
and practice your English with them.
So, I've left a couple of resources for this in the description and you can
check that out.
The last tip is a lot of fun -
I'm sure a lot of you already do this, but it is this: to sing karaoke to sing
in English.
Now, luckily on YouTube, you can search for any song that you like
plus the lyrics, ok, so let's say you like the song blowing in the wind by Bob
Dylan -
you can search "blowing in the wind lyrics" and you're most likely go to find
a YouTube video with the lyrics on the screen and by singing you're going to
improve your pronunciation, but you're also going to improve your general
speaking and you're going to learn new words and phrases and grammar structures
too
So, this is a fun way to learn English.
Now, if you are a little bit shy about your singing
then do this when you are at home alone or where nobody else can hear you, but
don't be shy about it;
don't be shy about doing it on your own. Find a song you like and sing your
heart out!
Now, although these tips are a little bit different and maybe a little bit strange,
they are very effective and if you want to learn more about how to use tips like
these, then download my free book if you haven't got this already.
You are going to love it. I'll also have more resources below and please share
this with anyone who would find it useful.
Thank you for watching and I speak to you soon!