Archive for the ‘Improve English’ Category

How To Improve English And Communication Skills

Friday, December 21st, 2012

How To Improve English And Communication Skills

Many deserving candidates lose out on job opportunities because of their

vernacular accent.

Can I ‘neutralise’ my accent?

Yes, you can. All you need to do is train yourself to speak English as

comfortably and perfectly as you speak your mother tongue.

How do you train yourself? By inculcating certain practices in your daily

lifestyle. These will get you closer to sounding like a native English speaker

and equip you with a global accent — and you will speak not American or

British English, but correct English.

This is the first step to learn any other accent, be it American or British or

Australian.

Lisa Mojsin, head trainer, director and founder of the Accurate English

Training Company in Los Angeles, offers these tips to help ‘neutralise’ your

accent or rather do away with the local twang, as you speak.

you.

Don’t worry about your listener getting impatient with your slow speech — it

is more important that everything you say be understood.

iii. Listen to the ‘music’ of English.

Do not use the ‘music’ of your native language when you speak English. Each

language has its own way of ‘singing’.

iv. Use the dictionary.

Try and familiarise yourself with the phonetic symbols of your dictionary.

Look up the correct pronunciation of words that are hard for you to say.

v. Make a list of frequently used words that you find difficult to pronounce

and ask someone who speaks the language well to pronounce them for you.

Record these words, listen to them and practice saying them. Listen and read

at the same time.

vi. Buy books on tape.

Record yourself reading some sections of the book. Compare the sound of

your English with that of the person reading the book on the tape.

vii. Pronounce the ending of each word.

Pay special attention to ‘S’ and ‘ED’ endings. This will help you strengthen the

mouth muscles that you use when you speak English.

viii. Read aloud in English for 15-20 minutes every day.

Research has shown it takes about three months of daily practice to develop

strong mouth muscles for speaking a new language.

ix. Record your own voice and listen for pronunciation mistakes.

Many people hate to hear the sound of their voice and avoid listening to

themselves speak. However, this is a very important exercise because doing it

will help you become conscious of the mistakes you are making.

x. Be patient.

You can change the way you speak but it won’t happen overnight. People

often expect instant results and give up too soon. You can change the way

you sound if you are willing to put some effort into it.

Quick tips

Various versions of the English language exist. Begin by identifying the

category you fall into and start by improving the clarity of your speech.

~ Focus on removing the mother tongue influence and the ‘Indianisms’ that

creep into your English conversations.

~ Watch the English news on television channels like Star World, CNN, BBC

and English movies on Star Movies and HBO.

~ Listen to and sing English songs. We’d recommend Westlife, Robbie Williams

[ Images ], Abba, Skeeter Davis and Connie Francis among others.

Start your own English language blog. Even for people who don’t have to

write in English, writing can be a great way of properly learning the kind of

vocabulary you need to describe your own life and interests, and of thinking

about how to stop making grammar mistakes. The problem most people

have is that they don’t know what to write about. One traditional way to

make sure you write every day in English is to write an English diary

(journal), and a more up to date way of doing this is to write a blog. Popular

topics include your language learning experience, your experience studying

abroad, your local area, your language, or translations of your local news

into English.

Write a news diary. Another daily writing task that can work for people who

would be bored by writing about their own routines in a diary is to write

about the news that you read and listen to everyday. If you include your

predictions for how you think the story will develop (e.g. “I think Hillary will

become president”), this can give you a good reason to read old entries

another time, at which time you can also correct and mistakes you have

made and generally improve what you have written.

Sign up for a regular English tip. Some websites offer a weekly or even daily

short English lesson sent to your email account. If your mobile phone has an

e-mail address, it is also possible to have the tips sent to your phone to read

on the way to work or school. Please note, however, that such services are not

usually graded very well to the levels of different students, and they should

be used as a little added extra or revision in your English studies rather than

as a replacement for something you or your teacher have chosen more

carefully as what you need to learn.

Listen to MP3s. Although buying music on the internet is becoming more

popular in many countries, not so many people know that you can download

speech radio such as audio books (an actor reading out a novel) and speech

radio. Not only is this better practice for your English than listening to English

music, from sources like Scientific American, BBC and Australia’s ABC Radio it

is also free.

Listen to English music. Even listening to music while doing something else can

help a little for things like getting used to the natural rhythm and tone of

English speech, although the more time and attention you give to a song the

more you will learn from listening to it again in the future.

