Improving Your Speaking
Find native English speakers. In certain areas, it's the hardest thing to do, but it's the best use of your time. Talking to actual native speakers is the most effective way to improve your English skills, speaking or otherwise. So whether you have to Skype them, call them, or beg them to speak to you, do so. Your progress will be faster this way than any other. Even if they're just tourists, invite them to dinner! They get a meal, you get an English lesson. Advertise on Craigslist. Take a class and get buddy-buddy with your teacher. Offer a language exchange. They're hiding out there somewhere!
Listen to the music of English. No, not English music, the music of English -- its lilt, its prosody, the sing-songy-ness of it. The intonation. Even if you speak perfect English technically if you speak it like a robot you're not speaking it the way it's meant to be spoken. Watch people. Watch how their mouths form the words. Watch how emotion is communicated. Watch where the emphasis goes on certain sentences and how that provides context. Apart from just deciphering their words, take notice of the humor, the feeling, and the formality they employ.
Slow down. Above all, if you want to be understood, slow down. The more clearly you speak, the better chance your listener has of understanding you. It's tempting to get nervous and want to speed up to get it all over with, but you can't do that! Clarity is key -- for some native English speakers, too! They will be patient with you -- don't worry! You just gotta be patient with yourself. It's much less frustrating to speak to someone who you understand even though they're speaking slowly than to speak to someone you don't understand at all. Speaking quickly isn't impressive if your tongue gets all jumbly.
Record yourself. Though we hear ourselves all the time, we really don't know quite what we sound like. So record yourself! What are the weak and strong points you hear in your speech? And then you can concentrate on what you need to work on. A great idea is to get a book on tape, record yourself reading an excerpt from it (or mimicking the narrator), and comparing yourself to the recording. That way you can do it over and over until you get it right! When that's a bit too much effort, just read your books aloud. You'll score points on your reading skills and your speaking skills. Half the battle is just getting comfortable with the words!
Take different style classes. Yes, one class is good. In fact, one class is even great. But if you can take more than one class -- of differing styles -- that's even better. A group class can be cheap, fun, and work on all your skills, but adding a one-on-one class, too? You'll get that individualized attention to your speech you've been craving. That's a double dose of improvement. There are specialized classes you can take, too. Accent reduction classes, business English classes, tourism classes, heck, sometimes even food classes. If you see something that interests you (let's face it, sometimes grammar doesn't cut it), go for it! You may learn more than you think.
Speak English at home. This is the biggest, easiest mistake to make. You go about your day, you're on the job working partly in English, you go to your English class, and then you go home and revert back to your native tongue. While you may be making slow improvements, you'll never get past that dreaded lingual plateau. Make a point to speak it at home, too. Have only English at the dinner table. Stick to English TV at home. Make it as 24/7 as possible. Heck, talk to yourself in English. Narrate your actions. While you're washing the dishes, say what you're doing, thinking, or feeling. It sounds a little silly (if you get caught!), but it keeps your brain thinking in English before your first language, which is huge. Once you can do that, the rest is just keeping it up.
Create opportunities. It's easy to look at your situation and think that you'll never be exposed to English naturally as much as you would like. Going abroad is expensive, you don't know any foreigners, etc. That's the lazy way of looking at it! English speakers are everywhere; sometimes they just have to be found and coaxed out of hiding. You have to come to them. Heck, call up an English hotline. Call up Nike and ask about their sneakers. Call a phone company and make small talk about phone plans. Start a blog. Set your OS to English. Play WoW. Get into English chat rooms. There are ALWAYS opportunities to be had.
Improving Your Listening
Know why it's difficult. If your listening skills feel lacking, don't beat yourself up. It seems like the easiest skill, but it can be very, very taxing. The way you're taught English in school is practically the opposite of how native speakers actually speak. No wonder it's such a chore! So the next time someone says, "Do you want to pass me that bag?" and you hear, "Djuwanapassmethabag?" you're not going crazy. Between that and all the "like," "uh," and "umm," you run into it could drive a person crazy. So when you get in the listening zone, remind yourself: it's slang time.
Talk. Really. Passive listening is okay, but interacting is even better. If you want to get good at listening, you have to ask questions. And this way you have control of the conversation! If you ask someone what their favorite thing to do in summer is you know they're not going to go off on a confusing tangent on politics. At least, hopefully! And the more you hear a specific individual talk, the easier it is to understand them. English has so many accents you may find yourself not understanding someone and wondering why. Be patient! Your mind will get used to their accent in time. English-speaking people have to adjust for each other all the time.
