Any Time is Practice Time
Any Time is Practice Time
Practice speaking skills in daily life
You may be on a break between semesters, still have time off work, or are looking for ways to include more speaking skills practice into your daily routine. I have some suggestions on how to practice in small ways every day.
Create as many speaking opportunities as you can
Pick up the phone. Call someone. Leave voicemail messages as often as you can. This could be to someone you know or you could call hotels to ask about availability or ask about a store’s hours.
Ask someone a question in person or by phone instead of sending an email.
Ask a question or just make a short comment that you agree with someone in a teleconference, webinar, meeting, presentation.
Attend work functions and events, even little social things like birthday cake in the break room because that is a situation to hear and practice casual speech.
Look for events on Eventbrite.com and Meetup.com that interest you for professional or social reasons. Make it a goal to just talk to one stranger and at least introduce yourself and say what you do. That’s a good test to see how easily strangers understand you.
Attend my Meetup.com groups
I won’t point you out or ask you to participate. You can always just listen and not speak, that’s still good practice.
American English Pronunciation Q&A -Tuesdays at 12:00pm (US eastern time)
American English Intonation - Wednesdays at 6:00pm (US eastern time)
Practice with software and apps
Get some objective feedback as you analyze your own speech.
Your friend, WASP - This is what you’ve seen me use a lot to show the change in pitch (Hz). You can use the free download (only works on PCs) or use the online version.
Voice Analyst (Mac, iPhone App) - This also shows pitch (Hz) and volume.
Voice Pitch Analyzer (iPhone)- Gives stats on min, max, avg pitch range.
ELSA Speak - They keep adding more ways to practice speech with exercises for sounds, word stress, intonation, conversation, and an AI speech analyzer.
Subscribe to a word-a-day
Youglish - You can choose “Improve Your Pronunciation” and it will send you an interactive video you can repeat after sentence by sentence. You can choose “build your knowledge” and it will send you a vocabulary word each day.
A.Word.A.Day - I like this one because it provides the etymology (history) of the word and there is a weekly theme to the words.
Merriam-Webster - When you click on “See the Entry” it takes you to the definition page of that word and I like how it gives examples of how that word was recently used in “Recent Examples on the Web.”
Practice while doing other things
Pick one vowel sound and rhyme it with as many other words as you can, “cat, fat, mat, black” and then try to make sentences with those words, “The fat black cat sat on the mat.”
Pick one consonant sound and use it with different vowels, they don’t have to be real words, “tha, the, thi, tho, thu.” Remember to also use consonant combinations, “tra, tre, tri, tro, tru.”
Pick one stress pattern and say as many other words that you can with that same pattern, “develop, condition, predicted.” Here’s a spreadsheet that helps you organize vocabulary words by stress pattern (copy and save to your own Google Drive).
Overhear and notice other people talking around you on the train, sidewalk, standing in line. Repeat the intonation pattern by humming it or just focus on the stress pattern of a word that stands out to you (you can do this silently in your head if you aren’t in a place to say it aloud).
Overhear and notice the exaggerated way people talk in children’s tv shows. If you hear children’s shows, whether you want to or not, use it to your advantage because they are making it easy for kids to hear the vowel sounds and using more emphasis than adult conversation. They’re making it easy to notice these things.
Overhear and notice the exaggerated way people talk on commercials. People speaking in commercials on tv and radio are using exaggerated pitch to get your attention. You don’t want to talk like that in your daily life, but it’s a good way to practice hearing a target and trying to match it to practice control and increasing your pitch range.
KISS - Keep it Short & Simple
I know that KISS can also be the abbreviation for “Keep it Simple, Stupid” but I’m using it as a reminder that you should keep your practice time short and simple. You don’t have to set aside 30 minutes from your usual routine to get some good speaking skill practice.
Doing a small thing consistently is where you’ll make the most progress.
If you check your word of the day in the morning, pay attention to just one aspect of that word, the pronunciation of a specific sound, which syllable is stressed, or how the unstressed vowels can change to the schwa /ə/ “uh” sound. That little bit of focus can raise your awareness of pronunciation throughout the whole day!