7 Ways to Improve Your English Speaking Skills
1: Work on pronunciation (for accuracy)
Learn the sounds of English and learn how to make them correctly. You have to learn the proper way of speaking, intonation, stress, relaxed pronunciation, etc.
This is going to make a huge difference to the way you speak. People will understand you better. Your English will be more accurate. And things will flow for you.
Think about a situation when you last spoke English. Did you have to concentrate on how to make the sounds of English? If so, you need to work on this area. You want to reach the stage where the right sounds come out of your mouth without you thinking about how to make them.
You might be thinking, but how?
Do this:
- use my program or a site like this to see what you need to do to make the correct sounds
- record yourself saying these sounds
- get feedback
- once you get it right, get long-term repetitious
This is just like improving your golf swing. Or the way you play the piano. Or kicking a football.
You learn the skill, practice, get feedback, make changes, and get lots of repetition.
2: Imitate Native Speakers (yes, copying is good!)
This is a very effective way to improve your speaking and your listening, vocabulary, and grammar skills.
It works like this (LRRC):
- Listen – start by listening to a sentence in English
- Repeat – pause the audio and repeat a sentence or phrase
- Record – while repeating the words or sentences, record yourself
- Compare – this is the last part of this method. Listen to the original audio, then listen to your recording and compare the two. Here, you’ll be able to notice what you need to improve, what you’re able to say and understand accurately, and the changes you need to make.
What you’re doing is imitating an English speaker AND correcting yourself so that you’re accurate.
Once you can repeat the original audio accurately, it’s time to get lots of repetition.
Here is a way to do this:
Learn more about this method here. I highly recommend using this method. It’s powerful!
If you want to jump right in, join our powerful fluency program.
3: Shadow English Speakers (be careful!)
This is all about working on your English fluency. It’s more challenging compared to the first two methods. In shadowing, you have to listen to audio and repeat what you hear without pausing it. No stops, no pauses! It is also vital to choose an audio piece that you can follow.
This is key: only do this with audio that you can easily repeat.
I’ve seen students do this incorrectly. They choose difficult audio to repeat and end up mumbling.
Take your time to find audio that is easy to repeat. Doing this will help you improve your fluency. A good test to see if you’re doing it properly is recording yourself and listening to it.
Learn more about accuracy vs. fluency here:
4: Take English Speaking Classes / Courses (or find friends to practice with)
Speaking with friends might be the best and most enjoyable way to learn. Talk to your peers in English; you’ll have fun while learning!
You also find a language exchange or take English lessons with a teacher. These would provide you the safest environment to learn because you know that your mistakes will be corrected. You can dramatically improve your speaking by having a natural conversation.
Working on your English at home is great. But it would help if you had some real-life practice to put it all together.
Plus, most people learn English to have conversations. So, start having them now!
Note: I recommend iTalki. It’s a platform where you can find native speakers to practice with. Use my link to get a discount.
5: Expand Your Vocabulary (but be specific!)
Learn more words and phrases that you are going to use when speaking English.
Make this specific to you: learn words or phrases you need to talk about a certain subject. For example, if you need English for business, learn business English phrasal verbs.
You may want to learn common everyday English because you will use it no matter what. Here’s a video where I talked about some of the common words and phrases:
Remember, when learning words and phrases, it is important to learn by sentences, complete phrases, or chunks of sentences. This will help with your grammar and so that you know exactly how to use these words.
Expand your vocabulary by getting lots of input. Here’s the video with the full lesson about input:
6: Listen As Much As Possible (ABL)
I have a video about ABL: Always Be Listening. Check it out here:
Listening all the time and getting as much listening practice as possible will dramatically help your speaking. Of course, listening and speaking are two different skills. But for you to have a conversation, you need to understand the person you are talking to.
Remember, having a conversation isn’t just about speaking.
Additionally, when listening to people when having a conversation, you can steal phrases that they use. But you can only do this if you work on your listening skills.
Listen to conversational English by clicking here.
Listening is also input. It will help you increase your vocabulary, and it will also help your pronunciation. Listening to the sounds of English will help you better make the sounds of English.
The good news is that you can listen while doing other things.
7: Stay Consistent (Practice Every Day!)
The English-speaking methods that we’ve described above only work if you use them.
Here’s what I recommend:
Do a little every day.
Commit to 5-10 minutes every day; if you can do more, great! Some days you might do 2-3 hours. But make sure that you do the minimum every single day.
Everyone can find 10 minutes a day to commit to something specific. This means that even if you’re tired or really busy, you still have to commit. You can do as much as you can, but make sure to do this every day. Remember, consistency is key in learning a complex skill, like speaking English at a high level and with confidence.
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