Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Improve Your Communication skills


Improve Your Communication skills

Today we have many communications problem. So, I surfing some sites & to collect some data.

Here I published the some surfing’s collections for to improve your communications skills.
Please give me your true response if you have like or dislike.

Let’s Begin to Improve Your Communication Skills.

Improve Your Communication Skills

We all have people with whom we have to work to get things done.  Our ability to communicate with clients, customers, subordinates, peers, and superiors can enhance our effectiveness or sabotage us.  Many times, our verbal skills make the difference.  Here are 10 ways to increase your verbal efficacy at work:

Develop your voice – A high whiney voice is not perceived to be one of authority.  In fact, a high soft voice can make you sound like prey to an aggressive co-worker who is out to make his/her career at the expense of anyone else.   Begin doing exercises to lower the pitch of your voice.  Here is one to start:  Sing — but do it an octave lower on all your favorite songs.  Practice this and, after a period of time, your voice will begin to lower.
Slow down – People will perceive you as nervous and unsure of yourself if you talk fast.  However, be careful not to slow down to the point where people begin to finish your sentences just to help you finish.
Animate your voice – Avoid a monotone.  Use dynamics.  Your pitch should raise and lower.  Your volume should be soft and loud.  Listen to your local TV news anchor; take notes.
Enunciate your words – Speak clearly.  Don’t mumble.  If people are always saying, “huh,” to you, you are mumbling.
Use appropriate volume – Use a volume that is appropriate for the setting.  Speak more softly when you are alone and close.  Speak louder when you are speaking to larger groups or across larger spaces.
Pronounce your words correctly – People will judge your competency through your vocabulary.  If you aren’t sure how to say a word, don’t use it.
Use the right words – If you’re not sure of the meaning of a word, don’t use it.  Start a program of learning a new word a day.  Use it sometime in your conversations during the day.
Make eye contact – I know a person who is very competent in her job.  However, when she speaks to individuals or groups, she does so with her eyes shut.  When she opens them periodically, she stares off in a direction away from the listener.  She is perceived as incompetent by those with whom she consults.  One technique to help with this is to consciously look into one of the listener’s eyes and then move to the other.  Going back and forth between the two (and I hope they only have two) makes your eyes appear to sparkle.  Another trick is to imagine a letter “T” on the listener’s face with the cross bar being an imaginary line across the eye brows and the vertical line coming down the center of the nose.  Keep your eyes scanning that “T” zone.
Use gestures – Make your whole body talk.  Use smaller gestures for individuals and small groups.  The gestures should get larger as the group that one is addressing increases in size.
Don’t send mixed messages – Make your words, gestures, facial expressions, tone, and message match.  Disciplining an employee while smiling sends a mixed message and, therefore, is ineffective.  If you have to deliver a negative message, make your words, facial expressions, and tone match the message.
Improving your communication skills will improve your productivity.


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Many deserving candidates lose out on job opportunities because of their vernacular accent.

Can I ‘neutralise’ my accent?

Yes, you can. All you need to do is train yourself to speak English as comfortably and perfectly as you speak your mother tongue.

How do you train yourself? By inculcating certain practices in your daily lifestyle. These will get you closer to sounding like a native English speaker and equip you with a global accent — and you will speak not American or British English, but correct English.

This is the first step to learn any other accent, be it American or British or Australian.

Lisa Mojsin, head trainer, director and founder of the Accurate English Training Company in Los Angeles, offers these tips to help ‘neutralise’ your accent or rather do away with the local twang, as you speak.

i. Observe the mouth movements of those who speak English well and try to imitate them.

When you are watching television, observe the mouth movements of the speakers. Repeat what they are saying, while imitating the intonation and rhythm of their speech.

ii. Until you learn the correct intonation and rhythm of English, slow your speech down.

If you speak too quickly, and with the wrong intonation and rhythm, native speakers will have a hard time understanding you.

Don’t worry about your listener getting impatient with your slow speech — it is more important that everything you say be understood.

iii. Listen to the ‘music’ of English.

Do not use the ‘music’ of your native language when you speak English. Each language has its own way of ‘singing’.

iv. Use the dictionary.

Try and familiarise yourself with the phonetic symbols of your dictionary. Look up the correct pronunciation of words that are hard for you to say.

v. Make a list of frequently used words that you find difficult to pronounce and ask someone who speaks the language well to pronounce them for you.

