G'day mate, how's it going? Today, I'd like to talk about a bit of an extreme opinion, which is "Just speaking cannot improve your English skills." Why is that? Well, simply put, you're gonna surely accumulate a very bad habit of using wrong grammar, collocation, word-choice as well as ultimately pronunciation. Let's touch on this a bit further, shall we?
First up, the use of wrong grammar, which has an adverse effect on pretty much everything in relation to communication and practicality. Someone says "Don't worry about grammar, just try to speak whatever you come up with without considering correcting grammar things." This is totally wrong. Yes, of course, being too much aware of grammar during speaking does negatively affect your oral fluency, rhythm and the flow of your overall communication. But nonetheless, being too nonchalant about grammar gives people the sense of being undereducated. And, obviously you will lose precious opportunities to forge a good relationship with somebody in any arena such as business, academia, and so on. The accuracy of grammar alludes to the level of your education, which I'm not exaggerating at all.
Next up, collocation and word-choice, both of which are also quite significant when it comes to not just speaking but writing as well, especially business and academic writing. Undoubtedly, your level of speaking does correspond to your level of writing. Collocation and word-choice can be widely learnt from reading newspaper, books as well as audio media outlets. The more you read well-written English sentences, the more natural your English will be/is gonna be. But of course you've got to have a good understanding of at least all the basic grammar rules prior to learning collocation and word-choice. You could possibly/somehow be understood by well-educated native speakers, but they're gonna have to strain to catch your point if your collocation and word-choice are too wonky. So, the more precise, the better for sure. Don't worry too much. Please try to learn basic grammar rules first, and take enough time to get the hang of them. And then, you're gonna gradually understand how critical collocation and word-choice should be when it comes to communication.
Last up, pronunciation, which is by far the most important thing that must be mastered before embarking on learning grammar and vocabulary. Without at least the solid mastery of pronunciation, I must say you will almost 100% give up learning English, or in some cases, the trajectory of your English learning journey is going to be very gloomy. No one wants to face this kinda consequence, right? Although learning and mastering pronunciation seems daunting, this is obviously inescapable if you wanna be a good/solid English speaker. But good news is that pronunciation isn't in fact too hard compared to grammar and vocabulary. Nevertheless, don't underestimate! If anything, my pronunciation is closer to Katakana English, in which case it's right time for you to ask some expert advice and join their pronunciation lessons. Refining pronunciation isn't possible just over night. It does take longer, depending on the accuracy of your current pronunciation. Please see the expert as early as possible in order to improve your English proficiency.
Thanks for reading my blog. Talk to you soon.