If you are not interested to know my story, you might safely skip to the Program section.

Motivation

I’ve spent last winter traveling in Southern Eastern Asia and during that time I had many interesting conversations with people from all around the world. Some topics were arising more often than others and many times I had the same advice for different people. One of the popular topics among travelers was how to start speaking English and here I have something to share. Several years ago I wasn’t able to sustain even most basic conversation (although I was able to read technical documentation fluently). I fixed that in half a year and I hope that my experience can help others.

My background

Simplified story of my life:

  • in school I started education from the failure: all students except for me and several others had existing English skills by the time we started learning English; the teacher only briefly touched basics which cause serious implications in the following education years;
  • in university I’ve made a conscious decision to read all computer science books and documentation in English; at first it was torture; during several years I’ve learned how to read computer science books but I’ve remembered wrong pronunciation for the big portion of my vocabulary;
  • at some point in my education I’ve started watching coursera.org courses with subtitles; I’ve learned how to understand technical talks;

As a result, I was able to read technical literature and listen for technical talks. But I was embarrassed and unable to speak.

Identifying the problem

I’ve made several failed attempts to improve my English skills. I think that the main reasons why I’ve made almost no progress are:

  • concentrating on grammar too much;
  • lack of speaking practice;
  • lack of interest and engagement.

Many school programs and many teachers in Russia concentrate on teaching grammar which appeared to be completely wrong for me. Let’s think how people learn their first language: children do the following: forever (listen >>= repeat what they hear >>= fail, get corrections). At some point, they learn how to read and write but by that point, they already know how to speak. Moreover learning how to read is not necessary, there were times in history when many people didn’t know how to read but they were able to speak. So basically children just listen and practice speaking to learn how to speak. Then they learn how to read and write and apply the same (consume >>= practice) cycle to learn how to write. Of cause, reading helps to acquire vocabulary and to learn phrases but I think it just augments speaking skills. If you want to learn how to speak then you need to concentrate on (listen >>= practice speaking) cycle.

While I was practicing my (listen >>= speak) routine I’ve discovered several interesting concepts. First: speaking is a self-modulating concept. The more you speak, the easier it is to learn speaking, because:

  • improving speaking improves listening abilities;
  • improving listening abilities allow consuming more content;
  • the more content you consume the better your vocabulary and speaking.

Also:

  • speaking is a separate skill; a big part of speaking happens unconsciously; hence it should be trained.

Once I’ve decided to concentrate on speaking, the question appeared “how to start?”. I’ve found a good speaking course and then started practicing over the Internet. It gave surprisingly good results so I’ve decided to document my experience.

Program

Without any context, the title of this article might sound like advertisement bullshit but it’s not. The content is based on my own experience and it might be useful for people who are in a similar situation as I was several years ago. There will be no scientific research though, only my vision.

Main ideas are:

  1. Learn better pronunciation.
  2. Practice speaking.
  3. Consume more content in English.

Simple.

To achieve the mentioned goals I propose doing the following 4 steps:

  1. Take a pronunciation video course

    There is a great Master Spoken English course which teaches proper American pronunciation. Start practicing it regularly. I am not proficient in questions of copy rights, but you can find the video on youtube and other places all over the Internet.

  2. Practice more by taking an audio course

    The same course can be used without the video. I’ve put a grabbed audio into my car’s audio player and I was practicing it each working day (I don’t advertise doing anything aside from driving while you are controlling your car). I started practicing audio version after several weeks of regular dedicated practice with the video.

  3. Talk to people remotely

    When you feel some confidence: find a partner on a language exchange web site. It can feel difficult to start, some people feel shy, some feel nervous. If you have difficulties starting then my advice is to reconsider your attitude:

    • be kind to yourself;
    • each time be curious: you are exploring new people, new possibilities and new skills;
    • prepare topics list: you can start talking about your country, culture, city, yourself, your profession, your hobby, sports, cars, climate, traveling, politics (be careful here), religion (be careful here), health. Try to think about each topic in English ahead of time before a real conversation;
    • don’t forget to listen.

    I believe that regular committed practice is more important than finding a partner who is a native speaker. For sure native speakers.. speak better, but for you, it’s super important to start. You need to break fear and intimidation and you need to make your brain realize that the English tongue is a new part of you.

    In my story, I quickly found a first committed partner from India, and we agreed to practice 2 times per week with a conversation topic decided in advance. At first, I was preparing my speech in a written form. But I’ve never used written speech during a conversation, each time I had difficulties, I tried to improvise and to describe an idea using some alternative phrases.

  4. Don’t throw your books away

    As an additional reinforcement: read books aloud. I’ve made a special reader to simplify that task, and It helped me to finish several books. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough courage to make my reading public. I saw some commercial products for that field but never tried one.

    I also encourage you using dictionary.com or a similar dictionary instead of translating words into your own language. Using dictionary.com is tough but that way you’ll acquire additional vocabulary.

    I was tracking not only my practice but also additional content which I receive such as audio podcasts, youtube videos, movies, cartoons, etc. The goal is to receive content in English every day. It’s good if you can have at least a little bit of speaking (or at least thinking) in English each day.

There could be an additional step: travel. It’s not that easy as the previous 4 points but if you have some budget, it’s not that hard. I’ve spent 1.5 months in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and I had conversations with expats and digital nomads each day. It was really good practice.

Conclusion

That’s all, I hope my experience will be useful for others. Currently, my speaking skills are similar to my writing skills: I constantly make mistakes, but it doesn’t stop me from conveying the meanings. I plan to improve but I am quite satisfied with the progress I’ve made by following the advice from this article. If you want to correct something or to just give some hints, don’t hesitate to write. And have a good time improving your skills by using any method which works for you :)