Communication is one of the important skills for English learners, but if you do not have any learning methods or tips, it will be easy for you to give up. Below are 11 tips to help you learn English communication at home that English experts hope will motivate you to study as well as help you improve your grammar, vocabulary and other English skills.
1. Practice with the “intensive reading” technique
“Intensive reading” or close reading is reading with a focused focus to understand the exact meaning of what you are reading. This is in contrast to skimming, which is reading to get a general understanding of the content. This type of reading helps the reader feel confident and enjoy the reading process because they can visualize what they are reading without having to focus too much on the details. Although skimming can be effective in many ways, close reading is more useful in helping you quickly improve your English skills.
The technique of close reading includes the following steps:
- Identify important vocabulary
- Cover some words and guess their meanings
- Write a summary after reading
- Read with an English tutor (or a friend) or discuss the content of the text you have read.
Make sure you choose short reading passages when practicing intensive reading, otherwise you will be overwhelmed and quickly give up the practice. This “intensive reading” technique not only helps you understand the meaning of the text deeply, it also helps you accumulate ideas from the reading so that when communicating, your brain will quickly turn what you read into the content of the conversation naturally.
2. Practice speaking in front of the mirror
Practicing in front of a mirror can help you feel less self-conscious when speaking English. Sometimes speaking English when your current level of English is low can feel awkward and awkward. This is partly because you don’t know what your mouth looks like when you say sounds that aren’t in your native language, even if you’re pronouncing them correctly.
So, watch how your mouth moves when you speak English in front of a mirror. Better yet, compare your pronunciation to that of native English speakers. For example, you could repeat some dialogue from a TV show and try to imitate the mouth movements of the actors. This will not only help you build confidence, but will also help you improve your English pronunciation.
3. Learn with the “distributed practice method”
The “distributed practice” method ensures that you will always improve your English and make lasting progress. In this method, you will have many very short study sessions. This is different from many other study methods such as cramming, studying too much or just starting to study right before a test. In addition to being really annoying, cramming does not help you retain information for a long time. Most people forget everything they have learned as soon as they finish their test.
To start using distributed practice, create a study schedule. Try to study at least a few times a week and plan out what you want to study each day/week/month/etc. Set multiple goals for the English skills you want to improve to better track your progress.
4. Highlight unfamiliar words as you read
When reading an English book, highlight the words you don't know and don't look them up in a dictionary until the end of the chapter. Then turn these unfamiliar words into a list of words to learn that day.
This is a good test to improve your vocabulary and reading comprehension in English. Just pick a book that looks interesting and sit down with a pen and notebook. By the end of the chapter, you should have at least a few words to look up.
5. Practice with real English videos
One of the hardest things about trying to improve your English is that you don't get much exposure to real-life English. The British Council's Video Zone is the perfect solution.
Video Zone teaches English through real English videos, each video comes with a script underneath, which you can look up to look up definitions, grammar. This way, you can improve your English vocabulary and grammar while understanding how native speakers actually use English. When you finish watching a video, it has small exercises to make sure you remember everything you have learned. This type of practice ensures that you are actively improving your English with the videos. There are thousands of videos for every level of English from beginner to advanced. You can easily select videos by level and genre to find the ones that are right for you.
Làm thế nào để nói tiếng Anh thật tự tin? - sách hướng dẫn miễn phí - Mọi thứ bạn cần để giúp con mình tự tin khi nói tiếng Anh
Tải sách hướng dẫn
6. Repeat English puns (“tongue twisters”)
“Tongue twisters” are short English sentences that are repeated over and over again with a lot of similar sounds, making them very difficult to say even for native English speakers. There are many such sentences in Vietnam, for example “nội đồng gà gà gà, đất đất gà gà gà”, “buội noon ăn grapefruit chua”, etc.
These sentences are great for fun and improving your real English pronunciation. They will help you master difficult English sounds and use them more naturally. Start slow to make sure you pronounce each word correctly, then work your way up to speaking faster and faster!
7. Record your English pronunciation every day
This may sound tedious (because it’s boring and repetitive) but you’ll be so glad you decided to do it. Use a voice recorder app to create a recording of yourself speaking English every day. You can simply talk about your day for a few minutes, read a passage from an English book or newspaper, say some new English words you’ve learned, or whatever suits you!
But don’t stop there. After your recordings, listen to them again and try to catch your mistakes, whether they are pronunciation mistakes, grammar mistakes, misused words, etc. This is one of the most practical and immediate ways to improve your English, especially if you are learning a foreign language on your own. If you don’t correct your mistakes, you will continue to make them and your English will progress more slowly.
An added bonus is that these recordings can be a great motivator later in your studies. There will inevitably be times when you hit a wall, when you’re not learning as quickly as you used to, and complex English grammar concepts seem too daunting. You may even want to give up. At this point, the recordings will remind you of how far you’ve come in your studies, which can pick you up when you’re feeling discouraged!
8. Memorize common homophones
Homophones are words that have the same pronunciation but different meanings (and possibly different spellings). Some examples of English homophones include:
- Blew - blue
- Know - no
- Here - hear
Studying homonyms will help improve your English conversation skills and avoid confusing words. It will be easier for you to listen to English if you are familiar with common words that sound the same. To remember common homonyms, you can use the flashcard method of creating word pairs with their actual meanings.
9. Understanding the SVO structure
English sentence structures are not really difficult to grasp, especially if you have studied German or Romance languages, as these languages have quite similar grammatical structures. However, it is important for beginners to master the SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) sentence structure as quickly as possible.
Once you can distinguish Subject - Verb - Object in any sentence, you will easily combine new sentence structures, especially, it will help you a lot in creating English sentences in real conversations or when practicing English writing .
SVO sentence patterns look like this: I grab a soda “ I” is the subject of the sentence, “grab” is the verb, “soda” is the object (the thing being taken)
Note that verbs can be in the negative form. For example: He does not clean the car .
You will find that a complement is not always needed in a sentence, however, a subject and verb are required. For example: She danced .
10. Play English games online
English games should be used regularly by learners simply because they are fun, relaxing, help improve English and are easily accessible online. Some fun English grammar games include:
- Fun English Game : Even games designed for children to learn English can be useful for adults! They include games to practice grammar, vocabulary, and even punctuation.
- Learn English Kids : This is a game resource for families or friends from the British Council.
- ESL Game Goals : This is a particularly useful site for English games grammar formulas .
Learning any language requires time and effort. With some useful tips and advice above, hopefully you will progress and improve your English communication skills even more. Good luck!