Here are our 13 top tips for improving your spoken English.
Part I: Preparation
As part of improving your spoken English, you need to get used to producing English sounds. Here’s what you can do.
1 Read aloud
Take a short text (preferably one with an audio file to go with it) and read parts of it out loud. Later, you can compare your version to the original.
2 Repetition
Repeat key sentences and expressions over and over again until they become automatic. Very soon, you’ll have learnt lots of useful phrases you can use in real conversations.
3 Stories
Practise telling your favourite stories or anecdotes. Write them out first. Then, make notes and practise saying them to yourself or a friend. Later, you can use these stories or anecdotes in conversations.
4 Memory
Memorise typical phrases, expressions and sentences. A lot of the language we use when speaking consists of set expressions and chunks of language. For example, “That’s interesting! / I never knew that! / That must have been scary!”
5 Simultaneous speaking
Sing along to your favourite songs, or try to speak at the same time as the character in a video clip or an audio recording you’re familiar with. Simply press play and then start speaking along with the news presenter, actors, singers, etc.
6 Questions
Practise forming questions. Take a piece of text and make questions from sentences in the article or paragraph. For example, “She’s seen it. = Has she seen it?” Asking questions is a good way of participating in a conversation without having to say much.
7 Listening
Work on improving your listening skills so you can follow what people are saying. You can do this by listening to audio files from course books, watching films or TV series, listening to music or watching videos on YouTube. Spend at least 70% of your study time listening to English.
