5 tips for Improving Your Speaking Skills in a New Language

 

Words have power! Power to change, power to improve, power to hurt, power to destroy, and power to kill. Being able to express one’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions in a certain language is very powerful; one word spoken incorrectly can change the meaning of a sentence forever, and in changing the meaning of the sentence, the idea would be understood in a wrong way. one way in order to ensure that the words that are being uttered are positively powerful, one needs to improve their spoken language; by improving a spoken language, mistakes tend to be avoided. A lot of people learn different languages; speaking correctly in all learned languages is key to express one’s personal opinions clearly.

As Warren Buffet stated, “If you can’t communicate and talk to other people and get across your ideas. You’re giving up potential.” Therefore, in order to keep on increasing one’s potential and influence on the world, a person needs to be able to communicate in a correct manner. Below you will find 5 different ways in which one can improve their spoken language skills:

Speak:

• It may seem cliché to say that to improve speaking skills one should actually speak, but speaking plays a significant role in the process of improving oral skills. It should be noted that in order to speak well, one should also set time aside to listen to others speak. It would be a good idea to have a conversation with someone who is fluent in speaking the language desired. There are a lot of free language exchange programs available that would help in this aspect.
• Moreover, one very important thing a person can do to improve speaking skills is to speak out loud constantly using the new language being learned. When you are home going about daily activities such as preparing food, getting dressed, or even taking a shower; make sure to speak to yourself out loud: this way you will listen to your own voice and practice speaking. Over time, your spoken language will improve greatly.
  

Reflect on conversations:

• After having an extended conversation with someone using only the language you desire to improve your speaking skills in, one should always reflect on the discussion that was held. It is not only about thinking back about if you have spoken correctly if your friend understood what you are saying, or even if your ideas were clearly portrayed, but it is about how much you understood from your friend. Think back to the conversation and ask yourself a couple of questions about it: how comfortable was I speaking? – how much did I understand? – were there any new words I heard that I didn’t understand? – did I enjoy the conversation? – was it easy to keep the pace?
• Asking yourself these questions after a conversation will open up the chance to criticize yourself and find many points on which you should improve. In addition, it boosts your confidence levels because as you progress forward, the number of things you did not understand will decrease and you will become proud of the achievement you are making in your spoken language.

Record voice:

• Hearing yourself talk is a very important thing, so when you are having a conversation with someone through a language exchange program, make sure to record the meeting and listen to it later on. Be careful: ask for permission before you begin recording!
• After you are done with the session, wait a few days or a couple of hours at least, and then go back to the recording and listen to yourself talking; when you listen to yourself talking you will realize when and where you are making mistakes in the spoken language; after pinpointing the mistake, it is the time to begin working on finding a solution and learning the rules of the language in order to avoid making the same error in the oral language skills later on in future conversations.

Learn phrases not words:

• One very important aspect of learning how to improve oral skills in a specific language is to change the approach in which you are learning the language. It is not only about learning new words and then combining them to form complete sentences, but it is about learning phrases from the get-go. When learning a new language, one directly assumes that the correct strategy is to find the translation of a specific word from one language to another, but in most languages, it is more about learning a phrase as a whole rather than learning the words individually and then trying to combine them together with the correct grammar structure and sentence fluency.
• Therefore, when having different conversations with people, focus on the sentences as a whole, not only the words in the sentence – keep in mind, to be able to speak correctly one must be able to combine words together correctly, learning them combined will make the task easier to achieve.

Have fun:

• Learning is a stressful thing, and sometimes overthinking about speaking correctly would lead to a blockage in the mind and an inability to learn properly. It is always advised to make sure that you have fun while learning. It isn’t just about overthinking and worrying about sounding right and speaking right, but rather it is about enjoying the time and having confidence that the words and the flow will be achieved. With practice and repetition, the impossible becomes possible!

While sharing a conversation with a friend through language exchange programs, make sure that both of you are having fun; this could be done by simply and small activities and games. There are many online games that can be played with a friend that would somehow break the tension of learning and at the same time would be a way to learn.

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