because they may be subconsciously trying to promote their profession on italki. It is rare for an italki teacher to promote learners going to an institute and spending time listening to natives talk before practicing. They will encourage people to practice as much as possible. Since people like the feeling of encouragement and want to be proactive in their learning, it sounds like something they should do. So I think people should be a bit skeptical of people giving advice. I am not saying that all the advice is bad. But you have to ask yourself "Is there something to be gained by the person by giving this advice?"
And with many of these articles coming out everyday ("Don't be afraid to speak", "Don't be scared to make mistakes", "Practice as much as you can"), it almost becomes like brainwashing.
Frankly as a teacher, teaching would be easy if all I had to do was listen to students talk in my native language and all I had to do was correct them once in a while. Unfortunately from experience, teaching beginners and intermediate level speakers in speaking doesn't work like that. But if I wanted to have an easy time of it as a teacher or if I was a teacher on italki looking to get as many students as possible without really caring about the students' learning well, that is what I would encourage them to do. I might even write articles and discussion posts urging people to do this. Telling them to not be afraid and to go out there and practice as much as possible with native speakers. If you come to Korea you will find legions of English enthusiasts doing this and Koreans as a body have been doing this for at least 10 years. But you wouldn't say Koreans spoke English well. What I find is that a lot of people who practiced early are poor speakers of English.
So I wouldn't be so gullible and just take up anyone's advice without examining the advice giver's possible motivation for giving it.
There is no need to rush when learning the speaking stage as a beginner. Spend time leisurely perfecting the pronunciation of beginner phrases. The more you spend time on this stage, the better you will ultimately sound. Enjoy the process. Native speakers like it when their language is spoken well even if they are just beginner sentences such as salutations. Go slowly and make sure that each stage is completed properly and you have full command of the elements to be learned in that stage before you move onto the next stage. Concentrate on making yourself sound like a native speaker early on. Keep practicing the sounds over again until the correct pronunciation comes naturally to you. Don't worry about others' progress. Just perfect the sentences you need to know for your level. Don't feel hurried. Don't feel you have to keep up with so-and-so who is also learning the same language. They have their own journey, you have yours.
A good teacher will understand that a student needs time to get used to the language and will not be impatient when a student takes time to speak a sentence. This is an awkward stage that all learners go through. Some take longer than others to get through it.
But the first stage for people learning on their own is not to watch dramas or movies or podcasts or radio shows or have conversations with native speakers in my view - the first step is to listen to easy simple sentences from audios designed for beginners. These sentences are usually read out aloud by professional voice actors. They will enunciate at a speed that is easy to follow and you will catch every sound. They usually have voices and pitch that are easy to emulate. I would choose audios where the speakers speak so clearly that you can hear every sound in their speaking.
Personally I prefer more neutral accents. For instance, with the American accent, a strong midwestern accent can be overpowering. A west coast American accent will sound better on the ear in many cases and sound less regional and not as strident. A British accent is preferred by some. An upper class British public school accent will make you sound "refined" and dignified IMO. An Australian accent that is neutral is quite good because it is neither British nor American - it is in-between. The Australian accent is the most neutral accent in my thinking so long as the accent is of the neutral kind and not the strong strine or westie accent. It is harder to place than the other two accents. The Australian accent seems to fit the speaking style and accents of East Asians for some reason. There is no strong "r" sound in both accents as an example. The Australian accent sounds less brisk and clipped than the English accent. But of course the choice of accent is ultimately one of personal preference.
I would recommend choosing a teacher who is flexible with their accents. For example, a good teacher for speaking will be able to switch to an American accent or British accent at will IMO. This demonstrates their knowledge of pronunciation and the sounds of English. An American person who cannot change their accent or a British person who has a fixed British accent probably will likely teach you with a very strong accent. I am not saying that a British teacher should teach you to speak with an American accent or vice versa. I mean that a teacher who understands "accents" is probably a better teacher than one who doesn't understand accents or who is "tone-deaf".
All the above advice is for people who want to sound like native speakers as much as possible. It is not for people who want to be fluent as quickly as possible. There is nothing wrong with being fluent early and having a slight accent. But for those who are very picky about their accents, I think it's best to take one's time when doing the listening stage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4rF47i_Oe4
This is Korean style English teaching.
I find this useful for learning Korean.
I don't think "Did you nail it?" is a very useful expression for beginners.
I have come across a few in my time. I just think this is so dishonest. They are not sincere about teaching at all. A few language exchange partners have offered to teach me Korean, also someone I hired paying by the hour, online teachers - they made it obvious they don't care about teaching Korean and just want to learn English from you or practice their English on you.
