How Can I Improve My Speaking and Vocabulary Skills in English?

Speaking has always been my weak skill, even though I practice every day. Why is that? Why do I keep getting stuck? Is it because I'm nervous? Is it because I need to learn more vocabulary words?

And if it's because I need to learn more vocabulary words, how can I learn more vocabulary words so that I can get better at this? What do I do? You know, I get questions like this one pretty frequently.

And if you are struggling with this, first of all, like, if you're struggling with that idea of wanting to be able to express your ideas, you know, you're practicing, you're trying to use your English, but it just doesn't seem to come through the way you want it to. Like, you keep making those mistakes, and those mistakes are frustrating. Like, you. You listen to that conversation that you just had in your.

Your mind back again after the conversation has happened, and you think, I totally messed that up. I said the wrong thing, or the thing that I really wanted to say did not come out the way I wanted it to. Gosh, that's so frustrating, isn't it?

By the way, hi, my name is Aaron. If this is the first time that you're listening to this, I'm so glad that you're tuning in and listening.

Today we're helping someone who wrote me to ask the very question that I just finished explaining a few moments ago. How can I improve my speaking skills? I get nervous. It seems to get all messed up.

And when I replay the conversation in my head after, I always realize what I could have done better. Is it my own nerves getting in the way, or is it because I need to build my vocabulary? What do I do?

And the first thing that I want to offer you is, aside from the, hey, you're not alone in this problem.

Lots of people struggle with this, and especially if you're an introvert, if you're quiet, if you're naturally more of a reserved person like me, then putting yourself out there to use your English skills, man, that's even harder.

Or at least it can feel harder when you're dealing with your own personality, as well as the challenges of trying to use a language that is not your first language. So what can you do? And is it a vocabulary problem, or is it a nerves problem? What is going on here? And my first question for you is this.

If this is your situation, your world right now, my first question for you is, when you say that you are practicing every day, my question for you is, what do you mean by I practice every day? Because it can mean a whole lot of different things to different people. So first get clear on what you mean when you say I practice every day.

So when you say that you practice your English every day, does that mean that you have in depth conversations with people on a day to day basis where you are using your English to go deeper beyond surface level questions like hi, how are you? How was your weekend? Hey, what did you have for lunch today?

Or you know, those kinds of surface level questions that we ask each other in passing very regularly. I mean that happens every single day almost. And you can get away with some pretty easy level uses of your English. I'm good, thanks.

Yeah, it was a good weekend. We stayed at home, watched some movies, relaxed. How about you?

Those kinds of interactions, while they're good, while they're useful, while they are helpful in giving you practice, they're not the kind of practice that you really need.

If you find yourself struggling with your English skills like this person has expressed, it might be because the kind of practice you are engaging in is not, it's not deep enough to draw you into using more of your English skills, forcing you to use skills that maybe you're not using, used to using.

That could probably be what you're struggling with, that the kinds of interactions that you are having are either surface level or they've gotten to a place where they're so routine that you don't even have to think about what to say. And what I mean by routine is if you back up that question of how are you doing?

Like when you first see somebody, you're passing each other in the hallway at work, for example, and you say, hey, how are you doing? Or how was your weekend? Those kinds of questions can be very routinely answered. Let me rephrase that.

It can be answered without you even thinking about your response, can't they? I mean, I'm just thinking about the conversation I had with my coworker this morning.

Our conversations, thankfully, whenever we have them, they tend to go beyond surface level answers. When we ask each other how their weekend works, went most frequently, yes, to begin with. The good, yeah, it was fine.

But then very quickly there's usually a follow up question that brings the conversation into a deeper level and we start talking about what we really did over the weekend or what we really did last night, for example. So it goes very quickly from being a surface level answer where you kind of know what the person is going to say and what you can say to being very.

Unscripted. You know what I mean?

Like you don't know what that person is going to respond and you in turn probably don't know how you're going to answer yourself, which is going to be forcing you to use like if you get into this using English as your second language, if, when you get into deep conversations like this, where you leave behind the safe and like things that you can expect in your answers, like in the way that you give them and the way that you expect the other person to respond, when you leave behind that predictable. That was the word I was looking for a moment ago.

