Hey, I am sharing with you 18 amazing strategies to speak English fluently while being a non-native English speaker. What you may be doing wrong with speaking English and what you should do instead.
How to speak English fluently & naturally well?
Following are some effective tips, which you can adopt to speak English fluently and naturally well.
Treat yourself as a Native English Speaker.
Success and failure are differentiated by the right attitude. So you need to stop thinking as if you’re someone who isn’t learning English and instead think of yourself as someone who speaks English.
This also means you need to start thinking in English, for example, say that you want to say the word “apple” in English, instead of thinking about it in your first language and then translating it into English, try to picture the apple in your head and just say it in English. Don’t even think about your native language. Over time you will be able to train your mind.
The answer is in the Question
Listen carefully when somebody asks you a question in English and you should be able to answer perfectly every time. Why? Because a lot of the times the answer is in the question, for example, if somebody says, does she play sports? Yes, she does. Or for example, is it good? Yes, it is. No, it isn’t.
So instead of memorizing English grammar try to look at patterns like this. It makes it a lot simpler.
Don’t study grammar too much
Now, while we’re on the topic of grammar. Speak English fluently isn’t the same thing as knowing perfect grammar. What fluency means is being able to communicate.
Even native English speakers have grammar mistakes all the time. You need to have a balance between studying but also actually practicing what you’re learning. So sometimes it’s necessary to put down that grammar book and get out in the real world and practice.
Use it or lose it
In America we have this expression called, use it or lose. And what it basically means is that if you don’t practice an ability, you’re going to lose it. You can’t just absorb tons of information and then leave it. You gotta use it. You gotta get out and practice it. That’s what’s going to keep it in your mind.
Learn and study phrases
Speaking English fluently means being able to express your thoughts and your feelings. So basically your goal is to speak in actual sentences. So to do that, just learn whole phrases or sentences instead of just single vocabulary words. What you can do to start this is, think of phrases that you say very commonly in your native language, then find the English variations of those expressions, the English translations, and learn those.
Learn intonation, body language, and gestures.
English is so much more than just vocabulary and grammar. So be sure to observe like friends that are native speakers watching movies and notice how people move and act and the gestures they make. Intonation, body language, and gestures are going to make you look like a native speaker. Speaking of gestures so much, if you liked this video don’t forget to go down there and give it a thumbs up so that we know.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.
Don’t let the fear of saying something wrong keep you from speaking at all. This was such a big issue for me when I started learning Korean. My speaking was not good. I didn’t practice. Do you know why? I was afraid. But honestly, people don’t care if you make mistakes. Be okay making mistakes because that’s how you learn and that’s how you progress.
Learn from everyone.
Don’t just learn English from a textbook or professors and teachers, but everyone around you. Feel okay asking a native friend like, how do you say this again? What was that that you just said? Or any sort of questions you have about English. Most of the time, they’ll be so happy to help you.
Use a speech-to-text for all English text messaging.
So basically speak your text instead of typing it. A lot of apps and applications have this at this point. So just get on Instagram or whatever app you’re using. There’s a little speech text thing here and you can say, hey, what’s up? How are you doing today? And then send it. And I actually use this all the time because it takes so much less time to speak instead of write. And if you’re learning English, this is going to give you an opportunity to practice all the time.
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Record your own English language audiobooks.
Take any book that you love to read in English and record your own audiobook.
I know this might seem strange but there are many benefits that come from this. You’re able to practice your pronunciation obviously and your mouth will be more used to form words and sentences in English. Confidence comes from speaking so do it often. And this technique will really help you.
Record yourself
Record yourself reading material that you want to learn and then listen to it throughout the day. For example, if you want to learn about some sort of business and you find an article on it in English read it out loud, record yourself reading it out loud and then listen to it throughout the day because then you’re going to get practice speaking and also listening.
Talk yourself through processes.
Let’s say this, you are about to cook dinner for the evening. You say each process you do out loud, I am boiling water. I am cutting vegetables. I am adding pasta to the water. Saying these processes out loud is a great way to practice you’re speaking.
Memorized conversation starters and use them.
Basically memorize ideas for starting a conversation. Don’t use conversation starters all the time but memorizing all of these might help you be a lot more confident in starting a conversation with someone. You can just look up on Google, conversation starters English and you’ll find tons of them.
Share your opinions online.
To really learn English you need to be able to talk about your feelings and your opinions, and a good place to start is by doing it online. So if you find a blog that you like you can comment your opinion on it, or post something on Facebook or Instagram in English. Get in the habit of forming your opinion and writing it down. That is going to translate to speaking later on. You can also comment on things like YouTube videos.
Improve your English pronunciation.
If you’re speaking like perfect English grammar and sentence structure but no one can really understand what you’re saying, that might be a bit of a problem. Use online resources, look up pronunciation exercises on YouTube. Find videos about it on YouTube as well or find specific courses about it if you’re very serious about practicing, or you can find specific sources that target pronunciation and sign up for them so that you can become killer with your pronunciation.
Get more out of listening
Most of the time when you’re hearing somebody speak English, you’re most likely trying to translate what they’re saying, really understand what they’re saying but you can get even more out of it.
Try to also listen to their intonation, their stress, and how they pronounce words. So for example, if someone’s just talking and then they say, you know, what did you notice from that? We don’t pronounce it you know, we always pronounce it ya know.
By noticing all these little things and applying them to your own speaking that’s when you’ll be able to really sound native. This is why I personally love FluentU so much because it teaches you English through real content, real-world videos, music, videos, movies, Ted Talks, inspiring speeches, all that stuff. With FluentU you’re able to learn grammar, dissect sentences but also know how people actually speak in real life. Ya know.
Accept that English is a weird language because it is.
Like sometimes English just doesn’t make sense at all. For example, the word read and read sound differently based on the tense used in but it’s the same spelling as why. But instead of focusing on all these inconsistencies and tell yourself that English is weird, it’s hard at times. Just accept that fact.
Dive into the deep end.
Okay, let’s be real, studying English once a week is not gonna cut it. You have to do it daily even if it’s a little bit each day just study it. The best way to improve your English speaking specifically is just to speak it every day, at least a little bit every single day. And over time, it will get better. Consistency is key.
Take it easy. Admit one thing: you will never speak as a native speaker. Never! You will stay a foreigner and you will have an accent. You will make mistakes. Even if you have no grammar mistakes, you will definitely have situational and cultural ones. Have you ever heard foreigners who speak Russian? You are able to recognize easily if he or she is Russian or not. It’s the same with English.
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