［转载］How can you benefit the most from speaking with English speaker.

夜王神夜

A lot of people want to practice English speaking with English speaker. It is because when we were in school, we learned English in lesson, but we don’t have chance to speak English with anyone. We have learned reading, writing, grammar and some English phrases, but we don’t speak English in school, even in English class, we still speak our mother tongue with our friends.

Therefore, a lot of people trying to look for English school, some place where they can get a find a partner to speak English with. Good thing for English school is, there are a lot of students there, having the same objective as you, which is looking for someone who they can speak English with. Therefore, it is very likely to can find someone to speak English with, by sign up for the school. The bad thing however, is that most of the students there, they are just student not English speaker. Therefore it is very likely that your conversation will be full of mistake, and nobody knows how to correct you, since both of you are still learning.

Some of you may already know about this, therefore you try to find some foreigners to practice English with. Some people exchange contact with foreigners when they play online game, some people make friend with foreigners by saying hi to them. In China, I have heard a lot of foreigners complaining about they have been treated very nicely just because local people want to ‘use’ them to practice English with.

Well, there is no right or wrong about looking for someone to practice your English with. However, the key is, how to benefit the most from speaking English with someone? There are a lot of people who went for language school, but still couldn’t have a conversation with real English speakers. It is because, in language school, you are having English conversation with other students based on the topic given by teacher. Those topic are what we called ‘textbook’ English, which is not applicable in real life. These are some example of “textbook English conversation”

---

Example 1: Conversation that not applicable in real life
Student A: Do you like me?

Student B: Yes, I like you.

---

Example 2: Something that can only start the conversation, not keep the conversation going.
Student A: What is your name?

Student B: My name is Tom.

Student A: My name is James, nice to meet you.

Student B: Nice to meet you.

---

Example 3: Something is too personal or involved private life.
Student A: How many family members do you have?

Student B: Four, my father, my mother and my sister.

---

Therefore, by learning ‘textbook English’, can actually makes you more difficult make friends with foreigner. However, it can be changed. I am going to give you a few tips how to benefit the most from English speaking.

Tip 1: You must understand about 60% of the language that speaker speaking.
If you don’t understand at least 60% of the content that the speaker speaks, you can’t have good time speaking with the English speaker. Let’s use Japanese in this example, I used to speak Japanese with my host family when I was in Japan, nowadays I speak Japanese with my friends sometimes, we can have good conversation because I can understand at least 60% of Japanese of they speak.

I know you can’t understand everything they say, because you are still a learner. However, listening is very important when you are learning any language. You can’t speak a language without good at listening. 60% is the minimum requirement of listening skills.

If you like American drama, British movie or Anime with English dubbed, chances are, you have the listening skills already. If you are beginner, I would recommend you start with watching drama or movie in English for a while, to train your listening skill.

The other way is, try to find an English speaker in your country, they don’t have to be native. It is easier to understand their accent when you are having conversation with them. If you are beginner, it might be hard for you to understand foreigners’ accent. Some accent are very hard for beginner to understand, such as Indian accent and British accent.

Tip 2: If you are beginner, try to start learning speaking with questions and answers.
Asking and answering question is very common in our real life. Even in your language, when you are chatting with your friends you are either asking & answering question or telling a story. It is good to start from learning Q&A, not only it trains you how to think in English, but it is also very useful in your real life. However, don’t ask something very personal, like how many times have you married or how many money you make.

These are some example of learning English with conversation. We picked the topic of hobby in this example.

Q: What is your hobby?

A: I like playing badminton.

Q: How often do you play badminton?

A: I play badminton once a week.

Q: Who do you usually play badminton with?

A: I usually play badminton with my friend Kevin, Sarah, Chloe and Andy.

Q: Are you good at badminton?

A: Yes, I am.

Q: Are you friends good at badminton too?

A: Yes, they are.

Q: Which of them is the best?

A:  Chloe is the best.

You can see, this kind of Q&A questions are very easy to beginner. When you ask a question, you learned the right way of asking question. When you answer a question, you learned the right way of answering question. This is also how I trained my student on my Skype 1-on-1 lesson. For those students who are higher level, I trained them Q&A in past tense and future tense.

Tip 3: Talk about topic you love
“If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. You might have heard of this phrase before, if you love what you are doing, then work is fun. Same theory when it comes to learning English. A lot of learners hated textbook, it is so boring and makes you fall sleep. However, if you are a Pokemon-fan, and you are Pokemon games in English, your brain can learn more faster, because it is your interest. If you love iPhone, you can buy smartphone magazine in English, it is going to turn on your brain. Next time, when you have a partner that you can speak English with, try to talk about topic that you like. You can talk about anime, travel, Pokemon, car, iPhone, fashion and anything else you like. After 3 months, you will see a significant improvement, trust me!

转载自：http://learnenglishwitheric.com/ ... th-english-speaker/