You're probably learning a language to speak fluently.
Many make the mistake of thinking that they need a native speaker or tutor or a class to practice speaking.
But in this video,
I'll share with you 6 proven techniques that I and other successful learners have used to speak foreign languages without talking to people.
If you're new here, get A-Mates, my name's Matthew.
I used to work for Fluent Forever and I was mentored by the American Polyglot and best-selling author Gabriel Weiner.
Since branching out on my own, I've just realised that I love learning languages so much.
So developed my own strategies and tools to learn languages effectively and I'd love to share them to help you too.
Now I know some people feel a little weird range about speaking on your own.
They think it's a little sad and they have visions of just.
speaking in the corner away from the world and it feels so distant from the language and the culture that you want to interact with.
But I want to encourage you to really consider,
practice speaking fluently on your own because at the end of the day you have to be the one to take control of your
For speaking fluency and flow,
you have to be the one to practice those things,
and you're not always going to have the opportunity to practice with other people,
and if you want to make the most of your time and you want to really get results,
speaking practice on your own really can help, and I truly believe that.
I've got.
three main reasons why I strongly believe that speaking on your own to practice fluency is really worth it.
Firstly, speaking on your own can be convenient.
It's not always the case that you've got access to native speakers or a class or a tutor.
So when you speak on your own, you can practice.
this on the go at home in those small pockets of time that you have throughout the day.
And that allows you to keep progressing your target language at your own convenience.
So you can do this anytime you want without having to schedule a class with others.
And plus,
It's free, no need to be paying for expensive classes or tutors, you can practice speaking fluently on your own without paying any cash.
Number practicing speaking on your own is great if you feel a little shy or introverted.
Now I know there are a number of...
who aren't extroverts and they aren't the type of people who are just ready to go out there and
speak to anyone that they can beat.
And to be honest, I'm actually one of those types of people.
I've done the Myers-Briggs test and I'm actually considered an INTJ, which means an introverted type of person.
So I actually get a lot more energy behind myself and working on things on my own or in small groups.
I'm not the type person to get tons of energy and get all hyped up and pump thickened to tons of people if
you can relate then practicing.
speaking on your own can really help you still learn languages.
Being shy and being introverted shouldn't be a barrier to you enjoying and enriching your life with languages.
Number speaking on your own helps you get the hang of talking fluently on your own
You're not stuck in a class having to wait for the people to finish their turn,
you're not stuck with a tutor who wants to talk about certain things and you don't really click with that person.
When you talk on your own, you're left with yourself and so you can talk about whatever you want, you can focus on different ways.
areas of the language that you need to improve on and you really have that greater sense of control of how you practice speaking fluently.
Now on to the six techniques to help you speak foreign languages without talking to people.
Number shadowing.
Now this technique is often used often used by a number of language learners who have succeeded, and I've used it myself.
You're following another native speaker in how they speak by mimicking and copying what they say.
This technique can also be called parading because in a way you're gonna be acting like a parrot.
Whenever native speaker does something, you can copy the exact same way that they speak.
You can use the same words,
the intonation,
the pronunciation,
and in that way you can practice speaking fluently because you will get a greater sense of the language without up with your own language.
As you get more comfortable with shadowing and parodying,
set phrases and paragraphs even or chunks of words, you can then get more comfortable to use those words and phrases in real life situation.
And you can even change so and words within those phrases.
For example, you see a movie and one of the characters say ola kettar soy santiatro.
Well, you can parrot or shadow the exact same thing but change the words and use your own name in that set phrase.
And you can say You can change not only the names to your name, you change verbs, nouns and adjectives to what's relevant for you.
Technique number two, islands.
Now technique was popularized by Boris Shekman in his book How to Improve Your Final language immediately.
Now, I read that book and it was really great.
And of his most important contributions in that book was language islands.
And what that is, is you can practice speaking by memorizing short speaking.
or phrases that are relevant to you and that you're most likely going to use in your everyday interactions.
These islands are the different topic that you've memorized and that you're confident to speak fluently in certain language islands that you can learn,
include talking about yourself, your job, family, but not.
interests.
In Spanish,
for example,
I memorized a number of set phrases that I would use regularly, such as so that I would use such as so would use regularly.
Set phrases like that, you're likely to say on a regular basis.
They're great for getting that confident.
in different situations and practicing those phrases and stories and speeches, you can do all of that on your own.
Technique three, talking around a topic or a word.
This is kind of like the game Kabu, where you're not supposed to say a certain word but instead you're supposed to.
describe that word using all different other types of words.
For example,
if you don't know the word for bag in Mandarin Chinese,
let's say,
now it's called chai zu, and you actually want to try and describe that word, you can practice on your own how to describe that.
that, by saying, as can see there, that helps you practice fluency because in
real life situations, you're going to face encounters where you won't know certain words, but you can still use the word that.
you do know to speak around that unknown topic or word to then help a native speaker understand what you're trying to convey.
So strongly suggest this technique of circumlocutions is a fancy word to say talking around the word.
Technique number four, write like you speak.
So when you're on your own and you don't have any native speakers or tutors around you, you can also practice speaking by practicing writing.
