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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