How ‘Talking to Yourself’ Can Boost Your Ability to Speak a Language

Hello, everyone and welcome back to this page! After 6 weeks of studying abroad in France and being a French teacher at a language immersion camp, I have finally started to settle down and to take time for myself before studying abroad again. For this week’s post, I wanted to focus on a skill that I have developed and strengthened over the years: talking to myself in my target languages. I know what you are probably thinking: “Why would I ever do that? Wouldn’t I sound weird and be made fun of?”. Those questions are very natural to have, but I hope to convince you to at least give it a try before the end of the year.

Since the video below could not have summarized what you should do after talking to yourself any better, I will list all of the points that the he made and will add a few of my own remarks to them.

1.  As you could have already guessed, once you have decided that you will talk to yourself in one of your target languages, one of the best ways to see your progress over the years is to record yourself when speaking. With all of the technology that we have nowadays, there are many ways to do so. The two easiest ways are by either grabbing a voice recorder, or your phone. If for some reason neither of these objects are at your disposal, you can do it the old-fashioned way by simply talking to yourself without a device that tracks your progress.

2. Speak for 5 minutes in the foreign language without stopping. Choose a different topic every time: As intimidating as this next step may sound, it is very important to hold yourself accountable for the progress, or lack thereof that you make when learning other languages. Therefore, setting yourself a goal of a short 5 minutes should be feasible for most language learners. Keep in mind that if you are an absolute beginner of a language, or if you have not had the chance to brush up on one of your languages for a while, this goal may not be as realistic for you. If that is the case, do not fret, lower your expectations at first, and set timely goals to eventually reach a 5-minute conversation with yourself.

Aside from choosing for how long you will talk to yourself, you should also change the topic every time in order to put yourself on the spot. Say that you are currently on a clothing unit in your textbook, then you should focus your conversation on clothing items and what you would like to buy next. On the other hand, if you are preparing for a business trip to China, then you should focus on proper formal greetings and how to ask polite questions to your colleagues. I personally like switching them up, as I find it more interactive and fun. I like being challenged and find that when I change the topic, I tend to make faster progress in the long run.

3. Listen to recordings of yourself and make notes: Once the 5 or so minutes have finished up, make sure to listen to your recordings. It will seem a bit unnatural and strange at first, but try to resist the temptation of deleting them instead of listening to the mistakes that you made and on which you could improve. Below are some questions that the video suggests that you should ask yourself when taking notes of what you said:

a.     What sounds are you not pronouncing well ? : For example, if you are learning Russian, you may have a hard time pronouncing guttural sounds, making it a priority of sounds that you should regularly practice. In Spanish, you may have to practice how to roll your r’s over and over again until it starts feeling more natural.

b.    What problems with tenses do you have? For example, if you are learning any of the Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, etc) the conditional, or the pluperfect may trip you up. Instead of giving up and telling yourself that you will never master all of these tenses, you can listen to your recordings and see which tenses do not come to you as easily as the others. You can then take an entire study day to review them until you feel like you have a better grasp on them. Remember that consistency is key.

c.     What words did you not know? Look them up. : For me personally, I have a hard time remembering long words that have few vowel sounds in both German and Russian, so I tend to focus on those words more-so than shorter words. After listening to myself talk for a few minutes, I take the time to write down any words that I did not know in those languages, look them up in a dictionary, and write them down in a notebook, so that I can easily refer back them to them later on.

d.    What mistakes did you hear? Note them down. : This question is a bit broader than the others, but is just as important. The mistakes that you can hear can be anything from mispronouncing a word to saying the wrong gender of a common word, such as “the book”. Instead of assuming that you what you said was correct, it is best to look up those words and to hear them being pronounced on online dictionaries, or on other websites.

e.  Find a friend/a teacher/a native speaker to listen for you. : Finally, once you have followed all of these simple steps, if you have someone at your disposal in real life, or virtually, you can ask him/her to listen to your recording and to give you feedback. This step is optional and is not always necessary, but if you are learning a language that is completely unrelated to your native language, or if you are not still not comfortable speaking your language (usually until you are an intermediate-learner), this can be helpful. Once you have listened to yourself several times, make sure to jot down any words or phrases about which you are unsure and then verify them with someone else. If you are confused about something, it is best to fix your mistakes sooner rather than later, as it is much more difficult to train your brain to say something the right way after having done it incorrectly for a long time. I hope that these tips help you out and that you consider trying this out for yourself. 