When you leave behind what is predictable and you start going into more deeper responses, that's where you're going to really start realizing one, you do need some more vocabulary words, but two, it's going to force you to be using your English in ways that are going to help you to get better.

So doubling back to how we began to answer this question at the start is not all practice times or practice sessions where you're using, where you are using your English are the same. They're not created equal.

So if your practice sessions are you just engaging in surface level, very predictable kinds of exchanges between you and other people, if that's where you are living with your use of English, then while it's good, it will help you to be using your English. Of course, every time you can use your English, you should be.

But if you are always staying in that level of usage where it's predictable, you know what the other person's going to say, you know what you're going to say, then your English skills are probably going to stay at a certain point, they're going to stay at a certain level. But what you really want to see happening is your English skills to get better. Right? That's what you're wanting to see happen.

You want to see your English skills get better. And that means you need to leave behind the safety of those surface level conversations which are good but will only take you so far.

You need to let go of them and go deeper into those conversations like what I was sharing with you that often happen between me and a co worker friend of mine that our conversations very rarely stay at those surface level opening questions.

They do begin there most of the time, but quite frequently our conversations last 15 to 20 minutes because we ask deeper questions and respond in a deeper way. And that should be your goal as well.

If you want those English skills to get better, check and see if the kinds of conversations you are getting into are staying at the surface or if they go deeper and those deeper conversations don't have to be with you you know, baring your soul and talking about all the deep secrets of your life. It doesn't have to be that kind of going deeper. Just has to be you talking about things that take you away from normal.

And I have here in my notes, like pattern interruption. We need to have our patterns interrupted. And I think I've shared this before.

In the city where I live, there's a lot of construction going on right now. So it's very common for the normal routes that you take in order to get to work.

For example, it's happened to me at least a dozen times over the last two or three weeks where the route that I was expecting to be able to take in order to get to work or to get somewhere that I was going was blocked off because of all the construction going on. So I had to take a detour.

I had to travel around a new area of the city that I probably haven't been to before or been to rarely in order to get to where I'm trying to go. And that expands me. It expands my mind, it expands my awareness.

Like my alertness levels go way up because I'm trying to figure out where I'm going and how I'm going to get to where I'm trying to get to following this new route. And the same thing needs to happen with you and your English. What. What you're probably needing to have happen to you.

If you're saying, I use my English every day, but I feel like my skills aren't getting any better, it might be because you need to do some pattern interrupts, like what I was just saying before, to change the way you get around with your English skills. Meaning go deeper. Meaning be willing to talk about things or initiate conversations about things that you wouldn't normally talk about.

Again, not with the intention of you, you know, sharing, like oversharing, talking about things that you know you don't want people to know about. But definitely it does mean looking for ways for you to speak about things that you don't normally talk about with the people around you.

And I think that if you engage in those kinds of conversations more frequently, you will begin to see your English skills improve dramatically. The same with your confidence. I mean, I do know that it takes guts to even talk about surface level things, right?

Especially if you're an introvert like me. It's not easy to engage in any kinds of conversations with random people.

But if you do practice leaving behind those surface level conversations, even a little bit at a time, like make it your goal today to Maybe engage with just one person going beyond those surface safe kinds of conversations. Again, with safe meaning that you know kind of what's going to happen in those interactions.

Okay, please don't take this as me saying you must have conversations where you are talking about, you know, the deepest, darkest things inside of you, unless you want to talk about that. But you don't have to do those kinds of conversations in order to improve your English.

But what you do need to do is interrupt those patterns of safe, I know what this person is going to say, I know what I'm going to say kind of interaction. So you need to go deeper than that and force yourself to use words and phrases that you don't normally use. Yes, that is going to feel awkward.

Yes, it's going to open up the door wide for mistakes to happen, my friend. You are going to quickly discover that you don't have all the words that you need to say what you want to say. And that's okay. That is totally okay.

And in fact, you should welcome those kinds of experiences because it will point you towards words and phrases that you need to learn quickly in order to express those kinds of ideas.

And I think that that leads to the next part of this question, and that is, how can I learn more vocabulary words so that I can express myself better? And that's a great question. And I think that learning vocabulary is a habit. It's something that should become a long term process for you.

Something that is not like done once and you're finished. It's like this ongoing journey that you should be on on a regular basis.