Record these words, listen to them and practice saying them. Listen and read at the same time.



vi. Buy books on tape.

Record yourself reading some sections of the book. Compare the sound of your English with that of the person reading the book on the tape.

vii. Pronounce the ending of each word.

Pay special attention to ‘S’ and ‘ED’ endings. This will help you strengthen the mouth muscles that you use when you speak English.

viii. Read aloud in English for 15-20 minutes every day.

Research has shown it takes about three months of daily practice to develop strong mouth muscles for speaking a new language.

ix. Record your own voice and listen for pronunciation mistakes.

Many people hate to hear the sound of their voice and avoid listening to themselves speak. However, this is a very important exercise because doing it will help you become conscious of the mistakes you are making.

x. Be patient.

You can change the way you speak but it won’t happen overnight. People often expect instant results and give up too soon. You can change the way you sound if you are willing to put some effort into it.

Quick tips

Various versions of the English language exist. Begin by identifying the category you fall into and start by improving the clarity of your speech.

~ Focus on removing the mother tongue influence and the ‘Indianisms’ that creep into your English conversations.

~ Watch the English news on television channels like Star World, CNN, BBC and English movies on Star Movies and HBO.

~ Listen to and sing English songs. We’d recommend Westlife, Robbie Williams, Abba, Skeeter Davis and Connie Francis among others.

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Better Communication with Employees and Peers

If the thought of speaking in front of an audience sends you into a cold sweat, then this Inc.com guide is for you. Communication experts and CEOs share their strategies for smooth communications with employees, making winning presentations to investors, writing and delivering speeches that get standing ovations, and much more.

A Crash Course in Communication

Need a quick refresher on effective interpersonal interaction? Two communication experts offer 12 steps to smoother conversations.

Lost in Translation

Thanks to e-mail, BlackBerrys, and text messaging, the face-to-face encounter is becoming a dying art. Here’s why you should revive it.

The Power of Listening

How does an old-line manufacturer in a stagnant industry manage to grow 25% a year for 10 years? By taking its employees seriously.

Do as I Say: Quick Tips for Masterful Communication

Tired of doing all the talking and not having your message get through to your staff? Try these suggestions to improve your leadership communication skills.

Just Listen to Yourself

Tape yourself to better understand your communications style.

Powerful Questions Can Have a Powerful Effect

Questions can be one of the most effective communication tools available to us. Do you use questions enough in your day-to-day interactions?

When Do You Lie? Strategies For More Authentic, Respectful Communication

Lies come in all shapes, sizes and colors. (Ever heard of flat-out, teensy or white lies?) This article focuses on when it’s appropriate, if at all, to lie.

10 Tips for Communicating Change

Transition is inevitable, but exactly what you say and how you say it can make a major impact on how change is handled in your company.

How to Motivate Employees

Kevin Plank, founder of Under Armour, says it is vital to maintain regular face-to-face communication with  employees even as a company expands.

The 4-1-1 On Constructive Criticism

Being critical is easy, and offering criticism seems easier still. Yet constructive criticism – - the more refined and effective brand of critical feedback – - is like an art.

Lost in the Translation

Tips on communicating with employees who don’t speak English.

How to Say You’re Sorry

Apologizing is part of doing business. But do it wrong, and you’ll really be sorry.

Tips on Becoming a Good Conversationalist

In this excerpt from How to Work a Room: The Ultimate Guide to Savvy Socializing in Person and Online learn tips for becoming a talk target — someone with whom it is easy to make conversation.

10 Tips for Successful Networking

Keith Ferrazzi needs two PalmPilots to keep track of all his contacts, people like Bill Clinton and Michael Milken. But there’s far more to cracking the inner circle of the power elite than just taking names.

Presentations and Pitches

Powerful Presentations

Small-business columnist Rhonda Abrams shares nine strategies for giving powerful presentations.

Reinventing the PowerPoint

New tech tools to liven your tired old PowerPoint presentations–and give your online marketing efforts a boost.

Perfecting Your Pitch

Check out these tips from entrepreneurs and business experts on creating pitches that can help you raise capital.

More Power Than Point

PowerPoint (or “presentation software”) has become the lingua franca of American business. It’s also become the problem with American business.

