English Speaking

DOs and DON'Ts

If you want to improve your English speaking, there are lots of things you should do, and some things you shouldn't do.

Click Here for Step-by-Step Rules, Stories and Exercises to Practice All English Tenses

Here are my top tips!

DO's

1. Practice as much as possible.
   
   Practice may not make you perfect, but it will make you better. (Perfection comes after LOTS of practice!)
   
   
2. Listen to as much English as you can, preferably spoken by native English speakers.
   
   Speaking involves listening, so you shouldn't neglect this.
   
   
3. Use new vocabulary as soon as you can.
   
   Making your vocabulary 'active' is a very important part of improving your speaking.
   
   
4. Speak with lots of different people.
   
   If this is possible, it will improve your speaking. Everyone speaks in a slightly different way, so talking with people who have different accents and different styles of speaking will help you.
   
   
5. Ask friends to correct you.
   
   If you have a good friend who speaks English, ask them to correct you sometimes. The more you use the correct version of English, the more you will start to know what 'feels' right.
   
   
6. Try different things.
   
   Use English in different situations. For example, when you are shopping, asking for directions, general conversations, on the telephone, etc.
   
   
7. Join a conversation class.
   
   If you can't do this, then join any kind of club or society (a group of people who meet for a particular purpose) where you will be able to talk in English.
   
   
8. Ask people to repeat something if you don't understand them.
   
   Or you could ask them to say something in a different way, or slower. If you are not sure if you heard them correctly, then repeat information back to them. It's better to check than to get something wrong.

DON'Ts

1. Don't be shy!
   
   One of the major reasons why students don't improve their spoken English is because they are too shy to speak.
   
   Maybe they are worried about making mistakes, or sometimes they are just naturally shy people.
   
   Don't worry. People will know you are not a native English speaker, so they won't expect you to get everything 100% right.
   
   It is better to try and to make mistakes, than not to try at all.
   
   
2. Don't try to be perfect.
   
   Even English speakers make mistakes sometimes!
   
   
3. Don't worry about having a 'perfect' accent.
   
   As long as your pronunciation is good enough for people to understand you, don't worry if you can't pronounce all the sounds correctly.
   
   If you are worried about your pronunciation, there are lots of videos on the internet that can help you.
   
   
4. Don't spend a long time trying to remember a particular word.
   
   If you can't remember the word for something, then think of a different way to say it.
   
   For example, if you can't remember the word 'kick' and you're talking about soccer, you could say, "hit the ball with your foot."
   
   
5. Don't ask an English-speaking friend to do all the talking for you!
   
   Sometimes it's easier to let someone else speak for you, but you won't improve if you do this.
   
   
6. Don't rely on internet text chats.
   
   These may help your vocabulary, and possibly your reading and writing, but will not help your speaking. If you are talking to friends online, then use a program like Skype, where you can have voice conversations over the internet, often with video.

If you follow this advice, then your English speaking should improve. Good luck!

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