At the very beginning, many English learners have problems with their English when expressing exact thoughts spontaneously or even worried about the mistakes when speaking English. They use words that sound unnatural in conversations and think about grammar rules before speaking.

“A butterfly in one’s stomach” might be the phrase for the learners when they are getting stuck while speaking English to natives even to locals. There might be a lot of ideas on their head, yet they cannot come up natural English words to speak up. To overcome these issues, many tips and tricks have already been published either online or offline. Here are some small things I have experienced, and hopefully can make a big impact for you as a learner to speak English naturally without hesitation as if you were English natives.

Keep it simple, but not simpler

First and foremost, I started an English conversation with a simple sentence by the words and expressions that I am familiar with. To me, it has been an enthusiastic thumbs-up to start speaking naturally without producing many pauses. I did have an experience to speak up with a complex sentence, but I can not keep my conversation going. The more complex sentences I produce, the more nervousness and anxiety I would feel. Thus, speaking up with a simple conversational English might be the proper way for the initial practice of spoken English.

One time, I have had an English conversation with my cousin’s husband from the US. I began talking with simple expressions and vocabularies to make sure that he understood what I was talking about. Surprisingly, it did work for me as I could keep the conversations going on. I could create this easiest sentence in only one clause with a single subject and predicate.

Get involved!

Another way I have initiated to talk naturally in English is to get used to the spoken English expressions. I would prefer using the same expressions that native English use in their daily conversation than translating my own language to the English word by word. To get to know more common expressions, I used to watch English movies, listen to English songs and read English articles as well as join the round table discussions where I could be involved in conversing with native English.

To be honest, these two ways helped me improve my spoken English and even raised my confidence to talk in front of the audiences. I could confidently produce my spoken English and in my opinion, I was just expecting that the audiences, locals or natives, understood what I was talking about and be enthusiastic to the conversations so that two ways communications would feel more natural.

How confident are you in speaking English?