Read the lyrics to a song. Although just listening to a song in English can be a

good way of really learning the words of the chorus in an easily memorable

way, if you want to really get something out of listening to English music you

will need to take some time to read the lyrics of the song with a dictionary. If

the lyrics are not given in the CD booklet, you may be able to find them on

the internet, but please note that some lyrics sites deliberately put a few

errors into their lyrics for copyright reasons. Once you have read and

understood the lyrics, if you then listen and read at the same time, this can

be a good way of understanding how sounds change in fast, natural, informal

speech.

Sing karaoke in English. The next stage after understanding and memorising

a song is obviously to sing it. Although some words have their pronunciation

changed completely to fit in with a song, most of the words have the same

sounds and stressed syllables as in normal speech. Remembering which words

rhyme at the end of each line can also be a good way of starting to learn

English pronunciation.

Write a film, music, hotel or book review. Another motivating and easy way

to make yourself write in English is to write a review for a site such as

Amazon or Internet Movie Database. Many non-native speakers write

reviews on sites like this, and if you have some special understanding of the

book, music or film due to your first language or knowing the artist

personally, that would be very interesting for the English speakers who read

and write reviews on the site.

Only search in English. Switching your search engine to the English language

version of msn, yahoo, Google etc. can not only be a good way of practising

fast reading for specific information in English, but could also give you a

wider choice of sites to choose from and give you an idea of what foreigners

are writing about your country and area.

Read a book you’ve already read or seen the movie of in your own language.

Although most language learners under Advanced level would probably

learn more from reading a graded reader or something from the internet

than they would from reading an original book written for English speakers,

for some people reading something like Harry Potter in the original can be a

great motivator to improve their English. To make this easier for you and

make sure that it motivates you rather than just making your tired, try

reading a book that you already know the story of. This not only makes it

easier to understand and guess vocabulary, but you are also more likely to

remember the language in it. If you have not read the book before, reading

a plot summary from the internet can also help in the same way.

Read a translation into English. Another way of making sure books are easier

to understand is to choose a book that was originally translated into English,

preferably from your own language. Even if you haven’t read the book in

your own language, you will find the English is written in a slightly simplified

way that is more similar to how your own language is written than a book

originally written in English would be.

Skip the first ten pages. If you have given up with a book in English or are

reading it very slowly, try skimming through the first ten pages or skipping

them completely. The start of most books tend to be mainly description and

are therefore full of difficult vocabulary and don’t have a clear story line yet

to help you understand what is happening and to motivate you to turn the

next page. If the book is still too difficult even after the introductionary part

is finished, it is probably time to give that book up for now and try it again

after you have read some easier things.

Read a book with lots of dialogue. Opening up books before you buy one and

flicking through them to find one with lots of direct dialogue in it has several

advantages. If there is less text on the page due to all the speech marks etc,

this can make it easier to read and easier to write translations on. Dialogue is

also much easier to understand than descriptive parts of a book, and is much

more like the language you will want to learn in order to be able to speak

English.

Read English language comics. Even more than books with lots of dialogue,

comics can be easy to understand and full of idiomatic language as it is

actually spoken. There can be difficulties with slang, difficult to understand

jokes and/ or dialogue written how people speak rather than with normal

spellings, so try to choose which comic carefully. Usually, serious or adventure

comics are easier to understand than funny ones.

Read English language entertainment guides. Nowadays most big cities in the

world have an English language magazine and/ or online guide to the

movies, plays, exhibitions that are on in the city that week. Reading this in

English is not only good value, but it could also guide you to places that

English speakers are interested in and where you might hear some English

spoken around you.

Read English language magazines. Like books, if you can read two versions of

the same magazine (Newsweek in your language and in English, for

example), that could make understanding it much easier.

Take a one week intensive course. Although you cannot expect to come out of

a very short course speaking much better English than when you started it, if

you continue studying a little over the following weeks and months, the

knowledge you gained then will gradually come out and mean that your

level of speaking, listening etc. are better than they would have been if you

hadn’t taken that course. This positive effect can still be true up to a year

later.

Follow your intensive course up with an extensive course. The more time you

can spend studying English the better, but studying periodic intensive courses

with a few hours of study a week in between is probably better value for

money than any other system as it gives your brain time to subconsciously

learn and start using the new language you have learnt before you introduce

the next new “chunk” of language.

