G'day, what's up everyone? Today, what I want to briefly talk about is the way in which I've been studying English from scratch without going to language schools. In particular, it's good to know in the self-isolation period.
- Review all the essential English grammar including phonetic charts - pronunciation. How should I do? Well, if you have a grammar text, just grab it and pick up your interesting topic first. If you don't have any, I highly recommend buying "English Grammar in Use", which is published by Cambridge University Press. This book is, I am sure, one of the best ones for those struggling to understand basic grammar rules and phrases.
- Once you've mastered basic grammar rules and pronunciation, you can kick off 'Read aloud' (Ondoku=音読) using a piece of very short news article online. This training is for not only refining your pronunciation, but also for boosting your oral fluency and intonation. At first, you just do read it aloud, but once you've got used to, then trying to record yourself using any devices. But my recommendation is using QuickTime Player as it has many useful functions such as 'New Movie/Audio/Screen Recording. Probably, you want to record yourself, simultaneously checking your pronunciation, in which case "Google Chrome Browser" is quite an effective tool. It recognises your voice, and if your pronunciation is correct, then it types up your voice accurately on behalf of you. It's good to know how your voice can be heard and understood by AI.
- Finally, once you've got accustomed to 'Read aloud' training, you shall start 'Self-talk' without having a look at your lappy screen. Since you've understood all the grammar rules and can enunciate all the phonetic symbols accurately, you don't need to think about grammar rules and how to pronounce consciously. The one which I'm always doing is to gather information for your topic ("Input learning") and to utilise it for your self-talk training. Without absorbing new knowledge, it's going to be quite difficult to continuously talk as no knowledge often leads to the overuse of filler or the same sentences over and over again. Although beating about the bush is already good enough to be able to speak fluently, doing self-talk nonsensically does frequently result in the intermittent termination of training.
Once you've become confident about these three trainings, you'll be ready to talk to people in English without having any significant problem.
Thanks for reading today!
Have a lovely day!