Welcome to the Listening Time podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 218 of the Listening Time podcast.
I hope you're all doing great and that your English learning is going really well.
Today's episode is going to be a very interesting one for all of you, I'm sure, because I'm I'm going to talk about how to speak English better, in my opinion, of course.
I mentioned some months ago that I started doing some different activities in my own language learning and I started to change my philosophy a little bit when it comes to learning other languages and speaking foreign languages better.
I didn't completely change my mind about everything, don't worry, but I adopted some new methods to help me actually speak foreign languages better, in particular French.
That's the language I'm, that I was learning and I experimented with with these activities.
And I'd like to share those activities with you here today.
It's nothing revolutionary.
These are pretty simple things.
And I'm sure you've heard this advice before from other people.
But I wanted to talk about these things because I've seen how helpful they've been for me and I like to be open about my own language learning and i like to help you guys if i can, by sharing my own experience.
So i'll talk about just a few basic activities that you probably already know about, but maybe you haven't tried.
So i'm gonna talk about those today And I'll talk a little bit about the change in my mindset when it comes to getting better at speaking.
So I'm sure this will be a helpful episode for all of you.
And before we start, remember that you can check out my advanced podcast episodes in which I speak fast by becoming a Listening Time family member.
That link is down below, so go down and click on that link to sign up.
And remember to check out my U.S.
Conversations podcast in which I talk to people from all over the US about a lot of different topics, so that you can practice listening to real, authentic conversations between native speakers.
Of course, I provide the transcript for you, with the definitions of words and phrases that we use that you might not know.
So this should be a great resource for you to help you practice listening to and understanding more than one person when they're talking.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
And I'm going to talk about just a few different things that I've done.
But first let me talk about the philosophy of, of learning to speak better in a foreign language, in your case English.
So, of course, I'm the listening guy, right?
You use my content to practice your listening comprehension.
And my philosophy when it comes to language learning is that what you can understand in that language really is your foundation.
That is the most essential element of your language learning journey, in my opinion.
It gives you a good base and this base helps you overall with all of the skills, including speaking.
In the past, I focused most of my energy on listening, and even when I was at a level where I needed to start to speak.
I still focused most of my energy on listening.
And I still believe that doing a lot of listening is key and will help you speak better.
Even when you're already at the level where you can have a conversation.
Listening helps to reinforce your vocabulary, your knowledge of the language and grammar, and therefore helps you speak better.
You repeat things that you've heard native speakers say.
It's fantastic.
However, I experimented recently with the idea that I should probably be more active in my output exercises, meaning speaking and writing, producing the language.
I should probably be more active in my output if I want to accelerate my progress in terms of speaking.
So it's not that I decided that listening isn't important. anymore at that level.
Of course not.
Listening is still really essential.
But I decided to add these output exercises to see if that would accelerate my speaking improvement.
And the reason why I wanted to do this is because i thought about what would possibly make my speaking better and i thought in basic terms, like okay, there are some things that i don't know how to say or i'm not saying correctly, and i need to be able to say those things.
That's basically what the issue is.
When you can't speak the way that you want to speak, it's because you don't know how to say things and therefore you either can't say them at all or you say them incorrectly.
That's basically the problem.
It's not really a problem.
It's just part of the process.
That's the situation.
So I thought to myself, what I should try to do is fill in those gaps, those holes in my speech.
I should try to specifically target those the holes, the gaps, the things that I want to say but I can't say or can't say correctly.
And so that became my philosophy for my output exercises.
And the thing with filling in your gaps is you don't know what you can't say until you discover it.
You don't know all the gaps that you have until you actually experience this situation where you're trying to say something and and you can't say it or you say it incorrectly.
So I thought that if I could discover these gaps and see what I'm not able to say and then learn those phrases and words in particular, then this would accelerate my improvement, because I'm focusing on my deficiencies.
I'm filling in the gaps in my speech.
So I went into these activities with that philosophy, with that idea.
So what did I do?
Again, none of this is revolutionary.
These are basic things.
You've probably heard other teachers or language learners give you advice similar to this, but now you're going to hear it from me and just know that these things helped me.
I saw progress.
I saw the benefits of doing these things.
So the first thing, maybe the most important exercise that you can incorporate into your language learning routine is talking to yourself.
I'm sure you've heard people give you this tip before.
And maybe you like this.
Maybe it sounds strange.
Let me tell you how I like to do this.
So, number one, I like to do this out loud instead of just saying, thinking the sentences in your head and talking to yourself silently in your head, if you can.
I think it's very beneficial to do this out loud because it helps you work on your pronunciation.
