Thursday, October 24, 2019

How to practice speaking skills alone?

Now, I am talking about English. It's quite possible and not even difficult to get good at speaking English without ever talking with anyone. It's harder when it comes to other languages, but the most common languages are almost as easy as English.
When it comes to other languages - learn IPA, and you will get close enough. It's not perfect, of course, but it's good enough to get you understood and able to correct your mistakes.

1) Speak. Say everything you are learning. If you go to Duolingo, read all the sentences and words out loud. You don't need to put in any air in your speaking, so that you can do it in a public library or a bus or anywhere without getting attention. Just try it. Read out loud this sentence without any sound - you HEAR your voice reading this. You feel your mouth, tongue, lips making the movements.
Learn the pronunciation rules, and IPA, and get an estimation of how you think the words should be pronounced, and then compare your estimation to reality, and correct your pronunciation accordingly.
"Repeat after ---". Parrot the words.

1) Read texts aloud. Record your speech. Listen to it and compare to a native speaker. Try to get it as close as possible.
If you are having difficulties getting some specific words to sound right, there's plenty of sites where people pronounce specific words. (Like Forvo, for example.)
Again, in English you probably can find every word pronounced by a native speaker somewhere online, in Navajo, not so likely.
Audiobooks are excellent for this purpose, and it doesn't matter if the books are modern or in public domain. The anciency of the language is irrelevant.
You can also read along with the native speaker. You will be able to spot the differences better this way. :-D Make notes on what you usually miss and practice that.

2) Speak about things in your chosen language. It doesn't much matter if you get it right or not. Speak clearly, do your best, but don't focus on if you get it right. You don't know. You can't know. But speaking a lot makes you better at speaking. Yes, it is highly possibly you develop some bad habits or learn something wrong, but it will be quickly corrected, if you ever get to use the language in real situation. If you don't, then nobody cares - or should care. Also, that's why you would be doing the first thing I suggested, to get it right. THERE it is important to get it as right as you possibly can.

3) Sing.

4) Practice tongue twisters.

Practice what is most difficult to you, what you have most problems with, and pronounce it loud and clear (at least when you are alone). Pronounce the words as if you were talking to a person who can't hear very well, or if you were trying to teach someone how to pronounce it correctly. It's really easy to mumble and try to be quick, so as people can smooth over the possible errors and problems, but what will you learn of that? You will learn to mumble, you will learn to pronounce the words wrong and YOU WILL LEARN THAT YOU CAN'T LEARN TO SPEAK WELL.

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