5 Smart Ways to Improve your English Speaking Skills

- Hello, listen, do you feel like, you know,  you're not making progress with your spoken  

English like your stuck? Well, today I'm gonna  help you. I'm going to give you five tips,  

right? Five simple things you can do every day  that will help improve your spoken English and  

help you get well unstuck. So you can do really  well on the ESL speaking test. Are you ready? Then  

come with me. Hello again, so my name is Keith and  I run the Keith Speaking Academy here to help you  

speak better English, give better answers and  get a higher score on the IELTS speaking test.  

So maybe right. You've taken the IELTS test  several times, but you're stuck at the same level,  

maybe a Band six or a 6.5. There may be several  reasons for this. And today I'm going to look  

at the most common problem for being stuck,  right? And actually, it's not that you need  

more technique, exam technique or tips. It's  just that your overall level of spoken English  

is too low. So the English in your head might be  great. But when you speak, it's just not the same.  

As a student, one said to me, he said, you know,  when I'm I've got ideas in English, the English in  

my head it's like driving a Ferrari. It's great.  But then when I speak, it's like a car crash.  

Which is a great image, I  think for many, many students.  

So today I'm going to address that  and help you improve your spoken  

English with these five tips. I'm going to  look at the following, how to learn, speaking  

how to automate your vocabulary, how to  increase fluency how to gain confidence  

and how to make sure you're choosing the right  tools to help you, right? Okey-dokey, let's begin.  

So, first of all, how to learn speaking  or how to learn how to speak the most  

important tip here I think is to learn speaking  by listening. Unfortunately, many students  

around the world learn speaking with books, by  looking at words by reading and reading aloud.  

Why? Well, probably because their teachers told  them and the reason their teachers told them is  

because they learned that at school too. And  I think one reason is in the past there was no  

access to the native speaker voice,  right? But the world has changed and  

unfortunately education has not changed  but it needs to. Why is this important?  

Because the speaking and writing are two different  systems, right? A bit of history to explain.  

I like history, we have been speaking right  for over 10,000 years we have only been writing  

for maybe four or 5,000 years, right? We began  writing with the Egyptians and the Sumerians  

with their cuneiforms in about 3000 BC. Speaking  came first. Writing was a way to capture what we  

say. And grammar is a way to capture what  we speak. And it does a pretty good job,  

but it's not perfect. And yet still so many people  choose the books to help them learn to speak.  

It's the other way round, right? We should start  with the speaking and the listening and the books  

come later. It's a bit like, right? Imagine like  Messi, the football player comes knocking on your  

door with his football. And he says, "Hey, Keith  would you like to come and play football with me?"  

And you go, "No actually, I'm just going to  stay at home and read this book about football."  

What? Why would you choose to read about it when  you can be doing it? Right, learning really well.  

I mean, the book can be useful maybe later  but start with the doing right start with  

the listening and the speaking. And the writing  comes later learning by listening. If I haven't  

convinced you let me finish with convincing you  learning by listening has the following benefits,  

right? First of all, you learn natural spoken  English. You know that the language is spoken,  

not written. You learn pronunciation, you  get the context. So you know how to learn,  

how to use the language when you're speaking,  it's a no brainer. You must begin by listening,  

right? And I said earlier, right? The world  has changed. We can now. We are surrounded by  

native speaker texts or proficient  speaker audio texts, videos, Netflix,  

YouTube. You can get it anywhere. Keith Speaking  Academy, if you've heard of that. There are audios  

all over the world at the click of a button. So  start using it. Learn your speaking by listening.  

Okay, number two. How to automate vocabulary.  I love that word automate. Great word, Keith.  

Yes. What does automate mean? It's a good  question. And I'm glad you asked to automate  

something is to make it automatic. Like  without thinking, do you know the phrase  

autopilot to do something on autopilot?  Sometimes I'm driving on autopilot. It just means  

I'm driving without thinking at the same time.  So you may know actually I have a fluency course  

and the strong focus of the fluency course is to  automate grammar. So we look at maybe 16 different  

grammatical items and through practice automate  them. So you're using them without thinking.  

Now you can do the same with vocabulary. Automate  your vocabulary. How'd you do it? Very simple tip,  

tried and tested method, repeat and juggle. Right?  Repeat and juggle. What do I mean by that? Well,  

first of all, you find something to listen to,  right? Remember what I said in tip number one,  

learn, speaking through listening. You listen  to something and you repeat a word or a phrase,  

maybe a collocation, right? So you're listening  to something, for example an audio tape.  

And it says, I love Paris and you go  stop. I love Paris and you repeat,  

right? That's the repeat easy peasy. The juggle  is that you then change a word. What is juggle?  

Good question. Let me show you juggle, right?  Oranges, like the magician. This is juggling.  

Now why do I call it juggling? I  don't. Why do I call it juggling?  

Because you take a word and you change  it. Right, so in our example, I love  

Paris. I changed the word Paris. I love  Hanoi. I love New Delhi. I love Manchester,  

right? Easy, now you can juggle by changing  the word or you can change the tense.  