Because if you do this silently, then you're not actually pronouncing the words.
So you get to work on pronouncing words.
You're actually working out your speaking muscles, I'll call them.
Like you're actually doing what you need to do to say these words, phrases and sentences correctly, as if you were in a real conversation.
So you're actually moving your mouth and trying to talk at a natural speed and sound good, and all of that.
You're practicing all of that.
So that's another benefit of doing this out loud.
And In my opinion, when you do this out loud, it keeps you focused on talking.
When I would do this in my head.
I would get distracted and start thinking about other things sometimes.
So doing this out loud helps me focus on speaking.
And this just simulates reality.
In reality, you talk to people out loud.
So you simulate that by talking to yourself.
Okay, so when you do this, you can talk about what you normally talk about your thoughts, your feelings, what you're interested in, the things that you like to talk about with friends and family, your work that's a big one events, things that you you did on the weekend and plans for the future, what you plan on doing, what you're gonna do on the weekend, your trip that you have planned, whatever it might be.
You should talk about things that you normally talk about.
And this ensures that you are filling in the necessary gaps because, of course, if you talk about subjects that you know nothing about and you're not interested in, you're gonna have a lot of gaps, a lot of holes, but those aren't that important to fill because you're not gonna talk about those things.
What's important to do is to fill in the gaps of things that you actually need to say or want to say.
So if you talk about things that you normally talk about or want to talk about, you'll fill in the necessary gaps.
The goal when learning a language isn't usually to learn how to say everything, because you native speakers can't even say everything.
What the goal usually is, in my opinion, is to learn how to say, and be able to say, the things that you yourself want to say when you talk about what you normally talk about or what you want to talk about.
So when doing this type of exercise, I think it's best to focus on topics that are relevant to you.
Okay.
And when you do this, so here is the key.
When you do this, when you talk to yourself, you need to note down the words and the phrases that you can't say or that you aren't sure about.
Okay.
So you don't need to stop and look them up and interrupt this activity.
I think you can do that.
I have done that.
But I find that it's more useful to not interrupt this activity and just simply note down the phrase in your language that you wanted to say, but you couldn't or you're not sure about.
And as you continue talking, just write down every phrase, every word that you don't know how to say, but that you want to say.
And then at the end of this activity, you can do this for however long you want.
I think I would often do this for 30 minutes.
I think that might be a good amount of time for a session.
And so, after you're done, you'll have a list of words and phrases that you couldn't say, but you wanted to say them.
And you can translate these now into English.
Look them up.
See examples of them if you need to.
And remember what you were talking about when you tried to say each of these words or phrases.
And remember that sentence that you were trying to say.
And then now...
Say it in English.
Say it a couple times.
Say it out loud.
And do this for all of those new words and phrases.
And then study them. in whatever way you want to.
But what is really helpful to do is to have some way to study these at least a little bit for the following days and into the future.
Some people like to use flashcards for this.
I've actually done this recently and it's been really useful.
So you might want to do that.
You make flashcards out of these using a flashcard app, whichever one you like.
Or maybe you just keep these in your notes and you review them in the future, in the following days and into the future.
And one great way to practice with these new words and phrases is to revisit the same topic in a future session.
Maybe in a few days you talk about the same topic or a similar topic, to give yourself the chance to try to say these new words and phrases again.
That really helped me.
Sometimes I would talk about the same story the next day.
I would just repeat the same story.
And then I used all the phrases and words that I learned and it really helped me remember them.
And you can also revisit these topics in classes, conversation classes with tutors, and you can use the words that you learned, the phrases that you learned, because you're talking about that same topic now with a tutor.
I did that as well.
So there are gonna be many, many gaps that you're gonna discover here.
You're not gonna remember all of them even though you fill those gaps.
Of course you'll forget some, but you'll continue learning them Little by little.
This creates a great connection in your brain in terms of that new phrase.
Like there's an emotional connection.
Whereas when you're just learning a random phrase, you have no connection to it.
You weren't trying to say it.
Someone just gave it to you.
So your brain doesn't really think it's that important probably, so it forgets it.
But when you were trying to say something, you couldn't complete your sentence, and then you learned the phrase that you were missing and studied it.
In my opinion, you're much more likely to remember it.
So that has definitely happened to me.
So this is the first exercise.
I think that this will be one of the main things that you can use to help you improve your speaking.
Another activity is writing and specifically translating.
This is something that I have done.
And it has helped me.
So I take my transcripts from my podcast episodes, because I transcribe all of these words that I'm saying right now.
All those transcripts are available for free in the description below each episode.
I take those and then I translate them into French.
So this is great because I'm translating my own words.
