Why You Can UNDERSTAND English But You STRUGGLE TO SPEAK In English

i received a question from one of my students and he said teacher how come i can understand you perfectly i understand everything you're saying but when i try to speak in english i can't speak at the same level now i've received this question so many times from students around the world and maybe you've experienced the same problem had the same difficulty and the same challenge and to be very honest with you i experienced the exact same thing when i was studying korean you know the feeling right when someone is speaking in the language that you're learning you feel so confident because you understand what they're saying again when my teachers were speaking korean or my friends would speak in korean or even when i would watch a television program in korean i was so proud of myself because i could understand but then when someone would approach me and ask me a question in korean it was like everything went blank in my mind i couldn't think of the words that i had studied i couldn't think of the words that i had understood when i watched those television programs they just didn't seem to come to mind and again you may feel the exact same way so how come you can understand english but it's hard to speak in english well today i'm going to tell you why and i'm going to give you the solutions you need to finally speak just as good as you can understand i'm teacher tiffany let's jump right in [Music] all right so there are five solutions to this problem the problem of not being able to speak as good as you can here the first one is equal ratio second learn and use one new word third summarize your day fourth take notes and read them and finally reading out loud and shadowing so let's take a look at the first one this one right here here's the fact your current situation you are watching listening to and enjoying hours of english programs but you are only using your eyes and your ears think about it you have a cell phone you have a computer you have a television and you're constantly watching programs in english so your eyes are getting lots of practice and your ears are also getting lots of practice which is why you can understand so much in english but again that's not helping with your speaking so here's what you need to do use an equal ratio you need to speak for the exact amount of time that you listen to or watch an english program that's right the same amount of time you spend watching a lesson just like this lesson or watching a movie is the exact amount of time you need to practice speaking let's continue you need to speak for the same amount in order to improve your speaking skills this will help your speaking skills match your ability to understand english it kind of makes sense right the reason why you can understand is because you've constantly been putting new information in english into your brain now we just need to do the same thing with bringing that information out okay so here's what you need to do first watch a 5 minute video 10 minute video or however long you want to watch a video for i have it in parentheses because you can choose how long the video is and what you're going to do is you're going to speak for five minutes or however long the video is you're going to speak for that amount of time about the video now half of the time is going to be summarizing what you saw and the other half is going to be giving your opinion so for example let's say you watch one of my youtube video lessons you can pick any video you'd like and let's say the lesson is 15 minutes long that means you need to also speak for 15 minutes now in the beginning it may seem a little bit challenging but remember half of that 15 minute period is going to be spent summarizing what you saw you could talk about what i taught you you can talk about my story time you can summarize the lesson and take your time it's okay now the other half of that time needs to be giving your opinion what did you think about my story what did you think about the tips or the tools that i gave you from the lesson or in the lesson again you have to practice speaking for as much time as the video was that you watched it's going to be challenging but you're going to see your ability to speak in english improve drastically okay now what about the second method the second solution you see here's the situation you are learning lots of new words and expressions indirectly through videos and lessons but you aren't using them so again you know a lot of words and expressions from watching my videos i like to tell you all stories because in the stories i usually use a lot of new expressions and idioms from natural conversations words that i would use if i was speaking to one of my friends here in america now when you hear the words that i use you kind of pick up on the meaning like ah maybe teacher tiffany means this and you kind of guess what the meanings of those words and expressions are because you're following along with the story or the lesson that i'm teaching now that's great that's why you can understand so much but what about speaking so here's the solution here's what you need to do you need to learn and use one new word notice i said learn and use because what's happening is you're learning a lot of words currently from this video and videos from other amazing english teachers on youtube but you're not using them so here's what you need to do try to learn and use one new word expression or concept every single day this is the key every single day a lot of times as students or as english learners what you may do is you may spend one day and say i'm going to learn 35 words today and you go hard you study really diligently but then it gets overwhelming and you do it one day and maybe the second day but then the third day the fourth day the fifth day the sixth day you stop so what you need to do is have a plan that you can remain consistent with learn one new word or expression every single day now simple words are okay the key is that they must excuse me you must learn and use them every day this will help you get in the habit of learning new words that you can use when you