Hi there! It's Asiya. You know when I came to study for my master's degree in
the UK I quickly realized that I could understand close to a hundred percent of
my lectures at university. There was no need to worry about it. But I definitely
struggled to speak. Every time I wanted to say something I felt like I need to
pull each word out of my memory and each word tried to hide. That was
especially true if I tried to speak in front of other students. And it was so
frustrating because I knew that each word is somewhere there and I could
easily recognize each word when someone else said them but I couldn't speak
myself the same way. Today I know why it was so and what can be done about it if
you are feeling the same way. So let's get started!
imagine that this circle represents all the words you know in English
whenever you hear them or you see them you will understand everything this is
your passive vocabulary all the words you can recognize and this much smaller
circle is your active vocabulary these are words we actively use when we
write or when we speak these are words we can recall but I need this word and
here it is so it's much smaller and this is because of the way our brain operates
our brain builds a path to each word we actively use and the more we use the
word the stronger the path and the quicker we can recall the world but if
we don't use a certain word for a while this path starts to disappear and then
it takes time to like what is this word it's on the tip of my tongue but I can't
quite get it that's a feeling and actually it's exactly the same in the
native language as well we have the active vocabulary and we have a smaller
passive vocabulary and I can feel it a lot because in Russian I don't typically
discuss like quite a lot of topics and if I suddenly start talking about
something I struggle to find lots of words even though it's my mother tongue
that simply because I haven't been using them for a while and of course in
English and the problem is more acute because of the way within the language I
personally mainly learn the language in a formal environment at school and then
at university and we were taught as a class of students so whenever we did a
listening or a reading exercise or even a writing exercise everyone could do it
at the same time but whenever we needed to speak only one student would speak
and everyone else would listen or actually
even listen and then like how much time would you have to speak in a class like
three minutes it's really not much the funny thing is I even had some personal
tuition for a few years and my teacher was very good and I think she helped me
to improve my English skills quite considerably but we didn't speak much
with her either and my guess is she wasn't fluent herself and she didn't
want to show it that's why we did lots of different things that not really
speaking and of course I had problems with it later but some people know the
language were already living in an english-speaking country and quite often
their listening skills would be really good they would understand everything
and they would actually speak well they would seem quite fluent even though in
reality they may not know as many words as you do and they may struggle with
reading or writing more than with speaking because whatever we walk on or
TOEIC practice gets better okay now we know what the problem is what's the
solution how can we start to actively use words we already know first of all
choose a word you know but you don't use actually need a laptop i've chosen the
word exhilarating and i know it very well
but I don't remember when I last used it myself
then read what exactly this word means not a word by word translation into your
mother tongue but the full description in English which gives a much better
explanation so exhilarating is making you feel very excited and happy
great now you need to learn how to pronounce the word and in the Cambridge
dictionary you can get the British and American pronunciation so you just click
here
can increase the sound yeah exhilarating so that's British I hope you can hear it
and that's American exhilarating great now let's read examples an exhilarating
walk in the mountains okay any other examples so that's
American Dictionary an exhilarating sense of new beginnings swept through
him that's a beautiful sentence so we can
say an exhilarating sense of something and now you need to make up your own
sentences for example once I flew in a helicopter and it was exhilarating all I
could say flying in a helicopter was an exhilarating experience so the phrase I
want to memorize is an exhilarating experience or an exhilarating sense of
something an exhilarating sense of adventure and next time when I would be
talking about something very exciting my brain will recognize the situation and
it will give me this phrase an exhilarating experience or an
exhilarating sense of adventure so when you link the world with your real
memories it's much easier to memorize it or to make the words active in your
brain that's how you learn it and so what you need is to see the word to see
how it's spelled to hear the word to learn how it's pronounced and then to
say it yourself to use it in sentences now I want you to choose five words you
know but don't use please post them in comments I'm gonna see what you choose
then check each word in the Oxford Dictionary the way I showed you and
after that take an aisle topic and think of a story you could tell that
would incorporate all five words in it and tell the story aloud probably you
won't be too happy about the way you told it so tell it again and again until
the point when you will feel content with the way you just spoke the last
time you tell the story will be definitely much better than the first
time it will help you to memorize those words and next time you encounter this
topic or a similar topic you will find it a little bit easier to talk about it
and that matters these little improvements of their regular basis a
much more effective than a lot of work in one go you need to speak regularly in
order to improve your skills and you can't rely on your school University for
that you have to take it in your own hands you can speak at home on your own
you can organise speaking sessions with a friend who's also learning English as
thank you for watching me today keep on speaking and you will get better take
care bye