15 ways to practice speaking English at home alone

Hello my friend, good to see you, how are you?

Great.

So listen, today,

I am going to give you lots of ideas about how to practice speaking English

when you are alone, at home.

'Home alone!' sounds like a film.

Are you ready?

Let's do it.

Hello! And if you don't know me, my name is Keith.

I run the “Keith Speaking Academy”

and the YouTube channel “English Speaking Success”

So listen, today we're going to be looking at how to practice speaking English

when you are alone at home.

It's not so easy for many people, right?

Because maybe you don't have any native English speakers in your city.

Maybe there are no tourists that you can go and harass.

Maybe there are no groups where you can locally where you can go and chat and

do English, speak English.

And maybe you're not ready to go on skype and try and find some random

English person to chat with.

Somebody you don't know.

I mean, that can be quite hard, especially if you're a little bit shy like me.

So what I want to do today is share with you

lots of ideas about how you can practice speaking,

when you're on your own at home alone.

Right, good.

Now, if you do know me, you may be thinking,

“What's that strange orange block over there? That wasn't there before.”

True and it's this is my meditating mat.

Sometimes where I sit and meditate sometimes.

I don't sit on the wall.

I’m just tidying at the moment, so I couldn't find a place to put it,

so right now it's over there.

Okay.

The truth about speaking is that yes, you can watch videos.

You can watch films.

You can listen to podcasts, all of that is great.

But at some point, you need to start speaking

and you can speak on your own but also later,

you'll need to start interacting and practicing speaking with people.

But that's not always easy to do and so right now today,

I’m going to focus on some really practical simple activities you can do

when you're on your own at home to start practicing speaking.

And just to add that, this video is actually sponsored by "Cambly"

Cambly are a fantastic online platform for you to learn English and practice English.

They have native English-speaking teachers.

You can choose anytime, any teacher.

It's really flexible and easy.

And if you are studying IELTS, they do have online IELTS courses,

that you can follow, right?

Lots of materials, lots of ideas.

So a big thank you to Cambly.

Thank you guys for sponsoring the video!

And also if you are new to Cambly, for the first time users,

you can get a discount.

Just use the code it's down here below:

keith-disc

and you can get a discount on all of their plans, whether they are monthly,

three monthly or for the year.

Great.

More about that later.

But right now, let's get into these ideas about practicing speaking English.

So the first technique is called “Speak into the mirror”

and this is really useful but it's really, really simple, right?

It's easy because you can do this first thing in the morning

when you're brushing your teeth or well, you can't speak and brush your teeth

but just before you brush your teeth.

And in the evening, before going to bed, when you wash your face,

what do you mean?

You don't wash your face in the evening?

Why not?

My mother always told me make sure you wash your face, clean behind your ears,

wash your neck, scrub your neck.

Yeah, wash your face before you go to bed.

It takes all the dust and pollution off your face, apparently.

Anyway, that's a great time that you can do it.

And this is good because the key

to learning and preparing for IELTS is habit, right?

And if you can attach your learning to an existing habit,

brushing your teeth or washing your face, then it makes it much easier.

Now I used to do this when I was learning Chinese and in the morning,

after brushing my teeth, I would just have a few sentences talking about

what I’m going to do today, in the future, right?

[Speaking Chinese]

right.

So today, I’m going to go to the park.

I need to go to the supermarket.

I’m going to buy some vegetables.

I’m meeting Jack at six o'clock.

I might go to the cinema.

All in the future.

Brilliant.

And then at the end of the day,

you can talk about what you did or what you have done, right?

Today I went to the park.

I played football.

I went shopping in the end.

I’ve done a lot.

It has been a good day, right?

Past tense, present perfect as well.

So you can see your--

it's actually great to practice different tenses.

It's a bit like writing your diary at the end of the day, right?

Which is also a great way to practice writing but this is speaking

in front of the mirror.

It's nice.

It's reflective learning in many ways.

Okay.

Moving on.

The next one I call “collocation fun”, right?

