In this lesson I will give you some tips and tricks to practice speaking English by yourself.
Many of you comment here on our videos that you don’t have anyone to practice your English with.
I know that can be frustrating and cause you to lose some motivation to learn English. There are
some ways though that you can practice speaking English by yourself. This is the first lesson in a
series that I will make with different tips about how to practice speaking English by yourself.
The first tip to help practice English speaking by yourself is to use
shadowing. This is a bit more of an advanced level tip, but I think English learners of all
levels can try it. What is shadowing? Shadowing is a technique to practice English where you
repeat an audio right after you hear it. You listen to words and phrases and say them back out
loud. How does shadowing work? First you find an audio that you want to use. It can be a podcast,
a YouTube video, a Netflix show, an audiobook. Really any piece of audio can work. Next, listen
to the audio. It is important that you understand what is being said. Make sure you understand what
is being said and the vocabulary that you are listening to. Next, use the audio transcript.
This step is for any learner but is really helpful for beginners and lower-level learners.
If you are a little more advanced, try shadowing without the transcript. In this case your focus
should be on listening and mimicking the sounds. When shadowing you should use active learning.
You should fully engage with the audio you are shadowing. The more you can focus on
listening and repeating the audio the better you will improve. Shadowing is an intense
activity so don’t try to do too much. You should only do it for short periods of 10-15 minutes.
Repeat the audio a few times. Repeating the audio 2 to four times should be enough. Most important
is to choose an audio you like. It should be something you are interested in. Finding audio on
topics you are interested in will make using this technique much easier. For example, if you
like soccer, find some audio about soccer. If you like cooking find some audio about cooking. So,
where can you find the audio? Find videos you like on YouTube or Facebook. These are great
because they usually have an English transcript. Find movies or shows you like on streaming sites
like Netflix. These sites will also usually have transcripts. Find a podcast you like. There are
many places to find free podcasts these days. You can try Google podcasts or Apple podcasts.
Shadowing will help you improve your English pronunciation and over all rhythm of your
spoken English. What is rhythm? Rhythm is the pacing of English. This will
help you sound more fluent when speaking English. What’s so good about practicing English using
shadowing? First, you can do it on your own. It only takes about 15 minutes. It
is very effective and can be free to do. To review, find a short audio (10-15 minutes long),
listen to the audio, and make sure you understand what is being said. Practice shadowing the audio,
with or without a transcript. I think you should make shadowing part of your English learning
plan. Now you know more about the shadowing technique. I’ll see you in the next video.