Name: How To Practice And Improve Your English Speaking Alone
Uploaded: 2024-09-13T03:49:11.000Z
Duration: 8 min 43 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

Today you're going to learn 6 exercises to practice and improve your English speaking skills alone, by yourself, anywhere in the world.

The first exercise is what I would call spontaneous repetition.

Whenever you're reading or listening to any piece of media in the English language, and you come across a word that is brand new to you, that you don't understand, or a word that you struggle to pronounce yourself, I want you to stop, pause whatever you're listening to, or stop whatever you're reading, and say that word out loud at least 5 times.

You should say it out loud about 5 to 10 times.

So for example, if I'm reading something on my phone, and then I come across the word thorough, and I'm not really sure what that means, I'm going to look up what it means, and then I'm going to say thorough 5 times, just like this.

Thorough, thorough, thorough, thorough, thorough.

Just by physically saying it 5 times in a row like that, physically training my mouth to say a word that I'm unfamiliar with, I'm going to have a much easier time remembering the word and not forgetting it.

So for all of you out there who are concerned about forgetting vocabulary words that you've learnt in the past, this is an easy way to never forget the new words that you learn.

This is simply because, generally speaking, you're going to remember much more all the things that you physically do, like physically saying the word thorough, as opposed to things that you're just passively reading and listening to.

So every single time you come across a word that you struggle with, or you just don't understand at all, stop and say it out loud 5 times, and it will be very, very difficult to ever forget it again.

In addition, this exercise and all of the other 5 exercises that I'm going to give you apply to people of all levels of English, whether you're at the beginner levels, the intermediate levels, or the advanced levels of the English language.

This is just finding another way to express something that you don't quite know how to express.

In order to do this, you're going to find a subject or a topic that you're not very familiar with.

So, for example, if you aren't really familiar with the vocabulary in the medical industry, with doctors and nurses, you can consume some media regarding the medical field.

You should also prompt yourself with some questions regarding the medical field, and when you're describing them, if you don't understand the vocabulary or how to express a certain thing, you simply need to force yourself to find another way to describe it.

This can be done with literally any subject.

So, for example, if I was starting to write, type, or text about a subject that I'm unfamiliar with, let's say it is audio, and I don't know what this object is called, then I'll simply say, the thing that people speak into when they're doing interviews, or the thing that people sing into when they're doing musical performances.

If I don't know what the word microphone is, I'll simply find another way to express it for the sake of conversing.

This is actually a very powerful exercise because in real life, when you speak English with real native English speakers, you're going to come across a lot of situations like these.

In order to survive conversations in English, you're going to need to know how to navigate your way through vocabulary words that you are unfamiliar with or that you do not understand, simply by simplifying it and redescribing it in another way.

Now, the third exercise or way to improve your English speaking alone would be description.

So, like the word entails, you're going to describe things about various subjects.

This exercise is even more efficient if you start to describe things about made-up and fabricated scenarios and situations.

So, for example, you can ask yourself thought-provoking or prompted questions such as, If I had a million dollars, what would I do with it?

If I had the ability to fly, how would I use or abuse that power?

If I was invincible, what would I do tomorrow?

Once you have a thought-provoking question, you want to describe what you would do in that scenario to the best of your ability.

As you're describing what you would do, keep in mind the previous exercise, which is simplification.

Meaning, if you don't know exactly how to express something, try to find an alternative way to express it and describe it.

This ties in with the fourth exercise, which is expression.

And ideally, you should record yourself expressing yourself.

This way, you can keep track of your progress as the days go by, as the weeks go by, and as the months go by.

You can simply use the recording tool on your phone and record what you did that day, what you did that week, anything exciting you have coming up.

You just need to express yourself and record yourself expressing yourself.

If you want to have fun with this, you can record yourself expressing yourself about thought-provoking topics.

As you're expressing yourself, and more importantly, recording it, when you play it back, you're going to very quickly see the gaps in your English-speaking abilities.

As you're listening to yourself recorded, it's going to give you plenty of time to reflect upon how you can improve expressing yourself and improve those gaps in your English vernacular.

An even more enhanced way to do this would be the fifth exercise, which is interviews and podcasts.

Now, you're going to find an interview or a podcast about a subject that you're interested in, and when the interviewer asks a question to the person being interviewed, you're going to answer the interview question as if you were the person who is being interviewed.

After you express your opinion, you're going to play the podcast again, you're going to hear what the answer was from the other person who was being interviewed, and then you're going to pause it again.

At that point, you could simply express if you agreed or disagreed with how the other person answered the question, or any other thoughts or comments you may have on it.

This can be a very fun and a very interesting way to express yourself as if you were going through a real interview.

This exercise and the exercises before all will improve your soft skills in English for tons of different scenarios that you could come across in real life if you're ever in an English-speaking country.

Even if you're in a non-English-speaking country, these exercises can just improve your overall communication skills in general.

And the final exercise is what I would call a tutorial.

Simply think about any skill that you may have or any experience that you may have and think about how you would go about teaching it to someone who is unfamiliar with it.

So, for example, if you play soccer, how would you teach someone to kick a soccer ball and other basic skills that come with the sport, soccer?

If English is not your first language, how would you teach an English person your native language?

If you know how to play a musical instrument, how would you teach somebody else to play that instrument?

This will really force you to think and force you to focus on your communication skills and how you would handle a situation as a niche and specific like this.

So to recap, the first exercise you could do is spontaneous repetition of any words that you come across that you don't understand.

The second exercise would be simplification, simplifying something that may be a little bit more complex.

Third exercise would be description, describing and making up a story about certain scenarios.

The fourth exercise would be expressing yourself about anything going on in your life.

The fifth exercise would be interviews and podcasts, pretending like you are the person who is being interviewed.

And finally, the last exercise is the tutorial exercise, which is just simply figuring out how you would be able to teach somebody another skill or experience that you have, all in the English language.

All six of these skills will do wonders for your communication skills, not only in the English language, but just your communication skills in general.

The more frequently you do these exercises, the faster you will learn English and the more progress you will make in a shorter period of time.

 If you've tried any of these exercises and you found that one works much better than the others, let me know in the comments below, and I will see you in the next video.