Collocations are words that are often used together, right?

Like we talk about heavy rain.

Heavy rain in English, we don't say big rain.

Today there's big rain, no.

There is heavy rain.

So these are collocations.

Collocation fun is where we're going to practice speaking.

Using a very common teaching method from

really based on the task-based approach to teaching.

And it's based on prepare, practice, present.

So we'll be preparing the words the collocations, practicing sentences

and then presenting a whole talk.

Okay.

Now, the reason I suggest doing this in front of the mirror

is that actually there are great benefits of talking to a mirror, right?

First of all, mirrors don't answer back like young children or wives.

But apart from that, right,

when you're speaking in the mirror, you can look at your mouth

and you can see the kind of movements that you're making,

which is great, right?

It's useful for pronunciation.

You can also check your body language.

You may be surprised to see that you speak like that

without ever moving your arms

or that you suddenly realize that I’m doing this all the time.

That's fine but it's being aware of your body language can be quite good.

And also you feel like you're talking to someone, right?

Many people I know and this happened to me, right?

I practiced for a long time with a book

and when I went to speak to somebody

in the foreign language,

it was like a shock seeing this face in front of me.

Oh my god!

But practicing with the mirror,

you've got used to a face in front of you, right?

So it does help.

So let's look then.

Prepare, practice, and present.

Preparing:

what I suggest you do here is you take a topic, right?

A recent topic.

We were studying in the live lessons was science, right?

And then get some collocations.

You can use your course book.

If you want you can get onto the internet.

You can go to this rather nifty little website.

This one called Keith Speaking Academy and in here, right,

you have got free live lessons.

You can go through to the free live lessons and there is a recent one on science.

So you can just download, right?

Download the document.

Yeah, we want to download that.

And then find in there all the collocations.

Look, you've got the notes here.

And here you've got collocations, you've got idioms, you've got loads of stuff.

And what I would do is I would take

maybe six or seven collocations or idioms like exact science,

it's not rocket science, to be on the same wavelength,

and that's the preparation, right?

That's step one.

Step two is in front of the mirror just make a sentence with it, right?

Exact science.

Well, parenting bringing up children is not an exact science.

Cooking is not an exact science.

Frying an egg, it's not rocket science it's actually quite easy, right?

And then, I’m just practicing sentences here.

And then in the end, after practice, present.

I take one of the old part two questions around science.

Maybe something like, describe an area of science you're interested.

And then start to talk about it, for maybe a minute and trying if possible,

to use some of these phrases and sentences, right?

So you may say something like this.

Describe an area of science you're interested in.

Well, okay.

I guess an area I’m interested in actually is cooking.

And I know it's not an exact science

but I guess it's a branch of science, a branch of food science, maybe, right?

And I am interested in the science behind cooking.

I think it's very interesting.

I know with cooking when you heat things up, they change

and when you mix different things, like sugar and vinegar,

you get different levels of acidity and chemical reactions happen.

So I think it's really interesting, right?

I think chefs and scientists are really on the same wavelength

because they're trying to experiment, discover new things

whether it's cooking or new dishes things like that.

I know cooking isn't rocket science but I am interested in how it works

and so yes, although it's not a hard science,

I think it's an interesting area of science for me.

So, you can see, what I’m doing really here is not giving a perfect part to answer.

I’m just trying to activate

and practice some of these expressions that I’ve been learning and that's it really.

So that's it.

It's great because that preparing the collocations,

practicing the sentences

and then presenting a talk is a really tried and tested method.

Do it in front of the mirror.

It's great.

You get everything.

You get the contact with somebody, you.

But you can see yourself.

You can monitor yourself.

It's really, really effective collocation fun, great.

I want to go and do it.

It sounds like so much fun.

I’m going to do it again right now.

I’ll be back in a moment.

And next up is practice with short audios.

Now I am a big fan of extensive listening, right?

Listening to podcasts and films that's great.

But when it comes to speaking,

I think short audios are much better.

