6 Easy Ways to Practice Speaking English on Your Own

Many of our ConfidentVoice.com students have asked for ways they can practice their spoken English on their own. Here are six strategies you can use to practice speaking English at home. Students studying English pronunciation in American universities commonly use these strategies.

 Use online dictionaries

Make a list of words that you use frequently and look them up in an online dictionary that uses American English pronunciation audio files. Two online dictionaries that I recommend are merriam-webster.com and dictionary.com. Using a dictionary, find each word on your list. Play the audio file to listen and repeat the word several times. Then say the word in a sentence. Do this several times a week until you can say all the words on your list with confidence.

 Friends and coworkers

Talk to some trusted friends or coworkers and tell them that you are working on improving your pronunciation. Ask them to correct you when you are in private conversations. Friends and coworkers often want to help but they usually don’t know how to approach you without hurting your feelings.

 Get physical 

Speaking is physical so put your hand on your face, throat and jaw to feel the way your face moves when you say American English sounds. Be aware of the way your tongue touches the different parts of your mouth when you speak. (Of course you want to do this in the privacy of your own home!)

 Rehearse

Many public speakers and actors ‘rehearse’ what they are going to say when they are alone. When you have an upcoming situation where you know you will be required to speak English, practice the situation aloud paying attention to the speech features (stress, consonant clusters) that you are working on.

 Mirroring

When you are watching an American television program or movie choose a character to ‘mirror’. As soon as your character starts to speak say exactly what he or she is saying as they say it. Mirror your character’s speech for about 15 seconds at a time. This will help you get a feel for American English intonation and stress patterns.

 Record yourself

One excellent way to monitor your own progress is to make a recording of your voice. Here is one way to do it. Take some text and mark the features that you are trying to improve on: syllable stress, intonation, etc. Then record yourself saying the text. When you are done recording used the marked text to judge your accuracy. If you are not happy with your recording try it again. (Take a look at the Mini Lesson below to read more about this process).

Remember, short frequent speaking practice will bring better results than practicing for a longer duration only once a week!

Mini Lesson: Marking and Recording Text

One technique you can use to improve your English pronunciation is to mark sentences or a paragraph with the speech features you are working on, and then record yourself to practice these features. (See tip #6 in the list of strategies above).

In this mini-lesson you will mark the intonation patterns in four different sentences and then make a recording. (You learned about intonation patterns in the previous lesson).

First, decide which type of intonation to use for each sentence, rising-falling or rising. Then mark each sentence with arrows ?.

Here are the sentences.

1. When are they coming?

2. Are they coming over this evening?

3. They’re bringing a pizza.

4. They’re bringing a pizza?

Second, record each sentence using your computer, phone or other device. Third, play back the sentences and listen to see if you pronounced the intonation patterns correctly.

Here are the correct intonation patterns; 1. RF, 2. R, 3. RF, 4. R

When you are done you can click below to listen to each sentence.

Insight: American English Idioms

An idiom is a unique expression in which the meaning cannot necessarily be understood from the literal definitions of the words.

In this lesson, I’ve chosen two more of my favorite food idioms to share with you.

 The first idiom is: couch potato

In American English a couch potato is a person who spends their free time sitting on the couch in front of the television eating junk food. As you can imagine, if someone calls you a couch potato it is NOT a complement!

For example: If my brother has been sitting in front of the TV all weekend I might say, “Come on Peter, don’t be such a couch potato, let’s go for a walk”.

 The second idiom is: food for thought

Food for thought refers to an idea is important and therefore worth thinking about or considering. For example: If my sister tells me that I should go to a particular store to get a good bargain on clothing I might say, “Hmm, that’s food for thought, thanks for the suggestion”.

Listening Activity

Click below here to listen and say each idiom in a sentence.

1. Come on Peter, don’t be such a couch potato!

2. What a great idea, that’s definitely food for thought.

Featured Learning Resource: TalkEnglish.com 

This website features sets of sentences and dialogs that you can use to listen and repeat American English. The sentences and dialogs are arranged by topics such as Travel, Business English and Interview Questions. The narrator’s American English pronunciation is very clear and he is easy to understand.   Click on the image to go to the site now.