speak in english again remember the goal is to improve your speaking skills so even if you know a word already if you're not using it it's kind of like you don't know it again you know it here ah teacher tiffany just said that word i know that word but you need to learn how to use the word in conversation when you are speaking so here's how you need to do this first write down at least you can do more at least one word expression or concept you learned next figure out a way to apply it to what's going on in your day and finally use the word in a conversation or by talking to yourself so again let's say you learned the word gargantuan i know it's a big word but hey stay with me now gargantuan just means extremely large really big now i've used this word in a previous lesson several months ago so some of you may have remembered that word when i said it gargantuan oh i remember a teacher tiffany taught that word in a previous lesson amazing your understanding your listening skills are amazing now how can you start using gargantuan in your daily life in your conversations with other english learners or native english speakers well what you have to do again step 2 is figure out a way to apply it to what's going on in your day so for me for example gargantuan well i watched a video about animals a nature video and in the video they had lots of whales now whales are very large animals right so i can say ah today i watched a video about a whale the whale in the video was really big it was a gargantuan whale makes sense you see i immediately connected what i did or what i saw today with this word that i learned but i had to say it out loud and that's again what's important when you learn the word when you figure out how to apply it to your day and then use the word in real life in a real conversation and again if you're by yourself you can talk to yourself that's okay your tongue just needs the practice so use it by saying it out loud and make sure what you're saying is applicable or is related to what happened in your day okay make sense good all right now the second thing that is important so here's the deal you are just thinking about your day in your own language this means your brain is mainly functioning in one language and i get this question all the time from students teacher how can i stop thinking in my mother tongue this is really a difficult thing again when i was studying korean i had the same trouble i would always think in english and then when i was speaking try to translate really quickly into korean but korean and english are very opposite they're very different they have different word orders so actually this morning i was talking to my friend hey annie on the phone and i was helping her with translation of something and she speaks english as well korean and english and she wrote it in korean and then i had to translate it to english i had to read it multiple times in korean because the word order is so different in english so one word may be in the middle in korean but in english it should be at the front so again that's why it's so important for you to realize that hey you can't just only think in your own language you have to figure out a way to think in english in order to improve your speaking ability so here we go summarize your day at the end of the day even if you are alone summarize the three to five main things you did that day if you worked if you went to school if you talked to your family if you cooked think about the three to five main things you did during the day now you need to start reviewing what you did each day and organize your thoughts in english remember that you need to speak out loud so for example i told you that i spoke to my friend this morning annie right we spoke on the phone now if i'm practicing korean so i just said i spoke to my friend we talked together and we spoke about marriage life but again i had to process what we did in korean because that's the language i'm learning right so for you think about what you did you're gonna think immediately in your own language but that's okay then you have to force your brain to convert what you're thinking into english and process everything in english about your day again the three to five main things you did so here we go here's how you do it steps set aside 15 minutes at the end of your day again not a long period of time i want to help you uh reach your goals without having stress so just start with 15 minutes whatever time of the day you want to set aside this 15 minutes is okay again in the evening though but set aside 15 minutes at the end of your day then think about the three to five main things you did finally start describing or explaining them out loud in english remember i said what it is i said we talked about marriage life again my friend is getting married so we talked about marriage life all right so if my friend is getting married we're gonna talk about marriage life i had to process that situation in korean and then say it out loud you notice that the more i say it the faster it will come out right because i've already processed it you need to do the same thing about your day alright the three to five main things that happened to you during that day it will help you improve your speaking ability now let's look at another one here's the situation you are taking tons of notes in your notebook you probably have your notes out right now just writing if you are i'm very proud of you as your teacher right now that's a good thing so you're taking tons of notes in your notebook on your phone or on your computer the problem is that they stay there now i am guilty of this as well when i was studying korean when i was in university sometimes it was easy to write tons of notes i would have tons of notes books full of notes whether it be korean new korean words or expressions or notes from class from our teacher teaching us certain aspects of art or different things but what happened after class the notebook would be closed and put on my desk the note will be closed or put in my book bag and that's what may be happening to you as well you're taking tons of notes which is amazing a great habit to have but if those