Supplement your group class with a one to one class. Another good way to

combine two different kinds of classes is to study both in a group class and one

to one. Having a one to one teacher, even if just a couple of times a month,

will mean that you can be taught exactly the language that you need, that

you will have more time to speak, and that you can have as much error

correction as you like.

Supplement your one to one class with a group class. The benefits of having a

group class are often less clear to students, but they include the fact that you

will learn to deal with several people speaking at once, have a chance to

practice skills such as interrupting people, and will hear a range of different

viewpoints and topics.

Teach your children or friends some English. Recent research has shown that

elder children tend to be a couple of IQ points above their younger siblings,

and the most likely reason is that explaining things to their little brothers and

sisters gives them an intellectual boost. In the same way, teaching someone

lower level than you the English you already know is a great way of

permanently fixing that knowledge in your own brain.

Ask your company to start English lessons. Even if you don’t need to speak

English at work, English lessons can be a fun and reasonably priced way for

your company to spend their training budget in a popular way.

Have English radio on in the background while you are doing your

housework. Even if you are not listening carefully, it will help you get a feel

for natural English rhythm and intonation.

Play English language learning games on your Nintendo DS. Although such

games can have quite random language and are unlikely to improve your

ability to speak English on their own, the next time you hear or read the

same language elsewhere it will be really fixed in your brain by the fact you

have played a game with it in already. It is also a nice way of taking a break

from your other English studies while also doing some English. To make sure it

really is a break and to avoid wasting time learning language from the game

that is not much used in daily life, don’t bother writing down any new

language you see in the game, but just try to learn it from playing the game

again.

Say or think what you are doing in English as you do your daily tasks. As you

are doing your chores, try creating sentences describing what you are doing,

e.g. ‘I am unscrewing the ketchup bottle cap’. This gets you used to thinking

in English without translating, and can be a good way of seeing what simple

vocabulary that is around you everyday you don’t know. yet

Watch English language films with English subtitles. For people who can’t

understand a film without subtitles but find themselves not listening at all

when reading subtitles in their own language, this should be the way of

watching a film that you should aim for. If it is too difficult to watch the

whole film this way, try watching the (usually important) first 10 or 15

minutes of the film with subtitles in your own language, switch to English

subtitles after that, and only switch back to subtitles in your own language if

you get totally lost following the story of the film.

Watch films in your language with English subtitles. If you are finding English

films with English subtitles too difficult or you can’t find English films with

English subtitles in your local video shop, this is a good second best option.

Looking for local films with English subtitles can also sometimes be a good

sign of quality, as it means the producers of the film are expecting it to be

popular internationally as well.

Watch English films with subtitles in your language. Again, this is not as good

practice as English language films with English subtitles, but is more relaxing,

can be easier to find suitable DVDs for, and is also possible with VHS.

Watch the same film or TV episode over and over again. This can not only

save you money on DVDs, but will mean that you can really learn the

language without having to study it. Some comedies can also get funnier the

more you watch them, especially if you watch them with no subtitles and so

understand a little more each time you watch it.

Be realistic about your level. One thing that holds many language learners

back is actually trying too hard and tackling something that their brain is not

ready for yet. Checking your level with a level check test on the internet, by

taking an English language test (FCE, CAE, IELTS, TOEIC, TOEFL etc.), or by

taking a free trial level check and/ or lesson in a language school will help

you find out what your level is and so choose suitable self-study materials.

Be realistic about your reading level. Most researchers agree that people

learn most when reading something they understand almost all of. If there

are one or two words per page that you have never seen before, that is about

the right level. If there are three or more on every page, you should switch to

something easier and come back later.

Read graded readers (= easy readers). These are books that are especially

written for language learners like you, e.g. Penguin Readers. Although it can

be difficult to find something as interesting as things written in newspapers or

on the internet, in terms of learning the language only people who need to

read for their work or an exam usually gain more from reading things written

for graded readers. Graded readers of classic books like Charles Dickens also

have the benefit of giving you a lot of knowledge about the literature, and

culture more generally, of English speaking countries in a short time.

Read the whole thing with no help. Although using a dictionary has been

shown to help with both short term and long term learning of vocabulary, the

fact that using it slows reading down can stop some people reading in English

at all. Reading a whole book quickly through just for pleasure from time to

time will help you remember how fun reading in another language can be.

Read and learn everything. At the opposite extreme, it can be hard work but

very satisfying to get to the end of a book knowing that you have learnt

every word in it. See other tips on this page to make sure it is a book that is

easy enough to do this with and to ensure that the vocabulary you learn is

useful.