Watch TV, movies, podcasts, and everything in between. So while talking and listening proactively is best, passive learning is good, too. So throw on the telly and sit down for a spell. Try to keep the captions off! And if you can record it and watch it more than once, even better. That way you can see your progress. Even having the radio on in the background is helpful, just to keep your mind in the English zone. But the best case scenario is getting a movie and watching it over and over until your mind stops having to worry about understanding and instead can concentrate on the little things, like intonation and slang. And watching TV shows where you have the same characters over and over so you get used to their speech. In other words: repetition.
Have an English exchange. If you have a friend who speaks English that is trying to learn a language you speak, start an English exchange! Half the time you speak your language and the other half you speak English. And you get to spend time drinking coffee and relaxing, too! If that's not a possibility, find some friends who all want to practice their English. Though practicing this language with non-native speakers isn't ideal, it's definitely way better than nothing. You'll be less nervous speaking it in front of them and you can learn from each others' strengths.
Listen to English music. Even just learning a song a day can widen your vocabulary extensively. And it's fun and energizing, too. You can grow your musical repertoire, learn new words, and expand your knowledge without even realizing it. And then you can go hit the karaoke bar! Stick to songs that are slow and clear. The Beatles and Elvis are two great places to start, though modern music is good, too -- just aim for the ballads; they're usually the easiest to understand. Rap can wait till later.
Improving Your Writing
Write. It's as simple as that. To get good at something, you have to do it. You have to do it over and over and over. So write. Every day. It can be a diary entry, it could be your next bestseller; it doesn't really matter. Just put that pen to paper and get going. Keep it all in one place. Having a notebook or binder dedicated to your English work will keep you organized and motivated. The better you get, the easier it will be to see your progress. You can look back and marvel at how bad you used to be and how awesome you are now.
Get it checked. However, it's kinda pointless if you don't ever get it checked or corrected. You want to get better at the entire language, not just the language you're capable of right now. You have two options here: The Internet. It's amazing; it really is. Sites like italki.com and lang-8 can correct your work for free! Don't get off wikiHow just yet, but do keep those sites in mind. A friend. Obviously. But the great thing about writing is that you can email your friend and wherever they are, they can get it, correct it, and get it back to you. So whether they're a mile away or in the middle of Canada, progress can be had.
Add phrases to your vocabulary. If you write like a six-year-old, regardless of how correct your writing is, it still is going to sound like a six-year-old. The only difference between a six-year-old with good grammar and a 20-year-old with good grammar is their vocabulary. So whenever you run into a phrase you want to start incorporating into your writing (or speech), write it down. And then make a point to use it. A good idea is to start learning collocations. That's a fancy term for words that go together. "Get married" is useful, but "get married to someone" is even better -- that way you know not to say "get married with." If you said you "received a cold," you'd receive some funny looks -- but not if you said you "caught a cold." See how that works?
Don't forget the small stuff! While knowing a lot of words is all well and good, if you type like this,your writing isn't going 2 look very good u know? Painful. Make sure you have your spaces right, your punctuation right, and use capital letters when appropriate. That stuff matters too. Unless you are a 15-year-old girl texting her friends, text speak is not okay. "You" is "you," not "u." "For" is not "4." "2" means something very different than "to" or "too." You won't be winning any medals for writing like that.
Utilize the Internet. It has practically everything you've ever wanted. Practically. There are websites that have English games, easy-to-read English articles, and exercises to improve your skills in every domain. Here are just a few neat ones to whet your appetite: Anki is flashcard software. Similar things can be found on websites like Memrise, too. You can basically quiz yourself. OneLook is a type of dictionary that can find words for you, define them, and translate. You only need the, cough cough, one look. It also has a reverse dictionary where you can type in the concept instead! Visuwords creates word map visualizations, connecting the word you search with similar, associated words or words that collocate with it. Great way to expand your vocabulary! Similar to Visuwords, Merriam Webster has a "visual dictionary." If you type in "tire," it will show you a tire, with words pointing to every little detail of it from "tread" to "bead wire." Englishforums is a great place to pose questions and talk to speakers. It's basically message board after message board of English-related questions.
Always correct your writing. And by that, we don't mean "get it checked," like stated above. We mean get it checked and then rewrite it. You want a beautiful, finished draft of perfect English created by you. If you just write it and get it corrected, you won't truly ingest what mistakes you made and how to fix them. And this way your notebook is a whole heck of a lot prettier. Once you've corrected a piece, try to write something the next day that builds upon the mistakes you've corrected. This way you can prove to yourself that you've improved and actually notice the mistakes you're not making anymore. You'll get better and build your confidence. Bonus.
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