3 English Speaking Exercises (zero friends needed)

0:00 Practicing English alone is easy, but only if you know how.

0:06 In this video, I will give you my top three English speaking

0:10 exercises that I would do every day if I were starting from zero.

0:16 We're outside.

0:17 I'm by a beautiful river and everything you can see is a word.

0:24 So shall we think of a piano?

0:32 If you play the same note all the time, it sounds boring.

0:37 It sounds monotonous.

0:40 And that is how a lot of non-native

0:42 English speakers sound even if the vocabulary is great.

0:47 So today I'm going to show you how to play with your voice like it's a piano.

0:53 So, let's stand up.

0:56 Shake your body.

0:58 Shake your face.

1:00 And now I'm feeling playful.

1:03 Let's start playing with our voice.

1:06 The first step is to take any English book that you have.

1:10 I choose this book and the author of this book is David Crystal.

1:16 The title is a little book of language.

1:22 On the front cover, you can see

1:25 an illustration of two people standing under a tree.

1:31 On the back cover, there are more illustrations.

1:35 There are reviews from other authors.

1:38 And in the bottom right corner, there is a barcode.

1:43 After you've chosen your book, the next step is to choose a random page.

1:50 I'll choose this page.

1:52 And the final step is to read out loud for one minute.

1:56 We sometimes do silly things with language.

2:02 Aren't you lovely?

2:05 Reading out loud is already a powerful speaking exercise.

2:09 It trains your brain and your mouth at the same time.

2:15 But here's what most people miss.

2:17 You can play with your voice.

2:20 Here are four ways that you can play.

2:23 You can play with volume, how loud or how quiet you go.

2:28 You can play with speed, how fast or how slow.

2:33 You can play with pitch, you can go high, or you can go low.

2:39 And finally, you can play with the pause.

2:47 Let's put this into practice.

2:48 I want you to shadow me if you can.

2:52 I'm going to read out loud and practice playing with my voice.

2:59 Capital letters add an extra complication.

3:03 Although there are 26 letters in the English alphabet, when we write them down,

3:09 it turns out that there are 52 because each letter appears in two forms.

3:16 We have a big A and a little A.

3:19 Big B and a little B and so on.

3:25 Printers don't use words like big and little.

3:28 Big letters are called uppercase or capital letters.

3:33 Little letters are called lowercase letters.

3:39 These terms come from the days when printers used to keep

3:42 the letters they needed for printing in two large boxes or cases.

3:48 The different capital letters were held

3:49 in compartments in the top box or uppercase.

3:57 When we play with things like volume and speed,

4:02 we're training our mouths like muscles.

4:05 When you speak loud, you open up and you articulate more clearly.

4:11 When you speak quiet, you slow down and you get precise.

4:16 Fast trains your mouth to keep up and slow trains you to be clear.

4:24 Native speakers like me naturally switch between these modes

4:29 all the time and we do so unconsciously.

4:33 Now, how can you remember these practices?

4:38 Well, let's think of a funny and cute image.

4:43 Very small purple penguins.

4:47 Volume, speed, pitch, pause.

4:55 A lot of my English students say that they study English but then

5:01 in an actual conversation when they try to speak the words never come out.

5:09 The conversation is gone.

5:12 So I'm going to show you two word games that can fix that problem.

5:18 But Chang and I are heading to a coffee shop now.

5:22 So, let's play the word games while we walk.

5:27 The first word game is called the word tree game.

5:32 And if you think of a tree, you have the trunk,

5:37 the part in the center, and then the branches and the leaves on the outside.

5:43 So, the trunk is your central word, and the branches are your related words.

5:48 Let's put this into practice with the word

5:51 book to make it very clear for you guys.

5:55 I'll begin.

5:57 Book, author, page, words, bibliography, illustrator, spine,

6:08 library, librarian, knowledge, information, fiction, non-fiction, genre.

6:21 Clever.

6:23 Now we finished the first game and I want to teach you what I'm doing right now.

6:28 I'm going to wait because it's not safe.

6:30 I am crossing on a zebra crossing.

6:35 This is a zebra crossing and there is traffic coming from that way.

6:41 In Vietnam, if you cross the road slowly,

6:44 ideally don't film yourself, then you cross safely.

6:51 Now over there I can see some traffic lights.

6:57 Let's go to them.

7:00 Yeah, it's gorgeous.

7:01 Eh, beautiful prominade and across safely.

7:17 Okay guys, these are traffic lights and they are red, yellow and green.

7:23 But in England we don't say red, yellow, green.

7:28 We actually say red, amber, green.

7:34 Mad, is it?

7:36 So the second game is the word association game where you

7:43 take a random word and you make a chain of associations.

7:49 Let's put this into practice.

7:51 Starting with the word traffic light.

7:54 Traffic light.

7:56 Red.

7:57 Amber.

7:57 Green.

7:58 Go.

7:59 Stop.

8:00 Pause.

8:01 Play.

8:02 Video.

8:03 YouTube.

8:06 Woohoo!

8:08 Subscribe.

8:10 Why do we play these word games?

8:13 Well, if you think of your brain like the internet,

8:18 if you have a bad internet connection, then it's annoying.

8:24 You might feel frustrated.

8:26 If you have a good internet connection, then it flows.

8:32 everything goes smoothly and life feels good.