And I think that those, the best kind of vocabulary learning opportunities happen when you find yourself in the deep end, you know, with what we were just talking about, where you find, I don't know how to say what I really want to say. Those moments, those moments are gold. Because one, your brain is alive, it's alert and it's realizing, oh my, I'm in trouble.

And I don't know what I'm supposed to say here. Which means that when you load something in, when you load that information in that's missing, your mind is going to be paying close attention to it.

Just like how when you're trying to get to work following a different route, because your old route, the route that you're used to, is closed off when you learn, when you go on that new route to get to where you're trying to go, your mind is kind of like on high alert and it's recording how to get there very carefully. Like it's paying very close attention to your surroundings so that you can, you know, do this again if you need to.

And that's what you want to see happening with your vocabulary. I think, I don't think it's a good idea for you to try to learn long lists of words. Number one, that's so boring. That would put me to sleep.

And it's also not very effective.

I think that the best thing that you can do for yourself, like what I was saying a moment ago, is to put yourself into those situations where your words run out or those phrases that you need to express your ideas just aren't there, forcing you to figure out what you needed to say in order to say what you, which will force you to know, to learn the words that you needed in order to say the things that you wanted to say.

You need to put yourself in those situations more often because when you do, when you do find out the missing words and you learn what they mean, they're going to stick with you.

They're going to be part of your vocabulary so much more easily and more effectively than you trying to, you know, waste your time trying to memorize long lists of words. So please don't do that to yourself. Don't, you know, look for a list of vocabulary words and try to use them instead.

Get yourself out there, Put yourself in situations where you get stuck, learn the words and phrases that would, that would have helped you to get unstuck and then go there again. Use it or, and in the moment you can safely ask, you're, you're the person that you're talking to.

Hey, I'm trying to say and, and see if you can get some help from them about what was missing in order to express your ideas. Because that is a really good way for you to build your vocabulary on the fly.

And later on, of course, you can also do it by, you know, trying to reconstruct the conversation that you were having and what the, the missing words and phrases were that would have helped you and then begin looking for what they might be. And the idea here is that you should be keeping a vocabulary journal.

That's something that would be very helpful for you to try if you've never done it before. And all a vocabulary journal is, is a simple notebook.

I highly suggest that you write this using the old fashioned pen and paper way, write the new word that you were learning or write the new phrase that you, that you needed to learn, write down what it means and then make it your goal to use that new word or new phrase at least seven times as quickly as you possibly can. The idea here is not memorization. The idea here is using it so much that it becomes a part of your vocabulary.

And like I said before, if you, if you are able to link those new words and new phrases to moments where you desperately needed them but didn't have them, but you found out what they were, and now you can say what you wanted to say. If, if the link between those two experiences is short or small, that's really good.

You want to be able to have a very quick I learned the new word that I needed. Now I can plug it in and use it in that conversation I was trying to have with person X, Y or Z. Right? So that would be my suggestion for you.

Put yourself into those situations where you run out of the words to express what you need to express. Those are good, it's not bad. And you shouldn't beat yourself up when those moments happen.

It's a sign that you are pushing yourself just beyond your current level of English, which is really good.

And if you can find out what was missing, what the missing words were, what the missing phrases were, and figure out how to use them, and then begin using them, my friend, that is how you're going to very quickly build your vocabulary skills and increase your fluency skills at the same time. I hope that these ideas help you. Please keep going. Don't give up.

Don't let this moment of frustration that you're feeling right now be the thing that, you know, blocks you off and make you think I'm a terrible English learner. No, you're not. No, you're not.

You just need to keep putting in the reps and definitely push yourself into those situations where you do run out of the words that you need in order to express yourself well. And then learn what they mean and learn what those new words or phrases are, what they mean, and begin using them.

Get your reps in is what I'm getting at here.

You need this to be happening on a regular basis and you need to be filling in those missing words or phrases on a regular basis so that your fluency skills will improve. I hope that that helps you. And if you have any other questions about this, if, please feel free to let me know.

It'll be my pleasure to help and that's what I'm here for. I want to be able to help you to build your English skills.

And thank you so much for listening or watching, depending on how you're engaging with this. And I hope that you have a great rest of your week. We'll see you soon. Bye. Bye.