How to Practice Speaking English Alone - 15 Easy Tips!

hello my friend good to see you how are you great so listen today i'm going to give you lots of ideas about how to practice speaking english when you are alone at home home alone sounds like a film are you ready let's do it hello and if you don't know me my name is keith i run the keith speaking academy and the youtube um channel english speaking success so listen today we're going to be looking at how to practice speaking english when you are alone at home it's not so easy for many people right because maybe you don't have any native english speakers in your city maybe there are no tourists that you can go and harass um maybe there are no groups where you can locally where you can go and chat and do english speak english um and maybe you're not ready to go on skype and try and find some random english person to chat with somebody you don't know i mean that can be quite hard especially if you're a little bit shy like me so what i want to do today is share with you lots of ideas about how you can practice speaking when you're on your own at home alone right good now if you do know me you may be thinking what's that strange orange block over there that wasn't there before true and it's this is my meditating mat sometimes where i sit and meditate sometimes i don't sit on the wall i'm just tidying at the moment so i couldn't find a place to put it so right now it's over there okay the truth about speaking is that yes you can watch videos you can watch films you can listen to podcasts all of that is great but at some point you need to start speaking and you can speak on your own but also later you'll need to start interacting and practicing speaking with people but that's not always easy to do and so right now today i'm going to focus on some really practical simple activities you can do when you're on your own at home to start practicing speaking and just to add that this video is actually sponsored by cambly cambly are a fantastic online platform for you to learn english and practice english they have native english-speaking teachers um you can choose anytime any teacher it's really flexible and easy and if you are studying ielts they do have online ielts courses um that you can follow right lots of materials lots of ideas so a big thank you to to camberley thank you guys for sponsoring the video and also if you are new to cambly for the first time users you can get a discount um just use the code it's down here below keith disc and you can get a discount on all of their plans whether they are monthly three monthly or for the year great more about that later but right now let's get into these ideas about practicing speaking english so the first technique is called speak into the mirror and this is really useful but it's really really simple right it's it's easy because you can do this first thing in the morning when you're brushing your teeth or well you can't speak and brush your teeth but just before you brush your teeth and in the evening before going to bed when you wash your face what do you mean you don't wash your face in the evening why not my mother always told me make sure you wash your face clean behind your ears wash your neck scrub your neck yeah wash your face before you go to bed it takes all the dust and pollution off your face apparently anyway that's a great time that you can do it and this is good because the key to learning and preparing for ielts is habit right and if you can attach your learning to an existing habit brushing your teeth or washing your face then it makes it much easier now i used to do this when i was learning chinese and in the morning i would after brushing my teeth i would just have a few sentences talking about what i'm going to do today in the future right now right so today um i'm going to go to the park i need to go to the supermarket i'm going to buy some vegetables i'm meeting jack at six o'clock i might go to the cinema all in the future brilliant and then at the end of the day you can talk about what you did or what you have done right um today i went to the park i played football i went shopping in the end i've done a lot it has been a good day right past tense present perfect as well so you can see your it's actually great to practice different tenses it's a bit like writing your diary at the end of the day right which is also a great way to practice writing but this is speaking in front of the mirror it's nice it's reflective learning in many ways okay moving on the next one i call collocation fun right collocations are words that are often used together right like we talk about heavy rain heavy rain in english we don't say big rain today there's big rain no there is heavy rain so these are collocations collocation fun is where we're going to practice speaking um using a very common teaching method from really based on the task based approach to teaching and it's based on prepare practice present so we'll be preparing the words the collocations practicing sentences and then presenting a whole talk okay now the reason i suggest doing this in front of the mirror um is that actually there are great benefits of talking to a mirror right first of all mirrors don't answer back like young children or wives but apart from that right when you're speaking in the mirror you can look at your mouth and you can see the kind of movements that you're making which is great right it's useful for pronunciation you can also check your body language you may be surprised to see that you speak like that without ever moving your arms or that you suddenly realize that i'm doing this all the time um that's fine but it's being aware of your body language can be quite good and also you feel like you're talking to someone right many people i know and this happened to me right i practiced for a long time with a book and when i went to speak to somebody in the foreign language it was like a shock seeing this face in front of me oh my god but practicing with the mirror you've got used to a face in front of you right so it does help so let's look then prepare practice and present