You’re not dumb: How to FIX your ENGLISH FLUENCY

I'm struggling with speaking.

My writing is zero.

I struggle with speaking.

I can't find the suitable.

When I try to speak, I forget.

I can't.

They aren't going to understand me.

I don't want you to struggle with  your English fluency anymore.

My goal is for you to feel proud because  you can use your English confidently.

My goal is for you to feel motivated because  every day your English fluency improves.

To do that, today you're going to learn 8 daily  practices to improve your English fluency.

Welcome back to JForrest English.

Of course, I'm Jennifer.

Now let's get started.

To help you remember these eight daily practices,  I've created a framework called Speak U.

This framework is simple, easy to follow, and  it will improve all areas of your fluency.

So let's review it together.

The S in this framework stands for Speak.

I receive comments every day saying,  Jennifer, I'm struggling with my speaking.

And that's why the first daily practice  is to speak, to speak out loud.

So how can you do this?

Because I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking, Jennifer, I don't have any.

Want to speak to Jennifer?

I live in a country where  there are no native speakers.

Well, guess what?

The good news is, and I'm being serious,  you don't need anyone to speak to.

Are you serious?

You can absolutely improve  your speaking on your own.

You just need to speak out loud.

So how can you do this?

How can you speak out loud?

Well, you can choose a topic and you can give  yourself one minute to speak on that topic.

Now, while you're doing this, I recommend  recording yourself because when you record  

yourself and listen first, you're  getting comfortable with the sound  

of your voice because most likely you  don't like the sound of your voice.

I need that nice voice.

This book has my voice.

I hate my voice.

You'll also be able to notice areas for  improvement and then you can make it  

your goal to improve those areas  and focus on one area at a time.

Now, if you're thinking, well, Jennifer,  I don't know what topic to use,  

don't worry because there is this great  website called Random Question Generator.

You can just Google that  random question generator.

And what this website does is you press a  button and it generates a question for you.

So all you need to do is generate a  question, hit record and speak for  

one minute and then generate the next  question and speak for one minute.

If you do this five times, you just  practice speaking for 5 minutes.

And remember this is a daily practice,  

so just aim for 5 minutes every day  and if you can do longer, that's great.

Now let's move on to P Plan your day in English.

You just practice your speaking.

So let's move on and practice a different skill.

And in this case, we'll focus on your writing.

I know this is an area that  many students struggle with,  

like this one student who said my writing is 0.

So to fix that, you can plan your day in English.

And you do that by just  opening up a Word document.

Or you can get a pen and piece  of paper if you prefer and just  

write down whatever comes to mind about your day.

Maybe you're going to write your To Do  List the things you need to do today.

Maybe you can write your goals for the day so you  can plan out your day and with this activity is  

also forcing you to use the future tense and  maybe the present simple or other verb tenses.

But it's a great way to practice writing  in different verb tenses as well.

Our next letter in our framework is E.

This stands for emulate, emulate natives.

Do you know what the word emulate means?

Well, it means imitate.

When you emulate someone, it's basically you  imitate or you copy them in a positive way.

Emulating natives is very powerful because  

it improves so many different  areas of your English fluency.

Many students said they struggle to  understand fast speech or understand  

natives or they struggle to respond in real time.

This daily practice to  emulate will help you do that.

So what you can do is you can find a short TV  show clip, movie clip, or even a YouTube clip.

And what you're going to do is you're  going to listen to a very short section.

You can practice your listening  skills with that short 2nd.

And when I say short, even 5 seconds,  10 seconds, 30 seconds is all you need.

So you'll listen, and then you  can listen many, many times to  

get comfortable with those pronunciation  changes that take place in fast English.

You can notice certain words or expressions  

or grammatical structures that you don't  quite know and make a note of them.

And then what you can also do is you  can emulate yourself by shadowing.

You may be familiar with this word to shadow.

So you are going to open your mouth and you are  going to repeat what that native speaker said.

And this will help you  emulate that native speaker.

So you're going to practice  matching their pronunciation,  

their intonation, their rhythm, and  also practice using those expressions.

The next letter in our framework  is a act out scenarios.

Do you know what it means to act something out?

Well, if someone asked you to act out that  is raining, you would probably go like this.

So you display it or you show it,  or you role play certain scenarios.

That's how you act things out.

For this daily practice, I want you to  

think about what scenario you  have today or in the near future.

Do you have a job interview?

Do you have an important meeting, a phone call?

Are you going to a social event?

Are you going to a cafe or restaurant?

