Most of the English classes and exams at school focus on reading and listening, so many people will understand how to study to some extent, but what about writing and speaking? When you actually use English at work or study abroad, you have to input not only reading and listening, but also writing emails and speaking during meetings and classes. Writing and speaking skills become very important.
Therefore, this time, I will introduce the recommended study methods for English writing and speaking based on the experiences of the author who studied abroad for four years at an American university.
Free / automatic writing correction
”Grammarly”
Writing that allows you to think and correct on paper is relatively easy, compared to speaking, where you have to write sentences in your head instantly on the spot. Therefore, if you want to improve your speaking skills, we recommend that you start by studying writing.
Grammarly is a free correction software that I recommend as a useful tool for studying writing. This is software developed by an American company that automatically determines spelling mistakes and grammatical mistakes, points out and explains in an easy-to-understand manner. It’s very easy to use. First, install it on your computer for free from the Grammarly homepage, then open the software and copy the English text you wrote yourself. Then, in about 3 to 5 seconds, all the parts with spelling mistakes and grammatical mistakes will be displayed in red. Then, on the right side of the pointed out part, the correct spelling and grammar will be written in green letters, so you can correct your mistakes while referring to it.
The reason why “Grammarly” is great
Conventional writing study could not be done without someone to correct it, but by using this software, even one person can easily do special training in writing. Also, in this software, all the languages for pointing out mistakes and commentary are in English. Therefore, it is useful for studying reading as well as writing. You can also save your own text directly in the downloaded software, so you can compare it with the text you wrote in the past to see if your writing skills have improved.
Grammarly’s basic features are free, but if you want to correct not only spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes, but also higher-level nuances, you can purchase a premium plan for $ 30 a month. .. Since payment is by credit card, you can pay with a Japanese card.
How to make your speaking better
Keep repeating speaking doesn’t work
After studying writing and becoming able to write English fluently, it means that I have acquired the ability to output English. Speaking ability is the ability to output English instantly, so if you improve your writing, you will naturally improve your speaking ability.
Occasionally, some people think that “speaking can be learned by memorizing words and talking to native people, even if you don’t have grammar in mind.” Even if you can speak fluently without proper grammar, you will not only be negative on the exam, but you will also speak incomprehensible English that natives have difficulty understanding even in everyday conversation. In fact, there are many immigrants in the United States who practice only speaking and speak messed up English.
However, in speaking, not only the ability to output correct English sentences, but also pronunciation and intonation are very important factors. Even if the English is correct, Katakana English is completely incomprehensible to native speakers. Therefore, we recommend reading aloud to imitate CDs, etc. as a pronunciation practice.
How to read out loud
The important thing in reading aloud practice is to listen carefully to the native pronunciation and intonation sentence by sentence, and to imitate it with the aim of becoming exactly the same. Occasionally, in reading aloud practice, after playing a CD, there are people who completely ignore the pronunciation of the CD and read aloud with their own pronunciation, but that is not a practice of speaking at all.
For example, if you read the English sentence “I can’t believe I passed the test!” Aloud, the words are connected and the bold part is emphasized, such as “I can’t believe I passed the test!” .. Instead of reading this aloud like “I Can’t Believe I Past the Test”, listen to the native pronunciation and imitate it in the same way. Then repeat one sentence over and over until you can. By continuing this, you will gradually acquire intonation and pronunciation, and your speaking ability will improve.
Quantity and quality is important
Writing and speaking are the power to output English, so you can’t learn them through passive practice like reading and listening.
There is no shortcut to studying English, so writing a lot of sentences and reading aloud every day will help you to improve your skills for the first time. However, just doing the amount will make it an assembly line, so if you are writing, pay close attention to the corrections and listen to the native voice even when speaking to improve the quality of practice.
Leave a Reply