preparing what i suggest you do here is you take a topic right um a recent topic we we were studying in the live lessons was um science right and then get some collocations you can use your course book if you want you can get onto the internet you can go to this rather nifty little website this one called uh keith speaking academy and in here right you have got free live lessons um you can go through to the free live lessons and there is a recent one on science so you can just uh download right download the document yeah we want to download that um and then find in there all the collocations look you've got the notes here and here you've got collocations you've got idioms you've got loads of stuff and what i would do is i would take maybe six or seven collocations or idioms like exact science it's not rocket science to be on the same wavelength and that's the preparation right that's step one step two is in front of the mirror just make a sentence with it right exact science well parenting uh bringing up children is not an exact science cooking is not an exact science frying an egg it's not rocket science it's actually quite easy right and then i'm just practicing sentences here and then in the end after practice present i take one of the old part two questions around science maybe something like describe an area of science you're interested and then start to talk about it for maybe a minute and trying if possible to use some of these phrases and sentences right so you may say something like this describe an area of science you're interested in well okay um i guess an area i'm interested in actually is cooking and i know it's not an exact science but i guess it's a branch of science a branch of food science maybe right and i am interested in the science behind cooking um i think it's it's very interesting i know with cooking when you heat things up they change and when you mix different things like sugar and vinegar you get different levels of acidity and chemical reactions happen so i think it's really it's really interesting right i think chefs and scientists are really on the same wavelength because they're trying to experiment discover new things whether it's cooking or new dishes things like that i know cooking isn't rocket science but i am interested in how it works and so yes although it's not a hard science i think it's an interesting area of science for me so you can see what i'm doing really here is not giving a perfect part to answer i'm just trying to activate and practice some of these expressions that i've been learning and that's it really so that's it it's great because that preparing the collocations practicing the sentences and then presenting a talk is a really tried and tested method do it in front of the mirror it's great you get everything you get the contact with somebody you but you can see yourself you can monitor yourself it's really really effective collocation fun great i want to go and do it it sounds like so much fun i'm going to do it again right now i'll be back in a moment and next up is um practice with short audios now i am a big fan of extensive listening right listening to podcasts and films that's great but when it comes to speaking i think short audios are much better they are bite-sized chunks they're easy to use and your concentration is shorter for shorter periods of time you can work with for example recorded ielts sample answers there are many websites have those not written it must be recorded right you want to listen and then speak there's a tool that i've talked about in the past to many of the stu many of the students here it's called lingq and i like it because it's full of short audios that you can use to help start speaking and it's free i mean there is a paid version but you know you can get lots of stuff for free which is great here so let me show you first of all how that might work so this is lingq okay um i'm not going to explain how it works you can find that out once you kind of sign up for free but basically there's a library um you choose your level here so let's say i'm going to go intermediate and you can choose down here different audios to listen to i've got one of my previous lessons here about sport that i will open up and let me just show you briefly how it works we'll just focus on the bit on the left okay okay let's try hello steven hello steve nice to see you again nice to see you again so what i want you to focus on first is as you listen to the sentence pick out the stressed words nice to see you nice see you like to chat a bit about your interest in sports chat interest sports so i'm just repeating the stressed words to the interest of sports sure uh you lived in japan for quite a few years i think that's lived japan years i think right about nine years nine years okay so you can see i'm just doing the word stress and also you can also pick out chunks or phrases that you like or that sound interesting years and i think you lived in different cities that's right i lived in sendai for four years which is a little bit north of tokyo a little bit north a little bit north that's interesting which is a little bit north right not in the north not located in the north is a little bit north of nice uh tokyo for four years and then one year down south in shikoku down south interesting not in the south down south okay and did you play any sports when you were in japan a little bit i a little bit i love that a little bit a little bit played a little bit of soccer i played a little bit of soccer a little bit of soccer isn't that great so you can see i'm picking out either the stressed words or little phrases or chunks that i like and this is really helping us listen and prepare for speaking next what you'll do after you've finished if you want you can check the tape script as you listen again that's fine but at the end what i would like you to try and do is try to repeat the audio or the lesson giving a summary so repeating it with your words not reading not listening in fact you can just close that focus on your own words right oops and then after you've done that and you've done a bit of