notes just stay if they stay in your phone or your notebook and you never actually use them your english speaking ability will never improve so here's what you need to do take notes and read them read them out loud you'll notice that there's this overarching theme of out loud reading out loud making sure you're speaking and not just thinking about things so here we go you need to start reviewing your english notes by reading them out loud this needs to become a routine because it will help you remember important words and also use them in real life so again during this video you've probably been taking notes again whether it be on your phone or in a notebook now what you're going to do is go back over those notes but read them out loud maybe you wrote a teacher tiffany said i need to take notes and read them you wrote that now go back and read it teacher tiffany said i need to take notes and read them out loud you need to let your tongue have practice this is how your speaking will improve now how do you do this here we go i'm going to give you some steps first write little notes throughout the week i have a little notebook that i keep with me that when ideas pop in my head or if i have a little sketch that i want to do i take that little notebook out it's very small and i just draw in it really quickly or i write some quick notes that's what you need to do throughout the week take notes maybe you watch a television program or maybe you see a youtube video like this lesson and you learn something new jot or write down a quick note it's okay write down the notes and collect these notes throughout a week okay over a seven day period next what you're going to do is pick a day to review those notes you can say hey sundays are my review notes day or days or you can say hey i'm going to do it on monday or wednesday you can pick the day just once a week pick a day that you're going to review the notes then what you're going to do is you're going to read them out loud three times it will get easier each time now you may say teacher why three times so let me explain the first time you read your notes you may feel a little bit awkward like teacher tiffany said write something and read it out loud right the first time you're kind of like okay but then the second time you read it teacher tiffany said write something down and read it out loud you're a little more comfortable by the third time your tongue is also gonna be hey i'm ready let's do it your tongue is ready you already know what it says because you've connected by looking at it and actually saying it so now uh teacher tiffany said write something down and read it out loud you're giving your tongue practice and by reading it three times out loud your speaking is definitely going to improve remember the notes are your thoughts things that you believed were important so you wrote them down so when you go back to read them they're not going to be pieces of information that are boring or this is not interesting no you wrote the notes so they're already interesting to you and since you wrote them your brain already have a little connector it's just waiting for you to make the connection between what's here to what's coming out on your tongue makes sense all right now let's look at another situation okay here's the situation you are just watching videos or reading english books or articles while relaxing and not doing anything else think about it now again it's very important for you to be relaxed when you're learning anything especially english but if you think about it really hard a lot of times you just kind of watch a video when it ends you go to the next video huh that was good then you go to the next video and you keep scrolling so you're watching which is good but you're never putting into practice what you've learned so instead of watching a video stopping and practicing you're just kind of going with the motions watching more and more so how can we fix this to help you improve your speaking ability you need to read out loud and shadow so reading out loud and shadowing is very important you need to start reading the words out loud and or shadowing what you hear as you watch various videos this will also help you improve your pronunciation skills so think about it you all notice that for my videos i always include lots of graphics you know i love design that was my profession before i became an english teacher i love to make pretty things right so since i have the words on the screen that i'm saying you can practice shadowing and reading what i have on the screen so in essence you could pause the video and repeat what i said so again you can go back and say oh teacher tiffany said you need to start reading the words out loud and keep going reading what's on the screen by simply hitting pause so instead of just taking information in you can pause and start to be more active and giving yourself the opportunity to improve your speaking skills so what are the steps here we go select a video or an audio file again you can select the youtube video you can select the podcast episode speak english for tiffany podcast i think you'll like it now the next thing you're gonna do is decide on a specific time interval now this is very important i put down 5 seconds 10 seconds and 15 seconds it all depends on your level so what's going to happen is for example i'm still talking to you right now but let's say you chose five seconds so yo watch for five seconds okay so we're studying this lesson and i want you to keep practicing pause i said okay we're studying this lesson and i want you to keep practicing when you hit that pause button you repeat what i just said now for those who are a little bit more advanced maybe you choose the 10 second interval that means you can remember what is said over a 10 second period and you can repeat it again you can choose the interval but whatever you watch whatever you are listening to you need to pick an interval and start and stop start and stop so again the last part stop the file based on the intervals and repeat what you hear this is so important this is how you practice or shadow and practice reading out loud as you're learning