Learn conversational English

Tips for chatting in English

When you practice conversation, you expand your vocabulary, forcing your brain to build sentences and practice pronunciation and listening. As experts say, people who are forced to speak the language, whether because they are on vacation or have moved somewhere, improve their understanding exponentially much faster.

Here are some tips to learn conversational English:  

Natives everywhere

It’s fine to chat practicing with people at your level or with non-natives, as practicing is always positive. But, without a doubt, if you practice with native speakers, your English will improve substantially. On the one hand, they can correct you if you say something wrong and, secondly, you’ll be able to practice your listening, which is very important. 

Leave shyness aside

Shyness and embarrassment are two of the biggest enemies when learning to speak a language. If you want to practice conversational English, it is essential that you dare to speak, push your accent a little and lose the fear of making mistakes. 

People are much more forgiving than you think with mistakes from foreigners speaking a different language. Usually, we appreciate the effort and help others to be understood. If you don’t make mistakes, you won’t know what you are doing wrong and thus won’t be able to correct and improve.  

Pay attention to accent and pronunciation

As you know, English is pronounced differently than it’s written. It’s not like Spanish, which is read and pronounced the same way. This can be a handicap for Spanish natives, but the important thing is to pay attention. To improve this, it is essential to practice listening. Watching movies or series in original version or listening to music are powerful ways to achieve it.

Expand your vocabulary

Talking in English is essential to expand your vocabulary and therefore improve your language comprehension. It’s common that when speaking with others, especially with natives, you learn expressions or words you had never used or didn’t even know existed. 

In this case, it’s very useful to write down unknown words in a notebook to have them handy and consult now and then. 

Discover more about the country’s culture

Talking with natives is very fun and useful to learn the language. You can talk about many things and discover many curiosities about the country and its culture. This will also open a new world about that place and you will learn different ways of living and understanding the world. 

Try to think in English

It’s a difficult exercise, but very useful to assimilate the language. If you try to think in English, you will force your brain to use the language. With practice, you will gain much more fluency when speaking and you will improve your comprehension and way of expressing yourself very significantly. 

When you are alone, you can speak English out loud. This will also help you lose embarrassment and improve your pronunciation. It’s an exercise similar to thinking in English, the only difference is that in the first case you do it silently and in the second, out loud.