Don’t want to miss any tips and tricks for English?
Did you know that you can improve your speaking skills WITHOUT talking to a native speaker?
No, this isn’t a trick.
Most English learners think they need tutor, teacher or friends to practice with all the time.
It’s true that, later, you need someone to talk with and hopefully correct your mistakes.
But when you are starting to learn English, you can learn the vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation to have a simple conversation by yourself.
The secret is…to learning English is chunks.
Chunks
Don’t just try to remember individual words out of context. Pay attention to the phrases that fluent speakers often use in spoken English.
For example, which is easier to remember and use in a conversation: “bump into” or “So glad I bumped into you”?
The easier one is the phrase. And if you check you pronunciation and practice saying a lot, it will stay in your memory. Then, when you need the phrase, you can pull it out and use it.
A good place to find chunks that are often used are tv shows and movies or listening exercises for beginners with transcripts. Or you can listen to native speakers talk and take notes.
Creating New Phrases with Chunks
When I started learning Spanish, I created a vocabulary journal just for chunks, and I would say them out loud to myself. In order to become a more flexible speaker, I also changed some of the words in the chunks to make new phrases. It really works!
For example, if you know the phrase “So glad I bumped into you”, you can change that to…
- “So happy I bumped into you.”
- “So awesome that I ran into you.”
- “What a surprise bumping into you here.”