In our last blog post, a student named Abel left us some questions. So, I decided to answer them here, because I’m sure other students might have the same questions.
Question 1: Do you think having conversations with a non-native speaker could help to improve my English and eventually fluency?
Absolutely – if you approach it in the correct way. Having conversations with other non-native speakers is very beneficial, but there are a few steps I recommend to maximize its effectiveness.
Step 1: Correct your mistakes immediately.
When speaking, you’re likely to make the occasional mistake. Whether it be with incorrect grammar tenses, misusing vocabulary, or anything else you might confuse, it’s vital that you correct yourself audibly (out loud).
If you don’t correct your mistakes when you speak, you will be damaging both your own English skills and the English skills of your speaking partner by letting bad habits form. Which leads us into the next point…
Step 2: Correct your speaking partner (and tell them to do the same!)
It might be a little awkward, but you and your partner should be correcting each other when you speak. And if there’s something you’re not 100% sure on, take a minute to look it up.
Part of the difficulty with improving your English is finding someone who has the confidence to correct you when they know you’ve made a mistake – So, I recommend explicitly telling your speaking partner to correct you when possible, and promise to do the same for them.
This is a great way of ensuring you don’t let yourself fall into bad habits, as mentioned before, because they can be hard to break.
Step 3. Challenge yourself!
Use new vocabulary, and new expressions when you speak. It’s, of course, more comfortable to speak in the habits you’re familiar with, but I recommend trying to add some new speaking tenses to your speech once you feel comfortable with them after studying. In this way, you might teach your speaking partner new vocab, pronunciation, grammar rules, etc, and they might do the same for you.
Question 2: Have you ever heard about the ‘shadowing technique’? Do you think this technique is useful to reach fluency?
I have heard of the shadowing technique before – It’s a classic method of learning a language. The technique reminds me of movies where a character is traveling to a new country, and is listening to audio tapes of the new language while on the plane there.
I believe the shadowing technique can be very useful for learning accent, pronunciation, and stress, but I don’t believe it’s as useful for learning vocabulary or grammar. You might pick up new expressions or phrasal verbs, but I’m not sure how helpful they will be if you don’t also study their definitions or usage – that will depend on your current level.
But, for improving your accent, the shadowing technique is one of the best methods. We actually do this quite often in our classes, but it’s a shorter version of the technique where we just practice one word or expression if the pronunciation is unique.
If you practice copying, or shadowing, English pronunciation, you’ll begin to learn the rules that dictate how we pronounce vocabulary without thinking. For example, learning word stress associated with suffixes after hearing them enough times.
So, go for it! It seems like a great idea to add a bit of shadowing to your daily English practice, if pronunciation improvement is your goal.
Question 3: I know that writing helps to develop your internal monologue, but Is there any other practice that helps with it too?
Writing is, of course, my biggest recommendation for improving your internal monologue – But there is another method that you can apply without ever needing to pick up a pen or pencil.
Imagine you’re walking down a street. You will see cars, buildings, street signs, sidewalks, people, birds, pets – And many other things. Try taking notice of them, and naming them in English. If you see a car, think to yourself (or even audibly say) – “Car”. And when that becomes easy, move on to actually describing the things you see. For example, “Blue car with ugly tires”. The more you practice this, the more instinctive it will become.
When it feels completely natural to identify and describe things like this in English, you’ll be ready to start using expressions, too. There are plenty that you can use to speak to yourself – “What a nice day” you might think, if the sun is out and the weather is nice. “My god!” you might say, if something startles you.
Using these basic, 2-3 word expressions frequently enough to make it a habit will be a great step towards improving your English internal monologue.
The next step will be a bit more of a challenge – Speaking in complete sentences in your mind. As you identify things in English, start asking yourself questions that allow you to elaborate on the things you saw.
For example – Imagine you are in your office, and you see someone’s lunch in the kitchen. “Delicious meal”, you might think to yourself in English.
But – ask yourself, who’s meal is it?
“That must be Abel’s delicious meal.”
But who made it?
“That must be Abel’s delicious meal… He must have cooked it before coming to work today.”
And what’s in the lunch you see?
“That must be Abel’s delicious meal… He must have cooked it before coming to work today. It looks like chicken and mashed potatoes.”
Try doing this a few times every day – More and more as it becomes easier. It might feel odd to force yourself to think in English like this, but, hey – nobody can hear your thoughts, so don’t worry about it.
I hope this helps, Abel, and any other students who have similar questions!
