V. Balaji
100

All you guys,

I know exactly what are your problems. Mr. Jacob is given you the guidelines for improving your English. Follow that, I do not say no.

The core problem lies only in your thinking. Do you follow me? What is English first of all? It is like any other language or medium that you chose to communicate your feeling, right?

Prima facie, you cannot speak any language withount first you feel that within i.e. in your heart. People want to speak in English, but their thought process going in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, etc. Then you will never be able to deliver your feeling or expression in English.

TO SPEAK IN ENGLISH, YOU MUST THINK (I REPEAT THINK) IN ENGLISH.

Assume that you are going to a local shop to purchase some material. When you walk or drive, your thought process is on. You start thinking ( I assume your mother tongue is Hindi), wahan jaane keliye kithnaa time lahegha? wo saaman nahi tho, hum kya karon?, etc. [I am not Hindi speaking guy, if any mistake I have done here in putting it in Hindi, dont ridicule me and dont take it seriously. I am only trying to give some examples here).

On the other hand, you must start thinking these things in English like this: "How long will it take to reach that shop? if that particular material is not availble in that shop, what should I do, should I chose other brand; while coming back, I must fill up my petrol tank;, should I finish my dinner near the shop and come home, or can I do some cokking and manage the dinner? etc?

You can watch English news, observe some people while they interact with each other. If you develop the thought process fundamentally in English,only then you will be able to deliver it English.

Thinking something in Telugu and you want to speak in English is not possible at all. May be you may speak, but you dont get the flow and rhythm when you want to deliver it.

Going through Newspaper, magazines, vocabulary building will help you, but these things come later.

Your IMMEDIATE REQUIREMENT IS TO START THINKING IN ENGLISH, OK?

All the best

Balaji

From India, Madras
nimesh_rpatel
Dear Friend, read the editorial of times every day for 15 minutes infront of mirror ... see the difference in a week Regards Nimesh
From India, Vadodara
mnsvasan
2

I have a few questions and a few suggestions also.

What about the standard of your written English?. If you are satisfied that you are able to write without errors of grammar and have adequate vocabulary, then the problem should be addressed in a different manner.

Problems only with oral communication means, lack of practice (or opportunity) when you learnt the language and fear when you actually use it, particularly in office and in front of the boss.

The fear, hesitation parts should be handled by building up confidence and I have seen great results in use of NLP for this purpose.

But still, you can not, in conversation, take time to compose a grammatically correct sentence and rehearse it before you deliver it. Our speaking should almost be spontaneous – perhaps we thing and speak simultaneously.

For this purpose you may read “conversations oriented tests” – these are comics. Writers of comics use very simple sentences, generally the way children speak. Read them repeatedly, (with good attention, of course) - you will soon become familiar with the structure of communicative form of English.

There are about 50 to 100 sentence patterns generally required for office conversations – we only change the subject, verb, objects etc in these sentence structures.

Repeated reading of such sentences in comic books, you will start using correct grammar, without being conscious about it. You will only notice, if the grammar is incorrect in a sentence. When you read a sentence with correct grammar, you will not notice it, you will only pick up the meaning of the sentence and go to the next sentence, quickly.

Once you are able spontaneously form a sentence, that is grammatically correct, you can focus on the contents of what you communicate rather than the syntax.

(At present, as you strain to get the syntax correct, you may lose focus on the content, this means disaster and loss of confidence etc. etc.)

Late “uncle Pai”, the journalist who created comics and children books, (amar chitra katha, for example), rendered a great service to the present age Indian school children, he made them to read English with interest and made them talk with confidence.

This method will work very well with children. But I am sure grown ups will also be benefited with requisite practice.

Listening to conversations, talk show, drama etc will also help in “spontaneous sentence framing”.

Only after we achieve this “spontaneous sentence framing”, our vocabulary, pronunciation, punctuation etc will help.

With best wishes.

srinivasan

From India, Madras
Gwalia11
2

Hi,

I think you have got enough feedback on the topic to feel motivated and chalk out an action plan for tackling the challenge of speaking English confidently.

I have one small suggestion to add to the above - in our school days, way back in the '80s our English teachers always encouraged 'Extempore' classes. For this class, each student was assigned a topic, given exactly 3 minutes to think about what to speak on it and then called up to speak. Each student had to stand right in front of the class

( the teacher usually left her chair and joined the students on one of the benches ) and speak on the assigned topic.

This, I think, was a wonderful way to learn speaking confidently in front of a fairly large group of people.

You can subsitute the class & teacher by simply standing in front of a mirror and speak out loud, else you could maybe request a small and close knit group of friends to watch while you speak and give you feedback.

English is not our mother-tongue, though it is very important today as it is the language of business communication. But you can speak well and confidently if you keep practising.

All the best and do keep us posted on your progress!

Gurjeet Walia

From India, Calcutta
sunilchristian
Hi, This is Sunil from Ahmedabad. I am also facing same problem. How can I downloaded mobile dictionary ? Can you give me ideas ?
From India, Ahmadabad
ankurkhanna1234
I guess going through an english newspaper and following english news channel for about a month will be more than handy to bail you out.
From India, Delhi
swwastik
As someone else rightly mentioned above, you need to transform your thinking. Instill confidence in yourself and your abilities. Learning English, or any other language for that matter, isn't a tough job.
All the resources you require are available online, or around you. What you need to do is put in a determined effort, and follow through for as long as required. You may see gradual improvements but over time, and with consistent efforts, you will improve.
Best of luck!

From India, Bangalore
bijay_majumdar
365

Hi,
Language should not be a barrier once you need to communicate something to some one.As regards to english,Pls try and dare to speak and ask your friends to correct you if you are wrong.For More learning as others on board guided the best. My advise to you is Read news papper, listen to news, improve you word power and learn grammar as much as you can.
Thanks
Bijay

From India, Vadodara
nareshreddy0188
Hi All
Greetings from Naresh Reddy,
Thank you all for your replies and suggestions, as I learned new things from the above different suggestions from different experts.So I determined to follow some of them as I am weak in world's standard English,So I need to concentrate on picking my drawback up to fill it up where I am going down.
I felt these suggestions are going to help me out in reaching peak level of my communication.
I am following those right a way.
Thank you all,have a great day

From India, Bangalore
Neelamgupta264
8

Dear Mr. Balaji
Very good advise. "START THINKING IN ENGLISH". What a great advice.
I really appreciate this.
Thank you so much for your advice. I am also suffer from this problem but now i am going to try your advise.
Thanks again :)
Neelam
Administrator

From India, Gurgaon
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