How to practice english speaking alone at home?

If you have no one to speak in English with, there are ways for you to improve your English speaking skills alone at home.  In today’s video lesson, we will look at 6 different ways you can practice your English speaking skills alone at home, to better prepare yourself for future conversations you will have in English.

Below you will find the full lesson notes from the video lesson

Now, before we go through exactly how to practice speaking English at home, friends I do need to tell you that regardless which of the option you choose to practice at home, there is only one thing you need to keep in mind to improve your speaking skills….that is consistency!
You need to practice your English speaking skills on a daily basis to see improvements in your speaking skills! 

Not once a week, not once a fortnight, you need consistent daily practice!

But how can you start practicing your English speaking skills?

Today I would like to share with you my 6 tips to help you start practicing your  English speaking skills at home.

1. Shadowing: Shadowing is a technique you should be using regularly, regardless of your level of English.  This technique will help you improve your pronunciation, intonation and also enable you to better use connected speech to sound more natural speaking in English. Shadowing is when you listen to someone speaking in English and you imitate and copy everything they are saying.

**The shadowing technique is something I use quite often to improve my Croatian language skills and many English learners in my online training programs use this to improve their speaking skills.  I have another great lesson explaining more on the shadowing technique, click here to watch that lesson

2. Talk to yourself: By talking to yourself you are forcing your mind to remember all those words and grammatical structures you know and use them to construct sentences.  By talking to yourself, you are training your brain to think in English and to recall and remember all those words you have learned in the past.  Try to talk about topics which directly relate to you, and keep it as personal as possible, so that you can start talking to yourself in English.

3. Create role-play situations and talk about them:  If you are struggling to talk to yourself in English, try to think of situations you may find yourself in, in the future.  For example:  try to imagine a situation where you are at a grocery store, and think of everything you would need to say in that situation.  For example: Can I pay by credit card, Can I pay by debit card, Do you have any milk? 

4. Talk in front of a mirror not only is talking in front of a mirror a great way for you to improve your English speaking skills but it also a great way for you to improve your overall confidence speaking in English.  While brushing your teeth or washing your face, talk to yourself in English about your daily routine, about what your goals, your dreams…. talk to yourself about different topics which directly relate to you.

5. Record your voice To improve your English speaking skills, you need to know what areas you are really struggling with…. you need feedback!  You can give yourself feedback by recording your voice and comparing your pronunciation and expression to that of the other English speaker.  This is also a great way to see what areas you really need to be developing and working on in the future, while you are talking to yourself or shadowing in English.

6. Read a book out loud: By reading a book out loud you are making it a habit it speak in English.  You are forcing yourself to speak, to say words and sentences out loud, and you are making it a habit to speak in English.  To make reading books or stories out loud even more fun, try doing this with friends, family or small children, for support and guidance.