Way to speak

H! guys……….!

I’m here, come for you in telling you how to be better in learning English as a second language

Are you very shy when it comes to new surroundings, such as starting a new class or moving to a new area? Sometimes, it is necessary to overcome your shyness and speak confidently. By doing this, it can help you not only to share your ideas properly to others, but also to learn communicating with others. Here are a few steps to consider when speaking with confidence.

v Steps 1

Learn how to have conversations with people. Our ideas or opinions may not always be accepted by others, but this is nothing unusual. Open our mouth, express your beliefs! This will improve your courage.

Don’t be afraid and speak loudly. If you speak in a low voice, not only will others not be able to hear what you say, but you will also portray a submissive demeanor, which suggests the opposite of a confident one.

Make eye contact when you speak. For one thing, it is polite for others. Also, eye contact will help others to listen to your thinking carefully.

Praise yourself everyday! This will promote your own confidence, which is important when you speak. With more confidence, people will take your thinking more seriously.

v Tips 2

Don’t be nervous when you make mistakes. Human error is far from being a new concept — nobody is perfect! It is normal for everyone to make mistakes. Just calm down and keep speaking bravely.

Try and try again! This may be difficult for a shy person at first, but you need to force yourself to speak, and not seclude your thoughts. If you have some ideas, then try to speak out! Don’t just keep them in your head.

If you have self confidence issues, try to think that you are the only one who has sound knowledge about the topic. Then go ahead and impart your knowledge to the audience in an effective way.

Remember that there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance. Don’t portray an exaggerated amount of confidence, or you will come off as arrogant, believing that your ideas are better than the ideas of everyone else.

“Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.” - Martin Fraquhar Tupper

One of the most important components of public speaking is the sound of your voice. It influences the impact of your message, and might even make or break the success of your speech. Fortunately, for many people, good voice quality can be learned.

Instructions :

Ø Breathe from your diaphragm – Practice long and controlled exhales. When you speak, use breath to punctuate your point. For example, take a breath at the end of each phrase whether you need to or not. Use that opportunity to pause and let the listeners absorb what you say.

Ø Use pitch – Lower pitches generally are more soothing to hear. However, modulating your pitch for emphasis will keep your listeners engaged. Develop your pitch by practicing humming.

Ø Moderate your volume – Find out if you speak too loudly or too softly. When you begin speaking, ask your audience how your volume is (each situation is different). Try to stay at the appropriate volume throughout your speech.

Ø Moderate your pace – This one is also closely related to breath. If you speak too quickly, people can’t keep up. If you speak too slowly, people will lose interest. Record your speech to determine if you need to change your pace. Get feedback from others.

Ø Articulate – Try exaggerating your lip movement to reduce mumbling. Practice articulating tongue twisters and extending and exaggerating vowel sounds. Become an expert at articulating tongue twisters as quickly and crisply as possible. Focus on the ones you find difficult.

Ø Practice your speech in advance and determine where you want to pause for a breath. For more emphasis, pause for more than one breath. Mark your breathing points in your notes.

Ø Loosen up before you begin. Look side to side. Roll your head in half-circles and roll your shoulders back. Shift your rib cage from side to side. Yawn. Stretch. Touch your toes while completely relaxing your upper body, then slowly stand up, one vertebra at a time, raising your head last. Repeat as needed.

Ø Posture – Stand up straight and tall to allow full lung capacity and airflow.

Ø Record your voice repeatedly using different ways of speaking. Determine which one is most pleasing.

Ø Practice breath control – Take a deep breath, and while you exhale, count to 10 (or recite the months or days of the week). Try gradually increasing your volume as you count, using your abdominal muscles—not your throat—for volume. Don’t let your larynx tense up.

How to improve your writing

‘How can I improve my writing?’ is one of the most frequent questions from us or students and the hardest questions to answer. When a student asks me this I always pull a face and rub my chin thoughtfully. ‘Hmmm…yes, well… Gosh is that the time?”

Every student is different but all the successful students have one thing in common – and that is that they found a strategy which worked for them, and once they found a strategy that worked they stuck to it and this became their path through the jungle of learning. One thing is probably true – that your writing is improved by writing. Sounds obvious? In fact, many students are so worried about making mistakes that they don’t write at all! Think about learning other things in life – learning to speak your first language, learning to walk, your first English lessons. How good were you when you started? Not very! Think about learning to drive - you can read all about how the gears work, how you should use the pedals and so on but you can’t learn to drive until you get in the car, switch on the engine and start going. Why should it be any different with other skills? Like reading, listening and speaking, your writing will get better the more you write. There are times when you should write and concentrate on your accuracy because it is important to be correct. But other times you should write for language improvement when the content of what you write is important. Think about speaking – if you are giving a formal presentation in English you will think carefully about what you are going to say and prepare it. But other times you will speak casually in English and not worry about your mistakes. Of course your casual speaking will improve your English for when you give presentations. So it is with writing. If you can write ‘casually’ every day you will improve your writing so that when you need to perform an important and accurate writing task you will be much better at it.

Writing casually could mean:

v Keeping a real personal diary about your everyday life (as people have done for centuries) only in English!

v Writing a journal about something which is ongoing (about work, study, English studies)

v Writing to a penpal (on paper or by e mail)

v Forming a writing group with friends and swapping texts you have written for fun

v Writing e mails to friends in English instead of your usual language (Friends are often embarrassed to speak English to each other – what about writing English to each other? You might find your friends think is a great idea.)

v Starting your own blog so you can write online. There’s any number of free blogs out there which are ready made for you to use. If you don’t publicize it no one will ever know about it. Or do publicize it and have fun!

v Write a message to the new forum at English for University. I have set up a ‘casual writing’ forum for this purpose.

Of course, there are times when you want serious feedback on your writing and there is nothing better than sitting down with a teacher who can point out mistakes to you. Unfortunately most students don’t have a private teacher who they can do this with!

Compiled from some resources