If you find yourself at a loss for words often, you might find it useful to talk to yourself more often, rehearsing how you would explain something. Showers are good for this. Parks are too, but there you should carry a handful of papers and occasionally pretend to look at them .
Apart from the point to which you have replied, there’s one more I would like to add.
I am an Indian, and have a bit of an accent. Am trying to rub it off. I work for US clients and have observed that I can’t crack jokes as easily as they do, nor do I sound as natural in a friendly banter as well as they do. Also, in the excitement of the conversation, sometimes my American client mumble off something which I am unable to grasp, and which my Indian colleague is able to understand with surprising ease. (The fact that my Indian colleague is vernacular medium educated freaks me off even more)
Also, I am preparing for IELTS the second time (Band 8 in first attempt). I am particularly weak in listening. To remediate that, I listen to a BBC podcast everyday called “The Archers”. I miss out on at least 5 points in the podcast, unable to decipher what they meant. That’s one area I am trying to improve at.
The other one is speaking itself. To put in simple words, I am trying to make my speech as fluid as water. The person I am conversing with should be able to understand me effortlessly. Right now my speech is quite rigid and not that articulate. I scored band 8 in speaking in IELTS. To take things forward, I learnt about this shadowing technique from YouTube’s Emma’s channel and from someone on HackerNews. The bottom line of the shadow technique is, pick up a favorite show - and speak along with whatever the character says, do this for all episodes, and finish the series. One person on HN said that in order to perfect his Mandarin, he shadowed on Chinese TV series for 9 years straight.
In addition to this, I also record myself and speak on some random topic daily for 2 min(Topic is mostly from IELTS speaking tests). Go through the recording. Spot pronunciation / intonation/ articulation mistakes. Take one more go at the same topic. And see if there’s improvement.
Do you have any other ideas apart from these in your mind which can help me with improving my speech?
I am also planning to gobble up all books related to languages written by Steven Pinker.
