Aw yeahh! What's up everybody? I'm Ollie
your RealLife English Fluency Coach. As a portuguese learner I'm
lucky enough to live in Brazil, so I get to practice my speaking every day.
However I know for a lot of you that for various reasons you are unable to
travel to an English-speaking country. So you might be a little frustrated
that you can't practice your speaking. That's exactly why in today's lesson
I've got some tips so that you can practice your speaking at home alone.
Yeah, that's right, at home alone. It sounds impossible but believe me it's not.
I use these tips so I don't forget my Spanish while living here in Brazil.
But before we get started I want to tell you that every week we create lessons just like this
one to help you understand fast native speech, be understood by anyone and connect to the world!
Just ask Moumoita, who says that our channel not only teaches English but helps to
teach skills and keep you motivated. So don't wait to join our Global Community. It's
really simple: all you need to do is hit that Subscribe button and the Bell down below,
so you don't miss any of our new lessons. So this lesson is divided into two parts:
First, I'll show you some exercises to train your muscles, your articulation
and the sounds of English, so that you sound and feel more natural when you speak.
Then, I'll show you how you can mock real and natural conversations in a fun way, so
that you can step up your speaking skills. Are you like me and are so focused on
using the correct words when you speak that you forget that there are some other
aspects of communicating and speaking here? I thought so! Speaking is so much more than just
using the correct words. For example speaking is about reacting, using body language, turn taking,
using informal and formal language, pronunciation, articulation of words, use of discourse markers
(which will help you sound natural) and thinking on your feet, which means to think quickly.
So we're going to look at some different exercises that you can use so that you are
using these aspects when you speak English. Alright, let's start with some exercises that you
can do on your own. The focus here isn't so much on speaking, it's more about getting used to the
rhythm of English and the sounds that you're going to hear. In particular with connected speech.
So the first exercise is a listen and repeat. Choose your favorite song or an audio from
YouTube, listen to it a few times reading the words. After listening to it for a few times
try and speak at the same time and finish with the person who is speaking or singing.
When you're listening try and focus on the words that connect as this will help
you to understand fast native speech. Alright let's do an example together.
Listen to this sentence: I bet you're gonna like
what I've bought for dinner. I'll say it again: I bet you're gonna
like what I've bought for dinner. Okay let's have a look at the places where
I connected. Often words that end in a t and the next word starts with y, they merge
together and the sound becomes a ch sound. I bet you I betcha.
And you can also see that the t in what becomes a flat t sound, which
sounds like a d as it is surrounded by two vowels. Let's try and say the sentence
one more time. You say it with me: "I bet you're gonna like
what I've bought for dinner" "I bet you're gonna like
what I've bought for dinner" How did you go? Let me know in the comments below. Another example is: "would
you like a piece of cake?" "Would you like a piece of cake?"
Try and think about the words that I connected here.
Now let's take a closer look. "Would you like a piece of cake?" Did
you notice how of sounds like a schwa? "A cake," "would you like a piece a cake?"
"Would you like a piece of cake?" Okay so you've mastered the listen and repeat. Now it's time to move on to the next exercise.
So another way of keeping your speech going is by activating the right muscles
and working on individual sounds. I often tell my students who don't like
the th sound to simply put their tongue between their teeth and practice that sound.
It seems hard but it's actually really simple. Tongue in between the mouth and
then you can say the th sound. You can continue to practice that at home.
When I was at university my professor loved for us to practice tongue twisters.
Tongue twisters are great because they will work on individual sounds and train your muscles.
Here the focus is not on the meaning, but it's on preparing your muscles
to practice those sounds in English. Okay, a tongue twister that I
love: "Which witch is which?" Listen and repeat: "Which witch is which?" Okay I'm gonna say it at a normal
speed and I want you to repeat: "Which witch is which?"
Your turn. How did you go? Okay I'm gonna
say it a little bit faster and you try and say it a little bit faster too. "Which witch is which?" "Which witch is which?"
Your turn. How did you go? Let me know in the comments
what your favorite tongue twister is. Another activity which you can
do at your home on your own is what we call shadowing which basically means
reading aloud or reading with an audio book. I really love to do this when I want to
practice my Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation. I'll read the book and at the same
time I record myself on my phone. Once I've finished I'll then listen to the
audio and see whether my pronunciation is okay. A good way to measure your pronunciation
is by listening to the audio book. Once you've listened to yourself, listen to the
audio book and then see whether your pronunciation is similar to that in the audio book.
The important part is not to be too critical but to learn from your experience and
improve your pronunciation, and your speaking. In addition to this you can also listen to
the audiobook and read aloud at the same time. And if you don't want to do that you can
even pretend that you're reading aloud to an audience in your bedroom or in your kitchen.
Another exercise that you can do at home is singing and personally this is my favorite.
Because learning with songs is natural, it's fun and it's full of repetition!
One of the things that I like to do is either singing in the shower or karaoke.
Find a song you like on YouTube, get the words up and then just sing along to it! By
singing in the shower or singing to karaoke you're going to have lots of fun.
