How to improve your spoken English!

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.

10 ways to improve your English outside of class

Source: ELT Learning Journeys Posted on June 16, 2015 by Daniel Vincent 

When it comes to learning a language, you can only do so much in class. At some point, we all need to look beyond the classroom walls if we’re to put our abilities to the test and hone those hard-earned skills. Luckily, the age we live in has no shortage of options for the motivated learner.

Here are 10 ways to improve your English outside of class:

1. Watch TV series and films in English

TV and film are great ways to practice listening skills because the visual element helps to make the context clear. However, if you’re watching something in order to improve your English, be methodical. Watch once without subtitles and then once again with them (in English). Rewatch difficult scenes over and over until you’ve really grasped what’s being said. If you’re watching a DVD, remember that these days many have an audio description option for the sight-impaired. This additional element makes for great extra practice.

2. Find a language exchange partner

One-to-one exchanges are a great way to practice your language skills in a relaxed setting – over a coffee, say, or even a beer. The key to a successful exchange is to find someone who has a similar level in your language as you do in English, otherwise the temptation is to drift into the stronger of the two. Be strict with one another as well: half the exchange in your language, half in English, or alternating languages every time you meet.

3. Join a language club

A great way to meet new people and hone those conversation skills is to join a language club, where like-minded people gather to improve their English either by getting together to chat or by taking part in an activity – walking in the countryside, for example, or visiting local galleries. Many of them are joined by native speakers looking to make friends in a laidback atmosphere. Sites like meetup.com are ideal for finding out what’s going on in your area.

6 ways to prepare for an English exam!

Are you thinking of taking an English exam? Perhaps you should. They’re a good way of motivating you to study. Here are our top tips on how to pass an English exam in five months. This is the first part of a series on doing exams.

Let’s imagine you’ve got five months to prepare for your English exam. You can prepare yourself with just an hour a day over the five-month period before the exam. Here’s what you should be doing.

 

1 General preparation
Most exams test your general ability to communicate in English. So, in order to prepare you for this, you’ll need to work on the four key communication skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. The best way to do this is to immerse yourself in the language, and to do a bit every day to increase your general level. Language learning takes time, and in order for it to take place, you need to read and listen a lot in order to get enough exposure to the language. In fact, language learning takes place through input (reading  + listening) and practice (speaking + writing).

What's the best way to learn vocabulary?

How to speak so that people want to listen

Have you ever felt like you're talking, but nobody is listening? Here's Julian Treasure to help you fix that. As the sound expert demonstrates some useful vocal exercises and shares tips on how to speak with empathy, he offers his vision for a sonorous world of listening and understanding.
Source: TED Julian Treasure

15 Common Errors in English

These common errors in English are made by students of all levels, from beginner to advanced. Here are some quick explanations and tips about how to avoid 15 common English mistakes.

10 mistakes Spanish speakers make

Hi,

 

Let's review some common mistakes Spanish speakers make. You may take a quiz. Did you find them useful? Does it help you to improve your oral skills?

 

9 easy ways to improve your listening skills!

Listening is one of the most important skills in learning a language. Once you can identify sounds, words and expressions, you’ll start learning a lot faster. Here are 9 top tips for improving your listening skills.

Source: Lear HotEnglish

 1. Comprehension!First of all, you need to accept the fact that you aren’t going to understand everything. Experts have shown that we only actually hear or fully understand about 40% of the words during a conversation… even in our own language.

2. Keep calm!
While you’re listening, the most important thing is to stay calm. You won’t understand everything, so don’t let that upset you. The aim is to get a general idea of what the other person is saying. Never try to listen out for every word. Listen for the gist of the conversation – go for the main ideas.

3. Help!
If you’re having problems during the conversation, ask the other person to speak more slowly. Also, ask people to repeat things if you didn’t understand. Again, the speaker is trying to have a conversation and will do what they can to help you.

4. Don’t translate!
While you’re listening, don’t try to translate. If you do, you’ll start concentrating on translating and not on processing the information. And then you’ll lose track of the conversation.

5. Keywords!
The most important thing is to listen out for the key words – the important, stressed words. Basically, English is a stress-timed language. This means that when we speak, we focus on specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the rest. Those stressed words are usually nouns (“dog / table), verbs (“sit / run”), adjectives (“beautiful / wonderful”) and adverbs (“quickly / slowly”). Most of the other words (determiners, auxiliary verbs, pronouns, etc.) are weak sounds. The great thing is that you only really need to understand the key words in order to follow the conversation. For example, if you heard the following key words, “saw / film /cinema / last night”, you’d understand that the other person is probably saying, “I saw a film at the cinema last night.”

6. Think “context”!
The other really important thing is to think about the context. If you know what the main topic is, you’ll be able to guess what the people are talking about. For example, if you know the topic is “the weather”, you can be sure that they’re going to mention things about the rain, the snow, the wind, the temperature… and so on.

7. Guess!
If you know what the context of the conversation is, you should be able to guess a lot of what the other person is saying… even if you don’t hear or understand all the words. The trick is to use your imagination, to guess and to follow your intuition. It isn’t an exact science, but it works!