They are bite-sized chunks, they're easy to use and

your concentration is shorter, for shorter periods of time.

You can work with for example, recorded IELTS sample answers.

There are many websites have those.

Not written, it must be recorded, right?

You want to listen and then speak.

There's a tool that I’ve talked about in the past to many of the students here.

It's called, “LingQ”

and I like it because it's full of short audios

that you can use to help start speaking.

And it's free.

I mean there is a paid version but you know, you can get lots of stuff for free,

which is great here.

So let me show you first of all, how that might work.

So this is LingQ, okay?

I’m not going to explain how it works.

You can find that out once you kind of sign up for free.

But basically, there's a library.

You choose your level here.

So let's say I’m going to go intermediate

and you can choose down here different audios to listen to.

I’ve got one of my previous lessons here about sport,

that I will open up.

And let me just show you briefly how it works.

We'll just focus on the bit on the left, okay?

Okay.

Let's try.

Hello Steven!

Hello Steve! Nice to see you again.

Nice to see you again.

So what I want you to focus on first is as you listen to the sentence,

pick out the stressed words.

Nice to see you.

Nice… see… you…

like to chat a bit about your interest in sports.

Chat… interest… sports…

so I’m just repeating the stressed words.

Chat… interest… sports…

sure.

You lived in Japan for quite a few years, I think.

Lived… Japan… years…

I think.

Right about nine years.

Nine years.

Okay.

So you can see, I’m just doing the word stress and also,

you can also pick out chunks or phrases that you like or that sound interesting.

…years and I think you lived in different cities.

That's right, I lived in Sendai for four years,

which is a little bit north of Tokyo.

A little bit north…

a little bit north…

that's interesting.

Which is a little bit north, right?

Not in the north, not located in the north is a little bit north of.

Nice.

Tokyo for four years and then one year down south in Shikoku.

Down south…

interesting.

Not in the south, down south.

Okay.

And did you play any sports when you were in Japan?

A little bit.

a little bit…

I love that.

A little bit…

a little bit…

played a little bit of soccer.

I played a little bit of soccer.

A little bit of soccer, isn't that great?

So you can see, I’m picking out either the stressed words or little phrases

or chunks that I like.

And this is really helping us listen and prepare for speaking.

Next, what you'll do after you've finished,

if you want you can check the tape script as you listen again, that's fine.

But at the end,

what I would like you to try and do is try to repeat the audio or the lesson,

giving a summary.

So repeating it with your words, not reading, not listening.

In fact, you can just close that.

And focus on your own words, right?

Oops.

And then after you've done that, and you've done a bit of practice, you could

then try to retell the lesson or the story and record yourself.

If you're not sure, you can use your, there's mobile apps to record your voice.

There's “vocaroo”,

which is also a very simple online voice recorder.

And recording yourself is great because it puts pressure on you.

And that my friend is good.

Also you can then once you've listened back,

go and compare to the original lesson or story with the tape script and see

if it's different.

Did you make a mistake?

Instead of saying a little bit of football, did you say a little bit football?

Or did you use different collocations, right?

Instead of individualized sports, did you say personal sports?

Something different.

That noticing, again, puts pressure on you, which is great.

And it also helps you notice.

A noticing language is a kind of feedback.

Which is essential to improve.

So that's it.

Practice with short audios.

Right, the next one is really fun.

And it's about “Imitating your favourite English-speaking actor or actress”

Okay.

So here, when you watch a film in English,

take some of the actors that you really like and pretend to be them, right?

So you're copying their body language, their gestures, their facial expressions,

their accent, their voice, their words.

You're copying everything.

Why does this work?

Because it's all about identity.

A key part of language learning is your identity as an English speaker.

And as students, we often have a mask or we can create a mask that we

hide behind when we speak a foreign language.

And this can be very, very helpful to reduce anxiety or stress.

Especially, if you're shy and or you don't want to--

you're embarrassed of mistakes and of not speaking correctly.