8:36 So, your brain has Wi-Fi and the more that you play these word games,

8:42 the faster your brain's Wi-Fi becomes.

8:46 Now, I want you guys to pause this video

8:51 and comment in the comments your associations to the word banana.

8:58 Try to do 10, 11, 12 associations.

9:01 Just let your fingers tap tap tap and let your mind wander.

9:06 I'm curious to see how everybody makes different associations.

9:11 And one rule, nothing rude.

9:13 All right, I'm watching you.

9:15 Okay, now that we've played the word games,

9:18 I'm going to show you a little bit of the world around me.

9:22 So, this is a car park.

9:26 In the background there are two skyscrapers.

9:32 This one is rectangular.

9:34 And this one is like a girkin, a pickle, a cucumber.

9:39 Down here we have bonsai trees.

9:43 And the bonsai trees are in plant pots.

9:47 There's a boy sticking his thumbs up.

9:49 He is on a bicycle and in a school uniform.

9:54 Hello.

9:56 Let's walk through the car park because the cafe is over there.

10:01 It's that way.

10:03 We are going that way.

10:06 Over there.

10:09 So, the cars I'm walking along the yellow line and the ground is blue.

10:18 By the way, the floor and the ground.

10:22 We usually say ground when it's outside

10:24 and we usually say floor when it's inside.

10:28 That's a general rule.

10:32 So now we are walking on a pavement.

10:37 This is the pavement and the pavement is usually next to the road.

10:45 Two motorbikes or two scooters.

10:48 This is a sign right here.

10:50 A road sign.

10:51 This is a Chang right here.

10:53 A chang.

10:55 And we are crossing the zebra crossing once more.

10:59 I'll get you a little Yeah, let's get a thumbnail.

11:02 All right.

11:02 Nice one.

11:03 Beautiful.

11:07 So silly.

11:09 This is a 4x4 car.

11:12 It's a large car with two wheels.

11:16 Well, actually four wheels on the other side.

11:20 This part of the car is called the wing mirror.

11:25 The front door, the back door, and in England, we call this part the boot.

11:34 In America, they say the trunk, but we say the boot.

11:38 And this is the license plate.

11:43 Henry Ford.

11:48 Now I'm standing beneath the skyscrapers and looking

11:53 up at the skyscrapers and they look enormous.

12:01 Is anyone scared of heights?

12:02 What are you guys scared of?

12:04 Let me know in the comments behind the scenes.

12:06 BTS, look at my camera woman.

12:13 Look at the effort she puts in.

12:16 Excellent.

12:18 Okay, come in.

12:19 I'm walking past now for this scene.

12:33 Okay, we have arrived.

12:38 We're at the cafe sitting watching the traffic, the beautiful traffic.

12:43 And it's a bit noisy.

12:46 But while we wait for our drinks,

12:49 let's get into the third speaking exercise of the day.

12:56 There are a lot of speaking exercises that you can practice alone.

13:01 For example, there's the jam game, just a minute.

13:06 I played that game in my last video.

13:08 So, if you want to check that out, then click there.

13:12 A big problem with speaking English alone is that you

13:16 don't know if what you have said is right or wrong.

13:23 You need feedback.

13:25 So, I built JI to help you with this.

13:31 Let's take a look.

13:33 I'll show you an example.

13:35 We are friends who haven't seen each other in 5 years.

13:41 We do some small talk.

13:43 Sounds like fun.

13:44 I'll be your friend.

13:46 It's been ages.

13:47 You look exactly the same.

13:50 How have you been?

13:51 And look at your dog.

13:52 What a cutie.

13:54 What's their name?

13:55 My dog is called Charles.

13:58 He's a little cockaspananiel.

14:01 And he's a little terror.

14:02 He's a little sh he's not very nice.

14:05 He barks at little kids and he barks at old women.

14:09 It sounds like Charles just needs a little more socialization,

14:13 but he's probably a sweetheart deep down.

14:16 It's funny how much they can make us laugh, isn't it?

14:20 2,000 years later.

14:22 All right, Jay.

14:23 Well, it's been lovely to talk to you.

14:25 We'll catch up again tomorrow.

14:28 Have a lovely day.

14:30 After you talk with Ji,

14:31 you can now check what you did well and how you can improve.

14:36 Oh, look.

14:37 The lights have just turned on because it's getting dark.

14:41 Right now, we'd call this time twilight or dusk,

14:45 the time between sunset and nighttime.

14:49 And I would like to review everything

14:52 from today's lesson so you guys can remember it.

14:56 The first thing that we did is we think of our voice like a piano.

15:02 We play with our voice.

15:05 We use things like volume, speed, pitch, and pause.

15:12 Secondly, we played word games to speed up

15:16 our brains wifi to prepare ourselves for real

15:21 life conversations by practicing speaking in a spontaneous

15:27 way connecting our brains and our mouth.

15:31 And finally, we practiced roleplay with JI.

15:35 The benefit of practicing role play is you're putting yourself in a real life

15:40 situation that you might have if you go to England or America or Australia.

15:46 You will come across these situations and you need to be prepared for them.

15:51 So if you practice just one thing from today's video, then you have succeeded.

15:59 You are successful.

16:01 Keep taking action.

16:02 Thank you for watching and I'll see you next week.