8. Pronunciation!
Finally, you need to learn about English pronunciation, and above all, connected speech. This occurs when sounds merge together to form new sounds – often when a consonant sound at the end of a word is followed by a vowel sound in the following word. For example, “She lived in New York” would be “She liv din New York” with connected speech. And we don’t usually say, “Look / out” (with separate sounds), we say, “Loo kout” (with the final consonant “k” combining with the vowel sound “ow” of the second word).

9. Practise!
So, what can you do to improve your listening skills? There are three main things:
1. Listen to recordings that are specifically targeted at your level.
2. Listen to native speaker conversations and recordings (from films, the news, TV series, songs, etc.) in order to develop your ear for the language.
3. Listen to recorded material and read the audio script at the same time so you can see how the words and sounds fit together.

Start listening, start learning!

Giving reasons

These expressions are for you to give reasons and explanations:

 

To start with,                                               That's why...,

The reason why...,                                       That's the reason why...,

For this reason...,                                        Many people think....,

Expressing Opinions, prefereces

Hi,

These are some expressions that you may learn to express your opinion:
 

I think...,                                           The way I see it...,

In my opinion...,                                 I suppose...,

I'd like to...,                                       If it were up to me...,

I'd rather...,                                       As far as I'm concerned...,

I'd prefer...,                                       I'm pretty sure that...,

I suspect that...,                                 Without a doubt,...

It is fairly certain that...,                      I strongly believe that...,

I'm convinced that...,                          I honestly feel that,        

15 top tips for increasing your range of vocabulary!

Vocabulary is a key part of learning a new language. But what’s the best way to pick up new words and remember them? Here are our top tips for building up your vocabulary.

1 Read & listen!
The best way to learn new words is to do it the natural way: by reading and listening to lots of English. And if you read and listen to things that you’re really interested in, you’ll improve your range of vocabulary without even realising it as you absorb language within interesting content.
2 Guess!
Interestingly, studies have shown that the more effort you put into working out what a word means, the easier it is to remember. So, instead of reaching for the dictionary, try to guess the meaning of any difficult words.
3 Focus!
There are thousands of words and expressions in English. But which ones do you need to learn? The answer is simple: high-frequency words. You can find high-frequency words in dialogues or conversations. Interestingly, a study by Oxford Online has found that the top 3,000 words in English make up 70% of the words we use.

Eight ways to learn English Grammar!

How useful is grammar for learning a language? And what can you do to improve your knowledge of it?

Grammar alone isn’t going to help you speak a language. However, learning some basic patterns can be useful. For example, if you know the negative past tense is formed with didn’t + a verb, you can produce hundreds of useful sentences: I didn’t go, she didn’t see it, we didn’t do it…” So, what can you do to improve your knowledge of grammar? There are two things: firstly, you need to learn how to form sentences; secondly, you need to know how to use the structures. Here are 8 things you can do to achieve those two objectives:
Forming basic structures

1 Verb tenses
When it comes to studying grammar, the best thing you can do is to focus on verb tenses as this will help you communicate in English. Firstly, you need to find out how the tenses are formed. In order to do this, simply get hold of a grammar book, choose a tense and read about it. Then, do some basic exercises online or in an exercise book to practice forming the structure.

Ways of saying something politely

This week’s tip gives some ways of saying something politely:

In our recent post on ways of agreeing and disagreeing we looked at some phrases that are used when politely disagreeing with someone. Knowing how and when to use these types of phrases is important, because what is normal in one language or culture can sound rude in another. 

Phrases such as (I’m) sorry, Excuse me, or Pardon me can be used to show politeness in many different contexts, such as asking for information and interrupting, as well as disagreeing:
Sorry/Excuse me, do you know what time it is?
I’m sorry, but I don’t see how you expect us to finish by lunchtime.
Excuse me, but I never said I’d pay for everything.
Excuse me, but there’s a phone call for you.
Excuse me for a moment, I have to make a phone call.
Pardon me, but those numbers aren’t right.
Pardon me for interrupting, but there’s a phone call for you. 

(I’m) Sorry, Excuse me and Pardon me can also be used when asking someone politely to repeat something. Excuse me and Pardon me are used mainly in American English:
‘Is this your coat?’ ‘Excuse me/Pardon me?’
I’m sorry, what was your name again? 

Excuse me is used in British English and Pardon me in American English when asking someone politely to move so you can get past. 

Expressions such as I don’t know, I see/take your point and That’s true, but… can be used when you want to disagree with someone to some degree, rather than completely: 
‘It’ll be boring.’ ‘Oh I don’t know. It might be fun.’
I see your point, but I don’t think there’s anything we can do at the moment. 

Phrases such as With (the greatest) respect, with all (due) respect and I beg to differ are very polite and formal ways of disagreeing with someone:
With all due respect, I think you’re missing the point.
He argues that young people would benefit from parenting courses. I beg to differ. 

Actually can be used when disagreeing politely with someone, or to correct them:
‘I find James a bit dull.’ ‘He’s actually very nice when you get to know him.’ ‘That Picasso’s amazing!’ ‘Actually it’s by Braque.’

I’m afraid can be used for politely telling someone something that might upset, disappoint or annoy them:
Things haven’t been going very well here, I’m afraid.
I’m afraid that I can’t accept this job.
I’m afraid to say I found the book very dull.
‘Did he forget to do it?’ ‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Will John be there?’ ‘I’m afraid not.’

Source: the Macmillan Dictionary

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