Watching English children’s films or TV programmes. Although some of the

vocabulary you can learn from things made for children can be a bit strange

(lots of animal names and maybe animal noises, including baby names for

things), the fact that not only the language but the structure of the story is

simplified can make it an easy and motivating thing to watch. Like good

language learning materials, the same language is also often repeated to

make it memorable, and the use of catchy songs etc. can increase this positive

effect on your memory.

Read English children’s books. This is very similar to watching English

children’s movies, but with the added advantage of there being more

illustrations than adult books, which both helps you to understand the story

and makes the page brighter and more motivating to read.

Keep a list of language to learn, e.g. a vocab list. Even if you don’t often find

time to go though your vocab list and it keeps on building up, just the act of

choosing which words you need to learn and writing them down on a special

list can help you learn them.

Go through your vocab list several times every day. If ticking off words on a

vocabulary list on the train to work is inconvenient or embarrassing for you,

you can keep your list of words to learn as an entry in your electronic

dictionary, as a mobile phone to do list or as a text file in your MP3 player

(e.g. iPod). Although the time spent transferring the information between

different formats like these may seem wasted, in fact any time you spend

using the vocabulary like this will help you learn it.

Convert your vocab list to English only. One way to stop yourself translating

and therefore increase your speed of comprehension and production is to

learn all your vocabulary without the use of your own first language. Ways

you can write a vocab list in only English include with synonyms (words with

the same meaning, e.g. “tall” and “high”); with opposites (“high” and “low”);

with pronunciation factors such as number of syllables (the number of beats,

e.g. three for “de- ci- sion”) and the word stress (the syllable that is

pronounced louder and longer, e.g. the second syllable in “baNAna”); and

gapped sentences (e.g. “I am not _________________ in science fiction” for the

word “interested”).

Cross out and delete. Crossing out or deleting words, sentences or whole pages

that you have learnt can be a great motivator, and save your list of things to

learn becoming too big to handle.

Throw everything away and start again. One of the things that can put most

people off learning is a stack of half finished books or a huge list vocabulary

waiting to be learnt. Simply getting rid of all that and starting again with

something new from zero can be a great motivator and get your studies

underway again.

Label things in your house or office with post-its. The easiest vocabulary to

learn is the vocabulary of things you see and use everyday. If you can write

the names of things around you on slips of paper and stick them on the real

thing, this is a great way of learning useful vocabulary. If you can leave them

there over the following days and weeks, this is a very easy way of revising

the vocabulary until it is properly learnt.

Label a drawing. For people who can’t put labels on real things, the next best

option is to take a photo of a real place in your life like your office, print it

out, and then draw lines to all of the things you can see in the picture and

label them in English with the help of a dictionary. You can do the same thing

with places you pass through everyday like the station. Because you will see

the same thing again and again, it should be easy to really learn the words

for those things.

Keep a diary in English. This is a popular method of making sure you use

English everyday for people who don’t often speak English and can’t think of

things to write about. The fact that you are writing about real things that

have happened to you means that any words you look up in the dictionary

will be vocabulary that is useful for you and easy to learn.

Online chat. The closest thing to speaking for people who don’t have the

chance to speak English is online chat, as you have to think and respond

quickly, and the language is short and informal just like speech.

Listen to the radio news in English. You can make this easier by reading the

news in English first, or even just by reading or listening to the news in your

own language.

Read an English language newspaper. Freebie newspapers like “Metro” in

London are usually the easiest to understand, followed by mid-brow titles

like “The Daily Express” or “The Daily Mail” in English. Popular newspapers

like “The Sun” are more difficult because of the idiomatic, slangy use of

language and the number of jokes in the headlines and articles.

Write fiction in English, e.g. short stories. For people who find writing a diary

about things that happen to them everyday boring, the best thing is to let

your imagination go and write about whatever comes into your head. The

advantage of this is that if you can’t think of how to say something in English,

you can just change the story to something that is easier to explain. Perhaps

the easiest way to start writing fiction in English is with a diary, changing any

details you like to make it more interesting and adding more and more

fantasy as the weeks go on.

English language exercise videos. This is quite similar to how babies learn, by

listening, watching and copying. It is also good for your health!

