G'day mate. Howz it goin? Today, I am going to talk about how to do Internal Monologue. Although I've presumably discussed this topic before, I haven't introduced the way in which I do Internal Monologue, so I'd like to share 'my how-to' with you guys. Internal Monologue is definitely free of charge, no one can check and stop you talking continuously. This is thus a very cost-effective and efficient learning method for English learners, but of course, to this end, you've got to understand all basic grammar rules and a minimum range of vocabularies and expressions in order to express yourself freely. Let's begin.
Step 1: Select one topic or theme based on your knowledge or today's news or whatever you come up with (30 sec)
This is your first step prior to embarking upon an internal monologue! Any topic or theme is fine, but ideally it should be an easy one for you to talk continuously as this training does not test your background knowledge. Just make sure it's a clear and simple topic. So, you shouldn't take a long time, just a half minute or two.
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Step 2: Brainstorm to come up with keywords pertaining to the topic or theme you selected as many as you possible can (120 sec)
Once you've selected a piece of a topic or theme, then you scratch your head to generate heaps of keywords in relation to the topic for approximately 2 minutes. Brainstorm is one of the most important skills when it comes to English learning. Ideally, your brain gets a deluge of ideas and imaginations for a very short period of time, which is terrific! How do you develop this skill? Well, undeniably, you should've already stored a wide range of vocabularies and expressions, so before doing this training, you need to put your effort into memorising and getting used to all basic words. The more you've got basic words, the easier you'll be able to generate brilliant ideas. For instance, if I've selected the topic, 'cycling', then I'd come up with the below keywords:
(Cycling) - Tour-de-France, Pedals, Crank, tube, tyre, wheel, carbon frame, cardio-exercise, burning calories, SPD, saddle, Cervello, Shimano, DownUnder, MTB, hardtail, road bike, pushbike, TT (Time Trial), peloton, etc.
How's that? They are the things I could brainstorm for 2 minutes. Not much, but seems enough to be able to talk continuously.
Step 3: Reorganise or rearrange the keywords you brainstormed (60 sec)
After having done brainstorm, you stop writing or thinking, and then you try to reorganise or rearrange them into your story like imaging a current or past event. What you should do is to think about your own definition of the keywords by using your own words or knowledge. It doesn't matter the word order or sequence you are going to explain, but please just try to explicate each in a unique way.
Step 4: Start conducting self-speech or more specifically explaining each keyword (120 sec)
Now, you shall begin! Don't worry about making mistakes, but please try not to hesitate too much, nor do you make too much unnecessary pause between sentence and sentence. Me, personally, of course I sometimes make mistakes, hesitate and pause, which is ok, but I always try to minimise them. Explanatory speech is not harder compared to free conversation as you don't need to think any story, chronological order, cohesion and coherence. It's like beating about the bush. But the point is you utilise all keywords to talk continuously.
Extra step: Talk like a story-telling if you feel confident about your speaking ability
Only if you can, you try to carry out a story-telling using all keywords you brainstormed. Explanatory speech is just talking about the definition of each keyword, whereas story-telling is like telling your current or past event by using all keywords. So, you've got to be very flexible, coherent, cohesive as well as having a clear introduction, body and conclusion. It's like an essay! This is an advanced level's Internal Monologue. Here is a short sample:
Script: Today, I'm gonna talk about cycling. Backing in 2001, I started joining a cycling team in Japan. One of the hardest bike races I've ever had was Tour-de-Osaka, which is sort of akin to Tour-de-France. Prior to joining this race, I trained seriously, and I did modify pretty much every key component such as wheel, saddle, pedals, crack, tubes, tyres, ...to be continued.
Something like that. As you can see, I haven't used any complicated sentence structure, vocabularies, but tried to talk about cycling in a kind of logical or meaningful way. It's not really difficult, is it? Please keep it simple!
That's all for today. Thanks for reading!
Have a great day!