Better Speaking – Part 2

Hi, this is Scott.

Last time I spoke about two areas that are important to focus on if you want to speak better English: improving your pronunciation and intonation, and increasing your vocabulary.

Point number 3 is improving your listening comprehension. Yes, that’s right! If you want to speak better English, you need to listen, understand English better when it is spoken to you. And I’ve found over the years that my students who speak at a very high level understand English at an even higher level. It always seems to be that way.

So it’s important if you want to speak better to also practice your listening comprehension. One great way to do this is to use the exercises I have in my virtual learning environment.

Now it’s important to understand that different exercises help you improve different skills of listening. There are some exercises that help you improve the general comprehension, others that help you understand details of the content, and other exercises that help you understand details of the language. And it’s important to be doing all of these different types of exercises to really help your listening comprehension, and thereby helping your speaking.

Point 4 is to improve your fluency, practice your fluency. One of the best ways to do this is through free conversation, especially if you have an intermediate level or higher. And I definitely include free conversation in many of classes, and my students enjoy this. And it’s very important! But please keep in mind it is one of the six areas. Also you need to be doing the other five to really improve your speaking.

Now next time I’ll be talking about the last two points, five and six, and I believe that they’ll surprise some of you out there.

I’ll look forward to seeing you then.