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- How did you learn how to drive?
- How did you learn how to cook?
- How did you learn how to ride a bike?
Did you watch youtube videos? Did someone show you? Did you take a course?
It doesn’t matter what you did, I am sure that if you do those things it’s because of only one thing: you practiced!
So many students around the world want to learn English, spend hours in front of the computer, phone, or books and still can’t communicate in English with quality.
Among all the reasons why this person still doesn’t speak the language, I am sure that is because of:
The lack of practice.
Many students have told me that they don’t feel ready or confidant enough to speak in English and that they will wait until they do. But let me tell you something, you will never feel confidant or good enough without practicing. It is by doing that you develop such feelings and skills. There is no way in heaven and on earth that you will learn how to do something by only watching, reading, or even thinking about it. If you wanna learn you must do it.
But how can you practice speaking English? Today I will show you 3 ways you can do that.
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- Imitation Technique
The imitation technique is an excellent way to practice your communication skills.
What is it?
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- A way to practice speaking English with a video or audio
What to do:
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- You will imitate or try to imitate the voice audio
- You will copy:
- Pronunciation
- Intonation
- Word stress
How to do it:
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- Find a video or audio with the max of 2 speakers (It can also be a scene of your favorite movie or TV show)
- Listen one time to understand what’s being talked about
- Listen to get familiar with the words and sounds and the speech’s speed.
- Try to imitate with the subtitles in English
- Keep trying until you feel confidant enough and then
- Remove subtitles and practice more until you are speaking just like or almost identical to the audio
Benefits
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- Practice your speaking
- Train your pronunciation
- Have a better sense of sentence construction
- Learn how to speak fluidly
2. Elsa Speak App
What is it?
A way to practice speaking/listening English with videos or audios on an app that can be downloaded on your phone or ipad (tablet). It supports Android and IOS.
Click here to download the app to try for free for 7 days
What to do:
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- Download the ELSA App for free to test for 7 days
- Create an account
- Take an assessment test score
- Daily plan
- Take 10-15 min a day
This is what you’ll see when you open the app. On the bottom you have some tabs, such as the Detailed Speech Analysis, explore, lessons, Customized Learning Plans, and profile.
The Detailed Speech Analysis helps you understand and learn about specific sounds in English. It contains videos to help you learn and lessons where you can practice your speaking/pronunciation of such sounds. A word is shown, there is an audio where you can listen the word and a microphone icon so you can record your speaking. The app then will give you a feedback.
On the tab lessons, you can explore, browse, create a study set that will help you focus on your weaknesses. There is also a dictionary on this tab so you can learn the meaning of a word or even phrase unfamiliar to you.
Customized Learning Plans, lets you learn and practice sounds, pronunciation right away. You have lessons with different goals focusing on different things. For example, the lesson I was taking had 5 lessons.
The lesson #1 was a dialogue, here I can practice conversation with another person about a common topic in English. The app scores your pronunciation, fluidity, and intonation. It shows you the exact letters you mispronounced and let’s you redo it.
Lesson #2 was a listening exercise. I had to listen to the word and choose the correct correspondent of that sound. Here you can practice sounds that you are not yet familiar with and start recognizing how distinct they are.
Lesson #3 taught about the “silent t”, I had to listen to the audio and then repeat (record) my saying the word.
As you can see you can record, listen to your recording, to the app audio recording of the word, and it also scores you, letting you know in which letter you made the incorrect sound.
Lesson #4 was another dialogue.
Lesson #5 taught about word stress. In English some syllables are more stressed than others and knowing this will help you communicate better.
This app can help you communicate better by practicing speaking and listening in English. It also teaches you through audios, video lessons, and exercises.
3. Conversation classes
I know that these last 2 involves investing your money, but if you really want to learn English you gotta invest time and money! To study by yourself is possible but extremely hard.
Conversation classes are a moment where you can practice in real time with other students.
These classes are great for networking, meeting new people, keeping your studies dynamic, learn new vocabulary, phrases, learn about your most common mistakes, and just start developing your automatic responses.
Sometimes when speaking in English a student will think first what to say in their native language and then translate it to English. Besides being super tiring, this process takes time and so by the time you are ready to speak the moment has passed.
Another problem with this process is the translation, many students will translate their phrases identical to how they would speak in their native language, and most of the times the phrase in English won’t make any sense.
To start understanding the logic of English, and the automatic answers you gotta practice and learn with your mistakes. It helps knowing what mistakes you are making the most. Little by little you will hone your communication skills and speak like a pro.
I offer conversation classes in my English course for intermediate levels. This course is taught only in English and it has 3 modules: Intermediate 1 and 2, and one advanced. The advanced module starts off with 70 classes and will be updated every month.
Besides the recording classes, you will have practice classes in group 2 a week on zoom with other students and a teacher. Don’t worry the class may be crowded but you will be broken down into smaller rooms (3 students per room) and practice your English communication for 60 minutes.
Check it out my course page by clicking here.
I will open enrollments in January, so if you are interested, put your name on the waiting list
That is it from me for today.
Thank you for reading and learning with me.
Check out my podcast to practice and learn more English.
I am also on Instagram and Youtube ! Click and follow me there to learn more English
