By Robby
If you are new here please read this first.
Phrases, idiomatic expressions and collocations are the basic units of the English language and if you make sure you learn lots of them, you’ll develop your ability to speak automatically and without much thinking.
Quite often, however, foreign English speakers may face the following problem – all those phrases have been memorized but it’s very hard to use them in real life!
So, the million dollar question is – how to ensure you can actually use them in real life instead of JUST KNOWING them?
Make Sure to Repeat Them Aloud!
First of all you have to make sure you actually REPEAT the phrases you’re learning. You have to speak them aloud many times over because it’s your mouth that does all the speaking – not your brain.
Not so many folks actually think about the fact that just knowing something doesn’t translate in your ability to use it, and it’s the typical active vs passive vocabulary dilemma.
But the inability to use all those newly acquired means of expression may still be present despite all your attempts to repeat them out loud and also use them while engaged in spoken English self-practice…
Learn to Let It Go and Don’t Force Yourself!
It’s not so easy to learn, but it is possible to learn to ignore the part of your brain that constantly tries to analyze your speech, tells you which words to use and recall the proper words and expressions. It’s hard to speak fluently while it happens, so you have to learn how to speak without much thinking about what exact words you’re going to use and how you’re going to structure sentences.
The moment you STOP FORCING yourself to recall words and phrases from your mental dictionary, you may just find that you can actually use a whole lot more phrases than if you tried to recall them at your will!
It’s ironic, yet it happens all the time in other aspects of life.
You can surely remember moments when you can’t think of the simplest things when you really, really have to remember something only to remember them 10 minutes later when you don’t need it anymore!
The very same thing can be observed when you’re trying to force your brain to pick entries from your inner dictionary, and it’s definitely worth trying to master the skill of speaking without much thinking.
How to do it?
Robby
P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!
P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!
P.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out the English Harmony System HERE!