There are many resources online that can help you boost your speaking skill. However, only one can really help you improve and it has been with us forever, just that we underestimate its power.
The Underrated Power of Reading Out Loud
Reading out loud is one of the most efficient ways to improve our fluency, pronunciation and everything related to speaking skill. It is true that reading can be boring, it works in a way that makes us improve faster than any other tool or resource.
It not only helps in learning vocabulary, new words for you to use, but also helps you understand where you are in the language. It means that if you read something out loud, record yourself and if you understand and like what you have read, your speaking skill should’ve improved a lot.
I understand that reading is boring because it makes me sleepy too. Sometimes when I am reading a book, not outloud of course, it makes me want to sleep if the story is not that entertaining, but just like movies, if the plot is good, it makes you want to read more.
Am I saying that you have to read books in your target language and read them out loud? No. What I am saying is that yes, you can read books in your target language, but to practice speaking, you can do it with paragraphs generated by AI or reading exercises you find online.
Why We Avoid the Best Tool for Fluency
If reading is so important, why don’t many people do it? Or Why don’t academies increase their reading practices? Because of what I mentioned above, reading is boring for most people.
People don’t find it appealing, and I have had students that have told me they simply don’t want any reading exercises because it’s boring. Of course, my classes are designed based on the student’s objectives with the language and if to achieve their goal we have to read, we read. This is not about being a bad teacher, no, it is because I know what is best for my students and when they see the results, they start doing it on their own.
I am not a magician nor a scientist that will give you a pill and tomorrow you’ll be fluent in your target language, but what I do is to tailor my lessons so students can practice speaking, because how do you learn a language? By speaking it.
Most language programs have very few reading practices because they don’t want to overwhelm students and it makes a lot of sense. Not even I have several reading exercises, but the reading practices I have are effective.
New Language, New Personality
First we need to understand that every language is different and we cannot speak in our target language the same way we speak our native one. Have you ever heard that when you learn a new language, you also acquire a new personality? It is true.
When I speak Spanish, my tone of voice is more serious, less dynamic, but when I speak in English my tone of voice changes and my personality shifts from being serious to a more easygoing person.
The same would happen if you learn Japanese for example. Japanese is known for being formal and polite, so you will become more formal and polite when speaking it, of course you won’t start talking like an anime character because, spoiler alert, japanese people don’t speak like that.
Understanding that we need to change the way we speak our target language, now the question comes: How do I do it? This is very important and most people fail to find the right answer because it is difficult to answer.
What I can tell you is: It depends. It depends on how you want to speak, my best recommendation is for you to look for videos, podcasts, Series, Movies or Interviews of several people and listen to them.
This will make you choose from all the different ways people speak, you will pick the one that you like the most. For example, if suddenly you are watching a video about a review of a phone and you like the way the person speaks, try to mimic it.
The Art of Mimicry and Environment
If we hear people, especially latinos who go to the U.S. and they learn the language in a different way. They usually learn it just by listening to what others speak and as they are in constant connection with the language, if they want, they can really learn it faster.
Now, why do their accents sound similar if they were using street talk all the time? If you listen to most latinos who speak english and learnt it at work, they are influenced by other latinos that maybe have learned the language and speak using lots of street talk and also they speak like they are lazy.
With this I don’t want to say that it is bad, what I am saying is that they speak like that because they are influenced by the way others speak. So, if you surround yourself with african americans, you will speak like them, if you surround yourself with British people, you will speak like them.
The same analogy can be used in Spanish, if you are surrounded by Argentinians, you will learn to speak like them and so on.
Embracing Your Accent and Overcoming Fear
Having an accent is not bad, it is part of the culture, but sometimes we are afraid that we will be judged by people who think you should speak like if you were a native speaker.
This happens a lot in the call center industry where I was cursed, I was told stupid, just because in my early days I had an accent and it was very noticeable.
This is one of the reasons people often are shy when they begin learning a new language, afraid of being judged and afraid to make mistakes. This is why reading is very important.
When you read out loud and record yourself, you can identify what words you mispronounced and correct them, then record yourself again reading out loud and you will notice the difference in comparison to the first recording.
The first attempt is always going to be very difficult and your voice may not sound as you want. In fact, you may feel the so-called “cringe” about yourself, but that doesn’t mean that you cannot improve.
The Secret Sauce: Drama and Pacing
Another important thing we have to do when reading out loud is to be dramatic. Choose the words within the sentences that you consider are more important and emphasize them more when pronouncing them.
Also, in most languages, whenever there is a punctuation mark like a dot or a coma, our tone of voice has to go down because it’s the end of the idea.
People often think that fluency is speaking faster, but it’s not that. Why do we assume that? Fluency means to speak clearly and at the right pace so your message is understood by the listeners.
Bold letters (stress the words), words in Italic (tone of voice goes down)
“These days, technology moves faster than we do. There are thousands of new things every month, and it’s hard to keep up. The thing I try to remember is that I don’t need everything—just what makes life smoother.“
Record yourself a couple of times and you will listen how your speaking becomes clearer and you speak slower.
A Universal Technique for Success
These exercises work in every single language that you are trying to learn. Of course each language has its own rules about phonetics, but don’t worry, just listen to others, try to mimic them and practice.
Improving or speaking skill is just a matter of constant practice, you can use language exchange apps but to start, you can read out loud, record yourself, identify the mistakes and correct them.
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