
Ask HN: How to improve spoken and written English skills rapidly? - geuric9
I was born in India. Although I studied in English throughout I always feel my spoken and written english skils are not good. I work for a tech company and get along with my coworkers easily. There is no problem for me understanding or talking in general.<p>What I want to improve is -<p>1. My accent.  I don&#x27;t like Indian accent. Indian English is influenced by British English. But, I like American accent.<p>2. I have problems speaking continuously. I often miss spontaneity. I can&#x27;t speak flawlessly without struggling to come up with correct and smart word.  I prefer brevity but I often fail to express myself in similar way.<p>3. My written English are okay but I often miss articles ( you might have noticed from my writing ).<p>Are there any free courses?  I am 29 so it&#x27;s kind of awkward to take classes but I am ready to work on myself if anything available online.<p>What are your suggestions?
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patio11
There is absolutely nothing awkward with a working professional signing up for
e.g. accent coaching, which is a service that many speech and language
therapists will happily offer.

Back in my days as a professional translator, one of the basic drills for any
sort of production problem was shadowing. The basic idea is to get a sample,
play it once, then play it while repeating it word-for-word and working on
nothing but _producing it exactly_ , and then _drill that to death_. You might
find it useful to pick an American with similar age/gender/education level/etc
to yourself or to the target accent you want learn to emulate.

This practice is _murderously difficult_ when you start. Pick samples which
are interesting to you, which you can listen to first, and which are
linguistically unchallenging (i.e. not the nightly news on a novel topic).
Spoken dialogue from movies with broad appeal tends to work well for this
purpose.

It is possible to code-switch on accents, and as you get better you'll tend to
do it automatically. Don't worry about it potentially threatening your
retention of your Indian accent and/or identity.

 _Production problems_ : (Your #2) Aside from continuing work on improving
your vocabulary, which largely comes from reading and speaking (practice,
practice, practice), you can work on circumlocution strategies. They're a bit
outside of the scope of a comment -- you can rephrase, work around the lack of
a word, use an analogy, even explicitly say "I'm blanking on a word" (practice
any line you use to death so that producing that line doesn't stress you),
whatever works for you. The important thing to remember is that your target
interlocutors don't evaluate day-to-day language for flawless word choice but
they _do_ notice hesitation noises.

Speak short sentences with simple words. You will sound smart. If you uhh
endeavor to what's it recollect the exactly aptimal no appropriate word for a
given situation, people will (often subconsciously) downgrade your fluency
and, regrettably, your intelligence.

Achieving drop-dead-cold mastery of short sentences with simple words allows
you to build from there, including with pre-canned sentence fragments which
are high-frequency in more sophisticated discourse and which you can throw out
fully-formed, having practiced them to death. This is both a cheat code for
passing any sort of oral examination and also a cheat code for life itself:
having a stock of a few dozen widely applicable things at your fingertips
makes it appear to the casual interlocutor that you have mastery of the entire
vast field they represent.

 _3\. My written English are okay but I often miss articles ( you might have
noticed from my writing )._

Don't be self conscious about this -- I frequently do it, too. The only cure
for this sort of thing is shipping more written words, then either editing
them yourself (if you can recognize the mistakes) or getting someone to assist
you (until you can recognize your own mistakes).

~~~
NnamdiJr
I can speak to the power of shadowing for improving spoken language ability.
If you check out techniques discussed on the How To Learn Any Language forum
[1] where many of the foremost polyglots and hyperpolyglots hangout, you'll
see that Shadowing and L-R are basically accepted as fundamental techniques.

It takes real determination to correctly shadow though, like patio11 said you
need to reproduce the sample _exactly_. This can cause you to spend an hour
trying to perfect <5min of speech. But it's extremely rewarding. For example,
when I was learning Mandarin I chose a 20 episode (1hr each) tv show as my
shadowing material. It took close to half a year of working on it almost every
night to finish. But afterwards I had "somehow" developed a deep sense of what
words/phrases/idioms/etc _felt right_ to say when speaking and how to say them
in that oh-so-close-to-native like way. The topic has been extensively
discussed on the learn any language forums. But suffice to say, if you want to
improve your spoken ability, doing a lot of shadowing would help.

[1] [http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum](http://how-to-learn-any-
language.com/forum)