things from videos or from audio podcasts now i hope this really helped you because i know how frustrating it can be to be able to understand english but not actually speak i experienced the same thing when i was learning korean and i wish someone had given me a lesson like this so put into practice what you learned today i will talk to you next week have an amazing week remember if you want to keep studying with me join my academy join our family by going to let's jump right in dot com i'll see you next week but as always remember to speak english you still there you know what time it is it's story time hey i said a story time like i slowed it down right there yeah all right guys so today's story is actually about a time i was nervous to give a speech now i'm sure all of you know something very um you know something about me i'm not a shy person i've never really been shy to speak up front or in public public speaking has never been a fear of mine and i've been told many times that it's a blessing to not be scared to speak up front so one time at my church this is before i went to korea uh no no i went to korea for a year and i came home to visit and my pastor said tiff we'd love for you to give us a sermon would you mind speaking i said okay i don't mind like i'll definitely do that so i had about maybe a month to a month and a half to prepare the sermon so i'm a christian and i love god so much and i believe that whenever you get up front to speak for him you need to make sure you're prepared so i studied the bible a lot and i made sure that the topic i was going to speak about i knew it like the back of my hand i knew it really well so i prepared a lot and i was practicing the morning of so it was the sabbath morning saturday for those sabbath morning and i was at home and i was practicing before going to church and all of a sudden my stomach just started turning in knots i mean it was hurting really bad and i i didn't know what was going on like i prepared everything and there was nothing wrong i hadn't anything wrong the night before um i couldn't think of why my stomach was hurting but it was getting worse and worse and worse to the point that i had to stop practicing and i had to run to the bathroom and i was in the bathroom for a long time i was still home but i mean i was in the bathroom for a long time you guys can imagine my stomach was killing me and i couldn't figure out what was causing me this problem so finally i came out the bathroom and when i came back to my room and i was sitting looking at my script that i was going to use for my sermon i heard you know i was like wait a minute i think i'm nervous and i i had never been nervous speaking up front before but i was like wait a minute i don't think i'm nervous but my body is showing me that yes what i'm about to speak about is not an easy topic and i'm more nervous than i realize now again my stomach was still turning a little bit but i was like i have to preach like the pastor asked me this topic is very important i have to preach so my family i would go to church and i'm sitting up front you know they have the people singing up front and they have like reading the scripture and they're going through the regular program and it's my turn to go up front to give the sermon now praise god the sermon went well god is good um i wasn't nervous as soon as i got on the stage i wasn't nervous at all and i delivered the sermon uh people said they enjoyed it and i also enjoyed giving it after the sermon i was standing at the door and normally when church ends people walk out and they kind of shake the hand of the person who spoke and give the person a hug so since i was the speaker for that day people were coming out and giving me a hug and saying oh tiff we appreciate the sermon etc etc but some people came up to me and said tiff you don't know how much i needed that sermon i had a friend text me tiff that sermon today really touched my heart and i got that response from so many people and i realized man if i had let my nervousness or my stomach hurting so bad hinder me from giving this message what would have happened the people that needed to hear the message that was given would not have heard the message and that situation taught me that sometimes you're going to be in a situation where you feel nervous you're not sure of the words you're going to say and maybe you may feel a little bit uncomfortable the thing is you have to work through that nervousness and still speak because you may not realize that someone else needs to hear what you have to say now i know we talked today about speaking in english and why it's more difficult than understanding but i believe in you i believe the very fact that you're able to understand what i'm saying right now is proof that you are just as intelligent as another person which means you can speak in english so when you feel your stomach kind of turning in knots or if you get a little nervous when you come up to a native english speaker and you have to speak in english hopefully my story will help you out work through the nerves press forward and remember that the words you have to say are just as important as the words someone else has to say guys i hope you enjoyed this story if you have a story about being nervous please share it in the comment section again if you want to keep studying with me and also join our family don't forget to go to let's jump right in dot com also you can help by liking this video sharing this video and subscribing i will see you all next week

Channel: Speak English With Tiffani

Views: 913,972

Keywords: why you understand english but can't speak, why i can understand english but can't speak, why english speaking is difficult, how to speak english easily, how to speak english fluently, how to speak english native speaker, english speaking course, english speaking course for beginners, english speaking practice app, english with tiffani, why you can understand english but you struggle to speak in english, struggle to speak in english, english speaking lesson, understand english

Id: e4SUAZOTAi0

Length: 27min 9sec (1629 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 01 2020