If all English students of the word could give their opinion about what they think the area they are struggling the most, that would certainly be speaking. Often times, they are afraid of speaking to their teacher, not to mention to other people. They may think they don’t have the skills or experience to use spoken English, but without using it they will never gain those skills or experience. This can become in a vicious cycle and one you need to get out from fast if you want to see improvement. In my lessons I always allow students to use the language freely without pressuring them to produce perfect language. You need to know you WILL make mistakes in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, and the correction of those mistakes is what will make you grow. Once you understood that and have the correct attitude about it, you can use the following tools to practice your spoken English and improve it.
- Recordings and Transcripts.
Recording yourself is one of the best ways you can check whether your pronunciation is right or not. If you have a private teacher, you can write down the words you don’t understand in class and then, with your phone, ask the teacher to record himself pronouncing those words. This is something I do a lot in my lessons and have seen tremendous improve in my students due to this. Another alternative for you to practice is taking an English video you like and writing words and phrases from that video; then, you record yourself with your phone pronouncing these same words and you compare your pronunciation with the video.