How to improve speaking skill

Tu Quynh

Wow, I'm impressed by the way you drawing your experience, Tien.

I might repeat some of your tips but I still want to share all. I
assume that the most common way might be the best way.

I improve my speaking skill step by step:

Firstly, I learnt to think in English. When I was driving, I often
thought of many things. You know, driving is boring, especially when
there are lots of traffics. So, I thought of my study, my work, my
boyfriend, my family, my friends, my hair, my sister's hair,... I
thought of everything; therefore I was rarely annoyed by the traffic
jam. When I get used to English thinking, I can speak and write more
easily. Now, I just write what I'm thinking. I don't translate. I
don't care of grammar or vocabulary. That's dangerous because I still
make careless mistakes. But it helps me to speak more fluently.

Secondly, I learn how to pronounce correctly. I attended the
Pronunciation course at Apollo. It was very helpful. The teacher was
very passionate. She inspired me to speak correctly. But I think we
can also learn by ourselves. The textbook that was used in Apollo is
"Pronunciation in Use" of Mark Hancook. It's really useful and
engaging. The first thing we should learn is the phonetic chart. I
recognize that English phonetic syllabus is just exactly the same as
Vietnamese. When you are aware of that, it will be a lot easier for
you to pronounce correctly.

I advise you to pay attention to the ending sound, it's the heart of
English speaking.

It took me 3 months to get used to the right pronunciation. The next
step is improving my intonation. You would have recognized that native
speaker's voice are up and down, up and down as they are singing. I
deeply fall in love with English because of that. But I couldn't do
that until recently. I don't want to sound like a Vietnamese speaking
English, I want to speak as natives.

So, it took me 2 years to improve my intonation. At this moment, I'm
still not very satisfied with my speaking skill. But overall, I'm
doing good and maybe better than many. How did I improve my
intonation? That was mainly because I had chance to listen to native
speakers every day when I was in Melbourne. I listened to them every
time I went out. Australian accent is awful. For the first 2 months, I
couldn't get what they said, but I still listened to them. Honestly,
it was hard not to listen to them when they were surrounding me.

You may find that my above experience is not useful because you are
not surrounding by the native speakers. How about making them
surrounding you? I recommend the following podcasts that you can
listen to.

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/multimedia/podcasts.html
http://www.newyorker.com/online/podcasts/fiction
http://www.radiolab.org/
http://www.cnet.com/buzz-out-loud-podcast/
http://www.mnsu.edu/voices/projects/humanrace.html

I think you should listen to the podcast without script so that you
can pay more attention to their rhyme, tones, and accent rather than
the content.

So, I spent 6 months to listen to native speakers. When I came home, I
was still not good at Speaking!!!!!!!!!
The chance came when I agreed to host a Swiss girl. She came here to
attend the International Week as an international student. She lived
with me at the same room. At the first night, we talked in 4 hours!!!!
Thanks God, she has excellent speaking skill. So, I both learnt from
her and talked to her. We talked almost every night in 2 weeks she
staying here. When she came home, I can finally talk without
translating in my mind and my intonation is good.

Hope the above helps.