Tuesday, 7 July 2015

How can I improve my English speaking skills?

https://www.speakalley.com/blog/how-can-i-improve-english-speaking-skills/

Superior communication skills can better your chances for success in attaining your educational goals, success in achieving you professional or business goals. There are several skills related to communication but speaking is the most frequently used skill. Speaking is used twice as much as reading and writing in our communication.

These techniques will help you speak with confidence.

  • Speak out loud.
    The best way to improve your language skills is by speaking the language.  There is no substitute for practicing with real people.
  • Develop intrapersonal communication.
    Think in English. Talk to yourself in English in your mind. Plan your day in English. Talk about things you see in English. For instance, talk about the weather while walking on the road.
    e.g.:  “Oh, It’s so hot today. Should have brought umbrella to avoid the scorching sun. The road is so narrow and dirty. Who puts all this trash on the road? I hope I reach office on time today. Why isn’t the bus coming?  Been standing here for so long.”
  • Try to imitate/emulate/reproduce/mirror/copy the speakers you admire.
    Listen to speech or dialogues and repeat it out loud. Repeat it until you feel satisfied. It will be fun and when you do it frequently, you will start enjoying it. This will help mouth, lips and vocal chords get into action. This will also help in losing the mother tongue influence and gaining good pronunciation.
  • Watch News. Journalists are very good communicators.
    The  news channels try to be succinct because more words costs them more  money. Observe the choice of words of the journalists, guests, experts,  correspondents who try to put forth their argument in a convincing and  persuasive manner. Observe how they present a story in a structural  manner.
  • Pick a topic to talk about.
    Pick  any topic and start speaking. Talk about the articles you read. Express  your thoughts on issues like Deforestation, Climate Change, World  Hunger and Poverty, Global Warming, Global Financial Crisis, Human  Population, Environmental Issues, etc with your friends. You can even  talk about your morning.
  • Paint a picture with your words.
    Go to flickr and describe the photograph to your friend. Try to paint the picture  with your words. Speak about the contents of the picture, the expression  of the people. What do you feel when you see the picture? Does it  remind you of something? Try to express yourself.
  • Watch the TV shows you like.
    Watch  television shows like Seinfeld (any show you like; I am just a big fan  of seinfeld) with subtitles to see how the thoughts are expressed  effectively and concisely in humorless or humorous manner. Watch  anything you enjoy. It is important that you enjoy what you are  watching. Observe the body language, emotions and expressions in  connection with the speech or dialogues.

These are some of the best comedy shows:-
       For people who like to watch documentaries:-  Top Documentary Films.



  • Read more.
    Exercising  without having food will not be helpful. Think of reading and listening  as input to your brain and speaking and writing as output from your  brain. So get more input to your brain by reading and listening.
    Read from a variety of topics, genre and authors. Don’t restrict yourself to a single author or topic.
  • Learn, Apply and Improvise.
    There  are always three steps involved in the process. Learn, Apply and  Improvise. So by reading and watching you will learn but you have to  apply what you learn by speaking and listening to real people. And when  you start applying what you learn frequently you try to improvise.  That’s the way to improve.
  • Speak Online.
    If you do not have anyone in your vicinity to practice your speaking, use the website SpeakAlley.com to speak online with other learners. I have started adding English  vocabulary to the website to help learners improve their vocabulary.
    The  way anything is developed is through practice, practice and more  practice. Keep practicing. Tomorrow’s victory is today’s practice.

Source:  https://www.speakalley.com/blog/how-can-i-improve-english-speaking-skills/


More Answers from Quora:-
How do I improve my English speaking skills in a very short time?

**  In order to start speaking, you need to start speaking.

**  Luis M. Gonzalez, 269 upvotes by Quora User
This answer is not comprehensive at all, but a complement to what others said here.

1) No matter your English level, just talk! This may sound stupid, but it's not. When learning a language (as well as other skills) perfectionism is sometimes an obstacle. Becoming fluent comes with practice, there's no other way, and FLUENCY IS MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN ACCURACY (this point is extremely important).

2) Avoid stammering at all cost. There's nothing more annoying to a native speaker than hearing someone stammering or pausing while trying to find the correct word in his head. It's much better to make mistakes (as long as the message is delivered) than being correct but annoying.

Think about Tarzan in the movies. He speaks like, well, as Tarzan. But we all understand him! Making yourself clear is your most important goal. It doesn't matter if you do it as Tarzan. Search for perfection later.

Imagine you are a bar tender and someone tells you "me need beer". It's an awfull English, but it's effective. This guy already achieved his first goal.

Every language has a subset of roughly 300 words that are needed to communicate effectively with others. Anyone can learn them in a very short period of time.

Perfection comes with a lot of reading, listening and practice. I'm afraid you need time for this. There's no fast track. You can have a very good English level, academically correct and even elegant by only reading and listening a lot.

But full perfection comes with full immersion. That means, living with people that only speaks English for a considerable length of time.

My experience:
As you may have noticed, my English is far from perfect, but I never, ever had a problem while travelling and working around the world.

I had a couple years of formal education (about three hours a week) while in primary school but I wasn't very interested in studying). It was at the age of 15 when I became a fan of martial arts and started reading "Black Belt", and American magazine.

In Buenos Aires, in 1985, it wasn't easy to find those magazines, so I would read each issue a thousand times at least. Reading repeatedly one unknown word over and over again, makes you try to look up its meaning. This is how I learned almost all I know, on my own.

10 years later, I travelled for the first time to an English speaking country. I visited Boston for a month with the excuse of getting into an intensive English course.

I was nervous because I thought my English sucked, but soon after my arrival, I was having a conversation with a taxi driver. It was Ike "hey! I can do it!".

To make the story short: I got bored in class, and I was so excited of being in Boston, a new city, a new culture, that I spent the whole month going out, having fun and meeting people. It was the best thing that could have happened to my English. My confidence skyrocketed.

I learned a few things from this experience...
I used to make pauses while talking, trying to figure out the correct word in order to be accurate, and people seemed to get impatient with me. It happened a few times until someone directly told me that it was annoying.

Then I learned that being succinct is extremely important.

Every sentence has a subject and a verb. If you are in trouble, just think about your subject and your verb. Forget about conjugation or time verbs, just do it the TARZAN WAY (I'll get the registered trade mark for this soon :-), and you'll be ok. Next time you'll do it better.

If you are lost in a city and you are about to lose your flight, you need to get there fast and you don't know how to, what do you do?

Just find someone and say "taxi, airport".

I travelled to china 3 times for work, and I had a piece of paper with a few critical words written down, of course, just their pronunciation.

Believe me, I moved around like a fish in the water...

P.D.:
By the way, if you like TV comedies, I highly recommend watching "Seinfeld" in English (and if possible, with English subtitles).

Why? Simply because these characters talk in an unusual way for TV. They all talk very clearly and with an excellent pronunciation.

Besides, this show is an excellent way to get used to common idioms of every day talking.

I believe this is probably the way most comedies do on TV. I wonder why it sounds so different than movies or other shows...


Related Questions from Quora:-
·         How can I improve my communication skills in a very short time?
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·         How could anyone improve his writing skills in short time?
·         How can I improve my English speaking skills at home when no one in my home speaks English?
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