When you have this mask to hide behind, it doesn't matter

because you're being somebody else

and it's great fun to do this with actors and actresses.

Is that actresses?

Actresses that you like.

Let me show you a very, very simple example.

There's a great actor called Rowan Atkinson.

You may know him for Mr. Bean but he plays a myriad of characters

and one of the recent ones is Johnny English, right?

Let's have a look at Johnny English.

[Unintelligible]

I’m not sure [Unintelligible]

let me clear up the uncertainty for you.

You haven’t.

Let me clear up the uncertainty for you.

You haven't.

Right.

So it's that taking the character try and do the voice and the whole body

and you become that character

and you can do that when you're practicing speaking on your own, right?

You probably don't want to do it when you're out and about

at the shops or speaking to foreign people.

Hello!

They'll think you're Johnny English.

They think you're mad.

But when you're having fun at home, it can be a great way to practice.

So that's it.

Imitate your favourite English speaking actor.

The next one is “To send audio messages”, right?

Now, when you're using, if you're using Facebook, WhatsApp,

other social medias that have a chat facility, often we send text messages.

You probably send them in your own language

but you could think about sending them in English, right?

And go a step further,

send an audio message rather than a written message

because that will be practicing your English.

Okay.

You can do this if you have some friends who maybe speak English

or family members, you can have a bit of fun with them

practicing sending messages to each other in English or any other language, right?

I mean we do this sometimes, it can be quite fun to do.

And the great thing about sending audio messages

is it's not like a live phone conversation,

where the pressure is there.

You have time to prepare to think about what you're going to say

to record it and if you don't like it, delete it, record it again.

But it doesn't have to be perfect, right?

It's just about practice.

Not perfection, practice.

So sending audio messages is a great way to do it.

Next up.

“Imitate the English foreigner”

Now, I’m sure most people can imagine or know how English people speak

your language, right?

If you've got tourists or you've met people from other countries

who speak your language,

how do the English people speak your language, right?

Take that sound, that accent and start to use it.

So for example, let's imagine I’m Spanish.

[Speaking Spanish]

right?

And I’m thinking, so how do English people speak Spanish, right?

They don't speak perfectly.

[Speaking Spanish]

They speak with an English accent, right?

[Speaking Spanish]

So, the Spanish person would try and speak Spanish with the English accent.

[Speaking Spanish], right?

And then switch to English but keep that accent.

[Speaking Spanish]

hello, how are you?

I’m fine, thank you!

Can you hear that, that the same pronunciation and accent is easy to switch

and suddenly my English sounds English.

It sounds great.

Right, that's it.

I’m doing an example with Spanish but you could do it,

with any other language, right?

Think how English people speak your language.

Speak your language with that accent

and then switch to English

keeping that British accent or English accent or American accent.

It really can be quite, quite useful and fun to boot.

Great.

Now the next idea is “Shadowing”

Of course, a shadow right, if the sun is shining down

on the floor behind you, you have a shape the same as you, right?

Dark.

That's your shadow.

The sun leaves a shadow.

You leave a shadow.

And to shadow someone is to follow somebody.

So, if I shadow you, it means I’m following you.

Sometimes detectives will shadow suspicious people, right?

Now, in language,

when we shadow somebody it can be just to repeat them

but you're very close behind them,

right?

Remember wherever you go, your shadow follows very closely.

So here,

the thing to do is to find a short audio

and to listen for maybe a minute and to repeat

almost on top of the voice.

But maybe a fraction of a second behind them.

So you're just behind them

but you are really following them very, very closely.

Do not wait for the sentence to finish and then repeat

this is different.

This is being really close behind them

and it forces you to pick up on word stress and intonation,

and if you focus on those two things,

it really can help build up that speaking skill,

word stress and intonation.

Let me kind of demonstrate.

So we've taken from culips or culips,

a little audio.

First of all, I recommend you listen to the minute completely,

so you've got an idea of what it's about.

And I’ve already done that because I’m well prepared.

And then second time, you listen

and shadow.