practice you could then try to retell the lesson or the story and record yourself if you're not sure you can use your there's mobile apps to record your voice there's vocaroo which is also a very simple online voice voice recorder um and recording yourself is great because it puts pressure on you and that my friend is good also you can then once you've listened back go and compare to the original lesson or story with the tape script and see if it's different did you make a mistake instead of saying a little bit of football did you say a little bit football or did you use different collocations right instead of individualized sports did you say personal sports something different that noticing again puts pressure on you which is great and it also helps you notice a noticing language is a kind of feedback which is essential to improve so that's it practice with short audios right the next one is really fun and it's a it's about imitating your favorite english-speaking actor or actress okay so here when you watch a film in english take some of the actors that you really like and pretend to be them right so you're copying their body language their gestures their facial expressions their accent their voice their words you're copying everything why does this work because it's all about identity a key part of language learning is your identity as an english speaker and as students we often have a mask or we can create a mask that we hide behind when we speak a foreign language and this can be very very helpful um to reduce anxiety or stress especially if you're shy and or you're you don't want to you're embarrassed of mistakes and of not speaking correctly when you have this mask to hide behind it doesn't matter because you're being somebody else and it's great fun to do with it do this with actors and actresses is that actresses actresses that you like let me show you a very very simple example there's a great actor called rowan atkinson you may know him for mr bean but he plays a myriad of characters and one of the recent ones is johnny english right let's have a look at johnny english he's the key to this i'm not sure let me clear up the uncertainty for you you haven't right so it's that taking the character try and do the voice and the whole body and you become that character and you can do that when you're practicing speaking on your own right you probably don't want to do it when you're out and about at the shops or speaking to foreign people hello they think you're johnny english they think you're mad but when you're having fun at home it can be great way a great way to practice so that's it imitate your favorite english speaking actor the next one is to send audio messages right now when you're using um if you're using facebook whatsapp other social medias that have a chat facility um often we send text messages you probably send them in your own language but you could think about sending them in english right and go a step further send an audio message rather than a written message because that will be practicing your english okay you can do this if you have some friends who maybe speak english or family members you can have a bit of fun with them practicing sending messages to each other um in in english or any other language right i mean we do this sometimes it can be quite fun to do and the great thing about sending audio messages um is it's not like a live phone conversation where the pressure is there you have time to prepare to think about what you're going to say to record it and if you don't like it delete it record it again but it doesn't have to be perfect right it's just about practice not perfection practice so sending audio messages is a great way to do it next up imitate the english foreigner now i'm sure most people can imagine or know how english people speak your language right if you've got tourists or you've met people from other countries who speak your language how do the english people speak your language right take that sound that accent and start to use it so for example let's imagine i'm spanish hola espanol miguel for example right and i'm thinking so how do english people speak spanish right they don't speak perfectly hola soy miguel they speak with an english accent right hola que talistas yo estoy muy bien gracias so the spanish person would try and speak spanish with the english accent hola yo estoy muy bien que talistas right and then switch to english but keep that accent hola que talistas yo estoy muy bien hello how are you i'm fine thank you can you hear that that the same pronunciation and accent is is easy to switch and suddenly my english sounds english it sounds great right that's it i'm doing an example with spanish but you could do it with any other language right think how english people speak your language speak your language with that accent and then switch to english keeping that british accent or english accent or american accent it really can be quite quite useful and fun to boot great now the next idea is shadowing of course a shadow right if the sun is shining down on the floor behind you you have a shape the same as you right dark that's your shadow the sun leaves a shadow you leave a shadow and to shadow someone is to follow somebody so if i shadow you it means i'm following you sometimes detectives will shadow suspicious people right now in language when we shadow somebody it can be just to repeat them but you're very close behind them right remember wherever you go your shadow follows very closely so here the thing to do is to find a short audio and to listen for maybe a minute and to repeat almost on top of the voice but maybe a fraction of a second behind them so you're just behind them but you are really following them very very closely do not wait for the sentence to finish and then repeat this is different this is being really close behind them and it forces you to pick up on word stress and intonation and if you focus on those two things it really can help build up that speaking skill word stress and intonation let me kind of demonstrate so we've taken from kulips or culips a little audio first of