I love Paris. I loved Paris. I will love Paris.  I used to love Paris. I'm sure I would love Paris  

if I could go there, right? So you're juggling  the tense. Very, very simple, listen, repeat  

and juggle. And that formula starts to get  you automatically using and hd wiring, the  

vocabulary making it active and more automated.  Now actually, as I said, education has changed,  

right? We are now surrounded by audio and video.  There's lots of it. And there's lots of really  

good tools you can use. I came across one the  other day that I thought was really really good.  

And I'm going to show you very briefly, how it  works gives you access to lots of audio and video  

and helps you do this repeating and juggling.  Let me show you. So let me show you this app,  

right? I've downloaded it off the Apple store.  I'm on my tablet over here. This is it. Over here,  

Woodpecker. And once you go in there, let me  go inside the screen and show you how it works.  

So we've got the whole bunch of YouTube videos. If  you've got Netflix, you can go in and sign in and  

access your Netflix videos. You can go on the  web browser and also get some websites here.  

And there is a built-in dictionary. I think  now let's imagine in YouTube if you want to  

select by topic, you can. So if you're interested  in, I don't know, in books you can find all the  

videos which are related to books. You can  also choose by the channel if you prefer  

or choose by the teacher. So all of your famous  English teachers are on here. So let's go into,  

let's see how we can actually use the  repeat and juggling technique in a video.  

If we go into this video here, right? You  can see, you can watch the video. Great.

- [Narrator] When people ask me what I do

- The tape scripts all the way through  

the video is here with timestamps.  So I can click on any timestamp

- [Man] He was very popular in its time and.

- Pause and I can repeat that, right?  He was very popular in his time.  

I can check the meaning of a word by pressing on  it. It tells me the meaning of popular well liked.

- [Lady] Popular.

- Dictionary voice. But if I press  the timestamp, it'll just repeat.

- [Man] He was very popular in his time.

- He was very popular. He was  very popular. Press the timestamp.

- [Man] He was very popular in  his time. He was very popular.  

Great and now I can juggle. I can change  the end. He was very popular 10 years ago,  

he was very popular two years ago, he  was very popular a year ago. And so on.

- [Man] He was very popular in his time.

- Total flexibility to be, to move around  and be repeating and juggling. Absolutely  

brilliant. Great, so that's it. Tip number  two. Listen, repeat and juggle. Let's move on.  

Right, number three. How to increase your fluency  when speaking? So the tip here is focus on chunks.  

So what are chunks? You ask. Chunks or pieces of  language typically two words together, or maybe  

three or four words that go together normally. So  your chunks may be, for example collocations like  

heavy rain, right? We don't say big rain. We say  heavy rain. These words go together. Like friends,  

they stick together. Chunks could be idiomatic  expressions like kick the bucket, right? Meaning  

to die. He kicked the bucket, kick the bucket.  It could be a filler like on top of that, right?  

When we say on top of that, you don't want to be  thinking is it in top, on top, on top of this, on  

top of that you don't want to be thinking you want  a ready-made chunk on top of that. So you learn  

the chunk without thinking about all the words and  this, as you can imagine speeds up your fluency.  

I mean, take collocations. Let's take the word  shopping, for example, right? When you learn the  

word shopping you should also learn some common  collocations, right? You can go to a website like  

ozdic.com, brilliant website giving you instant  collocations. And you'll find things like, well  

weekly shopping, online shopping, late night  shopping a shopping spree or shopping hours,  

right? These are chunks of language that if you  learn them you can use them much more flexibly.  

You don't have to think, right. Somebody says,  you know, what did you do at the weekend?  

Or I did my shopping, you know for Monday  to Saturday, you know the shopping for  

the week. Oh, you mean your weekly  shopping? Yes, I did my weekly shopping.  

If you learn the collocation it just helps you  become much more fluent. It's very simple when  

you think about it, right? When you learn words,  one word you have to think about putting them  

together. When you learn chunks you don't have to  think about putting the words together. You just  

think about putting the chunks together, imagine  this, right. Imagine a builder, building a house.  

And he's using bricks. And he puts the bricks one  by one. He puts the bricks on top of each other.  

That's quite slow and takes time to build a house.  But now imagine somebody has a new invention and  

gives him four or five bricks in a layer glued  together. And all he has to do is put the layers  

of bricks on top of each other. It's much faster.  And what's more, the house is gonna be better  

because it'll be more accurately aligned. It's  more accurate. And it's the same with language,  

right? Using these layers or chunks, more  accurate, it's faster. It's faster. You become  

more fluent. So when you're learning vocabulary  think and learn and use chunks Let's move on.  

Right tip number four, right? How to gain  confidence? While here my tip for you is push your  

comfort zone. Your comfort zone are, is the area  of doing things where you feel comfortable. So  

maybe you learn English by watching a film. You're  comfortable. You read a book you're comfortable  

but then somebody says, well, listen  why don't you record your voice? Oh no,  

I'm not very comfortable. No, no, no. Oh, why  don't you get a speaking partner on Facebook?  