Let me show you how close we are behind it.

I’m gonna use my phone so you can hear properly.

So Jeremy, let's get into it.

Talk about

how

to talk about pots.

How to talk about movies and music

and the kind of artwork that enriches our lives.

This topic was suggested to us

by one of our listeners and she sends us email,

which I will read for everybody.

Now it says…

[Unintelligible]

okay. I think you get the idea, right?

So it's different from

wait,

listen and repeat.

It's shadowing.

Following closely.

At first it's very hard but the more you do it,

the more you'll be noticing word stress,

intonation, even accent.

I noticed I was picking up a Canadian accent.

About, it's all about.

Right, that is shadowing.

Let's move on.

So we've had shadowing, right?

Now we're going to look at “Responding”

what is responding?

Well, put very, very simply, responding is

you hear a question,

you get an idea,

you give an answer.

You respond.

The biggest problem students have is that they practice.

They take a question,

they know the question,

they've prepared it

and they practice giving answers, right?

What happens in the exam?

Well, surprise, surprise in part three, you get strange questions

you weren't ready for.

What do you think of globalization?

Um.. Um… uh-uh…

and what do you do?

Well,

first of all,

have something to say about globalization, right?

Make sure you've done a bit of research on the topics.

Get some ideas.

If you don't know,

you can always say,

“Oh! I haven't thought about that.

Let me see”,

right?

Use a time filler

to gain time.

But the most important thing is that in your practice

as well as looking at these topics, right,

you need to practice responding.

Because in part three in the exam,

the biggest problem students tell me

is they don't have an idea.

“I didn't know what to say”

“I wasn't expecting that”

“I just couldn't get my ideas out and speak”

so you need to practice responding where you hear a question,

you've got no idea what it is,

you get an idea quickly and you answer, right?

It's a bit of pressure

but as I mentioned before, a bit of pressure is good in your practice.

Now you can do this if you have a speaking partner,

really effectively, right?

So what you do is one of you says,

“I’m going to bring in to our next session

five questions”

and you don't know what they are.

And the other person does the same.

You come into your session and you ask each other

these surprise questions

and it's a shock at first but it's like anything.

It's like going down the gym.

You just practice this and you build up the skill.

If you haven't got a speaking partner,

you can do a bit of practice on my YouTube channel, right?

If you know my YouTube channel, right, “English Speaking Success”

hidden away in the playlists,

go on the playlists.

There's lots here that you've probably never seen

and at the very bottom,

you'll see two called responding,

right? “Responding-Cities”

part one

and part three

and what I’ve done here is I’ve recorded several questions

with a gap

for you to answer.

And then the next question.

So if you go into for example, the part one

and you press the shuffle button,

the questions come at you in a random order

and it works a bit like this.

I mean, let me just play it for you and you'll see.

Let's press “shuffle”

and it plays automatically.

Do you like your hometown?

Oh! That's a good question.

Do I like my hometown?

Yeah, I think my hometown, Manchester,

which is

up in the north of England

is a very attractive place.

There's lots of restaurants and shops.

It does attract quite a few tourists as well

and they often come in to see the industrial landscape

or the football pitches.

We have a famous football team

called “Manchester United”

and Manchester…

Do tourists like to visit your hometown?

Yeah, there are quite a lot of tourists who come to visit my hometown.

So, you see what's happening, right?

It's just automatically asking me the next question

and I practice responding.

Because I don't know what the questions are because it's shuffle, random.

So, you can practice that.

You can also make your own, right?

Set up your own YouTube channel.

Don't worry about people finding it.

They rarely do

and you just put some questions up

with a gap

for the answer and then shuffle and Bob's your uncle.

Fantastic.

That's it.

The next suggestion is “Describe what you are doing”

and I know a lot of teachers suggest this as a way of

thinking in English,

right?

So when you're out and about, out-and-about,

when you're out and about maybe in the park and you're seeing different things,

you describe what you see.

Now I suggest you start with words, right?

So there you are

out and about

in the park and you see, oh bicycle!