all i recommend you listen to the minute completely so you've got an idea of what it's about and i've already done that because i'm well prepared and then second time you listen and shadow let me show you how close we are behind it i'm gonna use my phone so you can hear properly so jeremy let's get into it so jeremy let's get into it talk about how to talk about pots how to talk about movies and music and the kind of artwork that enriches our lives this topic was suggested to us by one of our listeners and she sends us email which i will [Applause] okay i think you get the idea right so it's different from wait listen and repeat it's shadowing following closely at first it's very hard but the more you do it the more you'll be noticing word stress intonation even axon i noticed i was picking up a canadian accent a boat it's all about right that is shadowing let's move on so we've had shadowing right now we're going to look at responding what is responding well put very very simply responding is you hear a question you get an idea you give an answer you respond the biggest problem students have is that they practice they take a question they know the question they've prepared it and they practice giving answers right what happens in the exam well surprise surprise in part three you get strange questions you weren't ready for what do you think of globalization um and what do you do well first of all have something to say about globalization right make sure you've done a bit of research on the topics get some ideas if you don't know you can always say oh i haven't thought about that let me see right use a time filler to gain time but the most important thing is that in your practice as well as looking at these topics right you need to practice responding because in part three in the exam the biggest problem students tell me is they don't have an idea i didn't know what to say i wasn't expecting that i just couldn't get my ideas out and speak so you need to practice responding where you hear a question you've got no idea what it is you get an idea quickly and you answer right it's a bit of pressure but as i mentioned before a bit of pressure is good in your practice now you can do this if you have a speaking partner really effectively right so what you do is one of you says i'm going to bring in to our next session five questions and you don't know what they are and the other person does the same you come into your session and you ask each other these surprise questions and it's a shock at first but it's like anything it's like going down the gym you just practice this and you build up the skill if you haven't got a speaking partner you can do a bit of practice on my youtube channel right if you know my youtube channel right english speaking success um hidden away in the playlists go on the playlists there's lots here that you've probably never seen and at the very bottom you'll see two called responding right responding cities part one and part three and what i've done here is i've recorded several questions with a gap for you to answer and then the next question so if you go into for example the one part one and you press the shuffle button the questions come at you in a random order and it works a bit like this i mean let me just play it for you and you'll see let's press shuffle and it plays automatically do you like your hometown oh that's a good question do i like my hometown yeah i think my hometown manchester um which is up in the north of england is a very uh attractive place there's lots of restaurants and shops it does attract quite a few tourists as well and and they often come in um to see the industrial landscape or the football pitches we have a famous football team um called manchester united and manchester tourists like to visit your hometown yeah there are quite a lot of tourists who come to visit my hometown so you see what's happening right it's just automatically asking me the next question and i practice responding because i don't know what the questions are because it's shuffle random so you can practice that you can also make your own right set up your own youtube channel um don't worry about people finding it they rarely do and you just put some questions up with a gap for the answer and then shuffle and bob's your uncle fantastic that's it the next suggestion is describe what you are doing and i know a lot of teachers suggest this as a way of thinking in english right so when you're out and about out in a boot when you're out and about maybe in the park and you're seeing different things you describe what you see now i suggest you start with words right so there you are out in a boat in the park and you see oh bicycle person path trees bag woman phone and you're using words right and then right as you're walking around the park you make collocations little chunks of language right riding a bike a long path a cluster of trees the woman glued to her phone um picnic having a picnic maybe right and then you go on to make sentences okay this is a bit like that we mentioned earlier the prepare practice present so you're going from words to collocation to sentences right oh there's a man strolling in the park there's a woman riding a bike and also there are lots of trees there's a woman glued to her phone and she looks like she's about to have a picnic and you go on and on and on right great you can do it in any context you can do it at home or when you're out at the shops wherever now you may think and you may say yeah but keith you can't go round the streets talking to yourself people think you're mad well yes and no right nowadays put these on right nowadays people walk around and they're on the phone and like hello yeah john yeah yeah i'm in the park actually yeah it's lovely there's a man strolling over there there's a woman riding a bicycle yeah i'm good how are you right that's perfectly normal to be talking to yourself in the streets right and if you're not comfortable with that you can pretend that you're johnny english right pretend you're a spy um hello yes there's a there's a man walking along a path there's a woman riding a