It really turned me off learning from Korean people. I felt like I could not trust anyone. It's a real shame - I live in Korea but there aren't many people I can learn Korean from, even from other beginner learners like me - I am forced to attend an academy to learn Korean conversation ... Even some people who I pay or do language exchange with (so it's not free for me as I have to teach English) are not sincere ...
At least with an academy the teachers are employed by the school so they cannot do whatever they like and abuse the system and try to use it to learn or practice their English ... although one teacher started to do this in a community class I was attending ...
Some teachers are good but they also try to practice their English --- every time they say a Korean word they say the equivalent English word ... I know this happens in teaching a lot, but I can tell the difference when someone is genuinely trying to help you by saying the English word and when someone just cares about practicing their English or tries to show off their English all the time ...
Frequently I have had to ask the teacher or language exchange partner to stop doing this - it gets really annoying.
I have to say when you are teaching a language to students whose language you are also learning, it's tempting to practice the student's language while teaching at the same time, but I think this is not really fair on the student and you should refrain from doing this. You shouldn't exploit students or language partners like this. The people who do this sort of thing should man up and pay for lessons instead of using this sort of method to practice their English, as they are not teaching properly, are not doing the job they are being paid for with sincere intentions or are cheating their language partner and wasting their time.
Once again, I KNOW that there are times you have to use the other person's language, but I am not talking about those times. It's hard to draw the line exactly between these two times, but as a student or language partner, you can quite easily TELL when someone is doing this ...
For example, if the person keeps supplying the English word or translation unasked, it's probably because they are practicing their English ... when they do it a lot unnecessarily, it's a sign. You can tell by the way the person keeps talking in English even after you ask them to talk in Korean only ...
And when you speak in English because you do not know how to say it in L2, how easily the person responds in English and keeps talking in English even when it's supposed to be their turn to speak in Korean ...
I actually had a one on one teacher do this. I was paying her and meeting her for lessons and she would bring a notebook and write down phrases in English as I said them. She would practice her English all the time. For example, she would teach me: "The weather is clear" (in Korean) and then write the sentence down in English in her notebook and repeat it aloud in English. She would not say much and wait for me to say something in English - I didn't know much Korean at the time so I did speak in English a fair bit. Since I wasn't being paid to teach her English, I didn't correct her and tell her that that phrase does not translate exactly into English like that. I even stressed to her before I hired her that she must speak a lot in Korean during the class. After a short time I gave up on her.
Knowing how crazy this country is about learning English, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a high proportion of people doing that here in Korea. It's no wonder I keep coming across many people like this. Not only that, people who are already good at English can be guilty of doing this. By teaching Korean they hope to improve their English or practice their English. These teachers tend to use English really really readily - partly to practice and partly to show off. Even when I insist or stress that the teacher must stick to Korean as much as possible, they don't seem to really care. Of course, not all teachers are like this, but I have come across quite a few like this.
I live in Korea, and one day my computer developed a problem. I had to replace the part. I did some research on the net in English and worked out what kind of part was involved and then I searched the net using Korean for that part. There wasn't really much information at all, and most of it was in Korean. It took a long time to figure out where I could get the part replaced. I rang a place and the person at the company could not speak English. So I spoke in Korean to the person. The person only spoke for a very short time and was not very helpful. I thought he told me the price for the part was $150. Since that price was OK, I thought I would go visit his center and either buy the part from there and replace it myself or buy the part and get it replaced there. Before I went there, I went to another repair center that I used to go to. The person there did not speak much English at all so I had to communicate in Korean. The price he quoted was really high and he wasn't really helpful, so I decided to try out the new place. But when I got there, the price of the part was actually about $100 more than I thought - it was $260. I must have misunderstood the person while talking on the phone. The service wasn't that good at that place. Like a lot of Korean small business places, the customer service is often poor, sometimes even bordering on being rude. it was like the person was too busy to attend to me and he seemed like he didn't care whether I used his repair center or not.
Anyway I decided to research the internet again and find a cheaper supplier. I typed in English this time and came upon a Chinese supplier website. There was one place with an unbelievably cheap price. I could not believe the price. So I looked on one webpage for a customer service contact and found that someone was online to help me. There was also Skype contact information. I contacted the person through Skype and waited. I was really surprised I didn't have to wait long and I chatted in English with the customer service rep about the computer part. I was able to get the information I needed. The price was indeed wrong. So I decided to look for other suppliers. I browsed two different seller websites and made a short list of about six different suppliers. I left messages with the ones who weren't online. The next day I skyped a few of them and all of them sent replies back or skyped me. Anyway I was able to chat in English with three or four of them, and they all chatted back in good English. It was like talking with native speakers for me. They were really helpful and friendly. They gave me the impression that they were keen to have my business. Some of them even sent me follow-up messages, which was really considerate.