If you like listening to podcasts then you're going to love the episode Ethan
Andrea and I made on this exact topic. We detail even more hints and tips on how
you can practice your speaking at home alone. To listen to it next, I'll
link it down in the description below. Okay so you've done the prep work. So part
two is all about developing conversations. It's time to actually challenge yourselves
in activities that will likely help you to have better conversations. These activities
are designed to help you think on your feet, react more naturally and think outside the box.
So a great activity you can do on your own at home is working with a scene. Everybody has a favorite
TV series or movie. So use them to your advantage. What you can do is pick out your favorite scene
and watch it on mute. And as you watch it narrate the scene. For example: "It was a cold dark
night, the moon was shining bright in the sky, as he drove down a narrow dark road."
So this is great because you can practice vocabulary but you can also practice
narrative tenses, which are super important in telling stories in the past in English.
Another thing you can do is watch a scene in your first language, so for example you speak
Indonesian. Watch that scene in Indonesian and when the scene finishes pretend to
explain the scene in English to a friend. Note here that you don't want to translate
word for word you just want the person you're explaining to to understand the context and
the idea of what is happening in the scene. So basically you're summarizing
what happened in that scene. So another activity you can do at home
is called fake it till you make it. So here you need to choose a
setting, whether it be a hotel, a restaurant or in the supermarket,
and you're going to write a script. So let's use the restaurant as an example.
We have a customer and we have a waiter. What you'll do is you'll write a script
using these two characters and once you have the script it's time to act it out.
This is great because here you'll be able to speak about the skills that we spoke about at
the start of this lesson, particularly reacting, body language, turn taking, using informal
or formal language, and things like that. The last one is called show time, so here
you need to find your favorite TV series or movie and find a scene that you really like.
Find the transcript online (you can either print it out or look at it on your phone) and
then pretend to be one of those characters. Reacting, turn taking and using body
language to get your message across. Make sure you focus on intonation and
connected speech when you say the dialogue. So I've spoken about recording yourself a
lot in this lesson and although you might feel a little bit uncomfortable to listen to
yourself back it's really efficient and brings a great level of awareness to the things you're
doing well and the things you could improve on. So use recording to your favor. For example
you could write down a list of real life situations on a piece of paper, whether
it be a job interview, at the doctor's or even having coffee with a friend.
So let's take the job interview for example you can type into Google: "10 common job
interview questions," write the questions out and then practice saying them in front of the
mirror while recording yourself at the same time. Once you're finished, listen to yourself
back and see if you are intelligible, if you use the correct register (that is informal
or formal language) and check your pronunciation. You can do this exercise with a number of real
life situations, so you'll never get bored. Everybody today uses WhatsApp, and a great feature
of WhatsApp is the voice recording feature. If you have a friend that speaks English
don't write to them, send them voice messages! And if you don't have anyone that you can
practice with, simply create a group with yourself and each day send yourself a voice
memo of one minute or two minutes long. And then in a month's time or six
months time listen to yourself back and check your pronunciation, see if you
were intelligible (if you made sense) and check your register (whether you're
using formal and informal language) and then you can learn from this situation
to take your English to the next level. Speaking of taking your English to the
next level, I highly recommend our FREE 3-Part Masterclass. To try today simply click
up here or down in the description below! Another great way to practice your English
at home is by using pictures. Pictures are great because they often say a thousand words.
I actually use pictures in all of my lessons and my students love using them. So here what
you need to do is find a picture online, it could be of anything, then set a timer
for one minute or one minute and a half. In this time write down on a piece of paper
all of the keywords that you see in that picture. Write down literally everything
not just the key features of the picture. Then once the time is up, set a timer for
one minute or two minutes and in this time you are going to invent a story. A way to see
if your story makes sense is to record yourself, so when you're telling the story
record yourself and when you finish listen to yourself back to see if you
are intelligible or understandable. Here is also a good chance
to check your pronunciation. The overall goal here is to make sure that your
story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Another way you can develop conversational
skills without leaving your home is online, through meetups and online gaming.
There are lots of online meetups where you can connect with people with common interests.
So for example you're interested in gardening, if you join an online meetup group you'll
be able to find someone who lives on the other side of the world where you can
share ideas and practice your English. Online meetups are great because you
actually get to connect to a real person about a topic that you're really interested in.
When I meet an English learner for the first time I always ask them "where did you learn
English?" and I'm amazed at how many people tell me that they learn English by online gaming.
There are lots of online games whether it be Among Us, Chess or Fortnite. And it's really a great
place to practice your English skills, because gamers tend to use fast informal speech, but
there are still visual supports there to help you. So in summary what you've learned today is
that repetition is a part of the process but it actually doesn't improve your speaking.
It is just like the prep work. Real speaking involves much more: it
involves body language, it involves reacting, it involves turn taking, the
use of discourse markers, connected speech and great pronunciation.
If you do the activities mentioned in this lesson I'm sure that you're going to feel
confident when you need to speak to others. A fluent speaker isn't afraid of making
mistakes and learning from others! If you enjoyed this lesson be sure to
subscribe and hit that bell down below, so you don't miss any of our new lessons!