bicycle and i think i think there's a woman glued to her phone and she's going to she's about to have a picnic calling the police get johnny english [Laughter] pretend to be a spy i don't know it's very very normal but the key speak out and go from words to collocation to sentences great practice you can do it at home as well i mean i'm talking about getting some fresh air nowadays that's not so easy right in fact if you've got a little mask you could speak behind your mask nobody need know or just stay home and do it and the next one is to sing in english right find a song you like in english get the lyrics sing along it's great way because why because you pick up on melody intonation connected speech contractions weak sounds all those pronunciation features really come out very strongly in songs um through the melody so it really is a very powerful way to practice and don't worry if you're out of tune i am mr out of tune seriously i just cannot hold a note or a tune at all but that doesn't stop me singing in the shower or anywhere because i enjoy it right so don't worry about that just practice if you're not sure where to go check out this website right lyrics training again there's lots of stuff for free and you can have a bit of fun with it let me show you briefly how it works fixtraining.com you can get it as an app which is probably the best way to do it but just to show you i'll go to the web um you can choose any song on here um most of them come from youtube i think but let's take perfect by ed sheeran and then the game mode so you decide if you're a beginner let's say i'm intermediate and here we're going to fill random words so it's actually a game as well as practice play the video to start the game look at that it stops if i don't give the answer [Applause] [Music] [Music] was it and follow my lead [Music] [Music] you get the idea um have a bit of fun with it so that's it go and sing a song next up is tong twisters tong twist um things that are difficult to say and this really is a focus on pronunciation um but they're a lot of fun and they're good to try and they help you focus on specific sounds and they're fun the idea is to to repeat the sounds or the the riddle if you like three or four times until you get more fluent with it and basically it's a bit like a gym workout for your mouth because again one of the really important things about speaking is in english you're using different muscles from your own language and very often you're not practicing those muscles enough tongue twisters are a great way to do it for example right the ragged rascal ran round the ragged rock good for your arse right try it two or three times the ragged rascal ran round the ragged rock the ragged rascal ran round the ragged rock the ragged rascal ran round the ragged rock or see i can't even say she she sells seashells on the seashore she sells she she sells sea shells on the seashore it's better if you don't read it because then you're focusing on the right sounds but that's the cert and the shu it's really good you can make up your own right find the the the consonants or the vowels that you struggle with make them up it's mainly consonants actually peter piper picked a pick up pekka pickle pepper you could just say well peter picked a plump plum peter picked a plump plum right make it up great way to practice really good for pronunciation next practice idioms with euclish now euclid is an amazing website it's very very simple to use it's basically like youtube but with clips so you can take any phrase and i think about idioms here you input the idiom and it gives you lots of video clips using that idiom and you just practice so you can imitate the intonation the sound you can get some context for the idiom which always helps right and it's a really really effective way to do it let's have a look how it works this is um you put in basically a word or an expression let's take for example an idiom um i don't know if you know this one pull your socks up which basically means um to do better to work harder to do better so to work harder to improve your performance if you like you need to pull your socks up my teacher at school would always say come on mr o'hare it's time to pull your socks up so if we want to see this in different contexts so he's been told come on pull yourself move that was so fast let's move to the next one we're given eight clips here the next one you had to pull your socks up you had to pull your socks up american right you had to pull your socks up so you can hear and just it's nice for repetition and also context which helps you that was how you got your network by improving right that was how you got your network so you can move on try another one moment like this pull up your socks at a moment like this pull up your socks put your pull yourself together and put down the phone pull yourself together and put down the phone right so again you can see the words um you can rewind at a moment like this you can control the sound and you can check different examples by just clicking on to the next one pull up your own socks pull up your own socks thank you very much sir right that's it that's youglish so that's it you can use it for vocabulary but i like it for idioms because that's often the difficult thing that a lot of students find to use naturally so any work you can do on idiom practice is gonna help great let's move on right okey dokey next up immerse yourself in english immerse surround yourself in english i think it's well known through research that the more you can be immersed in english the more you're going to learn i suggest you do a lifestyle audit an audit is like a check or a checklist right so where do you use english and where do you use your mother tongue so think about when you're using your phone using your computer think about the settings on your phone and computer is it in english or your mother tongue when you're texting sending messages participating on facebook in english or mother tongue listening to podcasts watching films listening to music songs reading books how much is in english and what can you switch to