Three Quick Techniques for Speaking and Writing More in a Foreign Language

If you are the self-directed type of language learner, I bet you’ve got yourself a little routine set up and have a large amount of input coming in. Online courses, flashcard decks, podcasts. And instructions and TV shows. And Harry Potter in whatever language you are learning. It’s all about how much you can put into your head in the shortest possible period of time.

And then an article comes along and tells you to “speak more”, so you pack your motivation and get yourself that language exchange partner, you open your mouth and …. nothing. Where the HECK are all those new words, please?

Like you, I totally know the feeling of wanting to just open your mouth and speak. I see it in my students on a regular basis. I can feel it when I try to have a French conversation. Why is it so frustrating?

For me, the heart of the problem lies in the nature of the skills you have been training. There are output and input activities. And within those, thee four core language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. All languages are systems of communication, so they require you to be able to both understand and produce comprehensible things. Balance really matters, and if you are on chapter 15 of your Assimil, but you can’t talk at chapter 3 level, you need to go back to the core language skills and start pushing yourself to go from input to output.

Core Language Skills to the Rescue

Luckily, this isn’t quite as tough as it seems. In my book Fluency Made Achievable, you can find lots of easy exercises for training the specific skills of writing and speaking. And here are three ideas you can use in your language learning routine to focus on boosting your output. If you have to cut some of your study time away from the input-focused tasks through this, don’t hesitate to do so. The aim of incorporating output into your language learning is not to make you better at producing language right away, but instead to give you that core skills balance. You will find that you become a better and more confident speaker through this, and that you’ll start approaching that desirable feeling of fluency and confidence.

1. Reply Back

This exercise is for all those learners who spend hours with foreign language podcasts and TV shows. It cuts right through all those excuses and attention drifts that are holding you back. Whenever you are listening to those recordings, get into a routine of stopping what you are listening to every five minutes. Think about whatever the actors were talking about and imagine you are being interviewed about the same topic. If you are watching a drama, imagine you are part of the action. What would you say? What do you think about these facts?

Don’t just imagine what you would say, but reply back to the video, talk to the actors or the imaginary interviewer in your head. Speak out loud, like no one is around you. This exercise is so perfect for being in the car or studying at home. Not only does it force you to say something, but it also prevents you from tuning out. If you force yourself to think about what was discussed and reply back, you are also forced to listen attentively and make sure you really understand. No more hiding.

If you’re interested in a great tool deeply understanding native language content, check out Yabla, a fabulous tool that goes so much further than your average YouTube channel.

2. Describe Your World

Here is a quote from Fluency Made Achievable, in which I interviewed language learner David Mansaray about his favourite practices in learning a foreign language:

I like to describe the world around me in a the foreign language. For example: ”The boy is wearing a hat”, or ”The woman is pushing a pram”, or ”The people around me are boring so I'd rather think in my head in a foreign language”. I can do this exercise anywhere at any time. It not only helps me practice, but it also helps me to discover vocabulary and grammatical structures I need to work on. I make a note of these in a small notebook I always carry with me and work on them later.

No matter if you are recording a voice memo on your phone or jotting sentences down in a notebook like David does, the key is that you are using your language in the context that works for you. You can go from foreign language shopping lists to describing an everyday scene in great detail. The key is that you maintain active use and produce something in a foreign language on a regular basis. This exercise is also particularly great because it builds habits very easily, which can make a huge difference when you start coming out of the first honeymoon phase.

3. Write Short Lines Every Day

There is a reason I keep making my students aware of the need to write as part of their language practice. Writing forces you into paying attention. When you try to write something on your phone, you miss what's on the TV. When you try to tweet while talking to someone, it comes out as nonsense. Writing has this way of being an activity that tells you "HEY! Look here! This is where you focus now". I often talk about how much I find that this practice is underrated, and it is the quietest core language skill. If speaking a foreign language appealed to you because you are an introvert, or dreaming of overcoming shyness, then you may not be willing to spend hours crafting short stories.