Best of the Net: Power Brokers

When it comes to presentation software, most users agree there’s one clear standard. We’ve found some Web-based resources to help you make your point.

Captivate Audiences with Powerful Presentations

Do you want your speeches to pack a punch? Professional speaker and speech consultant Patricia Fripp offers ideas on humor, movement, and vocal techniques.

Short and Sweet: Mastering Quick Presentations

Called on to make a brief speech? Professional speaker and speech coach Patricia Fripp offers tips for saying what you want, short and sweet.

Present Before You Propose

Improve your presentation by saving handouts until the end.

Finding the Perfect Pitch

Watch three rookies gear up for the investor presentation of a lifetime.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Presenters

Entrepreneurs learn pretty quickly that making a verbal pitch to investors is very different from submitting a written business plan. Here are seven good practices gleaned from a venture-capital boot camp.

Elements of a Winning Pitch

A presentation to potential investors in your business — to family, friends, or angels — should include most of these elements.

Meetings

Escape From Meeting Hell

It’s time for another soul-sapping, oxygen-depriving, time-wasting, mind-numbing company meeting. Or is it? We offer 15 clever solutions to the problems with most meetings.

Meetings Go Virtual

Web conferencing and other collaboration technologies — tools that help people work with one another through their computers — have become more available and affordable. This is a boon for smaller companies whose only previous collaboration option was to gather workers in a room with coffee, donuts and a whiteboard.

Meetings 101: Was That a Good Meeting, or a Bad One?

Five simple factors that help ensure every meeting is a good meeting.

Tools for Boosting Communication Effectiveness

Tips on how to boost the effectiveness of communication in meetings, during change initiatives, and in interviews.

Advice on Getting the Most Out of Meetings

Keith Lamb shares some advice on getting the most out of your meetings.

Cure the Sick-Meeting Ills

Ineffective meetings may be wasting time and lowering morale. Two communication experts offer seven strategies for dramatically improving your meetings.

How to Manage Meetings More Effectively

A look at companies that hold unique meetings for developing products, building camaraderie, generating ideas, and reviewing employees’ needs and achievements.

Speech Writing and Delivery

Writing and Organizing a Winning Speech

Public speaker and speech consultant Patricia Fripp suggests following one of two basic outlines for your speech. She also offers speechwriting tips.

Polishing and Rehearsing for a Perfect Presentation

You’ve written a speech, but there’s still work to do before delivering it. Patricia Fripp gives six suggestions for making sure your speech hits home along with several ideas on effective rehearsing.

Deliver a Stellar Speech

Powerful presentations happen when you check out the room in advance and work to connect with the audience when talking. Patricia Fripp offers ideas for ensuring that what you say is a smashing success.

No More Pre-Speech Jitters

From virtual reality therapy to positive visualization, we’ve got relaxation techniques to help offset your fears of public speaking.

Free Speech

Preparing for a big speech? Resources on the Web can help.

The Written Word

Work through Writer’s Block

Need help working through some written projects? Two communication experts offer eight tips for clear and effective writing.

Writing Well on the Web

Content is king. Here are easy ways to make your website more reader-friendly.

Polish Your Prose

Poor grammar and punctuation in proposals and reports could cost you business.

How to Blog

The trick, say experts and longtime bloggers, is restraint. “For marketers, it’s about being more authentic, which is so ironic,” says one analyst.

How to Drive Traffic to Your Company’s Blog

Driving traffic to your small business’ corporate blog takes equal parts old-fashioned marketing and contemporary Web tools.

Troubleshooting

Are You Assertive or Aggressive?

Assertiveness is the skill that tops the list for success or failure in any workplace situation. Learn how to be more assertive — not aggressive — and apply it to your interactions.

Get Your Point Across without Being Rude

Is your communication style a little rough around the edges? Here are five techniques for saying what you mean without making enemies in the process.

Communicating When People Leave You Speechless

Improved communication is a nice idea, but can it work in the real world? Take a look at these real-life business issues and suggestions for better communication that may lead to better business.

