Background

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.<p align="right">Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500–1558)</p>

I have learned English for more than 10 years, but I still can’t speak English fluently. However, I believed I got lots of improvements recently, I’d like to share something with you. On the hand, sometimes I feel It’s not easy to find an example to support my idea when I want to prove my method works, therefore, I try to note down some good examples when it comes to my mind suddenly.

technique

one by one stage for speaking

I believed that the whole journey of learning English could be divided into 4 stages. I know lots of Chinese learners spend too much energy on some stuff(eg, grammar, pronunciation) which was less important than other important stuff(eg, confidence, fluency) in my view.

Speaking as much and fast as you can, is one of the most important things to gain confidence and interest to learn English. As far as I’m concerned, satisfaction will be enhanced when you can speak English frequently. In this stage, you may speak without organization, but it’s still ok, native speakers are able to understand you even if you just speak fewer words instead of a full sentence.

Try to organize your structure before you speak and reduce your filter works(eg, uh, umm, you know). This is my current stage, I always begin to speak without any preparation, therefore, my words is lack logic and full of filter words. You may have lots of ideas to express, however, you have nothing to express after you just express some keywords. This situation may reflect your lack of logic. Try to organize your words before you speak, and try to start speaking before with good preparation.

Focus on clarity and word choice. In this stage, you are able to convey your main idea in English, however, it’s still not enough. Sometimes, the audience fell confused due to your low clarity and fell strange about your word choice(eg. you use “combustion” to refer to “on fire”). This stage needs a long time to practice, after this stage, you will be more confident than before.

Improve your pronunciation if your pronunciation let the listener confused and try to speak without grammar errors. In this stage, you are free to talk with foreigners as if you were a native speaker. But you’re still identified as a non-native speaker, and most importantly, your tone and pronunciation sound strange for native speakers. Try to mimic the way how the native speaker speaks, especially for their tone and pronunciation. Remember, there is no standard English in the world, it’s fine you got your unique accent which is not a barrier for the native sparker to understand you.

listening

• I do believe that we recognize words by context instead of sound. It may sound unreasonable at first, but considering such a background, you just record the conversation with you and your friends.

how to remember words?

• remember the spelling and pronunciation together.
• try to remember the main emotion of the words(This is useful in reading). eg, use remarkable or incredible to mean good, and try to replace some words like remarkable with good, you may realize that this action will not change the main point for each sentence.

points I don’t believe

someone may they are only weekly in the speaking.

I believe that listening, speaking, reading and writing is collaboration, in other words, you are good at writing once you are proficient in speaking. On other hand, it’s difficult to develop single skills one by one or separately. For example, I realized my pronunciation enhance a lot while I did lots of listening practice because I found my wrong pronunciation while I can’t recognize some words by my voice.

some skills you may want to be trained

motivation building

social

storytelling

the benefits I gained while I learning English

courage

• I’d initially want to speak with others even if I really want to spark with them, I start to initially talk with someone while I believe it’s interesting

confidence

• I start to speak confidently, I gain the confidence to learn new thing

In the beginning, my listening skill is weak, and I really suffer from imposter syndrome, I thought to give up several times, and I try to encourage myself by watching videos about the English learning experience on Youtube.

the way to think

I try to think in English.

my words become more clarity than before(both Chinese and English)

I try to organize my sentences and pronunciation before I start speaking.