Nonetheless, you should put your mind to short and regular writing practice. A line a day is easily written, takes up five minutes of your time and STILL does more for you than half an hour of podcasts can. If you work with a tutor, why not email or text them in your target language from time to time?

Or alternatively, start out translating one line from your native language every single day. Over time, you will feel this huge sense of achievement as you realise you have written thousands of words in your foreign language. Behold the achievement when it happens, congratulate yourself on your progress and make sure you get this proofread.

Remember Balance

Nothing is as frustrating as feeling you are working hard and making no progress at all, and understanding the core language skills idea will help you propel forward your language learning progress. Getting stuck in a rut is not for you.

Here is the key: Maintain variety and keep doing the things you haven’t done.

It’s not about beating yourself up when you find that your writing skill doesn’t live up to your advanced reading routines. It’s about recognising that there’s a skill gap and getting to work. I promise you that you’ll find yourself getting better and boosting your confidence in a little matter of weeks. It’s incredible what a shake-up can do for language learners.

If you want to work through your own core language skills assessment, check out my book Fluency Made Achievable which is focused entirely on this system of four skills and contains a neat 3 week planner. It will help you build your proficiency and focus on strengthening the precise skills you need.

Do your Mistakes Matter in Language Learning? A "Written Homework" Perspective

You know, language learners, how we bloggers always bang on about “things don’t have to be perfect” and “start speaking even if you will make mistakes”? You’ve heard all this, right? You’ve heard it and nodded and seen how it makes sense. You believe that you will be able to get over yourself.

But here’s the thing:

When it comes to really putting your skills on the line and “showing your workings” to another person, are you still holding back?

Take this example from one of my German students. We had spent a little time reading a news article and discussing the themes in it. In terms of core skills, this guy is a red hot reader! He is not only happy and confident about picking up any book from Harry Potter to Dune in German, but will also approach it with the positive mindset of someone who enjoys understanding every single word. We’ve also worked so much on speaking skills over the year and made excellent progress. But there’s one thing on my list, one left to cover: The Writing skill needs a push.

Why Do I Prompt My Students to Write?

You can tell me that pushing ahead on writing skill is just not what an adult learner needs in 2014, but I’d just direct you to what I wrote in Fluency Made Achievable: There are four key components to building up expertise and confidence in the language you’re trying to acquire: listening, reading, speaking and writing. You can't skip out on one of those four without feeling the consequences at some point. Even if you are not planning to enter into a German story competition any time soon, pushing your writing skill has a million advantages for your language learning journey. For example, your composition and structuring skills transfer straight to the spoken word. An experienced writer doesn’t need language exchanges, their confidence will come naturally when they open their mouth. For introverted learners, getting into writing also has huge advantages since you’ll become comfortable AND GOOD at using your target language correctly, before ever entering that “risk period” where someone else sees you. And believe it or not, being a great speller means being a great reader and speaker of your target language.

To speak a language well, it helps to understand how spelling and pronunciation work together. (Tweet this here)

If a tree falls in the forest…

Writing can be very introverted, it’s an exercise you do at home, typing away on your computer or scribbling into a notebook. No one else needs to see what you write. And there's why this is so difficult: Because your writing isn't for others to see, it becomes pretty easy to just not do it. What you need is accountability.

You know what it’s like with New Year’s resolutions: No one will ever know you’re doing it unless you actually tell them. Your foreign language writing is the same thing. If you don’t find someone that actually expects you to write, it becomes too easy to avoid doing this work altogether. You start realizing that mistakes are really, really visible when you write. On the one hand, language learners subscribe to the philosophy that making mistakes is part of learning. But on the other hand, showing those mistakes to people as a “written fact” is the hardest thing in the world.

Which leads me back to my wonderful student. I set him an exercise two weeks ago: Summarize each paragraph of our text in simple words, just one sentence picking up the key points. Yesterday I got an email saying:

I must admit that I am just not getting it done right now. I have tried to work on it a couple of times this week, but have only a few sentences to show for it. I feel like I’m still learning, but just not making progress on this part.

