Talking Alone Have you ever found yourself talking alone? It's something I often do by using my foreign language when staying at home. I've discovered a really good system for conversational practice in it. It's slightly odd at the beginning, since you feel as if you were from la la land...don't know, some kind of psychological disorder or so, but it does a great job on what it refers to thinking fluency, which hopefully will further translate into fluency of speech. The thing is that by flowing throughout your own fictitious conversation, it reaches a point at which you find a gap, a black blank in your thinking stream. It may be caused by an unknown word you need to use, or by a complex grammar structure you don't still master. All you have to do is to stop at that point and figure it out with a grammar book, an online translator or any other resource you prefer to use. So that system helps me to spot my weaknesses, at a time I'm practicing pronuntiation and shortening the time that goes from thinking to speaking. There is a handicap in it though: you could be making some mistakes you're not able to identify on your own. That's the reason why you need some real conversational practice with another person pointing out your mistakes, but that exercise is still good for detecting vocabulary/grammar lacks. Hope you find this interesting and dare to try, but first make sure there are not human beings all around you... they could be pushing 111 on their mobiles with a freezed smile in their lips.