Better Speaking Podcast 🗨️🗣️ How to improve your fluency

Better Speaking, presented by Callum Robertson and

featuring interviews with Richard Hallows.

In today's programme, teacher Richard Hallows will be here

with some more help and advice to make us better speakers.

I think you need to practise a little.

And I think you need to practise often.

Don't do lots and lots of pronunciation practice,

but just be aware, and just do a little bit now and again.

English is used as an international language

in many different areas. Sport is one.

When a football manager from Korea,

Park Hang-seo, had to speak to a worldwide audience

about football supporters in his country,

he did so in English.

He explains that people in Korea like football very much,

but they liked to watch it at home on television.

Koreans, he says, don't like to go and see a match live in

a football stadium. They prefer to stay at home,

have a picnic or go with friends to have a drink.

In the house of Korean people,

they like football very much.

More than baseball and basketball,

but actually they do not want to visit a stadium.

Even if Korean people like football very much,

sometimes they want to go another place, like picnic,

or do other things at home.

Maybe Korean people like drinking so much.

Maybe if a person is asked whether you go to the stadium

or you join your friends in maybe a beer shop,

something like that, I think maybe Korean people choose the, er,

going to the beer shop. I don't know.

Park Hang-seo is someone who's overcome his fears of

speaking English to the point where he can talk to an

international audience in the language.

But what's he doing that makes him such an effective

user of the language? What's his secret to better speaking?

And with me again in this studio is

teacher and teacher trainer Richard Hallows.

Hello, Richard. Hi, Callum.

And this week, you've been listening to Korean football manager

Park Hang-seo. Here he is again: In the house of Korean people,

they like football very much, more than baseball and basketball,

but actually they do not want to visit a stadium.

Even if Korean people like football very much,

sometimes they want to go to another place, like picnic,

or do other things at home.

Maybe Korean people like drinking so much.

Maybe if a person is asked whether you go to the stadium

or you join your friends in a,

maybe a beer shop, something like that,

I think maybe Korean people choose the, er,

going to the beer shop. I don't know.

That was Park Hang-seo, a football manager from Korea there,

talking about crowds. Now, Richard, how successful

is this person as a speaker of

English as an international language? I think he's very

successful because he's using the few words he knows

in a very effective way.

If I can draw your attention to the example of beer, beer shop:

Maybe Korean people like drinking so much.

Maybe if a person is asked whether you go to the stadium

or you join your friends in a, maybe a beer shop,

something like that. He uses this word, it's not correct English,

but we understand what he wants to say.

The correct English is 'liquor store' in America, and in Britain

we would say 'off licence', but beer shop is

perfectly understandable. We know what he wants to say.

So, he's using his words in a very effective way.

And I think this is a good,

a good piece of advice for our listeners. So, even if you don't

know exactly the right word, you can still use other words to

get your meaning across clearly. Yeah, it's better to explain

your way around the word.

You use the words you have. For example, let me see if you can

guess some words I'm telling you. OK, I'm driving my car, and

suddenly I have a, oh, you know

when the air comes out of the tyre, there's a bang, and the air...

That's a puncture.

OK, so I didn't need to use that word.

You understood me perfectly well.

Maybe, OK, what do you call the thing that, you know,

I want to clean my teeth? That would be a toothbrush.

OK, so there we are. It's very simple.

It doesn't have to be a very complicated thing.

So, not knowing the exact word in English is not really

a big problem for communication.

No, absolutely.

So, he deals with vocabulary very well,

but if he were your student,

what things would you like him to work on?

OK, I think, you know, I think Park Hang-seo is,

is very understandable, but I think we could improve his

pronunciation a little bit. I'm thinking particularly of the

sentence stress that he uses. So, by sentence stress, I'm talking

about when you make a sentence, where does the stress go in

the, in the sentence? So, the strong part of the word.

Exactly. It's not, it's very even with Park Hang-seo.

Every word is stressed the same.

This can be a problem because it can sometimes

affect the meaning of what you want to say.

If I give you a sentence, see if you can work out what

the important part of the information is.

