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HOW TO LEARN SPOKEN

ENGLISH AT HOME
LEARNING SKILLS LESSON

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1 Learn FULL phrases

Right. Let's start with tip number one. This tip is learn full
phrases, not just individual vocabulary words. Now there is a
place for studying individual vocabulary words. That helped me
a lot with my own learning journey when I was learning
Spanish. But if you are particularly focused on improving your
spoken English, then try learning entire phrases. When we say a
word on its own, we say it in a very flat way. When I say the
word 'amazed' as part of a sentence, I was amazed. I have a
different tone, some inflection, some emphasis, more stress.
Listen to speakers of English. When you're watching the TV or
watching a YouTube video or listening to the radio, whatever
you're doing to try and immerse yourself in English, try and
pick up on those individual phrases and work out where in the
phrase they're pushing the pitch up, or they're saying it slightly
more loudly. Pause it if you can imitate it, it's going to help you
sound really natural when you speak English.
Another part of this is if you do
pick up on an individual vocabulary word that you want to
remember, make sure you also include an example of it used in
a sentence as well. That's why with the majority of my
vocabulary videos, I always include an example. If you write it
down, make little notes and dashes to try and remember how
the speaker said that sentence or phrase.

2 Analyse chunks of grammar

Let's go back to analysing and listening to what speakers of

English say and how they say it. But I'm not talking about
pronunciation and tone of voice this time. This time, I want to
look at what they say grammatically.

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I know that grammar and spoken English don't tend to go

hand in hand, but I think it's important here. Now, let me
make this clear. I do not think that learning grammar is the
most important part of learning a language at all. Now you
would never teach a baby grammar. They grow up to be fluent
in a language. But you need to bear in mind: a baby is
immersed the entire time. Lots of people say, learn English
like a baby. But what they don't bear in mind is that babies
are immersed in English or their mother tongue the entire
time. They have the most wonderful opportunity to pick up on
all the spoken English and all the grammar and all the
vocabulary without even realising it. Bless them. Even then it
takes them a couple of years to speak fluently. Yes, of course
their brains are still developing.

But the point I want to make is there is a place for grammar,

but it's not the be-all and end-all. I really don't see the value
in going through a grammar book cover to cover. I really don't
see the value in that. And it's something that I have never
done in my own language learning journey. What I did do was
essentially fill in the gaps. I was constantly on the lookout for
holes or gaps in my grammar knowledge. I think you should
go through time filling those gaps bit by bit, rather than
approaching grammar as this big textbook that you have to
work through. It goes back to looking at full phrases again,
look at those phrases. Is there something that you can't
explain or that doesn't sound right to you in your head?

That should be the topic that you research. That should be

the topic that you bring to the table with your conversation
partner or your English teacher, or you search on an online
forum. There are some amazing language forums with some
really, really enthusiastic teachers who seem to give up their
time for free. I can't believe the quality of answers that I get
from language forums. I doubt grammar all the time. I'm
constantly looking it up.

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3 Don't let anything go!

This brings me on to tip number three which is don't let

anything go. Don't drop anything. I know the feeling. You hear
a word or a phrase that you don't understand and you think,
ugh, I can't be bothered. I'll remember it. I'll remember it and
do it later. You won't. 9 times out of 10, you will not remember
it. It's like when you come up with a really good tune in your
head and you think, oh, I'll remember that tomorrow. How
could I ever forget something like this? And then you just can't
the next day. It's gone. It's lost potentially forever. Every time
you have a doubt, don't let it escape you. Just don't let it
escape. Write it down immediately.

If you can't write it down because you don't know how it's
7 use the recording voice notes function on your phone.
spelled
If it's not possible for you to see a teacher every single week,
save up all of these doubts and book in one hour a month and
see how many of those doubts you can clear up with them in
that session. But please look into my eyes and tell me, Lucy, I
will not let my next doubt go. But don't stress yourself out at
the same time. Obviously you have to take everything with a
pinch of salt. You've got to make it work for you. But I find if I
come up with a fantastic video idea and I don't write it down
immediately, that video will never be made. And it's the same
with your grammar and vocabulary doubts.