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· Start your own English language blog. Even for people who don’t have to write in English, writing can be a great way of properly learning the kind of vocabulary you need to describe your own life and interests, and of thinking about how to stop making grammar mistakes. The problem most people have is that they don’t know what to write about. One traditional way to make sure you write every day in English is to write an English diary (journal), and a more up to date way of doing this is to write a blog. Popular topics include your language learning experience, your experience studying abroad, your local area, your language, or translations of your local news into English.
· Write a news diary. Another daily writing task that can work for people who would be bored by writing about their own routines in a diary is to write about the news that you read and listen to everyday. If you include your predictions for how you think the story will develop (e.g. “I think Hillary will become president”), this can give you a good reason to read old entries another time, at which time you can also correct and mistakes you have made and generally improve what you have written.
Sign up for a regular English tip. Some websites offer a weekly or even daily short English lesson sent to your email account. If your mobile phone has an e-mail address, it is also possible to have the tips sent to your phone to read on the way to work or school. Please note, however, that such services are not usually graded very well to the levels of different students, and they should be used as a little added extra or revision in your English studies rather than as a replacement for something you or your teacher have chosen more carefully as what you need to learn.
Listen to MP3s. Although buying music on the internet is becoming more popular in many countries, not so many people know that you can download speech radio such as audio books (an actor reading out a novel) and speech radio. Not only is this better practice for your English than listening to English music, from sources like Scientific American, BBC and Australia’s ABC Radio it is also free.
Listen to English music. Even listening to music while doing something else can help a little for things like getting used to the natural rhythm and tone of English speech, although the more time and attention you give to a song the more you will learn from listening to it again in the future.
Read the lyrics to a song. Although just listening to a song in English can be a good way of really learning the words of the chorus in an easily memorable way, if you want to really get something out of listening to English music you will need to take some time to read the lyrics of the song with a dictionary. If the lyrics are not given in the CD booklet, you may be able to find them on the internet, but please note that some lyrics sites deliberately put a few errors into their lyrics for copyright reasons. Once you have read and understood the lyrics,  if you then listen and read at the same time, this can be a good way of understanding how sounds change in fast, natural, informal speech.
Sing karaoke in English. The next stage after understanding and memorising a song is obviously to sing it. Although some words have their pronunciation changed completely to fit in with a song, most of the words have the same sounds and stressed syllables as in normal speech. Remembering which words rhyme at the end of each line can also be a good way of starting to learn English pronunciation.
Write a film, music, hotel or book review. Another motivating and easy way to make yourself write in English is to write a review for a site such as Amazon or Internet Movie Database. Many non-native speakers write reviews on sites like this, and if you have some special understanding of the book, music or film due to your first language or knowing the artist personally, that would be very interesting for the English speakers who read and write reviews on the site.
Only search in English. Switching your search engine to the English language version of msn, yahoo, Google etc. can not only be a good way of practising fast reading for specific information in English, but could also give you a wider choice of sites to choose from and give you an idea of what foreigners are writing about your country and area.
Read a book you’ve already read or seen the movie of in your own language. Although most language learners under Advanced level would probably learn more from reading a graded reader or something from the internet than they would from reading an original book written for English speakers, for some people reading something like Harry Potter in the original can be a great motivator to improve their English. To make this easier for you and make sure that it motivates you rather than just making your tired, try reading a book that you already know the story of. This not only makes it easier to understand and guess vocabulary, but you are also more likely to remember the language in it. If you have not read the book before, reading a plot summary from the internet can also help in the same way.
Read a translation into English. Another way of making sure books are easier to understand is to choose a book that was originally translated into English, preferably from your own language. Even if you haven’t read the book in your own language, you will find the English is written in a slightly simplified way that is more similar to how your own language is written than a book originally written in English would be.
Skip the first ten pages. If you have given up with a book in English or are reading it very slowly, try skimming through the first ten pages or skipping them completely. The start of most books tend to be mainly description and are therefore full of difficult vocabulary and don’t have a clear story line yet to help you understand what is happening and to motivate you to turn the next page. If the book is still too difficult even after the introductionary part is finished, it is probably time to give that book up for now and try it again after you have read some easier things.
Read a book with lots of dialogue. Opening up books before you buy one and flicking through them to find one with lots of direct dialogue in it has several advantages. If there is less text on the page due to all the speech marks etc, this can make it easier to read and easier to write translations on. Dialogue is also much easier to understand than descriptive parts of a book, and is much more like the language you will want to learn in order to be able to speak English.
