Introduction:

Good morning, my fellow friends! Today, I would like to talk about how to practice oral English.

Many students often feel disappointed about their poor oral English. Though some students are doing very well in listening, writing and reading, yet they just can not speak English fluently and beautifully. But unfortunately, oral English is in fact the most important part of English compared with listening, reading and writing. Why? Because to talk to others in English is the most practical and direct way to help you study and live in abroad. Can you imagine that you are living in England, but you dare not speak English? That’s really awful. Meanwhile, by practicing oral English, you can also efficiently improve your ability in listening, writing and reading. And this will directly help you to get a satisfying score in IELTS exam.

From what I have said above, we can see that oral English is very important to us. But how to improve it? In fact, there are three basic and workable ways to help you: reading aloud more, talking to yourself and talking to others, and in English, not in Chinese of course.

Main Body:

1. Firstly, you should often read aloud.

Reading aloud has two advantages.

(1) For one thing, it can help you speak English clearly and fluently. As we know, to speak English clearly should be the first thing we need to do. You should try to speak every word clearly and pronounce it correctly to make sure that others can understand you. Most of the students, in most cases, can speak Chinese fluently, but many students can not even read English so fluently. Why? The reason is quite simple: just because you practice reading aloud in English so little. When you speak Chinese, you use some parts of muscles of your mouth, but when you speak English, you use different parts of muscles of your mouth. So, only by reading more and reading aloud, can you get used to using that part of the muscles and speak English fluently too.

(2) For another, reading aloud can also help you to remember some useful sentences and that will give you a big treasure! Please think about this question: how many Chinese sentences or words do you usually repeat in a day, in a week? The answer must be a lot! That is why you speak Chinese so well simply because you have remembered so many sentences. And you even do not have to think for a while before you speak this language because you are so familiar with it. To learn English is exactly the same. If you remember a lot of sentences, you will find that the English sentences will come out from your mouth spontaneously and you do not have to think hard about what to say. Is it a miracle? Yes! But the miracle will not come down from the heaven, and you should try to create it by reading aloud more.

2. Secondly, you should talk to yourself.

Some students often complain that they do not have a good language environment because they can not find some people to talk to in English. To some extent, you are right. First, you dare not talk to foreign teachers; secondly, you feel shy to talk to Chinese teachers; thirdly, you find it too hard to talk to your classmates because you both want to speak Chinese. So whom you can talk to? What I can say is that your are too lazy because you do not know how to depend on yourself. These complaints are not reasonable in fact, because these students are not self-dependable and not strong-minded. If you always try to ask for other people’s help, try to depend on others, you will never grow up and never get real success both in study and your whole life. In fact, language environment exists anywhere and anytime because your best partner is yourself.

Then how to talk to yourself efficiently? Here are two ways.

First, prepare some topics and write them down on some pieces of paper and put them in your pockets. Whenever you have time, you can choose a topic for yourself and try to think for several minutes for preparation. And then, you just try to express yourself in English, try to speak in order and every time try to speak more than last time. Of course, at the very beginning, you will find it so hard to continue, but please keep going, do not give up, and you will find that you can express yourself better and better with each practice. And lastly, you can speak fluently, clearly and even without grammatical mistakes.

Secondly, say anything you want to say in English. When you are walking in the school, in the streets, when you are waiting for bus or others and even when you are in WC, you can think of something to say. For example, you can think of some funny things that happened around you, you can plan what you want to do tomorrow or at weekend and so on. Even, when you really have nothing to think of, you can also speak English to describe what you are seeing and what you are hearing. You see, if you do things this way, you will find you have so many opportunities to speak English.

Though my personal experience, I konw talking to yourself is the only way and a very good method to build a sound foundation of your oral ability, especially for a beginner. And now, you see, you have language environment anytime, anywhere.

3. Thirdly, you should also talk to others.

After you have corrected your pronunciation, and can speak English fluently and clearly by practicing according to the above two methods, now, it’s your turn to test your real ability. That is, you must speak to others. This is the only way to show that you have really got success in learning this language. After all, language is used to communicate with others, and only learning English in classroom does not make any sense.

Then, here are some questions some students may ask: whom we shall talk to and when and where we talk to others? My answer would be: talk to anybody and talk to others anytime, anywhere if you like. You can talk to your classmates, your friends, and your teachers, and try to answer questions in English in every class. I believe many students have the common interest and the wish to talk in English with others. So, why not take a try? You can ask some other students if they have the same interest and wish too. Surely you can find some partners.

Finally I want to say that talking to others is important but not as important as talking to yourself. Why? Because talking to others means you have to depend on others, but talking to yourself does not need anybody’s help. There is a proverb in English: God help those who help themselves. So, if you really think it is hard for you to find a partner, you can talk to yourself and you can also make great progress.

Conclusion:

Ok, now, let’s summarize what we have learned today. Reading aloud more, talking to yourself and talking to others ---the above three ways are generally useful to most of the students, but probably not to all of you. In fact, there is no certain kind of method to follow in study and everyone may have his own method. I hope you can think about the three methods, think about your own present condition and make a more practical study plan for yourself.

Lastly, thank you for your listening and wish you success in you future study.