To learn to speak you have to speak

 It must be heavily emphasised that language consists of sounds. We are becoming so accustomed to silent reading and writing that we are apt to lose sight of this fact. Language must have existed for at least 20 000 years, but only for the last 4000 has there been any sort of written record. Writing, therefore, is an invention of yesterday, comparatively speaking. It bears the same relation to language itself as a page printed with staff-lines and black dots does to the sound of music. Even when we read silently, we are unconsciously "hearing" the words with an inner ear, and literary style is judged by the sound which the words make when spoken, never by the pattern which they may happen to make on paper. Take great pains, therefore, to master the pronunciation. Read the pages on pronunciation very carefully, and on no account skip them to come to "more important" matters. 

It follows, also, that you should try to speak Esperanto as much as possible, right from the start. If you can make contact with an experienced Esperantist, he will be delighted to help you. But if you have no one else to speak to, you should speak aloud to yourself. Put a question and answer it. Imagine that you have at your side a four-year-old child who never stops asking "What?... Why?... Where?... Who?..." Ask yourself these questions and answer them. The answer will often contain precisely the same words as the question ("Is Esperanto a beautiful language?" "Yes, Esperanto is a beautiful language", etc.), but say them again, nevertheless. This repetition is part of your training and gives an encouraging feeling of fluency. The important thing is to use Esperanto itself as much as possible. No doubt you will need to use some English at first, but regard it as a crutch to be dispensed with whenever possible, and finally to be discarded altogether. The only way to learn to swim is to go into the water and try. Books may tell you many interesting things about swimming, but however much you read them, you will never become a swimmer if you never actually enter the water. Similarly, the only way to learn how to speak Esperanto is by speaking Esperanto.

- Teach Yourself Esperanto

John Cresswell and John Hartley