4 Pre-prepare anecdotes

The previous tips were more about theory. Now I'm going to
talk about putting it into practise. When I was learning
Spanish, living in Spain and conversing with lots of Spaniards,
there was one topic that at first caused me a lot of anxiety.
And then over time it caused me a lot of joy and excitement,
and I just loved it. And that is telling anecdotes and telling
stories, especially funny ones. I really think there is no better
feeling than making someone laugh in the language that
you're learning, it's such a good feeling. There are very few
people in this world that can just launch into a story and have
everyone engaged and interested. Some people are blessed
with this skill. I am not one of them.

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If I want to tell a good story, I have to prepare it in advance

and have it up my sleeve, have it ready. I have to do this in
English, let alone in another language.
If you want to feel funny, interesting, and engaging, I really
urge you to practise and sort of perfect, but I'll talk about that
more, your anecdotes and your personal stories, things that
you are going to want to tell to lots of different people. I have
maybe five or six entertaining stories that I have ready in case
there's a gap in conversation. And if I meet someone new. My
poor friends and my poor, poor fiancé have probably heard
these stories 20 times each. I encourage you to write your
stories down, to try and do as best a job you can of correcting
the grammar, of making sure it flows and then potentially
bringing it to a speaker of English to correct for you. Stories
don't have to be perfect when you tell them. In fact, it looks
weird and sounds weird when you read it out like a robot. On
your own at home, practise the story, read it aloud a couple of
times, then have a go reading it with no prompts.

If you have this preparation, you'll feel so much better when

you finally talk to another speaker of English. Great topics you
could use are funny mistakes that you've made in English. I
know that I always love hearing my students laugh about the
mistakes they've made. It shows that you're a really chilled
and funny person. And it's entertaining for me to hear. In the
UK, we love self-deprecating humour, which shows that you
can laugh at yourself. You could almost mock yourself, put
yourself down. We love that. We also love irony. I've actually
created an entire video on British humour. I'll put it in the
description box. It's called British humour explained with
examples, which sounds like the least fun video ever, but I
think it might be able to help you.

So I hope that's clear. Practise your anecdotes, practise your

stories. And even if your goal is to not be funny, practise, the
things that you know you will have to repeat again and again
and again. How did you end up in your job? What were your
school days? Like? How did you meet your partner? Practise
those stories so that they just roll off the tongue. It might
seem like cheating, but if it is then I'm a cheat because that's
what I do.

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5 Listen to chatty podcasts

Number five is listen to chatty podcasts. There has been a
podcast revolution all across the world, especially in the UK.
We absolutely love podcasts. And there are a lot of people
who aren't necessarily famous already starting podcasts with
their friends and they just chat. This is the perfect spoken
English improvement opportunity. Finally, you get to
eavesdrop, you get to listen in on other people's
conversations. This is something that I absolutely love. You
might not have the opportunity to be in a conversation with
lots of English speakers. Even if you did, it might be too
nuanced or fast paced for you to understand and participate
in. Well, loads of lovely people have recorded their chatty
conversations and you can pause them. You can check their
transcripts if they have one. People who add transcripts to
podcasts, they are the best.

These chatty podcasts really fill a void. Even for me, I don't
have a big group of female friends. So I feel that I miss out
sometimes on the gossip and talking about girls stuff, but I've
got a couple of podcasts that I listen to and they fill that gap
for me. As sad as that might sound, I hope you can relate with
that when it comes to learning, spoken English and practising
your conversation. Stop them, start them, slow them down,
replay them. You can do whatever you want with them, but
they are a fantastic learning tool for you. There are so many
with so many different niches. One really good place to start is
to look at the UK charts for podcasts, especially for episodes.
That gives a really good vibe on what's good and what's not.

If you're interested in football, the Peter Crouch Podcast is

meant to be absolutely fantastic, wide variety of accents.
There are lots of comedy podcasts, like No Such Thing As A
Fish. There are quite a few with rude names that I don't want
to put on my channel. Do you know what? I'm going to list
them in the description box. If you have any other chatty
podcast recommendations, please do put them in the
comment section. We can all learn from each other and
hopefully you can recommend me a good way to
procrastinate.

