I know what you are thinking, ELLs, “I don’t have any one to talk to!” But in this post, we’re not talking about talking to anyone, we’re talking about speaking out loud when we are studying and practicing English, not just listening, reading and watching. Yes! You can improve your English fluency by yourself!
Let’s look at reasons why using your voice even while studying alone is important.
There are three ways I can think of that speaking does this, even if you aren’t talking with anyone when you speak. I actually feel sometimes that talking to other people makes me less fluent, because I struggle to hold a conversation well!
Speaking Trains Your Muscles
Have you ever heard “Language is a muscle“? No? Me neither. 🤣
But actually, all languages use muscles to communicate. Your lungs, vocal cords, tongue, and lips are all controlled by muscles which are controlled by the brain. Even sign language is done through muscles!
The rules that apply to physical exercise apply to language because we speak with muscles. Now you know why I’m talking about exercise and muscles in a post on English fluency!
“Use it or lose it,” which means that if you don’t practice and use your muscles, they will get weak, is the same with language.
“No pain, no gain,” or sometimes called, “No train, no gain,” means that without hard work and lots of effort, even pushing through the pain, you won’t improve. It’s the same with language!
There is a principle that helps guide all athletes when they train called the SAID principle. I learned this in university. I’ll give you the words to the acronym, but don’t feel the need to memorize it because no one outside of exercise science knows what it means: specific adaptations to imposed demand.
That means, your body changes to become better at what you push it to do. If you run every day, your body will improve itself to be better at running. What you push your body to do is what your body will get better at.
That’s why muscles get stronger when you pick up heavy things a lot.
Language is exactly the same! If you study by listening to English podcasts 2 hours a day, you will get really good at listening to English. But you won’t be able to say a thing! If you practice translating from English to your own language or the other way around, you’ll get good at translating, not speaking.
I’ve worked with non-native teachers who couldn’t talk to me about their daily routine but could read a college level article in English and translate it into their language. We get good at what we practice. Period. So we have to practice speaking out loud to train our language muscles.
Have you ever met someone that always buys the newest exercise videos and equipment, reads about exercise online, talks about it every time you see them, but doesn’t exercise enough to lose weight or get fit? I’ve met them. I’ve even done it myself. I’ve studied how to exercise, made a great exercise plan, but then only exercised for a few weeks. Without exercising regularly and keeping up the habit, my exercise knowledge didn’t help me at all.
Well, we are the same with new languages. You can learn as many rules as you want, watch as many videos about grammar rules as you want, and listen to as many new vocabulary lists as you want, but if you aren’t practicing out loud, you won’t actually be able to use that language when you need to. Which means you wasted all your time.
Just like a dancer looks amazing after countless hours of repeated practice, you’ll have better English fluency by repeating words, phrases, answers, and more out loud. You’ll communicate better.
Without action, knowledge is useless. We need to put our knowledge into practice if we want results. Are you preparing for the IELTS? Want to do well and avoid the pitfall of repeated failures? You’ll have to get fluent speaking by practicing at home (unless you have lots of native friends to talk to, in which case, why are you studying for the IELTS?).
Wow, don’t worry. This was the longest section of today’s post! The others are a lot shorter 😂
Speaking Improves Memory
We all know this is true. That’s why teachers have us drill new words! But it’s also true for remembering things throughout life. What’s your phone number? Do you say it in your mind or out loud to remember it or do you see the number in your head? If you’re like me, you have to say it in your mind to write it down. There are some people who can see numbers, but most of us say them.
When you are trying to remember someone’s name, and you forget every time, what do you do? “I’m sorry, what’s your name again? Oh yes: Sam. Sam. Sam. Sam. Sam. Sam. I’m trying to memorize it!” Don’t say you never do this!
Saying the things we learn helps us remember them. Most of the times I do Anki review, I speak out loud what I am reviewing. There are times I feel too tired or I’m in public, but most of the time I speak it out. And just like people’s names, when I forget a word, I say it out loud multiple times. It just helps!
Wouldn’t you have better English fluency if you remembered words better?
There are other tips and tricks for improving your memory, which reminds me of this post which will help you learn to remember things better, but you can’t forget that speaking out loud is one trick!
Speaking Improves Confidence
Imagine two archers standing on the wall of a castle and enemies are coming closer. The one has shot 100 arrows at a target at home each day for the past year, though he was alone and there wasn’t a war. The other archer has been watching him. Which archer feels more confident as the enemy approaches?
Of course, practicing speaking by yourself is the same. It’s not the real thing, but you will feel much better prepared if you practice on your own. That doesn’t mean you can practice anything you want and in any way you want. You should still use listening to make sure you are speaking correctly, but you will feel much readier to talk to a native at the local store if you’ve been practicing at home. That way, when you open your mouth, you’ll be able to talk more and freeze less.
So, listening and watching are good, but using and practicing are better for developing English fluency. I’m not saying to stop listening to and watching English resources, don’t get me wrong.
I’m saying that we should be doing more practicing and speaking out loud than we are doing right now if we want to grow like a tree, which means we’ll probably be replacing some of our listening and watching time with speaking time (which brings up the topic of managing your time studying, which you need to go read, because we ran out of space on this post!).