Read English language comics. Even more than books with lots of dialogue, comics can be easy to understand and full of idiomatic language as it is actually spoken. There can be difficulties with slang, difficult to understand jokes and/ or dialogue written how people speak rather than with normal spellings, so try to choose which comic carefully. Usually, serious or adventure comics are easier to understand than funny ones.
Read English language entertainment guides. Nowadays most big cities in the world have an English language magazine and/ or online guide to the movies, plays, exhibitions that are on in the city that week. Reading this in English is not only good value, but it could also guide you to places that English speakers are interested in and where you might hear some English spoken around you.
Read English language magazines. Like books, if you can read two versions of the same magazine (Newsweek in your language and in English, for example), that could make understanding it much easier.
Take a one week intensive course. Although you cannot expect to come out of a very short course speaking much better English than when you started it, if you continue studying a little over the following weeks and months, the knowledge you gained then will gradually come out and mean that your level of speaking, listening etc. are better than they would have been if you hadn’t taken that course. This positive effect can still be true up to a year later.
Follow your intensive course up with an extensive course. The more time you can spend studying English the better, but studying periodic intensive courses with a few hours of study a week in between is probably better value for money than any other system as it gives your brain time to subconsciously learn and start using the new language you have learnt before you introduce the next new “chunk” of language.
Supplement your group class with a one to one class. Another good way to combine two different kinds of classes is to study both in a group class and one to one. Having a one to one teacher, even if just a couple of times a month, will mean that you can be taught exactly the language that you need, that you will have more time to speak, and that you can have as much error correction as you like.
Supplement your one to one class with a group class. The benefits of having a group class are often less clear to students, but they include the fact that you will learn to deal with several people speaking at once, have a chance to practice skills such as interrupting people, and will hear a range of different viewpoints and topics.
Teach your children or friends some English. Recent research has shown that elder children tend to be a couple of IQ points above their younger siblings, and the most likely reason is that explaining things to their little brothers and sisters gives them an intellectual boost. In the same way, teaching someone lower level than you the English you already know is a great way of permanently fixing that knowledge in your own brain.
Ask your company to start English lessons. Even if you don’t need to speak English at work, English lessons can be a fun and reasonably priced way for your company to spend their training budget in a popular way.
Have English radio on in the background while you are doing your housework. Even if you are not listening carefully, it will help you get a feel for natural English rhythm and intonation.
Play English language learning games on your Nintendo DS. Although such games can have quite random language and are unlikely to improve your ability to speak English on their own, the next time you hear or read the same language elsewhere it will be really fixed in your brain by the fact you have played a game with it in already. It is also a nice way of taking a break from your other English studies while also doing some English. To make sure it really is a break and to avoid wasting time learning language from the game that is not much used in daily life, don’t bother writing down any new language you see in the game, but just try to learn it from playing the game again.
Say or think what you are doing in English as you do your daily tasks. As you are doing your chores, try creating sentences describing what you are doing, e.g. ‘I am unscrewing the ketchup bottle cap’. This gets you used to thinking in English without translating, and can be a good way of seeing what simple vocabulary that is around you everyday you don’t know. yet
Watch English language films with English subtitles. For people who can’t understand a film without subtitles but find themselves not listening at all when reading subtitles in their own language, this should be the way of watching a film that you should aim for. If it is too difficult to watch the whole film this way, try watching the (usually important) first 10 or 15 minutes of the film with subtitles in your own language, switch to English subtitles after that, and only switch back to subtitles in your own language if you get totally lost following the story of the film.
Watch films in your language with English subtitles. If you are finding English films with English subtitles too difficult or you can’t find English films with English subtitles in your local video shop, this is a good second best option. Looking for local films with English subtitles can also sometimes be a good sign of quality, as it means the producers of the film are expecting it to be popular internationally as well.
Watch English films with subtitles in your language. Again, this is not as good practice as English language films with English subtitles, but is more relaxing, can be easier to find suitable DVDs for, and is also possible with VHS.
Watch the same film or TV episode over and over again. This can not only save you money on DVDs, but will mean that you can really learn the language without having to study it. Some comedies can also get funnier the more you watch them, especially if you watch them with no subtitles and so understand a little more each time you watch it.
Be realistic about your level. One thing that holds many language learners back is actually trying too hard and tackling something that their brain is not ready for yet. Checking your level with a level check test on the internet, by taking an English language test (FCE, CAE, IELTS, TOEIC, TOEFL etc.), or by taking a free trial level check and/ or lesson in a language school will help you find out what your level is and so choose suitable self-study materials.