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6 Prepare positive topics

Number six, make sure you always have good topics to talk
about. When we talk to people, we often talk about current
affairs. A lot of the current affairs are very depressing and
most people don't want to talk about how terrible the year
has been. So I have some solutions for you. I was feeling really
down last year from about June onwards, and I actually got to
the point of despair where I thought the world was just an
awful place. And one of my friends sent me a newspaper and
it's called The Happy Newspaper. This wonderful girl called
Emily Coxhead writes it, and this opened my eyes to the world
of positive news. I absolutely love these and they are the most
amazing tools for creating really good positive conversation.
Newspapers have always been teachers' favourite tools for
learning English and for creating dialogue, inciting
conversation. And what better than to have a newspaper that
is just full of the best stories of the quarter.

I now have two happy news subscriptions. One is called

Positive News. One is called Happy News. They're both written
in different ways, so there's not too much overlap. They both
come out every three months and I like to get a physical copy.
Although there are websites as well, which I will leave in the
description box. They're very inexpensive. I highly recommend
them for a fantastic mood boost, something you can pick up
and then use to talk about with people. I've checked for you
and they do both offer worldwide delivery. I think the most
wonderful English speaking club idea would be the happy
new speaking club or something like that. If you could get a
group of people to meet on Zoom every quarter and discuss
your favourite stories from these newspapers, I would want to
join them.

Whenever I create a video about English speaking, I look at my

comment section and there are just so many people who are
desperate to practise with other people. If you want to join a
conversation club and you can't find one, create one, just
create one, take something like Positive News or Happy News
as a prompt. It's not hard to run and it would be so much fun.

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7 Don't stress about your accent!

My last point is number seven and it is chill out. No it's don't
stress. And in particular don't stress about your accent.
Accents can unfortunately be such a massive source of shame.
So when you're looking to improve your pronunciation, I want
you to do exactly that. Look at improving your pronunciation.
Please just don't stress yourself out with trying to reduce or
get rid of your accent. Unless it's something you really want to
do, there's just no point. I understand the charm of it when I
was learning Spanish and you've got to understand I was in a
fantastic position. I was going out with a Spanish guy living
with a Spanish family. I really had all the opportunities there
for me. And it was so amazing when I was mistaken for a
native speaker from time to time. So I do understand the
charm and there are loads of options for people who do want
to achieve that, but just try and analyse why you're doing that.

But in general, the most important thing is improving your

pronunciation to speak in an understandable and clear way.
You want to speak so that other people can understand you
easily. If learning about other accidents and mimicking other
accents is something that you really enjoy, and it brings you a
lot of pleasure then by all means do that. But if it's stressing
you out or making you feel bad about yourself, don't do that.
It's a really, really hard thing to do. An example of how
unimportant accents are nowadays is my experience with
Google. I spent a lot of time with people who work at Google
and YouTube. I visited lots of Google offices in different
locations, such a high percentage of the people who work in
this massive, amazing company with fantastic salaries have
very strong, very clearly non-native accents. And has it
affected them? No. Does it affect what I think of them? Yes. It
makes me really impressed that they speak another language
to such a high standard every day in their workplace. Wow.
I don't know. That's food for thought. I'm sure each of you will
have your own individual opinion on what's important and
what's right for you. I just wanted to put it out there because I
have seen some comments that have made me sad about
people trying to lose a bit of their identity. And that's what an
accent is, it's a part of your identity.

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VOCABULARY
1 flat
not showing much emotion; not changing
much in tone

2 inflection
a change in how high or low your voice is as you are
speaking

3 to immerse
to become completely involved in something

4 the be-all and end-all

something that is the most important

5 to read something cover to cover

to read from start to finish

6 on the lookout
searching for

7 to clear up
to solve

8 to take something with a pinch of salt

to not completely believe something that you are
told, because you think it is unlikely to be true

9 to put something into practise

to apply/exercise something

10 anecdote
a short amusing or interesting story about a
real incident or person

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1
11 to have something up one's sleeve
to have something ready

2
12 self-deprecating humour
self-belittling humour

3
13 to roll off the tongue
(of a word/phrase) easy or pleasant to say

1
14 chatty
talkative and or casual

1
15 to eavesdrop
to listen to a conversation without them knowing

2
16 gossip
conversation or reports about other people's
private lives that might be unkind,
disapproving, or not true

17 niche
interesting to, aimed at, or affecting only a
small number of people

1
18 to procrastinate
to keep delaying something that must be
done, often because it is unpleasant or boring

2
19 current affairs
political news about events happening now

3
20 to mimick
to copy/imitate

1
21 food for thought
something interesting to think about

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