How to stop repeating words or phrases in your CELPIP speaking responses

How do I stop myself from overusing certain words and phrases?

This challenge has been coming up repeatedly in my work with clients over the past few weeks, so I thought I would do some research around how to help you and my clients overcome repetition in speaking task responses. Hi, I'm Aaron. Welcome to the CELPIP Success Podcast.

This is the podcast where motivated English learners just like you learn how to speak English fearlessly and learn practical tips and strategies to conquer the CELPIP exam. The other day I was listening to a podcast that I had never heard before.

I was enjoying the content when all of a sudden I noticed that every once in a while words or complete phrases would repeat.

It wasn't that the hosts were repeating themselves by mistake, but somehow something was going wrong in their audio or with the software they used to do their editing, because every so often they would just repeat the last thing that they said. The first few times it just sounded odd or really weird, but then I started hearing it every few minutes.

It stopped being weird because I was suddenly aware that it was happening. That repetition began to distract me from what I was listening to and I began to feel sort of annoyed or bothered that it seemed to keep happening.

The episode was on a topic I was interested in learning more about, and so I continued listening. But boy, it got hard to ignore all the repetition going on.

In this case, the repetition was caused by a technical issue, a software mistake, and I'm sure I've had it happen to me a few times in my own podcast. It can be edited out if you notice it happening. In our day to day conversations, a different kind of repetition can happen, can't it?

We find ourselves repeating certain words or phrases simply because we feel more comfortable saying them instead of other things, or we simply don't know any other way to say what we want to say. So we repeat what we always say. It happens to everyone.

Even in our first language, we all have words and phrases that we lean on to help us to communicate our ideas. And like I said, it's normal and usually quite harmless. But there are times when repetition can be a problem.

While repetition happens frequently in our day to day conversations, it doesn't really do much harm unless it's happening all the time. In that case, you might just get the people who are listening to you frustrated.

And if you notice yourself repeating something, certain words, certain phrases, you might end up just frustrating yourself a little bit too. But that's likely the extent of the difficulty you might find yourself in.

But repetition on the CELPIP exam is a whole other situation test raters listen for and can ding you or reduce points for overusing or repeating certain words or phrases in your speaking task responses so what should you do today? I have an idea to share with you that might just help.

It's from the website All Things linguistic by Gretchen McCulloch and I hope I pronounced your last name correctly, Gretchen. She is an Internet linguist.

On the webpage that I found, she is writing about pre thinking, which is basically you trying to predict the situations you might need to talk about, describe or explain in some way, and that you try to think about them and what you'll say before you actually need to. Hence the term pre think. She goes on to suggest that you actually try talking about those situations to yourself as a great way to practice.

Pre thinking, says Gretchen, is a great way to sort of rehearse what you might need to say before you actually have to say it.

And she points out that when you come across words or phrases where you get stuck or where you find yourself repeating yourself, it's time to pull out a thesaurus and look for alternatives. Arm yourself before you actually need it, in other words. I'll be linking to her article in my show notes today if you want to check it out.

But I really liked her idea. I was thinking a lot about it over the past few days actually, and really wanting to be putting myself in your shoes.

How would I talk about or describe a random situation in my second language? Would I be able to do it? If you don't know my second language is Spanish. So I decided to give myself a little bit of a challenge.

I decided to practice the idea of pre thinking.

On my way out of the grocery store the other day with my hands full of grocery bags, I surveyed the busy parking lot in front of me as I made my way towards my car. I I thought, hmm, this looks like a Great Celpip speaking task 3 or 4 question so I went for it.

I decided to describe what I was looking at to myself as if I were trying to describe the scene on the CELPIP exam. But I didn't do it in English. That would be kind of easy for me to make it hard.

Like the hard that you feel when you're trying to describe a random scene in English, which is your second language. I decided to put myself in that challenging situation and tried to describe it in Spanish.

Now the parking lot turned out to be quite easy for me to talk about.

I didn't have any trouble at all coming up with what to say and what to Talk about as I went through the scene in front of me as I walked towards my car, and I didn't notice myself repeating any words or phrases. Like I said, it was pretty easy. When I got home, I started doing a few chores, specifically cleaning the bathroom.