So you can write out made up dialogues or conversations that you're likely to have between you and a native speaker.
So you could type out say in Tagalog, you could say, and then you would think, oh, what would I say to that in return?
I probably say, you could say, which means And what else could I say after that?
Oh, what are doing today?
And you could write this out
and you could
think okay in the conversations or interactions I'm going to actually have
with natives because what are the types of things that we'd say you could
write these things out and practice just by writing writing is a great way to
get started to speak because you can take a lot more time with your thoughts.
I know that sometimes introverted people, including myself.
I'm kind of in my head a lot and sometimes it helps clarify my thinking through writing and I
think that also applies to practicing speaking on your own.
You can have less pressure by speeches or dialogues that you want to have,
and you're likely to have with native speakers in advance of those actually happening.
And that can really help.
Technique number 5.
Another to practice speaking fluently is to record yourself and talk about any topic that you'd like about your day, about your opinions, about movies.
So you can time yourself as well and talk for,
start with 30 seconds and then one minute to five minutes and what you then do is then you can listen to the audio later on and listen
out for any mistakes in pronunciation, grammar, you're probably going to find that you weren't able to say certain things.
So write down what you had trouble with and then you can look up those expressions or words that you didn't know at that time.
So you can self correct yourself with that recorded audio.
But at the same time you can also get that audio checked by a native speaker.
Technique number six, time fluency speaking activity.
Now there's a whole bunch of research about how to practice speaking fluently on your own using time speaking.
Now there are two different types of time speaking activities that I think could be useful.
Firstly, there's a max fluency activity.
What you want to do is choose a topic that you want to talk about and use a stopwatch and try to talk about that topic non-stop for as long as you want to see
your maximum amount of fluency.
Anytime that you're going to stop for three seconds or more, that's your maximum mana fluency.
And you want to do is using that stopwatch try and push yourself each time to get a longer and longer time frame so that each time you're able to speak more fluently for a lengthier
amount of time.
And that's useful in a real life situation because in day-to-day conversation with people,
you want to be able to give your opinion and say your stories and describe certain things in a longer manner.
Another speaking activity that I really love as well,
and that really helped me when I've been doing proficiency exams in other languages,
is the 432 Now,
this is based on linguistic research that shows when you speak for four minutes about a and you time yourself,
then you speak again about that topic for three minutes and then later again for two minutes.
Each time, since the time frame gets shorter and shorter, it pushes you to speak faster and faster.
I've used this myself to talk about different topics,
prepare for exams and they really helped me go from a 39%
speaking score to a 94% speaking score when I did the Della B2 Spanish exam.
So I really encourage this type of activity and I've actually made a tool that I used when I was sitting with a 432 and I'd love to give you access as well to
that tool for free.
So check it out in the description and you can practice speaking on your own about random topics,
about random pictures, describing them and sharing your opinions.
and I hope this helps.
So these six techniques in mind, you're probably wondering, okay, what then do I actually talk about?
So there are three main topics that I strongly suggest you talk about.
Firstly, talk about personal things that are relevant to you.
Talk about yourself.
Talk about your, talk about your interests, your your family, your work.
As talk about things that are personal, the experience that you have speaking fluently becomes more memorable for you and becomes more enjoyable too.
Another topic to talk about are native materials that you've encountered.
So, I strongly suggest you go out there and you read books, you watch movies and listen to music and you
go to different websites in your target language.
And as you do that,
you can also then practice your speaking by talking about all of those different native materials and you can share your opinions,
your ideas, your reactions to those.
And that's a great way to not only build your input that you're getting in in regards to the language,
but you're also then practicing your output.
So you get both of the benefits by doing this.
And the third thing to talk about are prompts.
Now, prompts are just certain topics or conversations that are prompted to you so that you're encouraged to go beyond your comfort zone and talk about different things that you
usually wouldn't talk about.
There are different websites and different books that suggest different conversations that you can talk about.
about that also you're likely to see on different proficiency exams and tests and they're really
useful because then you're going to push yourself to talk about different aspects of history,
society, the environment, about animals, about social issues, about controversial topics, about the future, about the past.
this is really great to push yourself.
Having these prompts is really an advantage or when you practice speaking on your own because often when you speak
with other native speakers or in classes you get limited to speaking about certain topics like basic topics around your day about the weather.
about your job, but when you have prompts, you're really forced to go beyond those everyday topics.
You're also forced to use different grammatical expressions,
such as the conditional, the future tense and past tense, and that's a great way to keep pushing your language learning.
even on your own.
So when it comes to the prompts, that's also why I really liked the 432 tool that I made.
We actually give you random images and random prompts so that you are forced to talk about different situations that you're not used to.
So in mind when you're talking about personal things,
talking about native materials and content or talking from prompts that you want to practice how to describe certain things,
how to share stories, and also how to give your opinions.
If you focus on doing those sorts of things, you're really going to be pushing.
your speaking fluency even by yourself.
So there you have it.
These six techniques of shadowing, of language islands, circumlocutions of talking around the words of writing, recording myself, and timing myself.
All these six are how I learned how to speak foreign languages without talking to other people and I hope they