Person,

path,

trees,

bag,

woman,

phone,

and you're using words, right?

And then, right, as you're walking around the park,

you make collocations,

little chunks of language, right?

Riding a bike.

A long path.

A cluster of trees.

The woman glued to her phone.

Picnic, having a picnic maybe, right?

And then you go on to make sentences, okay?

This is a bit like that we mentioned earlier.

The prepare, practice, present.

So you're going from words to collocation to sentences, right?

Oh! There's a man strolling

in the park.

There's a woman riding a bike

and also there are lots of trees.

There's a woman glued to her phone

and she looks like she's about to have a picnic.

And you go on and on and on, right?

Great, you can do it in any context.

You can do it at home

or when you're out, at the shops wherever.

Now, you may think and you may say,

“Yeah, but Keith,

you can't go round the streets

talking to yourself.

People think you're mad.”

Well, yes and no right?

Nowadays,

put these on, right? Nowadays,

people walk around

and they're on the phone and like,

“Hello! Yeah john, yeah, yeah, I’m in the park actually.

Yeah, it's lovely there's a man strolling over there.

There's a woman riding a bicycle.

Yeah, I’m good. How are you”, right?

That's perfectly normal to be talking to yourself in the streets,

right?

And

if you're not comfortable with that,

you can pretend that you're Johnny English, right?

Pretend you're a spy.

“Hello! Yes, there's a man walking along a path.

There's a woman riding a bicycle and I think

there's a woman glued to her phone

and she's about to have a picnic.

Call in the police.

Get Johnny English”

pretend to be a spy.

I don't know.

It's very, very normal but the key

speak out

and go from words to collocation to sentences.

Great practice.

You can do it at home as well.

I mean, I’m talking about getting some fresh air.

Nowadays, that's not so easy, right?

In fact, if you've got a little mask,

you could speak behind your mask.

Nobody need know

or just stay home and do it.

And the next one

is to “Sing in English”, right?

Find a song you like in English,

get the lyrics, sing along.

It's great way because why?

Because you pick up on melody, intonation,

connected speech,

contractions, weak sounds.

All those pronunciation features really come

out very strongly in songs through the melody.

So it really is a very powerful way to practice

and don't worry if you're out of tune,

I am Mr. out of tune.

Seriously, I just cannot

hold a note or a tune at all.

But that doesn't stop me singing in the shower or anywhere.

Because I enjoy it, right?

So don't worry about that.

Just practice.

If you're not sure where to go,

check out this website, right?

“Lyrics training” Again, there's lots of stuff for free

and you can have a bit of fun with it.

Let me show you briefly how it works.

Lyricstraining.com you can get it as an app,

which is probably the best way to do it.

But just to show you, I’ll go to the web.

You can choose any song on here.

Most of them come from

YouTube, I think.

But let's take, “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran and

then the “Game Mode” so you decide.

If you're a beginner, let's say I’m intermediate

and here we're going to fill random words.

So it's actually a game as well as practice.

Play the video to start the game.

I found a love I found a love... for me

I found a love for me... for me

darling, just… oh! Look at that. It stops,

if I don't give the answer.

For me.

Darling, just dive right in

right in dive right in

follow my lead

follow my lead

I found a girl

Was it and follow my lead?

And follow my lead

Well, I found a girl I found a girl

Here we go I think you get the idea.

Beautiful and sweet beautiful and sweet

I never knew you...

you get the idea?

Have a bit of fun with it.

So that's it.

Go and sing a song.

Next up is “Tongue Twisters”

Tongue twist,

things that are difficult to say.

And this really is a focus on pronunciation

but they're a lot of fun and they're good to try

and they help you focus on specific sounds

and they're fun.

The idea is to

repeat the sounds or the riddle, if you like,

three or four times until you get

more fluent with it

and basically it's a bit like a gym workout for your mouth

because again, one of the really important things about speaking

is in English,

you're using different muscles from your own language.

And very often, you're not practicing those muscles enough.

