Three Tips for Speaking English naturally

Let’s imagine the next scene: You are in your native country, quietly eating at a restaurant and all of a sudden two Americans show up speaking English, laughing and talking about how great is your country and the good time they’ve had while staying there, one of them turns around, looks at you and asks you: “Excuse me, do you speak English?” you say: “Yeah man, what can I do for you?”...
then he asks you about other places that they could visit on your country, so you start speaking and you feel confident, relaxed and your speech is fluent, you sound so good that one of the American guys ask you “hey, where are you from again?” and then you answer: “I’ve lived my whole life in this beautiful country” and the American replies “wow! Nice English man, you sound really good, I actually thought you were from somewhere else”.

"Nice English man, you sound really good, I actually thought you were from somewhere else"

How would you feel if the former story happened to you? I’m pretty sure you would feel awesome and it is actually possible that you get this great skill of speaking English with a near native accent, but how?  How can you speak English in a natural way? Here are some tips that have been really helpful for me:

• Listen to Real English: Try to listen to real conversations where you can hear how the native speakers express themselves, if you listen to real expressions, real voices, real intonations, this will help you improve your speaking and understanding in English. Movies are a great tool to do this and there are also web sites that offer nice and interesting conversations on mp3, on this point I highly recommend Learn Real English.

• Observe Closely: When talking to native speakers pay close attention to the way they speak, move and the way they use facial expressions, remember that a really important factor in human communication is also reflected on the way we use our body. When I started to learn how to speak English, I remember paying close attention to the way some of my cousins, who were born abroad, talked and expressed themselves, this taught me the way I should express myself when speaking English.

• Imitate Native Speakers: When speaking English, try to copy the native speakers, repeat their expressions, their intonation, pay attention to the way they express their emotions and copy they way they say things, but be careful with overacting, if you overact, your English is not going to sound natural, and we don’t want that!

Take seriously these three points I just recommended you and be patience, remember that even for some children it can take a long time to learn how to speak correctly and only if you are constant with your English learning your brain will learn it automatically that is its nature, this has worked for me, for many people in the world and of course for every single children in this planet, this method is 100% real, so keep motivated to learn, we all can learn how to speak English and the best part of all of this is that it’s all a natural process. Keep listening to English and you’ll end up speaking like a native speaker.

Remember: Everybody can speak English; we just need to be patience and constant.