Be realistic about your reading level. Most researchers agree that people learn most when reading something they understand almost all of. If there are one or two words per page that you have never seen before, that is about the right level. If there are three or more on every page, you should switch to something easier and come back later.
Read graded readers (= easy readers). These are books that are especially written for language learners like you, e.g. Penguin Readers. Although it can be difficult to find something as interesting as things written in newspapers or on the internet, in terms of learning the language only people who need to read for their work or an exam usually gain more from reading things written for graded readers. Graded readers of classic books like Charles Dickens also have the benefit of giving you a lot of knowledge about the literature, and culture more generally, of English speaking countries in a short time.
Read the whole thing with no help. Although using a dictionary has been shown to help with both short term and long term learning of vocabulary, the fact that using it slows reading down can stop some people reading in English at all. Reading a whole book quickly through just for pleasure from time to time will help you remember how fun reading in another language can be.
Read and learn everything. At the opposite extreme, it can be hard work but very satisfying to get to the end of a book knowing that you have learnt every word in it. See other tips on this page to make sure it is a book that is easy enough to do this with and to ensure that the vocabulary you learn is useful.
Watching English children’s films or TV programmes. Although some of the vocabulary you can learn from things made for children can be a bit strange (lots of animal names and maybe animal noises, including baby names for things), the fact that not only the language but the structure of the story is simplified can make it an easy and motivating thing to watch. Like good language learning materials, the same language is also often repeated to make it memorable, and the use of catchy songs etc. can increase this positive effect on your memory.
Read English children’s books. This is very similar to watching English children’s movies, but with the added advantage of there being more illustrations than adult books, which both helps you to understand the story and makes the page brighter and more motivating to read.
Keep a list of language to learn, e.g. a vocab list. Even if you don’t often find time to go though your vocab list and it keeps on building up, just the act of choosing which words you need to learn and writing them down on a special list can help you learn them.
Go through your vocab list several times every day. If ticking off words on a vocabulary list on the train to work is inconvenient or embarrassing for you, you can keep your list of words to learn as an entry in your electronic dictionary, as a mobile phone to do list or as a text file in your MP3 player (e.g. iPod). Although the time spent transferring the information between different formats like these may seem wasted, in fact any time you spend using the vocabulary like this will help you learn it.
Convert your vocab list to English only. One way to stop yourself translating and therefore increase your speed of comprehension and production is to learn all your vocabulary without the use of your own first language. Ways you can write a vocab list in only English include with synonyms (words with the same meaning, e.g. “tall” and “high”); with opposites (“high” and “low”); with pronunciation factors such as number of syllables (the number of beats, e.g. three for “de- ci- sion”) and the word stress (the syllable that is pronounced louder and longer, e.g. the second syllable in “baNAna”); and gapped sentences (e.g. “I am not _________________ in science fiction” for the word “interested”).
Cross out and delete. Crossing out or deleting words, sentences or whole pages that you have learnt can be a great motivator, and save your list of things to learn becoming too big to handle.
Throw everything away and start again. One of the things that can put most people off learning is a stack of half finished books or a huge list vocabulary waiting to be learnt. Simply getting rid of all that and starting again with something new from zero can be a great motivator and get your studies underway again.
Label things in your house or office with post-its. The easiest vocabulary to learn is the vocabulary of things you see and use everyday. If you can write the names of things around you on slips of paper and stick them on the real thing, this is a great way of learning useful vocabulary. If you can leave them there over the following days and weeks, this is a very easy way of revising the vocabulary until it is properly learnt.
Label a drawing. For people who can’t put labels on real things, the next best option is to take a photo of a real place in your life like your office, print it out, and then draw lines to all of the things you can see in the picture and label them in English with the help of a dictionary. You can do the same thing with places you pass through everyday like the station. Because you will see the same thing again and again, it should be easy to really learn the words for those things.
Keep a diary in English. This is a popular method of making sure you use English everyday for people who don’t often speak English and can’t think of things to write about. The fact that you are writing about real things that have happened to you means that any words you look up in the dictionary will be vocabulary that is useful for you and easy to learn.
Online chat. The closest thing to speaking for people who don’t have the chance to speak English is online chat, as you have to think and respond quickly, and the language is short and informal just like speech.
Listen to the radio news in English. You can make this easier by reading the news in English first, or even just by reading or listening to the news in your own language.
Read an English language newspaper. Freebie newspapers like “Metro” in London are usually the easiest to understand, followed by mid-brow titles like “The Daily Express” or “The Daily Mail” in English. Popular newspapers like “The Sun” are more difficult because of the idiomatic, slangy use of language and the number of jokes in the headlines and articles.
Write fiction in English, e.g. short stories. For people who find writing a diary about things that happen to them everyday boring, the best thing is to let your imagination go and write about whatever comes into your head. The advantage of this is that if you can’t think of how to say something in English, you can just change the story to something that is easier to explain. Perhaps the easiest way to start writing fiction in English is with a diary, changing any details you like to make it more interesting and adding more and more fantasy as the weeks go on.