And because I was still thinking about this challenge, I decided to try it again, this time trying to describe what my bathroom was like, as I said about the task of cleaning it. And here. Here is where I ran into trouble.

I discovered a few vocabulary words that I needed to pause on for a few moments, trying to remember, how do I say that word? I haven't used that word in such a long time. Do I even know what that word is?

For a moment, I couldn't remember what the bathroom sink was in Spanish.

And I stood there with my cleaning sponge in hand and my cleaner in the other, staring down at my sink, trying, like imagining myself being on the celpip exam, but in Spanish. Not that that exists, but I was trying to put myself in your situation. You know what I'm coming at here, what I'm trying to say.

I was trying to describe the scene of this bathroom, but in Spanish, pretending that I was taking a language exam like what you are trying to get ready for. And there I was, stuck. What do I do? What do I say?

I tried to find alternative ways to describe it, and that's when I noticed some repetition sneaking in. I began reaching for words I felt more comfortable saying.

A second or two later, the word I was looking for flashed back to me, thankfully, and I was able to properly talk about the sink. But that moment of not knowing was key.

I realized I needed to brush up a little on my bathroom vocabulary so that I could talk about it more effectively in the future, which is not likely to happen here in Canada, but it was still a great way to practice. The same might be happening for you. I think we have the greatest chance of repeating ourselves when we don't feel sure about what to say next.

To solve it, use pre thinking. Turn it into a game you play each day. Try taking a random mental snapshot of a situation that you're in and begin trying to describe it.

Like, for example, if you're waiting to get on the bus, that's a perfect place to try pre thinking out. How would you describe the people who are waiting in line with you? How would you describe how that bus looks?

Or how would you describe what that busy scene is happening in front of you?

On the CELPIP exam. Practice it and when you come across an object or a way to express what you want to express, that stumps you.

Like what happened to me in my bathroom with my bathroom sink where you don't know how to say what you're trying to say. Do some investigating to find that vocabulary word out that you were missing and then work on using it.

I think that the more you do this, the less you'll find yourself repeating words or phrases in your day to day conversations and most importantly in your cell PIP responses. I've also talked about this in a previous episode so I won't repeat myself. Haha. See what I did there?

Instead I'll link to it in my episode show notes for you to check out if you're interested.

But yeah, just to recap or to give a brief summary of what I was just sharing with you, I think that the best way that you can maybe curb this problem of repeating yourself or overusing certain words or phrases is by familiarizing yourself with random situations that are happening all around you on a day to day basis. Try thinking about how you would describe them. And by doing that I think you'll begin building finding.

First of all, you'll begin to find words and phrases where maybe you feel a little bit less confident.

That is where you need to put on your investigator hat and begin finding those words and phrases that you find are missing in your day to day conversation.

And as you begin plugging those new words and phrases into your vocabulary and using them, I think you're going to reduce the amount of times you end up repeating yourself in your speaking task responses. Because ultimately when we are repeating ourselves, it's probably because of a lack of vocabulary to use.

So get out there today and see how much pre thinking activity you can do as you're going about your normal day to day routines. I am so excited about something that I just did.

If you follow me on LinkedIn, you will have noticed that this week I actually showed up in a video that I made specifically for LinkedIn. I have never posted a video on LinkedIn before and I've got to tell you that I was terrified. This is way out of my comfort zone.

My comfort zone as far as putting myself out there right now has been doing this podcast. I mean I am safely hiding behind this microphone you know what I mean? I am kind of a shy, more of an introverted kind of guy.

And if you've been following my podcast for any length of time, first of all, thank you so much for sticking with me for such a long time. But you would have probably heard how I struggled to get even my very first episode of this podcast out into the open and published.

It took me months, months. It was so hard for me to go from having the idea in my head to actually publishing my very first episode.

And I even did it recorded it anyway from my car because I was so scared to be recording it in my home where other people could hear. But yeah, that was my first step out of my comfort zone with all of this is recording podcast episodes for you. But you know what?