What, what am I trying to tell you? For example, if I tell you

Callum, I've got, I've got this big black cat.

Well, it's not a small cat, it's a big cat, because you stressed

'big'. Yeah, now I could say, I've got a big black cat.

So, the colour, this time, you've stressed the colour. So,

it's not a white cat. It's not a brown cat. It's a black cat.

Exactly. Or, I could even say I've got a big black cat.

So you've got a cat and not a dog. So, it's the same words,

but by putting the stress on a different place you, you change

the meaning, really. Yeah. Now you've got to be aware of

different stress patterns in your language, and by

knowing the differences, this is going to help you, you know,

to work out what you need to focus on, where,

where the differences lie, and what you need to do to make

yourself more understandable. And it's not only just

in sentences that stress is important as well, it's also

in individual words. Yeah, again, Park Hang-seo says they

like football. In the house of Korean people,

they like football very much.

He puts the stress on 'ball'.

It should be on 'foot'. Football.

And, so, again this makes not just the word difficult

to understand, but the whole phrase becomes quite difficult.

So, I suppose a problem is then,

that if you use the stress pattern from your own

language into English, it might not be the same and it might

cause some problems for understanding, possibly. Yeah. So,

again, in Korean, the stress pattern here is very even, and so you

need to be aware of that, and to see the differences.

A different language might have a stress pattern

where, for example, the ends of words  are stressed much

more than English. So, you need to see how, you know,

how you need to change that.

And have you got any advice or tips

for students to help them with this?

OK, when you learn a new word,

don't just think about learning the word.

There's so much more information

you need to add to that.

An important thing is checking the stress.

A good dictionary will always tell you the stress.

So, when you learn that word, learn the stress.

Mark it in your notebooks -

show, underline the syllable or mark it on top of something.

But mark the stress.

When, when you learn a word,

it's a good idea to say it out loud, with very exaggerated,

with very strong stress. So, for example, if I was

learning the word, I don't know, 'television',

yeah, I might say television. Television.

So, I really exaggerate it,

so, I can remember it.

It's all about remembering.

I think you need to practise a little and I think you need to

practise often. Don't do lots and lots of pronunciation practice,

but just be aware and just do a little bit now and again.

And, maybe if you can, try recording

your speaking, or have another person

listen to you and get some advice from them.

That's a very good tip there.

Richard Hallows, thank you very much.

Richard talked there

about what to do if you want to say something,

but you don't know the word or phrase in English, or you've

simply forgotten it.

He said that you need to talk your way around the

unknown word by using words that you do know,

just like Park Hang-seo

did with his use of the expression 'beer shop'.

This is something that Raphael from Spain has also discovered

as he he's learned to become a more fluent speaker of English.

As a non-native speaker, your vocabulary

sometimes is not as good as you, you like to be. So, in

many terms that you don't know when you want to express

something, and you don't know the right word for it.

You tend to just go around and trying to explain, explain it,

using different sentences

and trying to define how that thing is used for, in which way it is

used. And another thing we do, at least in Spanish, we do,

we use our hands

a lot as well, and the face and everything.

I mean, suddenly, the whole body,

body language becomes an integral part of the explanation.

And all of that just to say a simple word.

Better speaking means better communication,

and if it means using body language as well as your voice,

then that's as much a part of English as it is in any language

And now, just time to hear

today's Better Speaking tips again.

When you hear native speakers speaking English,

notice how certain important words are stressed in a sentence.

Think about how English sentence

stress is different from the sentence stress in your

own language.

When you meet a new word

and you write it down in your vocabulary book,

don't forget to mark the stress - which syllable is stressed

in the word.

If you're not sure, look in a good learners' English Dictionary.

The stress will be shown in there.

You can practise word stress by saying the word

and repeating it, giving the stressed syllable

exaggerated emphasis,

for example: 'vocabulary', 'vocabulary'.

If  you're  speaking English, and you can't think of the right word,

don't stop or stumble.

Explain your way around the word

you don't know by using words that you do know.