Communication is one of the important skills for English learners, but if you don’t have any learning methods or know-how it will make it very easy to give up.
Let’s find out how to develop communication skills in English in this article!
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Practice with the “intensive reading” technique
“Intensive reading is reading with concentration to understand exactly what you are reading.
This is the opposite of skimming, which means reading to understand the content in general, this reading helps the reader feel confident and interested in the reading process because it is possible to visualize what is being read. No need to focus too much on details. While skimming can be helpful in many ways, thorough reading is more helpful in helping you quickly improve your English skills.
The careful reading technique includes the following steps:
- Identify important words
- Cover some words and guess their meanings
- Write a summary after reading
- Read with an English tutor (or a friend) or discuss the content of the text you have read.
Make sure you choose short reading passages when practicing your intensive reading technique, or you will get overwhelmed and quickly give up on the practice.
This “intensive reading” technique not only helps you understand the meaning of the text deeply, but it also helps you accumulate ideas from the text so that when communicating, your brain will also quickly turn what you read into the content. Use the conversation naturally.
Practice speaking in front of the mirror
Practicing speaking in front of a mirror can help you feel less shy when speaking in English. Sometimes, communicating in English while your current level is still low can make you feel awkward and awkward. This is partly because you don’t know what your mouth looks like when speaking sounds that are not in your mother tongue, even if you are pronouncing them correctly.
So watch how your mouth moves when you speak English in front of the mirror. Better yet, compare your pronunciation with native English speakers. For example, you might repeat some dialogue from a TV show and try to imitate the actor’s mouth movements. This will not only help you build confidence but also help you improve your English pronunciation.
Learning with a “distributed practice method”
The “distributed practice” method ensures that you will always improve your English and achieve lasting achievement. In this method, you will have many very short study sessions.
This is different from many other training methods such as cramming, studying too much, or just starting to study right before a test. Aside from actually making you feel uncomfortable, cramming doesn’t help you remember information for a long time. Most people forget everything they have learned as soon as they finish their test.
To start using distributed practice, create a study schedule. Try to study at least a few times a week and plan out what you want to learn each day/week/month/etc. Set multiple goals for the English skills you want to improve to better track your progress.
Mark strange words while reading
When reading an English book, mark the words you don’t know and don’t look up the dictionary until the end of the chapter. Then, turn these unfamiliar words into a list of words to learn for the day.
This is a good test to improve learners’ English vocabulary and reading comprehension. You just pick out a book that looks interesting and sit down with a pen and notebook. By the end of that chapter, you should have at least a few words to look up.
Repeat English puns (“tongue twisters”)
“Tongue twisters” are short English sentences that are repeated over and over with a lot of similar sounds, making them very difficult to say even for native English speakers. In Vietnam, there are also many such sentence patterns, such as “a copper pot cooks snails, an earthen pot cooks frogs”, “eat sour grapefruit for lunch”, etc.
These sentences are very effective in creating fun and helping to improve actual English pronunciation. They will help you master difficult English sounds and use them more naturally. Start slow to make sure you pronounce each word correctly, then try to speak faster and faster!
Record your English pronunciation every day
This may sound tedious (because it’s boring and repetitive) but then you’ll be so happy you decided to do this. Use the voice recorder app to make a recording of your English speech every day. You can simply talk about a day that has passed for a few minutes, read a passage from an English book or newspaper, say some new English words that you have learned, or anything that suits you. friend!
But don’t stop there. After the recordings, you need to listen to them again and try to catch your mistakes, whether it’s pronunciation mistakes, grammar mistakes or misused words, etc. This is one of the most practical and immediate ways to improve your English, especially if you are learning a foreign language on your own. If you don’t correct your mistakes, you will continue to make mistakes and your English will improve more slowly.
An added bonus is that these recordings can be a great motivator in your later learning. Because it is certain that there will be times when you will have difficulty, you are not as fast as you used to be, and complex English grammar concepts seem too difficult. You may even want to give up. At this point, the recordings will remind you of how far you have come during your studies, which can lift you up when you feel demoralized!
Memorize common homonyms
Homonyms are words that have the same pronunciation but different (and possibly different spelling) meanings. Some examples of English homonyms include:
- Blew – blue (blow – blue)
- Know – no (know – no)
- Here – hear
Studying homonyms will help improve your English conversation skills and avoid confusion between words. You will hear English more easily if you are familiar with the same common words. To memorize common homonyms, you can use flashcards for word pairs with actual meanings.
Understanding the S-V-O structure
Sentence structures in English aren’t really that hard to grasp, especially if you’ve studied German or Roman, because these languages have similar grammatical structures. However, it is important for beginners to master the S-V-O (Subject-Verb-Object/Subject-Verb – Object) sentence structure as quickly as possible.
When you can distinguish Subject – Verb – Complement in any sentence, you will easily combine new sentence structures, which will help you a lot in creating English sentences in different sentences. Good practical conversation when practicing writing English.
S-V-O sentence patterns look like this: I grab a soda “I” is the subject of the sentence, “grab” is the verb, “soda” is the object (what is being taken)
Note that the verb can be in the negative format. Example: He does not clean the car (He does not wash the car.)
You will find that a compliment is not always needed in a sentence, however, subject and verb are required. Example: She danced (She danced).
Play English games online
English games should be used regularly by learners, simply because they are fun, both relaxing and improving English, and are easily accessible online. Some fun English grammar games include:
Fun English Game: Even games designed for children to learn English can be useful for adults! They include games to practice grammar, vocabulary, and even punctuation.
Learn English Kids: This is a family or friends game resource from the British Council.
ESL Game Goals: This is a particularly useful site for English games for adults that revolve around grammar formulas.
Learning any language takes time and effort. With a few useful tips and advice above, we hope that you will continue to improve and improve your English communication skills even more.
Final thought
Speaking is the most important skill in English, to master this skill you need to learn and practice English daily through videos on Youtube or English websites. It’s true that it might seem not easy at first but the more you try the better you become. Make sure you follow these methods above to improve your English speaking skills.
Top News hopes this article can help you learn more about ways to improve communication skills in English effectively and wishes you the best on your English learning journey.
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