As I now had a choice of suppliers, I picked the one that seemed the most reliable, helpful, friendly and supportive. One customer service agent helped me negotiate the payment part on the website as there were some difficulties I encountered since it was the first time I had ordered through that website. She stayed with me for about one hour. This contrasted with the two Korean people whose companies I visited in person who could not give me three minutes of their time! So in the end I was able to order the part for $100 less than I could buy it in Korea for. On top of that, I was able to communicate well in English with all of the supplier companies and confirm that the part I was getting was the exact one I needed, and all of the people were courteous and very helpful. This was so different to the service and treatment I got in Korea.
This is strange to me because Koreans have been learning English for decades longer than the Chinese have but here English is like an alien language sometimes (usually when it is important to communicate well such as when buying something complicated like a computer part or getting something repaired, in my experience). I end up having to use Korean a lot of the time. I know it's normal to use Korean because it's Korea I am living in, but for Korean companies to sell more to foreign customers, English is important. Not only that, the Korean companies' customer service people do not Skype you or even ask you for your email. They do not use these sort of resources well at all. They just give a curt answer on the phone and sound impatient if you cannot speak Korean well.
The upshot of all of this is that being able to speak English well as well as having a friendly attitude can help the bottom line. Even though I wanted to support a Korean business because I live in Korea, I could not do that because the service was poor and the prices were too high.
If you are going to study a language for a test, you might as well study to learn to speak it well
A lot of people in Korea study for the TOEIC test. They spend a lot of time and resources on studying for the test. They give themselves ridiculous deadlines to study for the test when their language isn't really up to par and then they seek teachers who will help them gain high scores in the test. There are such teachers in Korea, most of whom are Korean native speakers. Lots of these teachers cannot speak English well, but they somehow know how to do well in these tests - maybe because they studied the vocabulary for these tests and did the grammar study.
By learning English from these people, the Korean English learner has lost a valuable opportunity to experience immersion by learning from a native speaking teacher. A native speaking teacher should be able to teach grammar and should be able to teach the vocabulary found in these tests. The additional benefit of learning from a native teacher is that the student gets to hear English 100% of the time - pure English spoken by a native speaker, and this will go a long way to helping the student improve their English. Students spend lots of money on expensive courses made by Koreans instead of doing the study by themselves. Students in Korea like to be spoonfed.
They think with the mindset that someone should do the study for them because they don’t like studying or don’t know how to study. With this dependent mindset where they expect a teacher to do everything for them, from giving them a list of words to study to explaining grammar rules to them, things the student can do easily by themselves, it’s not a surprise that Koreans are the worst performers in TOEIC tests in the world along with a few other nationalities.
Instead of taking full opportunity to immerse themselves in English with the many English native speakers around them, the language learners cling to non-native speakers to learn English, and as a result, they speak English with the same poor pronunciation, strange grammar and weird expressions that Korean natives use when speaking in English.
They think native speakers are only there to teach slang, trendy expressions, idioms, and (wrong) constructions like “I wanna ...” to them.
They forget that the reason why English native speakers can speak English like “natives”, is because they learned from a native speaking teacher in school for a solid 10 years minimum before they graduated.
Korean learners want everything explained to them in Korean, and so as a result, the most important attribute of an English language teacher in Korea ends up being the ability to speak Korean!
Korean language classes are the opposite. Foreigners generally demand and expect Korean native teachers to teach in the class. The Korean native teacher teaches everything in Korean, including grammar. Being able to speak English well is optional. The differences in attitudes and expectations of the different nationalities are very telling.
Back to the TOEIC test.
TOEIC test takers like these people overlook the whole point of the TOEIC exam, which is to give the employer an idea of the kind of English language skills a prospective employee will have. This test helps recruiters screen out the candidates who are not going to be able to communicate well in the office environment. Even if you do well in the exam but can't speak English well, you are going to be found out sooner or later. The TOEIC test should be used as a guide to see how good your English should be. It's not a test for "cheating" or "fooling" others to think that your English is better than it really is.
A lot of Korean companies are losing faith in the TOEIC test. Some of these have either stopped caring about the job applicant's specs altogether and just base their hiring decisions on whether the applicant has experience or qualifications in the relevant field, or they conduct interviews in English to assess the applicant's language skills. "Dazzling" English specs such as a high TOEIC score, a undergraduate degree from a foreign university, etc no longer impress them.