It was time for me to try something new to pull me out of my comfort zone. And I'm sharing this with you today because it's a pretty frequently reoccurring message that I share on here and in my newsletter.

And if you follow me on LinkedIn, you definitely have seen me post about this.

But if you're one wanting to improve your skills for this, like especially the speaking section of the CELPIP exam, then my friend, being in your comfort zone is the last place that you want to be. You need to be stepping out of that comfort zone on a daily basis purposefully.

You need to be purposefully stepping out of that place where you feel comfortable and safe. You need to be taking more risks with your English. More risks.

And in the, I was sharing in the, in the video that I just uploaded to LinkedIn, I was sharing that in the company where I work in my day job. One of the most important values that they have for their leadership is that leaders model the way leaders model the way.

They don't just tell you what they do, they show you what to do. And I am blessed to be surrounded by so many leaders who do that for me. They don't just tell me what to do, they show me.

They show it on a day by day basis.

And honestly, I love where I work for many reasons, but that is one of them that the leaders that I have the opportunity to work with very frequently will model what to do. And I wanted to do that for you today just by letting you know that I have decided every once in a while.

I don't know how frequently I'll do it yet, but I have decided, at least with this very first video, to step way out of my comfort zone and post a video on LinkedIn. Yeah, that's way out of my comfort zone. That's me taking a ginormous risk because of the reasons I just shared. I'm quiet, I'm shy. I don't.

It's just not something that I do well. It took me five, at least five tries to get the video right.

And when I was setting it up on my phone to post it, I realized that I probably have the angle wrong or the, the size of the video wrong. I think it, it just didn't look like other videos that I've seen posted on LinkedIn. It seemed like it was the wrong size. I don't know.

The thing is, it wasn't perfect. And you know what I think? I think that if I had kept hitting stop and kept trying over again, I would eventually give up.

I would eventually think that I'm never going to get it just right, so maybe I shouldn't try to do this.

And I think that that's one of the things that hold us back the most when it comes to using English for you, English for me, Spanish, using our skills because we are afraid of making mistakes. We're afraid of looking stupid. We're afraid of having, you know, our faces show up on video, in my case, in the wrong size, in the wrong angle.

And so we let those fears hold us back.

And while this, this little segment of my podcast today is me wanting to encourage you by modeling the way, me showing you that I too am doing what I say that you should be doing, I am stepping way outside of my comfort zone with this. Way outside. Believe me, this was hard for me to do, but I'm going to do it more. And I have a couple of objectives with this.

And that first objective is that I want to get to know the people that read me on LinkedIn. Like it's one thing to be posting text based messages on there, which is what I have been doing since I began.

I have never once posted a picture of myself. I've never once, definitely, definitely have not posted a video of myself.

I have shared the odd podcast episode on there, which was kind of scary for me to do just because that's me putting myself out there in front of other people. But I've never ever done a video before.

So I did it because I want to get to know the people that follow me on LinkedIn or I want maybe, let me rephrase that. I want the people who follow me on LinkedIn to start to get to know me, me better. I want to build that relationship a little bit more.

And text does a little bit of that, but not nearly as much as actually seeing a face. So that's my first reason, my second reason. I just need to do things that pull me out of my comfort zone. I need to practice what I'm preaching.

I need to do what I'm encouraging you to do. And I want to improve my skills at creating videos like that.

Not that I'm going to be showing up in videos all the time, but it's just something that I want to practice and get better at. So over to you.

Is there something that you can do today that will stretch you, that will pull you out of that comfort zone that you might be hanging out in with your English skills, my friend? If there is, I want to encourage you to do it.

Because that is, in my humble opinion, in my experience, it's the only way that your speaking skills for the Celpip and in English in general are going to get better. It's by you stepping out of your comfort zone and actually using those skills in real world situations where, well, there's risk involved.

It's something new. So what are you going to do?

And I'm going to be linking to that, to this post, this video post on LinkedIn in my show notes today so that if you want to, you can check it out and see me taking that risk. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Celpip Success podcast. I'll see you next time. Have a great week. Bye. Bye.