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Self-teaching speaking ability | ||
Tags: Self-Study | Speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| alp Bilingual Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4590 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Italian, Swedish, Russian | Message 9 of 24 19 February 2012 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks everyone for all the advice. Looks like there definitely is a wide array of exercises one can try at home. This has given me hope that I will be perhaps one day be able to speak Swedish and Russian to an acceptable level, even if I don't have the opportunity to go to those countries. Fortunately my Italian has improved a lot since I've been here, so my confidence is back up in that department.
@Itikar: I didn't mean to call Italian an easy language in the absolute sense, just in the sense that for a French speaker there is a great resemblance between the two languages in terms of grammar and vocabulary. Ironically, I found speaking Italian harder than speaking Swedish (even though Swedish is further away on the language spectrum relative to my native languages), as I easily get confused with the verb endings in Italian when I try to speak. In Swedish conjugations are super easy which means you don't ever have to worry about mis-conjugating the verb when speaking. I guess you could say there are no easy languages, just certain aspects that are easier in different languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Itikar Groupie Italy Joined 4458 days ago 94 posts - 158 votes  Speaks: Italian* | Message 10 of 24 19 February 2012 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
I understand perfectly, I got a similiar experience with French... and Russian. I think that learning a language very similiar to one's native poses some challenges that more different languages do not. And the fact that when these difficulties are met they are somewhat unexpected can have a bad effect on the learner's morale. Because when learning one pays more attention to the huge similiarities than to the small differences, but these small differences often turn out to be not so small as one might think. Edited by Itikar on 19 February 2012 at 1:56pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6386 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 11 of 24 22 February 2012 at 12:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5170 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 12 of 24 22 February 2012 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It is not impossible for a devoted person with fairly sharp analytical and observational skills to learn to speak on his own, provided he does plenty of self-talk and subjects himself to a lot of exposure. Failure to do self-talk means that he will never gain the flexibility and speed to create language on the fly, and failure to seek proper exposure means that he is unlikely to consistently create comprehensible language. Without an external filter (such as people telling you that they don’t understand you), you will need to be very critical of the language you are exposed you. You would basically be responsible for spotting and correcting your own mistakes. The more critical you are, the less input will be needed to yield similar results.
Does this mean that learning to speak alone is an optimal learning environment? Absolutely not. But since most of us cannot always be surrounded by native speakers, it’s a great substitute for all those times you have no one to practice with. Obviously, learning a cognate language implies that you will learn to understand the language much faster, but this doesn’t automatically translate into speaking ability, which in turn, would require an active knowledge of the language, the kind of knowledge that allows you to manipulate the words and the grammar to express yourself accurately. This active knowledge needs to be nurtured by means of speaking practice and careful analysis of a healthy dose of input. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5458 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 13 of 24 22 February 2012 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sure. The main idea is that people are afraid of making mistakes in foreign languages. But what do we mean by mistakes? Do we mean grammar errors, or missing words, or looking silly? Boris states that the purpose of language is communication, and the biggest mistake is failing to communicate. In his book he introduces a number of "communication rules" each of which is actually a strategy that improves communication. I don't want to give everything away here, since I really think Boris's book is excellent and is quite cheap, so I encourage people to take the risk and buy it. Here, though, are a few of his rules: 1: Show your stuff: most people have a much larger passive vocabulary than their active vocabulary, and in communication they use an even smaller subset of their already small active vocabulary. This makes them appear far less fluent than they have the potential to be. Don't give one word mumbled answers. Use much longer sentences that use much more of your active vocabulary. Of course, this is easier said than done, so the book has a number of exercises that help you break out of mumble-land and develop the skill to keep on going and "show your stuff". 2: Build up your islands: a lot of conversations are very repetitive. So, some folks memorize whole passages from, say, Teach Yourself books. Such passages tend to be very general and quite short. Boris teaches you to evolve your own passages (he calls them islands) which are pre-rehearsed mini-speeches on topic about your family, your job, your home, your hobbies, and so on. As your level in the language improves you keep evolving these islands so they capture not just facts but also bits of the language you want to be able to reuse in different contexts. Some of his students have developed as many as 200 such islands, which they can roll off their tongues effortlessly in huge numbers of conversations, but (perhaps more importantly) recombine bits from them all, and substitute new words and phrases on-the-fly. Again, the book explains how to create these islands, and how to use them. 3: Shift gears: no matter how good your language level, there will be times when you are completely lost in a conversation because the other person is using words or talking about topics that are completely alien to you. At this point, you could panic, sweat, and want to run away, or you can learn how to take control of these uncomfortable situations. The book teaches you how to steer conversations when they wander into territory you are less comfortable with. For example, he teaches a five step conversational process that you can follow that progressively shifts a conversation from being completely lost to being completely at ease and chatting away merrily again. The above "tools" are taught in much greater depth than outlined here, plus there are many more "tools" in the book. What is striking is that these are not just nice sounded theories, but rather these are conversational tools developed at FSI to help diplomats converse at high level political meetings. They were refined over several decades with politicians and international journalists. Since buying the book several months ago, I have been heavily influenced by it, and have put into practice its many recommendations. It has had a very significant impact on my conversational ability. I cannot recommend it too highly. However, it is not a book to be read passively. It DOES require you to put things into practice for the magic to occur. If you put the effort in, though, the rewards are there. Edited by Splog on 22 February 2012 at 4:45pm 16 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5382 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 14 of 24 22 February 2012 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have just ordered the book. I am looking forward to reading it and applying the
techniques. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4457 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 15 of 24 22 February 2012 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's not that difficult to speak a language fluently.
It is difficult to sound natural. I'm more into Portuguese and Spanish now, and when I speak Italian, somehow I end up using very formal words. I don't sound natural. Colloquial expressions and slangs are first things you forget if you don't practice the language regularly in an active way: that is, speaking. 1. learn a few texts you find interesting by heart 2. when you meet native speakers, try to start a conversation by using one of these pre-memorized texts, and expand it on the go 3. when you read, try reading it aloud so you can practice the pronunciation 4. watch a dvd/bluray, use the pause button frequently and repeat after actors ;) Edited by Medulin on 22 February 2012 at 8:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6386 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 16 of 24 20 January 2015 at 6:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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This thread is now part of history :)
3 persons have voted this message useful |
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