~~~
rahimnathwani
I'm curious - which show did you use?

~~~
NnamdiJr
Beijing Love Story (北京爱情故事). Actually 39 episodes.

Don't have a great reason why I chose it other than that it was really popular
at the time, and I felt it would cover general day-to-day language well, which
it did.

------
DrScump
I think one can absorb a more nimble conversational flow simply by listening
to intelligent, articulate people, like on podcasts.

My favorite "talk radio" broadcaster, John Batchelor, is particularly
articulate and well-read. Listen how his content just _flows_ effortlessly:
Podcasts:
[https://audioboom.com/channel/johnbatchelor](https://audioboom.com/channel/johnbatchelor)
Previous podcasts (he changed hosts recently):
[http://johnbatchelorshow.com/podcasts](http://johnbatchelorshow.com/podcasts)

You can learn from how his guests converse as well.

As for losing self-consciousness and gaining confidence in "finding the right
word" on the fly, that takes practice. Think of a topic you are confident in,
record yourself giving a mock monologue on the subject, then go back and
listen to yourself and see what you want to change.

And don't _fear_ making a mistake or being at a loss for words; it's part of
the art of conversation. Few truly master it, but all can become effective at
delivery.

~~~
partisan
Much agreed on John Batchelor. He is eloquent and has an ease with words that
I aspire to as well, even as a native english speaker.

------
andrew-lucker
1\. Listen (a lot) to speakers/recordings of whatever accent you like

2\. Read (a lot) of anything you find interesting

3\. English grammar = memorization. We inherit grammar points from Old German,
Old French, and Latin. The result is that native speakers mix and match
grammar rules and it sounds weird when using a certain rule in a place where
it logically should be OK.

It sounds like most of these problems can be solved with bulk exposure to the
language. I know, easier said than done.

Also for the grammar, it would be good to have structured learning rather than
just listening/reading to random things.
[https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-
grammar/v...](https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-
grammar/verbs/double-object-verbs) seems to be a decent resource, and British
grammar is 99.99% same as American.

------
devnonymous
From one Indian to another -- here are some tips:

a. Read, listen, write -- as much as you can; while being aware of /every/
word. Try to express yourself differently. Say/write the same things using
different words / sentences. Pay close attention to how other people express
the same idea using different words. All of this can be done with 'normal'
communication -- ie: email, news, mailing lists ...even HN. So, you won't be
doing any extra work than you would normally, you'll just be more conscious /
aware.

b. Don't beat yourself about your accent. Embrace it. Most people won't care
about the accent as long as they understand you. Also, if you improve your
language and grammar, then you'll find that an accent actually adds
personality and flair to your words.

c. Learn to love the language itself ! Savor the words, critically examine
sentence structure, play with phrases and think about what you are
communicating and whether the manner in which you are doing it actually serves
to emphasize what you intended to.

d. Finally, take sometime to learn from
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37134/37134-h/37134-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37134/37134-h/37134-h.htm)

( the link above is the html version from Project Gutenberg but there are
various other formats available. And here's its wikipedia article for the
curious --
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style)
)

------
mindcrime
Practice makes perfect. Find opportunities to engage with native English
speakers and spend as much time conversing with them as you can. You might try
reading English literature out loud as well. Maybe repeat lines from English
language television shows and movies, etc. If you don't want to waste time on
"mindless" entertainment, do the same thing with TED talks or talks from
Strange Loop, or whatever you can find that is educational and informative in
its own right.

Download a shitload of English language podcasts and listen to them when you
have idle time. There are all sorts of podcasts to pick from, but here's one I
like:
[http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts.html](http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts.html)

I'm not sure how (easy|hard|possible) it is to lose an accent at 29, but I
would guess you can radically improve your vocabulary and use of idiomatic
English through practice and exposure.

------
rtl49
I encourage you to improve you English skills, but you should know that native
English speakers working in diverse settings are accustomed to being around
non-native speakers with varying levels of skill. You probably aren't being
judged harshly for speaking with an accent or missing articles. Even many
native speakers have difficulty speaking continuously or extemporaneously. I
think you may not need to worry about it so much. If you still want to
improve, there's absolutely no shame in learning in a classroom setting. It
may be the best thing for you.

------
Effie-Ioannou
I learned English mostly myself mostly from reading a book in English a week,
watching movies that were in English and trying to speak it every opportunity
I got. You can try writing as much as you can in English and if you get to
live somewhere else then your accent will change, you need to mimic the accent
of people in the movies or native speakers. I also "play" with duolingo, not
for English but for spanish but I think for someone who wants a course with
out classes is quite good.