english to help immerse yourself more in english now a lot of this is passive right rather than actively speaking it's giving yourself the opportunity to listen read and see more english but also to use it in some of those cases like on the phone or messages you can also be using english so check out do a lifestyle audit now we're coming on to two really important points here and these are much kind of bigger vision points first about goals and then about habits so first goals set yourself some short term goals about speaking english okay if you just think i'm gonna practice and keep on practicing it's all very loose and airy fairy and nice but you won't keep going i think people like frameworks restrictions limits goals paths not everybody but it works well for a lot of people to set yourself a goal right so for the next four weeks i'm going to speak english every monday wednesday friday for 20 minutes that's it what's so good about that is that you can measure it you can just tick off and at the end of the four weeks you can see how much you've done as you're ticking off it's motivating you to keep going so it's nice to measure with goals there's famous writer james clear who talks about atomic habits right he talks about breaking down goals into smaller goals and i think it's really important rather than saying for the next six months i will practice an hour every day which is very big and difficult say for the next week i'll do five minutes a day right set yourself up to win make the goals really really simple five minutes a day for the next week i mean that you can't go wrong and once you've done that then you step it up and you make it more challenging okay so do yourself a favor set yourself up to win and on the point of goals there's going to be a day where you're just too tired and fed up and you don't want to do it right there's a little trick which is it's called the one minute trick right so you thinking today i've said i'm going to speak for 10 minutes right but i just can't oh i've got the baby screaming i've got to prepare dinner i've got this to do and that to do i just don't can't do it right the one minute trick is you say to yourself okay i'm just gonna take one minute to practice so instead of ten today i do one minute but i don't stop i don't say i'm not going to do it i still do it but just one minute and try that what often happens is after a minute once you've started you think i might as well do another couple of minutes now that i've started and actually you often end up doing ten but the one minute trick is really powerful so check it out next habits if possible when you've got your goals and your speaking practice um try and do the same place at the same time every day it helps build a habit and also if you have a cue right that is the same that indicates i'm going to do it the queue could be a time right 11 o'clock every morning that's my english time boom when i brush my teeth in the morning remember in front of the mirror that's my english time two minutes just speaking about what i'm gonna do have that cue same place same time every day makes it much more easier no much easier classic native speaker mistake so that's all about habits finally you thought we would never arrive at the end right the last piece of advice is to join a community because often when you're speaking alone it can be a lonely experience right so even though your practice is alone at home having some kind of contact with the community even if it's reading writing typing can be very motivating um so there are lots of facebook groups i mean i have one but you can choose any facebook group um if you want to find out mine link below but being a part of a community can really help just motivate you even if you're not speaking you can speak in a in my community some people record themselves great but you can practice at home on your own but just having people you're sharing your learning with is very powerful that is it all of these i hope interesting useful and great ideas for you great so there are lots of ideas there i hope you can take some of these and start practicing speaking when you're at home alone i think it's all a question of confidence right the more you speak the more confident you get and the more ready you are for your ielts um speaking test also i hope if you practice these you can be ready to move up to the next step because i do think it's also important to interact with people and maybe this can help you get ready to find a speaking partner or speak with a friend in english or even find a teacher where you can go and practice more and more whichever way you go enjoy it and have fun with english as well i'd like finally just to say a big thank you again to cambly because if you are ready now for a teacher cambly is a great place to go online learning you can choose which teacher you like the topics you want to discuss and when you want to practice it's great right they can also record lessons they have in chat translations if you need it it's really great value for money so go and check it out and you'll get a discount check out the details below for the first time users you can get a nice discount on their offer as well brilliant so listen thank you very much for watching if you've enjoyed the video do like it share it with others subscribe to the channel english speaking success and that's it i look forward to seeing you very soon take care my friend bye-bye

Channel: English Speaking Success

Views: 1,000,692

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Keywords: ielts speaking, ielts speaking success, ielts keith, ielts speaking 2020, ielts speaking alone time, how to practice ielts speaking alone, keith speaking academy, practice english speaking, practice speaking, practice speaking english, practice speaking english at, how can i practice speaking english at home, practice speaking english at home, how to practice english speaking at home by yourself, practice ielts speaking at, how to practice ielts speaking at home

Id: 9gpmxN5SlNM

Length: 51min 20sec (3080 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 27 2020