Those are the words of somebody who’s judging himself pretty harshly. My reaction? “A few sentences? That’s AWESOME!! All credit to you for trying, and we totally have something to work with now for the lesson.” Do I care if he’s sending me a perfect summary of the text? No! Do I treat this like a school exam, grading him on a scale of A to F for “failure”? No! From the point of view of your language tutor, let me tell you that all I want you to do is try your best. Or even your semi-best. Just sit down and do the thing, open up, be vulnerable and let’s work on this together.

No matter if you do work with a tutor or not, here are a few tips on embracing mistakes in your writing:

• Stop apologising to anyone about how “little” work you do, and start embracing that any exercise done means you become vulnerable. Most likely you're not perfect. You will spell things wrong and (if I'm your teacher) I will still LOVE it, because that's how I can know which bits you spell wrong. We tutors are largely a kind bunch. We appreciate the fact that you have made a commitment to study a foreign language.
• Converseley, if you ever hear a person in a "teaching position" tell you that you're never going to get it, consider FIRING THEM.
• Go somewhere specific to do your writing: not in the office, not at the computer, not where you usually type all your Facebook posts. Here are a few more tips on why that is going to help.
• Work with word order formulas. Here are a few German ones you can use, but if you are studying other languages please ensure that the word order you’re working with is actually correct:

1) Subject + verb + object

2) time + verb + subject + object

3) Subject + verb to say "says" or "expresses", subject + verb (indirect speech) + object

• Use a little bit of lesson time or email time to type in your foreign language. This can be done right from day 1, and it's one of the easiest way to bridge the gap when you don't have a native speaker to practice with.

The Language Writing Challenge

In conclusion, writing is difficult. It may well be the core skill that takes the most time, makes your mistakes super visible and has the most potential to embarrass you. And now we've put that out into the open, it's time to get over it! Try one of the steps above, or even start by copying textbook language into your notebook, but it's a fact of language learning that writing will always be there. It's part of a healthy language habit!

I've tried my best to address all of the reasons why you would avoid writing in your language practice above. Got any others? Write me a comment and see if you can change my mind!

Thanks for reading this article on Fluent, the Language Learning Blog. If you are feeling stuck right now, why not subscribe to Fluent and check out our language book shop.

Language learning with Yabla

Today I want to write an article introducing you to some software that might really go some distance to keeping you learning languages online. It's called Yabla, and online at Yabla.com.

What I like about Yabla is that the system is not in a specific learning method or a big method that you have to learn first. Instead, their special software is designed to make that target language video world accessible.

Here's how it works

The materials come from TV, film and music videos in the original language. The system gives access to native language videos and allows language learners to watch things in the original language, understand them, expand their vocabulary and quiz themselves on listening comprehension. So in other words, if you've ever wasted an hour on YouTube this is your thing.

All videos display in the Yabla player, which looks like this:

I've annotated this picture for you so you can work out what the different sections are about. We have

1. Control buttons. The coolest ones are "Slow" which slows the whole video down without sounding like it's creepy monster talk (i.e. it's pitch corrected) so that you can understand the native speakers better, and "Loop" which will run a very short section on a loop until you are ready to move on.
2. Subtitles. These are available in the language of the video (here it's German) and the menu language (here that would be English), but as you can see there is a little "Hide"/"Show" menu on the right hand side so that you can watch the video with or without subtitles.
3. Subtitle Lookup. Every word in the subtitles is clickable, and will show up in the dictionary once you click on it.
4. Difficulty rating. Yabla tells users how difficult it thinks the videos are and rates them from 1 to 5. For example, my French is good enough to watch a 4/5 video without any subtitles, but I want them on for 5/5.
5. Game. The in-video game is a listening comprehension exercise, asking you to find the missing word in any phrase contained in the video. Yabla regularly publishes the high scores so I'm pretty sure you couldn't resist if there's a bit of a competitor in you.
6. Dictionary. Yabla player searches various dictionaries, or Wikipedia, for every word that you click on in the subtitles. This way you get the benefit of several uses and you can see the word used in a sentence straight away.

