G'day mate. How are things? Today, I am going to briefly talk about how I practised speaking in order to boost my oral fluency. It's definitely not easy, but practice makes perfect in the end. Let's begin.
First and foremost, refining 44 sounds of English pronunciation is a must-do-list. If you persist mispronouncing some particular sounds, you can't really speak smoothly. Of course, it doesn't have to be perfect. I am not perfect, either. But, at least the 3rd grade (Good) of its classification is needed to boost your fluency.
After having refined my pronunciation satisfactorily, I started the practice of read aloud. But at the same time, when some words were not recognised by AI, I checked them via 'Google Chrome Browser', which is quite useful. Personally, I recommend not recording voice but your voice being dictated by AI first. Recording is not really effective at this stage, but later on. Until your voice being dictated by AI pretty accurately, you need to continue to do so.
Then, you should be fairly confidently able to speak to your computer. You focus more on phrasing. Phrasing here means that you should understand where SVO, depending clause, connected devices, comma, (semi-)colon and full-stop are in the article you are reading during speaking. Just monotonous reading is not good at all. To become fluent, you need to have necessary pauses, simultaneously omitting unnecessary pauses and hesitations as much as you possibly can.
To minimise unnecessary pauses, hesitations, repetitions or false starts, of course practise, practise and practise! But, most importantly, correct training has to be done. According to the above image, you see the word 'staccato', which originally comes from Italian, and it means that you stop saying every word or put too much stress on each word rather than phrasing smoothly without stopping until the full-stop. This staccato of your speech tends to discombobulate AI. If AI doesn't recognise properly, then people also hardly understand what you're trying to say. First, you understand where the Subject (S), Verb (V) and Object (O) are. Second, try not to put too much stress on each word. Third, you can only have a very immediate pause at comma, and then non stop until the full stop.
If you've done these steps successfully, then congratulations!! 🥳 You can move on to the next stage 'Speaking to yourself'. I will talk about this specific method tomorrow.
That's all for today. Thanks for reading! Should you have any further information on this topic, please feel free to contact me.
Have a great Sunday!!