This is an area that is really neglected especially by learners who are learning by themselves. I can't emphasize as a teacher how important the basics are. If you have not learned them well there will be problems in your speaking: either in fluency, accuracy, pronunciation or ability to express yourself, or in all of these areas. If you have skipped the basics thinking they are too easy and you don't need to spend time on them, you will be learning in a faulty way. It doesn't matter how wide your vocabulary knowledge is or how fluently you speak, you will not sound as good as someone who has mastered the basics.
Often adult learners need to improve their English skills because it's important for their career and not because English speaking is a hobby. Although there are such people of course.
Very few learners are near-native speakers who need just conversation practice to brush up on their skills to get them speaking very well or to correct a couple of errors here and there.
Most learners that I have seen here are in the category where they are fluent but are making gross errors in grammar and using awkward expressions and not pronouncing well.
What they need to do is to get help from someone who will attend to their basics. You are not an advanced learner if you are not good in one of these areas: accuracy, pronunciation and fluency.
Actually if you are NOT fluent, you have a better chance of improving your skills by a lot and approaching the ability of a native speaker. If you are fluent but are poor in other areas, the chances of your improving your skills substantially are quite low. It's not impossible to improve but there will be factors against your improving very much.
One of these is not wanting to go back to learning the basics. You don't feel like visiting the elementary stage again. You think it's unnecessary and you also feel very small doing this. You think it's boring and too easy. You don't know HOW to study the basics again. People often tell you that you are a good speaker because you are fluent. And so the learner does not go back to studying the basics again.
But as long as you do not fix the basics, improving your speech and approaching the skills of a native speaker will be a pipe dream.
More than that, if you actually keep practicing with a native speaker, your skills will get permanently fixed at that level.
This is because speaking is a HABIT. When you practice bad habits, your speech will not improve. You are just setting your speech at its current level. After a while of doing this, if you try to use proper methods in order to fix certain areas of speaking, the work of fixing your language will be really hard. You will have many bad habits that have to be broken, on top of which you have to learn the language again to replace the bad parts.
People who are not fluent do not have to do the additional work of undoing fixed habits in speaking. They just need to learn correct language. If these people go back to learning the basics again, more carefully than they did at first, they can absorb the basics quickly like a sponge because nothing gets in the way.
Make it easier on yourself by not making those bad habits engrained. If you have lived long enough, you will know how hard it is to correct a habit.
If you do not care and you just want to increase the volume of English you are using right now, that is, at the same level of pronunciation ability and accuracy, then practice conversation speaking by all means. But you will not improve much in other areas.
Be clear about what you want in the long term. Keep in mind that short term goals are not that important for the serious language learner.
This is mostly directed at Korean and Japanese speakers who are learning English. People whose language is close to English do not have to pay attention to the above points that much.
Also be aware that native speakers of all languages in general, including many teachers, will push you to achieve fluency early, even if your speech is not accurate. This is because it is more comfortable for them to listen to someone who is fluent even if they do not speak accurately. No one likes to listen to someone who is taking a long time to form a sentence. Listeners feel impatient, sometimes awkward. They even get irritated and feel superior and start treating the speaker as a child. So subconsciously they will push non native speakers to become fluent. They will praise speakers who are fluent even though they are poor in other areas. And the learner will start thinking fluency is the main or only goal.
Do not damage your ability to improve in order to make it more convenient for others around you. Don't learn for others. Learn for YOURSELF.
Setting of your language goal is important as a first step. We all want to improve our language skills but do we have priorities that are more immediate than others? For example, if you are applying for jobs and need a good TOEIC score, your learning would be directed toward the kind of English you see in TOEIC exams. But if you study for a TOEIC examination you cannot always be sure that at the end of the studying period, no matter how good your score is, that you will be able to speak conversational English well.
Likewise if you are studying for the university entrance examinations, you may be good at understanding difficult vocabulary and knowing obscure grammatical points but you probably won't be good at speaking unless you have done extracurricular study towards improving your speaking skills.
If you have studied a language for a few years but still are not proficient in some area, think to yourself what sort of goal you had set for yourself. Was it to sit for a certain examination that focused on advanced reading comprehension? Was it because you attended a language institute that focused on speaking only but did not teach you how to read newspaper articles?
It might have been that you didn't even set certain goals definitely in your mind but that you just vaguely thought of it subconsciously and directed your study in a certain direction without realizing it.