English language exercise videos. This is quite similar to how babies learn, by listening, watching and copying. It is also good for your health!
Learn a famous speech or poem in English by heart. Although you may never hear or get the chance to say exactly that line, having one memorable example of an English grammatical form in your head can make it much easier to learn other examples of the same grammar as you hear them. It is also something you can practice over and over without being as boring as grammatical drills.
Get tipsy (= a little drunk) before speaking English. This can not only improve your fluency while you are drinking, but can also improve your confidence in future days and weeks by showing you that you can communicate what you want to say.
Use a dictionary while you are watching a movie. Films often have the same words many times, so if you look up important words the first or second time you hear them, you should have learnt them by the end of the film. It is easier to use a dictionary if you watch with English subtitles.
Learn and use the phonemic script. Although there are many sounds in English, there are even more spellings. By learning the phonemic script and writing vocabulary down with it, you can both add another stage to your vocabulary learning that should help you learn it more thoroughly, and improve your pronunciation. It can also make things easier for you by stopping you trying to pronounce different spellings of the same pronunciation different ways.
Learn some spelling rules. Many people think that English spelling is random, but in fact most words follow some kind of rule, e.g. the “magic E” that changes the pronunciation of “mad” and “made”.
Record your own voice. For people who don’t have much or any correction of pronunciation from a teacher, recording yourself and listening back makes it easier to hear whether you are really making the English sounds that you are trying to or not.
Use computer pronunciation analysis. Although most programmes that claim to tell you when you are pronouncing correctly or not don’t actually do that, listening many times and seeing how your voice changes as you try to match the sounds and waveform given by a pronunciation CD ROM can be good practice and more motivating than just recording your own voice.
Learn as many words as you can of one category, e.g. animal words. Learning similar words together can both expand your overall vocabulary and make them easier to learn by forming links between the words in your brain.
Take holidays abroad. This is not only a good opportunity to speak English in situations where you really have to make yourself understood in order to live, but it is also a good motivator to study English seriously in the weeks and months before your trip. If possible, also try to use English even when you could use your own language, e.g. when you pick a guided tour of a museum or historic place or when you book a flight on the internet, and try to avoid package tours.
Draw pictures of the words you want to learn. Especially if you are artistic, this can be a better way of learning vocabulary than writing translations or example sentences.
Find a foreign boyfriend or girlfriend. No tips on how to do this here, but everyone agrees that getting or even just looking for a date in English can be a great motivator to improve your language skills.
Arrange a conversation exchange. Swapping lessons and conversation with someone who wants to learn your language can be a good alternative for those who aren’t looking for romance, or can sometimes lead onto dating for those who are!
Sign up for an English language exam. Even if you don’t need to take an exam and don’t want to or can’t take a special course to study for it, paying to take an exam like TOEFL, TOEIC, IELTS or FCE can really motivate you take your English studies seriously.
Model your accent on one particular actor. e.g. try to speak like Robert De Niro. Students who say they want to sound more like a native speaker have the problem that native speakers don’t sound all that much like each other. Choosing one model can make the task of improving your pronunciation more clear, and is quite fun. Doing an impression of that person also makes a good party trick.
Use an English-English dictionary. Trying to use a bilingual dictionary less and switching to a monolingual one can help you to stop translating in you head when you are speaking or listening, and other useful English vocabulary can come up while you are using the dictionary.
Occasionally talk to or e-mail your friends in English. Many people find this a bit false or embarrassing, but if you think of it as a study club and set a particular time and/ or place, it is no different from studying maths together.
Go to an English or Irish pub. As well as having a menu in English and being a good way of finding out something about the culture of English speaking countries, you might also find there are free English language listings magazines, English language sports on the TV and/ or foreign people you can speak to.
Buy a speaking electronic dictionary. Although most electronic dictionaries are not as good as paper ones for the amount of information they give you about each word, some of them have the very useful function of saying the word with the correct pronunciation.
Learn your electronic dictionary vocabulary list. Most electronic dictionaries also have a button which you can push to see the last 30 or more words you looked up. By deleting words you decide are useless or you have already learnt from this list, you can use it as a “to do list” of words to learn that you can look at several times a day in the train etc.
Switch operating system to English. Changing the operating language of your mobile phone, video recorder etc. to English can be an easy way of making sure you use the language everyday.
Set goals. Deciding how many hours you want to study, how many words you want to learn or what score you want to get in a test are all good ways of making sure you do extra study.
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Many deserving candidates often lose out on jobs because they might be a bit difficult to understand. The better you communicate with those your work with, the more effective and successful you will be at your job and in your daily life interacting with people!

