How to Improve your English Speaking BY YOURSELF

Private teachers, group classes,  speaking clubs, online courses,  

conversation partners, language exchange  websites and so on. There’s so many  

things we have access to these days to  improve our speaking skills in English.

But let’s assume that for whatever  reason you can’t do any of that.  

Because it’s different for each person  and we all have different circumstances. 

But you really want to be able to speak  English or you really want to or need  

to improve your speaking skills. And your  only option is to do this on your own. So,  

what do you do? How do you achieve this goal?

I have videos where I mention or talk about  this way. But let me just briefly summarize  

it for you and remind you about  how you can improve your speaking  

skills significantly all by yourself. But first, I want to get into a couple  

of the most effective exercises to work  on your speaking and then I’ll tell you  

about that one best way to improve your  speaking by yourself, that I swear by.

My number one go-to exercise that I  recommend to everyone is shadowing. 

If you really make yourself do it regularly  I promise you’ll see amazing results. 

This exercise works wonders. If you  want to learn more about it click the  

links in the description to watch  the videos where I talk about it.

Next, I recommend that you practice your  speaking using my dialogue videos.( a Little  

self-advertisement “) Based on the feedback that  I’ve got from you guys on those videos I can  

proudly say that this method has helped  a lot of you to improve your speaking. 

In those videos we basically have  a conversation where you and I have  

our lines and I say my line and then  you will see your line on the screen  

and you need to read it out loud off of  the screen as if you were answering me. 

And I also perform the full  dialogue for you. It’s easy and fun.

Another way is to find dialogues  online and read them out loud. 

Oh, before I forget to mention this. You  need to speak out loud. I hope it’s clear.  

Cuz there’s no chance of improving  your speaking if you don’t speak.

These two exercises that I just suggested are  easy but so effective. Easy because you don’t  

need to come up with your own sentences. You have  everything all set and done and ready for use. 

Effective because the more you actively  use the language,- the better and easier  

you learn and memorize things, including  grammar, sentence structure patterns,  

vocabulary. Everything just falls into places.  On one condition of course - consistency.

And one more exercise that will  help you tremendously not only  

improve your speaking skills but  also learn to think in English is-  

to answer questions or speak on  some topic in English freestyle. 

Answer who’s questions you may ask. Well…Google’s. Search for IELTS speaking test questions  

or small talk questions which by  the way will come in very handy.

Now, let’s get to the one very thing that  you probably won’t like but will need to  

do in order to really improve. This way is  truly the best and it is tried and true. 

You will need to record yourself speak. Nowadays  

we all have phones with cameras  so this shouldn’t be a problem. 

I know I know…Awkward, awkward,  awkward. You feel awkward recording  

yourself and speaking to yourself. First of all - nobody has to see  

those videos. Second you’ll get used to it. But believe me you need this. You need it  

anyways but especially because you’re working  on your own and there’s nobody to correct you.

When you listen to yourself back, you  can catch your mistakes that otherwise  

you wouldn’t even notice you make, whether  they are pronunciation or grammar mistakes  

and you can correct them. I’m telling you this  from my own experience making YouTube videos. 

You won’t believe how many takes I needed  to take at the beginning to say something  

right. I could completely butcher  a word or the whole sentences.or,  

for whatever reason, I could just drop some  words from a sentence or my intonation was  

totally off and consequently the message  wasn’t properly delivered. But at the  

moment of speaking I didn’t realize that and  thought that everything sounded pretty good.

But when you listen to yourself you can  catch all of that, analyze and correct. 

And the more you do this the less  you eventually need to do this.

If you don’t know what to talk about or find  it difficult to structure your thoughts,  

you can start with dialogues. You can come up  with them by yourself or find them online. Or,  

again you can use my dialogue videos  that are called “Speak English with  

me”. I’ll link the playlist with all  of those videos in the description. 

So, you can use those already put together  dialogues. You can record yourself reproducing  

the full dialogue or you can you can simply  answer me just like the video suggests. 

Moreover, this way you will have  something to compare your speech to.

When you read dialogues out loud  don’t forget to record yourself.  

When I worked with people on their  pronunciation using shadowing, I swear,  

people would always drop words out of sentences  they just heard or the ones they were reading,  

or replace them with other words  and they wouldn’t even notice that.

You can also choose a little fragment of any video  or podcast where a native speaker speaks. Practice  

that fragment and recreate it on video. Again, it’s important to record yourself  

because we make mistakes or drop  words not even realizing it.

And of course when you just speak freestyle,  just expressing your own thoughts,- you need  

to record yourself. This will help you  identify the things you need to work on. 

If you don’t know what to talk about  you could think of this,- sometimes  

there’s things we want to say to others but  can’t and just saying them to yourself out  

loud helps to get that burden off your  shoulders. This can be very therapeutic.  

Recording yourself is a very powerful  tool that I suggest everyone use,  

even those who work with teachers. Establish an everyday speaking  

practice routine and get into this. A couple of months of doing this will be worth  

years of studying English by means of tests. Plus this is a very good way to keep track  

of your progress that in turn  will help you stay motivated.