Private teachers, group classes, speaking clubs, online courses,
conversation partners, language exchange websites and so on. There’s so many
things we have access to these days to improve our speaking skills in English.
But let’s assume that for whatever reason you can’t do any of that.
Because it’s different for each person and we all have different circumstances.
But you really want to be able to speak English or you really want to or need
to improve your speaking skills. And your only option is to do this on your own. So,
what do you do? How do you achieve this goal?
I have videos where I mention or talk about this way. But let me just briefly summarize
it for you and remind you about how you can improve your speaking
skills significantly all by yourself. But first, I want to get into a couple
of the most effective exercises to work on your speaking and then I’ll tell you
about that one best way to improve your speaking by yourself, that I swear by.
My number one go-to exercise that I recommend to everyone is shadowing.
If you really make yourself do it regularly I promise you’ll see amazing results.
This exercise works wonders. If you want to learn more about it click the
links in the description to watch the videos where I talk about it.
Next, I recommend that you practice your speaking using my dialogue videos.( a Little
self-advertisement “) Based on the feedback that I’ve got from you guys on those videos I can
proudly say that this method has helped a lot of you to improve your speaking.
In those videos we basically have a conversation where you and I have
our lines and I say my line and then you will see your line on the screen
and you need to read it out loud off of the screen as if you were answering me.
And I also perform the full dialogue for you. It’s easy and fun.
Another way is to find dialogues online and read them out loud.
Oh, before I forget to mention this. You need to speak out loud. I hope it’s clear.
Cuz there’s no chance of improving your speaking if you don’t speak.
These two exercises that I just suggested are easy but so effective. Easy because you don’t
need to come up with your own sentences. You have everything all set and done and ready for use.
Effective because the more you actively use the language,- the better and easier
you learn and memorize things, including grammar, sentence structure patterns,
vocabulary. Everything just falls into places. On one condition of course - consistency.
And one more exercise that will help you tremendously not only
improve your speaking skills but also learn to think in English is-
to answer questions or speak on some topic in English freestyle.
Answer who’s questions you may ask. Well…Google’s. Search for IELTS speaking test questions
or small talk questions which by the way will come in very handy.
Now, let’s get to the one very thing that you probably won’t like but will need to
do in order to really improve. This way is truly the best and it is tried and true.
You will need to record yourself speak. Nowadays
we all have phones with cameras so this shouldn’t be a problem.
I know I know…Awkward, awkward, awkward. You feel awkward recording
yourself and speaking to yourself. First of all - nobody has to see
those videos. Second you’ll get used to it. But believe me you need this. You need it
anyways but especially because you’re working on your own and there’s nobody to correct you.
When you listen to yourself back, you can catch your mistakes that otherwise
you wouldn’t even notice you make, whether they are pronunciation or grammar mistakes
and you can correct them. I’m telling you this from my own experience making YouTube videos.
You won’t believe how many takes I needed to take at the beginning to say something
right. I could completely butcher a word or the whole sentences.or,
for whatever reason, I could just drop some words from a sentence or my intonation was
totally off and consequently the message wasn’t properly delivered. But at the
moment of speaking I didn’t realize that and thought that everything sounded pretty good.
But when you listen to yourself you can catch all of that, analyze and correct.
And the more you do this the less you eventually need to do this.
If you don’t know what to talk about or find it difficult to structure your thoughts,
you can start with dialogues. You can come up with them by yourself or find them online. Or,
again you can use my dialogue videos that are called “Speak English with
me”. I’ll link the playlist with all of those videos in the description.
So, you can use those already put together dialogues. You can record yourself reproducing
the full dialogue or you can you can simply answer me just like the video suggests.
Moreover, this way you will have something to compare your speech to.
When you read dialogues out loud don’t forget to record yourself.
When I worked with people on their pronunciation using shadowing, I swear,
people would always drop words out of sentences they just heard or the ones they were reading,
or replace them with other words and they wouldn’t even notice that.
You can also choose a little fragment of any video or podcast where a native speaker speaks. Practice
that fragment and recreate it on video. Again, it’s important to record yourself
because we make mistakes or drop words not even realizing it.
And of course when you just speak freestyle, just expressing your own thoughts,- you need
to record yourself. This will help you identify the things you need to work on.
If you don’t know what to talk about you could think of this,- sometimes
there’s things we want to say to others but can’t and just saying them to yourself out
loud helps to get that burden off your shoulders. This can be very therapeutic.
Recording yourself is a very powerful tool that I suggest everyone use,
even those who work with teachers. Establish an everyday speaking
practice routine and get into this. A couple of months of doing this will be worth
years of studying English by means of tests. Plus this is a very good way to keep track
of your progress that in turn will help you stay motivated.