Learn a famous speech or poem in English by heart. Although you may never

hear or get the chance to say exactly that line, having one memorable

example of an English grammatical form in your head can make it much

easier to learn other examples of the same grammar as you hear them. It is

also something you can practice over and over without being as boring as

grammatical drills.

Get tipsy (= a little drunk) before speaking English. This can not only improve

your fluency while you are drinking, but can also improve your confidence in

future days and weeks by showing you that you can communicate what you

want to say.

Use a dictionary while you are watching a movie. Films often have the same

words many times, so if you look up important words the first or second time

you hear them, you should have learnt them by the end of the film. It is

easier to use a dictionary if you watch with English subtitles.

Learn and use the phonemic script. Although there are many sounds in

English, there are even more spellings. By learning the phonemic script and

writing vocabulary down with it, you can both add another stage to your

vocabulary learning that should help you learn it more thoroughly, and

improve your pronunciation. It can also make things easier for you by

stopping you trying to pronounce different spellings of the same

pronunciation different ways.

Learn some spelling rules. Many people think that English spelling is random,

but in fact most words follow some kind of rule, e.g. the “magic E” that

changes the pronunciation of “mad” and “made”.

Record your own voice. For people who don’t have much or any correction of

pronunciation from a teacher, recording yourself and listening back makes it

easier to hear whether you are really making the English sounds that you are

trying to or not.

Use computer pronunciation analysis. Although most programmes that claim

to tell you when you are pronouncing correctly or not don’t actually do that,

listening many times and seeing how your voice changes as you try to match

the sounds and waveform given by a pronunciation CD ROM can be good

practice and more motivating than just recording your own voice.

Learn as many words as you can of one category, e.g. animal words. Learning

similar words together can both expand your overall vocabulary and make

them easier to learn by forming links between the words in your brain.

Take holidays abroad. This is not only a good opportunity to speak English in

situations where you really have to make yourself understood in order to live,

but it is also a good motivator to study English seriously in the weeks and

months before your trip. If possible, also try to use English even when you

could use your own language, e.g. when you pick a guided tour of a museum

or historic place or when you book a flight on the internet, and try to avoid

package tours.

Draw pictures of the words you want to learn. Especially if you are artistic,

this can be a better way of learning vocabulary than writing translations or

example sentences.

Find a foreign boyfriend or girlfriend. No tips on how to do this here, but

everyone agrees that getting or even just looking for a date in English can be

a great motivator to improve your language skills.

Arrange a conversation exchange. Swapping lessons and conversation with

someone who wants to learn your language can be a good alternative for

those who aren’t looking for romance, or can sometimes lead onto dating for

those who are!

Sign up for an English language exam. Even if you don’t need to take an

exam and don’t want to or can’t take a special course to study for it, paying

to take an exam like TOEFL, TOEIC, IELTS or FCE can really motivate you

take your English studies seriously.

Model your accent on one particular actor. e.g. try to speak like Robert De

Niro. Students who say they want to sound more like a native speaker have

the problem that native speakers don’t sound all that much like each other.

Choosing one model can make the task of improving your pronunciation

more clear, and is quite fun. Doing an impression of that person also makes a

good party trick.

Use an English-English dictionary. Trying to use a bilingual dictionary less and

switching to a monolingual one can help you to stop translating in you head

when you are speaking or listening, and other useful English vocabulary can

come up while you are using the dictionary.

Occasionally talk to or e-mail your friends in English. Many people find this a

bit false or embarrassing, but if you think of it as a study club and set a

particular time and/ or place, it is no different from studying maths together.

Go to an English or Irish pub. As well as having a menu in English and being a

good way of finding out something about the culture of English speaking

countries, you might also find there are free English language listings

magazines, English language sports on the TV and/ or foreign people you can

speak to.

Buy a speaking electronic dictionary. Although most electronic dictionaries

are not as good as paper ones for the amount of information they give you

about each word, some of them have the very useful function of saying the

word with the correct pronunciation.

Learn your electronic dictionary vocabulary list. Most electronic dictionaries

also have a button which you can push to see the last 30 or more words you

looked up. By deleting words you decide are useless or you have already

learnt from this list, you can use it as a “to do list” of words to learn that you

can look at several times a day in the train etc.

Switch operating system to English. Changing the operating language of your

mobile phone, video recorder etc. to English can be an easy way of making

sure you use the language everyday.

Set goals. Deciding how many hours you want to study, how many words you

want to learn or what score you want to get in a test are all good ways of

making sure you do extra study.

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