Tongue twisters are a great way to do it.

For example, right,

the ragged rascal ran round the ragged rock.

Good for your R’s, right?

Try it two or three times.

The ragged rascal ran round the ragged rock.

The ragged rascal ran round the ragged rock.

The ragged rascal ran round the ragged rock

or

see, I can't even say she.

She sells seashells on the sea shore.

She sells she…

she sells sea shells on the seashore.

It's better if you don't read it

because then you're focusing on the right sounds.

But that's the /s/ and the /ʃ/

it's really good.

You can make up your own, right?

Find the the consonants or the vowels that you struggle with.

Make them up.

It's mainly consonants actually.

Peter piper picked a pick a pekka pickle pepper...

you could just say well, Peter picked a plump plum.

Peter picked a plump plum, right?

Make it up.

Great way to practice, really good for pronunciation.

Next “Practice idioms with YouGlish”

Now YouGlish is an amazing website.

It's very, very simple to use.

It's basically like YouTube but with clips.

So you can take any phrase and I think about idioms here,

you input the idiom and it gives you lots of video clips using that idiom

and you just practice.

So you can imitate the intonation, the sound.

You can get some context for the idiom, which always helps, right?

And it's a really, really effective way to do it.

Let's have a look how it works.

This is YouGlish.

You put in basically a word or an expression.

Let's take for example, an idiom.

I don't know if you know this one.

Pull your socks up.

Which basically means to do better, to work harder,

to do better.

So to work harder to improve your performance if you like,

you need to pull your socks up.

My teacher at school would always say,

“Come on Mr. Ohare, it's time to pull your socks up”

So if we want to see this in different contexts,

so he's been told, “Come on, pull socks up, move”

That was so fast.

Let's move to the next one.

We're given eight clips here.

The next one.

You had to pull your socks up.

You had to pull your socks up, American, right?

You had to pull your socks up.

So you can hear and just, it's nice for repetition and

also context, which helps you.

That was how you got your network by improving, right?

That was how you got your network.

So you can move on try another one.

At a moment like this, pull up your socks.

At a moment like this, pull up your socks.

Pull yourself together and put down the phone.

Pull yourself together and put down the phone.

Right.

So, again, you can see the words.

You can rewind.

At a moment like this…

you can control the sound and you can check different examples

by just clicking on to the next one.

-Okay? -Pull up your own socks.

Pull up your own socks.

Thank you very much sir!

Right.

That's it.

That's YouGlish.

So that's it.

You can use it for vocabulary but I like it for idioms

because that's often

the difficult thing that a lot of students find to use naturally.

So any work you can do on idiom practice is gonna help.

Great.

Let's move on.

Right.

Okey-dokey.

Next up “Immerse yourself in English”

immerse, surround yourself in English.

I think, it's well known through research

that the more you can be immersed in English, the more you're going to learn.

I suggest you do a lifestyle audit.

An audit is like a check or a checklist, right?

So where do you use English?

and where do you use your mother tongue?

So think about when you're using your phone.

Using your computer,

think about the settings on your phone and computer.

Is it in English or your mother tongue?

When you're texting, sending messages,

participating on Facebook in English or mother tongue?

Listening to podcasts, watching films, listening to music, songs, reading books,

how much is in English and what can you switch to English

to help immerse yourself more in English?

Now a lot of this is passive, right?

Rather than actively speaking,

it's giving yourself the opportunity to listen, read and see more English

but also to use it in some of those cases like, on the phone or messages,

you can also be using English.

So, check out, do a lifestyle audit.

Now,

we're coming on to two really important points here

and these are much kind of bigger vision points.

First about “goals” and then about “habits”

So first goals.

Set yourself some short term goals about speaking English, okay?

If you just think I’m gonna practice and keep on practicing,

it's all very loose and airy-fairy and nice.

But you won't keep going.

I think people like frameworks, restrictions, limits, goals, paths.

Not everybody but it works well for a lot of people to set yourself a goal, right?