   

Until next time, happy language learning! Feel free to also comment on this post any post ideas that you would like me to write next.

How to Improve Speaking a Language

There is no doubt that languages require a lot of time to master; however, what you should know how to do well is how to speak a language with ease. This does not mean that you should expect perfection, or that you should expect to not say any mistakes when speaking, but it does mean that speaking should ultimately be your start and your end goal. You may be asking yourself: why is that the case? As Benny Lewis has said, languages are used to communicate ideas with others. Languages are not a passive activity, but rather an activity that is constantly used.

If you have been struggling finding a starting point on how to improve in a language, or have felt frustrated with your progress, I hope that you realize that there are many solutions that can help you get back on track. In other words, there are many ways in which you can get better at language learning. Below, I will give you 4 tips that Alex Rawlings, a famous hyperpolyglot, talks about in the video above, and will expand on his points.

1. Get a Language Partner

Not surprisingly, it has become more and more easy to find native speakers and other languages partners with whom to practice languages thanks to the internet. Now that we have Skype, meetup groups, and websites that are designed for languages speakers to find language partners, there is no reason to say that you simply cannot practice speaking. If you type up “language learning websites, “language learning chat-rooms”, or type up other key words that have to do with practicing your conversational skills, hundreds of results will pop. I personally recommend iTalki, and will eventually devote an entire post to this amazing language learning website.

What I have done this school-year is become friends with other international students and friends who are native speakers of my target languages. As we have strengthened our friendships, I have slowly become more comfortable talking to them in English, and eventually ask them if I can practice my target languages with them. I cannot remember of a single time in which my friends have said no, which has been very reassuring for me. 

If you think that this is too unrealistic for you, you can ask your friend if you can have a meal, or do something together and speak English for half of the time and then your target language. That way, you both get to practice speaking both languages. You can also ask your friends, or classmates who are looking for someone with whom to practice, and ask him/her if you can do so whenever you have free time, or whenever you go somewhere together. All it takes is asking someone once, and, if it goes well, you will be assured to have a language partner for many years to come.

2. Talk to Yourself

As weird as this tip may sound, what I have found most helpful and most reliable is talking to myself in my target languages when nobody else is around. I have been doing this for several years now, and have found that I have drastically improved my vocabulary and my confidence in speaking by using a powerful tool: repetition. By talking about my day, or about what is going on around me, I pinpoint what I am comfortable talking about, and on what I need to improve. 

Whenever a word, or a phrase comes up that I do not know, or that I learned at some point, but can no longer remember its meaning or its translation, I write it down in a notebook. That way, I can make myself read all of the new vocabulary that I learn every time that I decide to talk to myself. Even though it may take something get used to, it will eventually become second nature, and can even help you step out of your comfort zone, especially if you are shy, or are a perfectionist when speaking.

3. Learn Vocabulary in Phrases

This tip is very helpful, especially when you are first starting out in a language. Instead of learning a word out of context, you can learn it through a song, or through a particular phrase that you read often. That way, whenever you are in a situation in which you can use that word, you can say it in a phrase without having to translate it from one language to another in your head.

For example, when you first start out learning the basics in French, you learn how to say “I would like”, which translates to “Je voudrais”. For years, you know how to comfortably use this phrase, and know what it means, but do not know that it is in the conditional. As you progress in the language, you will eventually realize that you had always known the endings for the conditional mood without even knowing it. Phrases like these are what will help you get out of confusing or uncomfortable situations, and can help you master survival skills, as well as help know how to say more complex sentences.

4. Imagine How You Will Use the Language

The last tip that Benny Lewis gives us in the above is to think about how you will use the language in your everyday life. Another way to think about it is coming up with scenarios in which you can say certain phrases, or talk about your day in various realistic situations. Some could include: being at a restaurant in a foreign country that speaks your target language, having a conversation about your academic and personal goals with your friend, or asking where the restroom is. What is important to remember is that are endless situations in which you could put your languages to use. Constantly reminding yourself why and for what you are going to use them is going to help you stay motivated to continue learning them (Feel free to read my post titled "How To Stay Motivated When Learning a Language" if you want to get some tips on how you can stay on track when learning languages).

No matter how comfortable you currently feel speaking your target language, I hope that you learned that there are endless ways in which you can continue to improve in them. There is no doubt that there are thousands of individuals around the world who want to be more confident in, and who want to practice what they have learned over the years. Deciding how and with whom you are going to practice them is what is ultimately your choice.