Oh no, no, no, no, no. I'm not comfortable  with that. Why don't you go join the classes  

down the road? Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no.  I'm not comfortable with that. And so you're,  

there's almost a fear if you like of breaking  your comfort zone. But when you use English  

in the world you are going to have to interact  with other people speak to strangers, be nervous,  

make mistakes have other people sometimes laugh  at your mistakes. It's going to happen. So get  

used to it and believe it or not. When you do the  IELTS speaking test, you do it with a real person.  

Yes, the examiners are real people and  you will have to get used to being nervous  

get used to making mistakes in front of them. Get  used to those feelings of being uncomfortable.  

How do you get used to it? Push  your comfort zone do these things  

that make you uncomfortable, right? And  I think one of the best things you can do  

really is practice with other people. Yes, you  can practice speaking on your own. That's great.  

But to take your confidence up to the next level  you should practice with other people. You know,  

I'm a big fan of platforms like italki and  Cambly or Facebook for finding, you know,  

speaking partners. But by doing that you're  gonna be practicing with other people. Yes,  

you will feel uncomfortable. But the great news is  you will get used to feeling uncomfortable. You'll  

get used to feeling nervous. You'll get used to  making mistakes in front of other people. And then  

by pushing your comfort zone you'll be in a  much stronger position and have more confidence  

to face the aisles and examiner on test  date. So go out and push your comfort zone.  

Good talking of tools. Let's move on to the  next tip number five. It's all about tools.  

Right, tip number five. All about choosing  the right tools, right? My suggestion here,  

tip number five is immerse yourself in natural  spoken English. It's all well and good,  

right? Having a course book having a teacher and  practicing with English, which is for students  

but it's really important you don't forget the  real world and that you also engage and immerse  

yourself in natural spoken English, which is not  for students which is used by not normal people.  

By native speakers or proficient level speakers  of English. Why is this important? Well, because  

teachers are great, right? But teachers and  course books normally limit the language,  

they expose you to. They speak slowly. They  correct you. They're polite. They encourage  

you. It's kind of an artificial bubble where you  can build up your confidence and that's great.  

But also the real world is a bit different,  

right? People are not so polite. They may not  correct you. They speak quickly. They expect you  

to understand there is no mercy in the ESL out  speaking tests, you must answer straight away.  

So there's pressure, right? So I think having of  course have the teacher the course and the book.  

That's great, but also make sure you're immersing  yourself in spoken English. And this connects with  

a lot of things I said earlier, right? About  listening, learning, speaking by listening  

about using different tools. So nowadays there is  so much opportunity and I'm sure you know, through  

videos and podcasts that you can find on the  internet on your television or through your radio  

if you still have a radio. Call me old fashioned,  if you will. But there's lots of opportunity  

to be listening and watching. I think it's  great to be looking at news broadcasts.  

Current affair shows, chat shows interviews  with people. Great, natural English,  

TED talks can be great. Obviously films are good.  I mean, bear in mind, films are scripted. So that  

semi natural but still a great source  to immerse yourself in English. And also  

there's the tool that I mentioned earlier, right?  Which I think has a great balance because it's  

the Woodpecker Learning app. It gives you not  only access to ESL stuff so stuff for students,  

but also the real world stuff. You get access I  think to hundreds of thousands of videos that you  

can choose from on the app and be watching them  all in one place, lots of, lots of them have got  

subtitles, right? So that gives you the support  if you want the written support. But it's a  

great opportunity to submerge yourself or immerse  yourself in the natural English language. Go and  

check it out. I'll put a link in the notes below.  You can go and download it. It's out on Google and  

Apple. Go and have a look and let me know. Here  you go. Let me know in the comments below what  

you're watching on the app now to help improve  your English, go and check it out. It's free.  

Of course, lovely. Let's move on. So listen, those  are my five tips to help you improve your English  

speaking skills. So we've looked at how to learn  speaking by listening how to automate vocabulary,  

repeat and juggle how to increase fluency with  those chunks how to gain confidence by pushing  

your comfort zone and how to use the right  tools and immerse yourself in English. Great  

and I think, I mean, remember these are tips  but it needs day to day practice be patient,  

but be persistent. Keep practicing day  after day. That's what it's really all  

about because we're talking about increasing  your overall level of English. It takes time,  

but it's fun. It's great. And I hope with these  tips, it will help you maybe move from being  

a struggling IELTS student to being a successful  IELTS speaker. Now that would be nice.  

Wouldn't it? Great, that's it. Please do  subscribe. Remember to turn on notifications  

on YouTube so you can find out about my  upcoming videos. Do leave me a comment below.  

Let me know what you're watching or listening  to to help improve your English today.  

Brilliant, as always it's been fun and a  pleasure. Take care, my friend. Bye bye now.