Learn English: How To Speak Better English (Practice)

© Harish Jharia

In the “Fourth Step to Speaking English (Practice)”, we will discuss the right ways to practice English speaking. If we repeatedly, keep speaking all types of words and sentences including those needs ‘tongue twisting’… during real English conversation, then only we would become perfect in English speaking.

Fourth Step to Speaking English (Practice)

In the “first, second and third steps to speaking English”, we discussed the importance of thinking and speaking both in English, simultaneously, while speaking this language.

We also discussed the intricacies and technical tricks for gaining perfection in English speech. Nevertheless, the real hard work is yet to be discussed. Once we have located the steep uphill way for our goal, then we are left with the most laborious job to scale the heights all by ourselves.

The more we speak and use our tongue and voice the better would be the results. English is a tongue twisting language when it comes to speak it fluently. There are many words that are not that easy to pronounce for the first time, because it needs a proper twist of our tongue to speak them in an appropriate way.

Some tongue twisting words are as follows:

1. Vulnerable
2. Pleasure
3. Environment
4. Repercussion
5. Extraterrestrial

The main time-tested ways to practice English speaking are as follows:

1. Interact with your siblings or friends
2. Read newspapers or books aloud
3. Listen to English news on TV
4. Do not hesitate to clear doubts with anyone

Interact with your siblings or friends:

Speaking any language is the only way to be fluent in it. We need to speak as much as possible. Either right or wrong just keep speaking; there is no other way.

Now, the question is as to with whom should we speak? The answer is our nearest ones. Select someone who continues to be with us most of the time and decide to speak between ourselves, only in English. He / she might be our siblings or friends with whom we spend most of the time in our day-to-day life.

It is not essential that our partner for practicing English is expert in this language. Anyone who has a working knowledge of basic speaking in English would be quite helpful.

Read newspapers or books aloud:

Any language other than our mother tongue carries certain tongue-twisting words or combination of words with those we feel uncomfortable while pronouncing them with fluency. We usually fumble while speaking or sometimes stammer, as our tongue does not synchronize with our mind in producing the end-results.

Hence, we will have to get our tongue used to such typical pronunciations by speaking those words and combination of words repeatedly all by ourselves.

‘Vulnerable’ is one such word that gave me a real hard time, while I tried to speak it in a sentence. I could some how speak it as an individual word; nevertheless, I just fumbled while pronouncing it with a smooth flow in a sentence.

The best way to practice to overcome fumbling with tongue-twisting words or combination of words is ‘reading aloud’. In our day-to-day academic preparations, we need to read books and we read newspapers and magazines.

Just read it loudly by using your tongue and throat. By doing so, we put your tongue and throat on a job synchronizing with the commands issued by our mind. When we do it repeatedly, our tongue develops a natural instinct to produce a desired sound and eventually pronounce it without any hesitation.

Once natural instinct is developed, we achieve expertise in speaking even tongue-twisting speeches smoothly.

Listen to English news on TV :

An eight-month child learns speaking by hearing our speech and copying the same from us. Hearing impaired people cannot speak. Hence, for learning perfect English we need to hear someone speaking English.

Speaking a language other than our mother tongue is not a physical exercise and cannot be done by solitary practice. Speaking includes specific phonetic reproduction and for achieving perfection in it, we need to hear that sound so that we could learn to emulate the same sound with synchronized twist of tongue and orientation of throat vis-à-vis blowing air at a controlled throttle.

The easy and abundantly available source of perfect English speech is the news bulletins read on radio and TV. We should make it a regular habit of listening at these bulletins carefully.

It is better to listen to Indian English news rather than going for CNN or BBC or any other foreign media. I personally consider Indian English as the best for Indians to speak because, people in different countries speak English with different pronunciations and accents. If we try to learn from English spoken by British, American, Australian or Canadian people than we would end up in confusion and ambiguity and would not be able to pickup any style.

We have discussed this point in the previous resources; links to those are given at the end of this article. Please visit those resources for more information on this.

Do not hesitate to clear doubts with anyone:

We should remember that we are learners and are at the receiving end. Hence, we should not permit our ego to intercept our pursuit. We should tell our friends to feel free and point-out our mistakes. Subsequently we can find out the ways to rectify our mistakes.

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Read more articles on similar subject: Click on the following links
Discover Life: Speaking English- 1  
Discover Life: Speaking English- 2  
Discover Life: First Step to Speaking English (Words)  
Discover Life: Second Step to Speaking English (Sentences)  
Discover Life: Speaking English (Speech)  
Discover Life: Speaking English (Practice)
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