Here are two of my favourite demo videos:

1. Piggeldy und Frederick - Der Himmel: Piggeldy and Frederick are cartoon pigs and they live and learn, and have done this for as long as I can remember. I used to enjoy them when I was little, and still enjoy them today. Suitable even for early learners (or 2/5 on Yabla's own difficulty rating).
2. Canadian Chocolate Seller - Chocolats: The lady makes chocolate. The video contains chocolate. I think now I'm hungry.

In conclusion, I think you guys should give Yabla a go. A 1-month subscription costs $9.95 and it's refundable within 7 days, so that you can test drive the system thoroughly. The system is great for:

1. listening comprehension: slow it down where you need to.
2. writing skills - take notes and compare them with the subtitles afterwards
3. growing your vocabulary - write down new words and quiz yourself or use the in-built Game and Flashcards features.

Yabla is available for learners of English, French, Chinese, German, Spanish and Italian.

Final message to Yabla: Where is the Russian version? I can't wait!

Final message to you: Fluent Language's blog is an affiliate partner and receives a small commission if you decide to sign up for a Yabla account, so thanks in advance if you do!

Fluency Masterclass, Part 2: Writing

​Hey all, welcome to the second instalment in my series of articles looking at practical techniques for mastering each of the four core skills in language acquisition. Let's have a closer look at..

Writing

Yes, writing skills. That's that thing people did with pen and paper before screens and keyboards. Ideas for simple exercises to get started with might be writing your shopping list, packing list, postcards or recipes.

Using colours to mark word types, and to annotate my notes.

A word about writing and typing

In this article I do recommend you focus on old-school pen and paper. For the language learner, this provides a really important benefit: kinaesthetic (tactile) learning. This means that the movements of putting letter-shaped lines on paper in new combinations will help you remember.

There are also psychological benefits. I'm currently studying Russian - a new challenge with new letters! Putting them onto paper in my own handwriting and with my own hands gives the whole undertaking a stronger sense of achievement. It really is me mastering letters like л, Ф, and я!

If you do feel that you want to get typing, there are advantages to doing it online. Websites like Italki have journaling functions that invite native speakers to answer your questions or correct your entries, which can be excellent practice. Make sure you re-write everything after it's been corrected.

Steps to improve your writing skills

Play with colour, shape and paper

​Now that you are hopefully signed up to pen and paper, or at least stylus and paper app, you should use them to their full potential. Use different coloured pens, highlighters and crayons. Doodle. Mark up your sentences in a way that makes sense to you. Here are some tips to get you started:

• Colour each word differently depending on its gender
• Underline every verb, then shade in every object, then use another colour for different cases
• Write out the sentence in one tense, then re-write it in another
• Draw tables, boxes, diagrams, or whatever you need to illustrate your thoughts

Sound out the letters, syllables and words

While breaks and gaps in a conversation are so obvious they're bound to make you nervous, writing is something you can do in your own time. Languages have a script in order to document the sounds you make when speaking out loud, so make sure you engage fully when you are writing things down: Sound out each letter, add the sounds to make a word and really get to know them. Yes, it sounds silly. That probably means you are doing it correctly.

Listen and Write

Combining your language skills is the key to fluency. When it comes to writing, this means your integration should go both ways. Remember dictation tests from school? Find a simple audio example. Listen first and write down what you hear - this will work on your comprehension, spelling and most importantly teach you the connections between spelling and sound. Then compare your notes to the transcript to see what you got right. This exercise should be a weekly drill, because its benefits are bound to build up your skills significantly.

Writing was part two of the Fluency Masterclass. Catch up on Part 1 (Reading), and if you enjoyed this article why not subscribe to my monthly newsletter here:

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Other great articles about reading in language learning

• Omniglot: Want to speak a foreign language better? Learn to write first!
  
• ​The Everyday Language Learner: Five reasons you should write as part of your language learning