How to Get More English Speaking Practice if You DON'T Live in an English-Speaking Country

(smooth music)

- Hello, this is Jack from tofluency.com.

Now, today, I'm going to give you advice

on how you can get more English speaking practice.

Okay, how you can practice your English

with somebody who is going to help you.

Now, this is specific to people who don't live

in an English speaking country.

If you live in the UK, the US, Australia, et cetera

then the advice that I would give you

to get more speaking practice is different

because you have all these opportunities

to go out into the world,

depending on the current situation, and speak to people.

But if you live in a non-English speaking country,

then you might be thinking, "Well, how can I get practice?

How can I practice my English with English speakers?"

And that's what I'm going to talk about today.

Near the end as well, I'm going to give some extra tips

so that you can practice your speaking

and improve your English no matter where you live

and without getting specific speaking practice.

But the main focus is going to be

on how you can find somebody to help you with your English.

So the problem is that

if you live in a non-English speaking country,

it is difficult to find somebody in your local area.

The big news is, as you probably already know,

you can find people online.

And I'm going to give you tips now

on how to find people online to help you.

The first way and the way that's going to give you

the least amount of headaches.

The way that's going to be the easiest to schedule

is to pay a teacher

or to pay someone who is going to give you a lesson

or somebody who is just going to have

a conversation with you.

A good place to start is with YouTube teachers.

Ask your YouTube teachers if they give lessons

because that's a way for you

to support independent teachers.

There are other ways as well.

For example, you can use sites such as italki

and use my affiliate link in the description

to get a special offer with italki.

Because on that platform,

you can find a teacher that's right for you

and somebody who's going to help you.

You can find professional teachers

and also just community teachers,

those who are just wanting to have conversations

without giving you specific lessons.

So there are a couple of options there,

but the first way is to get a teacher.

Find a teacher and pay a teacher

so that you can request a specific time with that teacher.

Know that they are going to show up.

The second way is to find a language exchange partner.

And this is where you meet with somebody online or offline

and you have a conversation usually about an hour,

but half of that time, you're speaking in English

and half of the time,

you're speaking in your native language.

So you need to find somebody who can speak English

and wants to learn the language that you speak.

So let's say that you live in Spain, you speak Spanish.

You find somebody from the UK, for example,

who wants to learn Spanish.

And that way, what you're doing is that your trading time.

You're spending half the time in your language

and half the time in the language

you want to learn, English.

So there are so many people who want to do this.

If you just search for

language exchange partners using Google,

DuckDuckGo, Bing, whatever you use,

you'll find websites where you can sign up,

look at profiles,

and find somebody who is willing to do that with you.

And the best thing about this is that it's free

and that you're going to find somebody who wants to help you

because they're on the same language learning journey.

The third way is to make friends with people

who are English speakers.

Now this takes longer than you probably think.

I know a lot of people have contacted me in the past

and said, "Can we speak English?

You're an English teacher, can we speak for free?"

And my answer is always no.

And I know other teachers who get these requests too

and their answer is no as well.

Because we are professional teachers,

our time is important to us.

And if we offered this to everybody,

then we just wouldn't have time to do anything else.

On the other hand,

I have spoken to some students in the past,

those who have offered me something in return.

So for example, I've spoken to people

who have been big in social media

and talked about social media,

a graphic designer and video editors.

What you can do here is think about the skills that you have

and help people and do it in English.

And also just making friends over the longterm with somebody

is something that's going to benefit you too.

So this is a longterm play.

Again, it's easier

if you live in an English speaking country,

but if you don't,

then you can join groups that match your interests.

So let's say you're into photography.

You can join a group, let's say on Reddit or on Facebook,

and you can converse with people in text using English.

But then after a while,

you start to become friends with people,

you say, "Hey, do you want to have a quick chat?

Do you want to meet in a mastermind group?

Do you want to get together and talk about this subject?"

Again, this is a long-term play,

but if you align it with your interests

and you join groups anyway,

you're going to get lots of practice

with your writing and reading in this area.

And then if you become friends with people

and talk to them online, that's great too.

Now, very briefly,

if you live in an English speaking country,

then what I highly recommend you do

is to join groups of anything that interests you.

So again, photography, go to a photography meeting group.

Like I mentioned before,

I want to share some other tips that will help you

improve your English speaking,

because it's not just about having conversations

and getting to speaking practice,

it's also about doing things

that are going to help you just generally.

And those include working on your pronunciation,

working on the LRRC method or the To Fluency method,

getting lots of listening practice and also shadowing.

So let's go through some of those briefly.

The first one is working on your pronunciation

and this is important because,

in order to speak fluently and also accurately,

then you need to work on how to make the sounds of English,

intonation, stress, the rhythm of English.

And to do this, I recommend taking a course.

Download the materials that are going to help you with this.

I have a course, so I have a section inside my program

all about this.

So click the link in the description to learn more,

but also just to get lots of practice.

So it means listening to yourself as you speak in English

and thinking about how you can make changes.

This is my listen, repeat, record, compare method

where you take audio in English, repeat it,

record your version and compare it to the original.

And then you can make changes

with the way you say the vowels, consonant sounds,

all the different sounds of English.

The To Fluency method,

the sentence repetition is going to help you too.

And without going into depth here,

what this is, is you take flashcards

and you repeat these flashcards over the long term.

Sometimes you record yourself saying them,

but the key with this one is just to get that repetition.

So if you want to learn more about that,

go to my channel homepage and watch the featured video.

And the third way is shadowing.

So this is when you listen to audio in English,

but you don't pause it.

Instead, you repeat what is said without stopping the audio.

This is quite a difficult skill to use.

I've made a video on shadowing,

so I'll leave a link in the description,

but it's a great method if you can do this properly.

And finally, I just want to ask you

if you have any tips to improve speaking

or any ways that you have used in the past

to get more speaking practice,

now to continue your lessons here with me on YouTube,

go to the playlist in the description

where I talk about how you can improve your speaking.

And I go into the methods in more depth.

But speaking practice is important too,

So I recommend you find the time

to find a speaking partner or a teacher

so that you can practice your speaking

on a consistent basis.

Now, if you have enjoyed this video,

then please like and share it.

Again, go to the description.

There are lots of resources there for you

including in my book,

"The Five-Step Plan for English Fluency."

And don't forget to leave a comment below.

Thank you so much for watching and I'll speak to you soon.

Bye-bye.

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