Goal setting works whether you set your goals consciously or subconsciously. So be careful what you set your goal on. Your mind will work hard toward your achieving that goal but you might not like the result at the end. You might be able to do well in certain tests but not be able to communicate well with a native speaker for example.
Also, setting too many goals at the one time will confuse your mind. Too many goals and you could easily end up achieving none of them. Achieve the goals sequentially. Organize the goals according to priority and achieve them one by one in order of importance.
For example, if you are done with academic study for the university entrance exams like the SAT and you don't need to study English for that purpose right now, ditch those materials that you have been using for that and set yourself a new goal. Say, you want to now acquire speaking skills so that you can talk conversationally with natives - even work in a native language setting. Then imagine yourself in that situation communicating fluently like a native. Visualize yourself being mistaken for a native. Lock that image in your mind and set that goal as your ultimate goal in language learning.
Another way to set a goal in speaking well is to visualize yourself acing the TOEFL examination in speaking. Don't just settle for a passable score. Imagine yourself getting a PERFECT SCORE in the TOEFL speaking section. Make that your focus of learning. Think to yourself "What do I have to do to get a perfect score in TOEFL speaking?" and work toward that goal. Once again, you probably won't emerge out of that studying with great skills in reading or writing but you will probably have much improved skills in speaking and you may even get a perfect score in TOEFL speaking and find yourself communicating well with natives (even being mistaken for a native speaker!!!) So keep in mind your goal all the time and discard activities that don't help you toward that goal.
Learning speaking first before learning reading should be the first goal especially for languages where the writing system is different to one's native language.
Learning to read a language before learning to speak can be very harmful for a person's language abilities.
Speaking is a very essential skill for anyone learning a language. Even if you don't intend to use the language and only want to write in it, having the ability to speak a language well will help you to write well too, as speaking and writing are just two sides of the same coin - both come from the ability to express one's thoughts.
Learning to speak a language to at least an early intermediate level should be done before one learns even the alphabet of that language for the best results in speaking, reading, writing and listening.
This is because if one learns in this way, that is, through the ear, the spoken language gets absorbed in the brain. The spoken language is actually the true source of the language in normal life, not the written one.
In the history of mankind, humans have spent the majority of their existence using only spoken language. The time that man has spent during their existence on earth writing their native language has only been a blink of the eye relatively speaking.
So humans have developed their linguistic abilities over the millennia by using their ears and not with their sight for most of the time. That is why humans have highly-evolved listening capabilities. Language is a very important thing that distinguishes man from most of the other animals. Humans have been able to evolve and become a species that employs a highly complex spoken language.
Concentrating on the written word from Day 1 actually HINDERS the acquisition of a language. That is why nearly all adults have much trouble mastering a foreign language in a short span of time (less than 2 years), whereas nearly all children (up to the years of 17 or so) will master the speaking of a foreign language before two years have elapsed. This includes children who are way past the so-called critical period of course.
Now there is not much distinguishing an adolescent of 14 years from an adult older than 20 years of age in terms of their development and brain structure as well as cognitive abilities etc. But why do the statistics show such a large gap in the language acquisition results between adolescent immigrants and adult immigrants?
The main difference is that adults are usually pushed to the written word early. Adolescents will be pushed to the written word early but not as vigorously as adults. They are often left alone in the school setting. Teachers assume that they will just "catch up" even if they are left alone, and this usually does happen.
The difference is that the adolescent will learn the SPOKEN language first by listening to the different people around them, to their friends, classmates, the teachers and media such as TV and videos watched at home.
Adults are pushed to learn the written word from the first day. For example, when adults learn Korean in a classroom, they are often taught how to write Hangeul as the first thing they learn. This is deadly. The adult will focus their energies on learning how to read instead of learning how to speak. Learning how to speak by reading the written word is detrimental for developing good skills in speaking, especially in the areas of pronunciation, intonation, natural phrasing and grammar acquisition.
Conversely, many Korean adults will struggle learning English through learning with the written word. They will often end up with poor pronunciation, intonation and they will use faulty grammar and weird phrasing, even if they are fluent and comfortable with speaking.
The more distant a language is from one's native language, the bigger this problem will be. And the opposite is true of course. If one is learning French or Italian and one's native language is English, the problem of learning reading before speaking may not be so great. The Latin alphabet is used for these languages, and the phonetics are almost the same, and the pronunciation of the words is not too distant from each other.
However, in general, for the best results, as well as the quickest results, one should observe the principle of learning by the ear before learning by sight. The people who learn in this way are generally the best speakers and the most native-like in their diction, pronunciation, intonation, phrasing, syntax and word selection.