Pick one scenario and I want you to act that out.

So let's choose something easy.

Let's say you're going to a cafe for lunch.

So how could you act that out?

You could pretend first that you're the waiter,  

and then after you can pretend  that you're the customer.

So what would a waiter first do  when you enter a cafe or restaurant?

They would most likely greet you.

So act that out and you can do it out  loud or you can write it down so you  

can say hello, welcome, how are you doing today?

And then you can play the other role  so you can act out the customer.

Hi, yes, just a table for two.

Thank you.

Now you might be thinking, well, Jennifer,  I don't know what these scenarios are.

That's why I'm here.

I need to learn what a waiter would say or  I need to learn what a customer would say.

Well, don't worry because you  can use ChatGPT to help you.

So you can ask ChatGPT to create a short scenario  where a waiter is greeting a customer at a cafe.

Now you can read this out loud and then once you  practice it for a while, you can practice doing  

it without looking at the prompts that ChatGPT  gives you to make it more of a challenge for you.

And think of how confident you'll feel going into  that cafe after you've acted out that scenario.

Now, of course, I just use  going to a cafe as an example.

Choose scenarios that are real for you.

Choose scenarios that happen in your  daily life to make sure that you go into  

these situations feeling confident and  prepared because you've acted them out.

Our next letter in the framework  is K Keep a vocabulary log.

In this framework, so far, you have probably come  across many words that you didn't understand.

When you were emulating native speakers, there  were probably words or grammar rules you didn't  

understand or when you were acting out  a scenario, there were probably many  

expressions or words that ChatGPT generated  for you that you also didn't understand.

So This is why you're going to keep  a vocabulary log every day because as  

you're doing these activities in the framework,  I want you to write down 5 to 10 of the words,  

expressions or grammar concepts or even words  for pronunciation that you want to focus on.

Remember, this is a daily practice,  

so you don't want to overwhelm  yourself with 50 words every day.

Keep it to five to 10, which is  realistic because of course you  

need to then learn those and get  comfortable using those concepts.

Practice, practice, practice.

And this leads us to our next daily practice  in the framework you, which stands for use.

Use what you learn.

So in the last step of the framework,  when you keep a vocabulary log,  

you identified many areas  that you want to improve.

You learned new concepts.

And also in all the previous steps, even when you  were speaking and recording yourself in step one,  

and when you listen back to that recording,  

you probably noticed certain  areas you want to improve.

So now it's time to use all  of this new information,  

the new words that you didn't know,  the new words that you learned,  

the new pronunciation or the words that  you want to improve your pronunciation.

Now it's time to use it because you want to make  sure you're also getting output, which you already  

have done a lot of output in this framework,  but you want to keep getting output daily.

The last letter in your daily  framework is P personal reflection.

It is so important to reflect on your day, reflect  on what you learned, reflect on your progress.

So I want you to promise me one thing.

Can you do that for me?

In this section of your daily  practice personal reflection,  

I want you to make sure you include  one thing that you're proud of with  

your English every single day because  this will help you stay motivated.

This will help inspire you because  you realize that wow, I am learning.

I am improving every day.

Because yes, learning English  is a lifelong journey.

And yes, there will always be  areas that you want to improve.

And that's why it's so important to focus on  your successes, focus on your accomplishments.

So in this personal reflection, you can  choose if you want to write it down,  

which is a great way to practice your  writing skills, or if you want to say  

it out loud, which is a great way  to practice your speaking skills.

And you can do a combination of both  as well, depending on your needs.

So identify one thing that you're proud of.

Maybe you learned one new word, maybe you  understood most of something you read in English.

Celebrate that success.

And also in this section, a personal reflection.

You can summarize what you learned,  

which is a great way to get  repetition of that new information.

You could summarize a meeting you attended,  You could summarize a conversation you had.

You could even set some areas  for improvement that you can  

reflect on and make progress on  for tomorrow or for next week.

The important point is that you enjoy the process.

So choose activities that you enjoy  doing for this framework because  

you'll be more likely to do these  activities every day if you enjoy it.

So now you have your daily practice.

All you need to do every day is speak up.

And now you have these activities.

You can find the link to download this daily  

framework in the description  or the comments section.

And of course, make sure you like this video,  

share it with your friends and subscribe so  you're notified every time I post a new lesson.

And you can get this free speaking  guide where I share 6 tips on how  

to speak English fluently and confidently.

You can click here to download it or  look for the link in the description.

And this video will help you get started  with your new Speak Up framework.

So watch it right now.