But how do you train yourself to do so?

Through practice, you can soon learn to speak English as comfortably and easily as your native tongue. Incorporate these tips into your daily life. As with anything in life, the more you practice something the proper way, the better you will become at it. Here are several tips to improve your English speaking skills.

1. Observe the mouth movements of those who speak English well and try to imitate them.

When you are watching television or watching people in real life converse, observe the mouth movements of the speakers. Repeat what they are saying, while imitating the intonation and rhythm of their speech. Great television shows which reflect everyday English conversation are Friends, Seinfeld and The Simpsons.

2. Listen to English music, television and movies to get familiar with the language sounds.

This is an extremely helpful and fun way to improve your English. Also listen to the volume of their voices depending on the situation. Remember that loud volume can sometimes indicate aggressiveness or anger in certain situations. Watch the English news on television channels like CNN (for American English) or the BBC (If you wish to study British English). The news is very helpful because their speech must be clear, concise and objective – however, keep in mind they do not hold a great amount of emotion in their voices because of this.

3. Use the dictionary.

Try and familiarise yourself with the phonetic symbols of your dictionary. Look up the correct pronunciation of words that are hard for you to say. Write down words and their definitions in a notebook for future reference – it may come in handy!

4. Make a list of frequently used words that you find difficult to pronounce and ask someone who speaks the language well to pronounce them for you.

Record these words, listen to them and practice saying them. Listen and read at the same time.

5. Buy books on tape.

Record yourself reading some sections of the book. Compare the sound of your English with that of the person reading the book on the tape.

6. Pronounce the ending of each word.

Pay special attention to ‘-s’ and ‘-ed’ endings. This will help you strengthen the mouth muscles that you use when you speak English.

7. Read aloud in English for at least 15 minutes every day.

Research has shown it takes about three months of daily practice to develop strong mouth muscles for speaking a new language. Find something you enjoy reading – especially if it has a lot of dialogue, and read it aloud. Even if you don’t speak aloud, reading as many English books as possible will increase your vocabulary and knowledge of sentence structure. Make sure when you read these books that you understand what the author is trying to say.

8. Record your own voice and listen for pronunciation mistakes.

Many people hate to hear the sound of their voice and avoid listening to themselves speak. However, this is a very important exercise because doing it will help you become conscious of the mistakes you are making.

9. Be patient.

You can change the way you speak but it won’t happen overnight. People often expect instant results and give up too soon. You can change the way you sound if you are willing to put some effort into it.

10. Know which version of English you intend to speak.

Various versions of the English language exist. Begin by identifying the category you fall into and start by improving the clarity of your speech.

What else?

As an overall and final note, I would recommend for you to simply practice and repeat. Having conversations with others in English is quite helpful because you refresh your memory on what you know, and you learn new things as well. When my mother didn’t know what a word meant or how it was pronounced, she would ask me the meaning and to pronounce it. Then she would whisper it to herself repeatedly after this. This helps to strengthen your memory.

Immersing yourself in English-speaking culture is a good way to appreciate the understand the English language without losing a sense of your own identity and culture. Don’t forget that you can embrace both!

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