Now that you know what skills and techniques can help you in specific conversations, here are a few general exercises that you can do to enhance your overall language skills and fluency. They can help you when you cannot practice your speaking with a partner but you still want to get better, nonetheless.
Exercise A
Grab a mirror or the camera of your phone and try to watch yourself speak. Talk about a specific topic, such as your hobbies or something you are passionate about. This exercise will help you find mistakes that would otherwise go unnoticed. Now, you can see what words make you lose your flow or cause you to struggle. Whenever you notice something that doesn’t sit quite right with you, just try again. Practice is key!
What did you notice?
Possible struggles:
- struggle to pronounce “th”
- some word combinations were hard to articulate
- many breaks in-between talking
- wrong intonations
- …
However, these mistakes should not make you doubt yourself. Instead, use them to improve your English skills and find specific exercises that can help you work on them.
Example:
Exercise B
Another handy tip for practising your language skills is to use apps and programmes designed for chatting in different languages. You can use apps to talk to native speakers who want to learn your language, or you can use AI tools to practice your pronunciation. If you don’t have a programme to hand, of if you would prefer not to use AI, you can start by recording yourself speaking, then listening to the recording again.
Record yourself saying: “This is my brother from another mother, someone I´ve known for thirty years and three months.”
After listening to your recording, what challenged you the most?
When talking / listening to native speakers (or recordings of yourself):
- accept feedback from native speakers
- try to catch up new vocabulary in different contexts
- improve listening skills
- learn rhythm and intonation of the language by coping your speaking partner or by looking up words online
- try to engage in topics that you struggle with in order to learn how to overcome language barriers
- pick up on idioms and collocations
- ...
Exercise C
If you want to practice structuring your thoughts and arguments, journaling can be a great tool. It challenges you to write down your ideas in a structured and organized manner. By doing so, you’ll practice the language you want to learn every day for a few minutes, and it always lets you keep track of your improvements.
To start, write down a note about your day in about 5 sentences.
As you can see in the example text, you can use specific vocabulary (holidays/Christmas).