So for the next four weeks,

I’m going to speak English every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for 20 minutes,

that's it.

What's so good about that is that you can measure it.

You can just tick off.

And at the end of the four weeks, you can see how much you've done.

As you're ticking off, it's motivating you to keep going.

So it's nice to measure.

With goals, there's famous writer James Clear,

who talks about “Atomic habits”, right?

He talks about breaking down goals into smaller goals

and I think it's really important rather than saying

for the next six months I will practice an hour every day

which is very big and difficult.

Say, for the next week, I’ll do five minutes a day, right?

Set yourself up to win.

Make the goals really, really simple.

Five minutes a day, for the next week.

I mean that, you can't go wrong and once you've done that,

then you step it up and you make it more challenging, okay?

So do yourself a favour.

Set yourself up to win and on the point of goals,

there's going to be

a day where you're just too tired and fed up and you don't want to do it, right?

There's a little trick which is, it's called the “One minute trick”, right?

So you thinking,

today, I’ve said I’m going to speak for 10 minutes, right? But I just can't.

Oh! I’ve got the baby screaming. I’ve got to prepare dinner.

I’ve got this to do and that to do.

I just don't--

can't do it, right?

The one minute trick is you say to yourself,

“Okay, I’m just gonna take one minute to practice.

So instead of ten, today I do one minute.

But I don't stop.

I don't say I’m not going to do it. I still do it but just one minute”

and try that.

What often happens is after a minute, once you've started, you think,

I might as well do another couple of minutes now that I’ve started

and actually you often end up doing ten.

But the one minute trick is really powerful.

So check it out.

Next habits.

If possible, when you've got your goals and your speaking practice, try and do

the same place at the same time every day.

It helps build a habit.

And also if you have a cue, right?

That is the same, that indicates I’m going to do it.

The cue could be a time, right?

11 o'clock every morning, that's my English time.

Boom!

When I brush my teeth in the morning, remember?

In front of the mirror, that's my English time.

Two minutes just speaking about what I’m gonna do.

Have that cue same place, same time every day makes it much more easier.

No, much easier.

Classic, native speaker mistake.

So that's all about habits.

Finally you thought we would never arrive at the end, right?

The last piece of advice is to join a community.

Because often when you're speaking alone,

it can be a lonely experience, right?

So even though your practice is alone at home,

having some kind of contact with the community,

even if it's reading, writing, typing, can be very motivating.

So there are lots of Facebook groups,

I mean, I have one but you can choose any Facebook group.

If you want to find out mine, link below

but being a part of a community can really help just motivate you.

Even if you're not speaking, you can speak in my community.

Some people record themselves.

Great.

But you can practice at home on your own but just having people,

you're sharing your learning with is very powerful.

That is it.

All of these I hope interesting, useful and great ideas for you.

Great.

So there are lots of ideas there.

I hope you can take some of these

and start practicing speaking when you're at home alone.

I think it's all a question of confidence, right?

The more you speak, the more confident you get

and the more ready you are for your IELTS speaking test.

Also, I hope if you practice these, you can be ready to move up to the next step

because I do think it's also important to interact with people

and maybe this can help you get ready to find a speaking partner

or speak with a friend in English or even find a teacher,

where you can go and practice more and more.

Whichever way you go,

enjoy it and have fun with English as well.

I’d like finally just to say a big thank you again to Cambly.

Because if you are ready now for a teacher,

Cambly is a great place to go.

Online learning, you can choose which teacher you like,

the topics you want to discuss and when you want to practice.

It's great, right?

They can also record lessons.

They have in chat translations if you need it.

It's really great value for money.

So go and check it out and you'll get a discount.

Check out the details below for the first time users,

you can get a nice discount on their offer as well.

Brilliant.

So listen, thank you very much for watching.

If you've enjoyed the video, do like it, share it with others,

subscribe to the channel “English Speaking Success”

and that's it.

I look forward to seeing you very soon.

Take care my friend.

Bye-bye!