How to Improve English Speaking

English teachers everywhere are full of useless tips and tricks on how to improve your English speaking fluency. Here are the 4 skills that you actually need to learn to improve at speaking English. 

The 4 skills for speaking English fluently are Rhythm, Pauses, Tone, and Inflection. 

These are the skills that are often missing from non-native English speakers. To become fluent in English, you need to work on mastering these 4 parts.

Rhythm in English is very important. It is what makes all of your sentences sound like they are connected. Rhythm helps your sentence flow naturally. Rhythm helps the information you are speaking be delivered in a way that is easier for the listener to understand. Think of rhythm as making bite-sized pieces of your sentences. It helps the listener to chunk the information and understand it easier. 

To practice the idea of rhythm in speaking fluently, you can watch me explain it better in this video. 

Pauses are one of the most important skills to learn for speaking English well. Pauses help the listener know that the information that comes next will be important. When the listener hears silence, they start to listen harder. They focus more on what the speaker is saying. You can see this skill used in every presidential speech for example. 

To improve your skills with pauses when you speak, you can watch me explain it more here in this video. 

Tone is another very important part of English speaking fluency. Tone can change the meaning of the things we say. There are 3 main tones that we use to explain information. An Up-Tone helps you show that what you are saying is Happy, Positive, or Important. A Neutral tone is used for when you are just speaking about facts or normal conversation. A Down-tone is used for when the information you are saying is negative, bad, or serious. 

To learn more about tone and how it can change the meaning of what you say, you can watch this video lesson. 

The last of the 4 main parts is inflection. Inflections help the listener know more about specific important words. Just like Tone can change the meaning of the whole thing we say, Inflections can change a specific word to give more importance to that word. Sometimes, a speaker can communicate extra information by changing how one single word is said. 

To learn more about inflections and how to use them, you can watch this video about them. 

Let’s get some more practice with lesson 5.

Lesson 6 teaches you that your mood and feelings when you speak can change the meaning of what you say. You need to be careful how you feel when you speak English so that there is no miscommunication.

Conclusion

All over the internet, you will find people telling you the secret to improving your English speaking ability, but there is no secret. You must learn these 4 main skills as a starting point. To improve your English Speaking, you need to practice these skills and get comfortable making mistakes. Mistakes are the best teachers of all.