Practicing speaking is one of the most fun and rewarding parts of learning English. Once you can speak even a little English, there are many ways to quickly improve your skills while having tons of fun. Here are ten top tips to improve your spoken English and have a good time while doing it!
Read the following list and we are sure that you will find many useful tips to improve your English!
Do not be afraid to make mistakes. Be confident. People can only correct your mistakes when they hear you make them.
Surround yourself with English. Put yourself in an English speaking environment where you can learn passively. The best way to learn is by talking.
Practice every day. Make yourself a study plan. Decide how much time a week you are going to dedicate to studying and stick to it. Establish a routine.
Tell your family and friends about your study plan. Get them to push you to study and don’t let them interrupt you either.
Practice the 4 basic skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. They all need to be worked on for you to improve.
Keep a notebook of the new words you learn. Use them in sentences and try to say them at least 3 times when you speak.
Do a lesson at least once a day.
List memorization is one of the most common ways to learn vocabulary for a test. It’s just a good short-term study exercise because you often don’t retain the information you’ve learned for a test.
Use your biological clock. If you are not a morning person, study in the afternoon.
You will find words easier to remember if you try to remember an example sentence using that word instead of the word alone.
Plan to take a test. You will find that you work harder when you need to study for something.
That being said, it’s best not to study just to take a test. Think about the big picture. What can you do when you have a good command of English? How will it improve the quality of your life?
Give yourself a long-term goal. Focus on working to achieve it.
Set short-term goals, too, and reward yourself when you reach them.
Create an atmosphere where you want to learn, not because you have to. You will learn more when you are learning because you want to.
Find out what works best for you. Think about what methods have been successful for you in the past and stick with them.
Find out how you learn. It can be by memorizing, reading, speaking, summarizing or other methods. Find out how you study best. It can be in a quiet place alone or with a group.
Get help! If you don’t understand something, you have to ask someone. Ask your teacher, classmates or friends for help.
Review! Review! Review! Be sure to take the time to review the things you have studied in the past.
It is not a good idea to study alone for more than 30 minutes at a time. Take regular breaks, get some fresh air, and stretch your legs.
Don’t be in such a rush to level up. Focus on the level you are at now.
Watch DVD instead of TV. It’s better to use something you can see again to catch information you might have missed the first time.
Watching TV just gives you a chance to hear something right the first time. This is best for high level students. It can be great practice for speaking with native English speakers so you don’t have to ask them to repeat themselves!
Read graded readers. These books are specially written for your level. Read a complete novel. You can do it! You will feel great afterwards.
Children’s books have easier words and are a good alternative to graded books.
Newspapers are a good place to find passive constructs. Read an article and see if you can find the passive sentences.
First read the general meaning. Don’t worry about understanding every word, then go back and look up new words.
For a word you don’t understand in a sentence, look at the other words around it. They will give you a clue. Try to guess the meaning from the context.
Learn the roots of words. They will help you guess the meaning of the words. For example: scrib = write, min = small
When you learn a new word, think of all its other forms: Beautiful (adjective), beauty (noun), beautifully (adverb).
Learn prefixes (dis-, un-, re-) and suffixes (-ly, -ment, -ful), these will help you figure out the meaning of words and build your vocabulary.
English, unlike Japanese or French, uses word stress. For new words, count the syllables and find where the accent is. Only one accent per word and always on a vowel. Verbs with two syllables have stress on the second syllable (beGIN). Nouns with 2 syllables (TEAcher) and adjectives (FELIZ) stress the first.
Use English whenever you can. It’s as simple as that!
Do not translate into English from your own language. Think in English to improve your fluency. Talk to yourself… but not on the bus, otherwise people will think you’ve gone crazy!
You cannot learn English from a book. Just like driving a car, you can only learn by doing it.
The most natural way to learn grammar is by speaking.
Keep a diary or diary in English. Start by writing a few sentences a day, and then get into the habit of writing more.
Why not start a blog online and share your writing with the world?
To become a better writer, brainstorm ideas and thoughts on paper without worrying about grammar or spelling. Then think about the structure. After that, write your piece using good grammar and spelling. Finally, read it through or give it to someone else to check for errors.
Keep an eye on your punctuation as it can totally change what you are trying to say. Look at the difference in meaning between these two sentences: “A woman without hers, her man is nothing” and “A woman: without her, man is nothing”.
Sing with all your heart! Show the world your beautiful voice! Learn English songs and sing along to improve fluency and intonation… Karaoke anyone?
Get a pen pal or use chat rooms, forums and community sites. If you can’t speak to someone in English, this is the best alternative.
Shadow English CD. Listen to a few sentences and then repeat what you heard. Focus on rhythm and intonation.