These are things that I actually wanted to say and said.
So I am learning really relevant words and phrases when I do this exercise, because these are things that I say.
You probably don't have transcripts of your own speech unfortunately, but what you can do is use a journal if you have one, or maybe you start a journal in your own language, a diary, and then you can write in your own language and then translate that into English.
Or, if not, you can just find some relevant text, something related to your interests, your work, something you're fascinated by, something that means something to you.
And when you do this exercise, when you translate this and write it down in of English, don't use autocorrect.
So don't allow your computer or your phone to correct your sentences for you.
OK, if you don't use autocorrect, this actually helps you learn the proper grammar.
You have to actually think of how to write the sentence correctly, and it helps you practice your spelling.
You practice spelling words correctly and not just relying on the autocorrect to spell it for you.
And this helps you with your writing, of course, because you are writing.
So I think that it's important to be able to write English and not just speak it.
And when you can write better, of course, this helps you speak better.
I think when you do this type of exercise, when you translate and write it down, it helps you recognize patterns and rules, of course spelling, because you're seeing it.
This is one of the you actually see the sentences, you see the phrases, the spelling, and this is a great element of this activity.
I think the visual element really helps solidify some of these concepts for you, meaning It helps you understand these concepts and remember them and use them.
I really like this visual element, so that's why I think it's good to do this in writing.
Of course, you can also translate while speaking, but I think it's great to add some writing.
This is what I did.
And when you do this, do the same thing that you do when talking to yourself.
Note down all the words and phrases that you don't know how to translate.
Unless they're completely irrelevant, they're super technical or something that you would never say, then you can basically ignore it.
But if it's something relevant, write it down.
And then...
Afterwards, look at your list of words and phrases, of things you wanted to be able to translate and you couldn't, and then look those up.
Find out how to say those words and phrases correctly in English and do the same thing, like I mentioned before.
You can use those in the sentence that you were trying to write.
So repeat that sentence a couple of times and go through your text and put in those phrases and words where you couldn't write them before.
So fill in those blanks and you can come back and study these ones.
I think that the phrases and words that you couldn't say when you were talking are probably going to be more relevant for you, because they were your own sentences, that you were filling in the gaps for.
But even with this translation exercise, even if you're not using your own words, I still think you're creating that same connection in your brain.
You were trying to write something and you couldn't, and then you looked up what the correct phrase was and then you wrote the sentence again.
That is much more powerful than just remembering some random word or phrase.
So the same principle applies, even if these words and phrases aren't quite as strong and relevant to you as your own words and phrases that you discovered when you were talking to yourself.
So the same principle applies but it might not be quite as strong.
And then the third exercise is having classes with tutors who give you correction.
This is the key.
If they don't give you any correction, then this isn't as good of an exercise.
So you still want to do the same thing, where you're discovering your gaps, what you can't say correctly, and then you fill in those gaps.
And if your tutor can't correct you or tell you how to properly say sentences, then you're not going to be able to fill in your gaps while doing this.
So they don't have to correct all of your errors.
I don't do this with students, but I at least give them a report with a handful of key errors that they made and the corrections to those errors, so that they can study those afterwards and see what what they were trying to say and said incorrectly.
And hopefully that helps them build this connection in their brain.
It helps solidify that correct sentence because they remember what they were trying to say and how they said it, and then that was wrong.
So their brain really wants to correct that now that it knows the right way to say that sentence.
So that's kind of the philosophy behind these classes as well.
And of course, it just gives you speaking practice.
That's great.
But really, you want to fill in those gaps.
So have conversation classes with a tutor who will give you some correction.
And write down those phrases, those words, or have the tutor write them down and do the same thing.
Study them.
Say those sentences again.
Remember what you were talking about and say the correct sentence this time.
Help your brain establish those connections.
So these are the three things that I have done recently that have helped me.
So really, the overall strategy with these exercises, as you can see, is to identify my gaps, the things that I want to say but I can't say correctly, and fill those gaps.
So this is a very specific approach to improving your speaking.
You're not just... hoping that the new words and phrases come to you.
You're going out and discovering what you can't say.
That's really the key here.
You discover what you can't say, but what you want to say, and then you learn how to say it.
It's a pretty simple philosophy, but I think that this can be really beneficial for you and your speaking.
All right, I hope that this episode was interesting for you and that it was good practice for your listening.
Remember to check out my advanced podcast episodes in which I speak at normal speed.
The link is down below to sign up for those.
And check out my US Conversations podcast in which I talk to native speakers from all over the US.
And it's a lot of fun.
It's great practice for your listening.
So check that out.
That link is also down below.
All right.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
