well first of all. i seem to have a lot of problems with coming up with sentences or forming sentences in general. for example when i’m talking to americans or whatever i usually don’t really know what to say. but i fully understand them!! and when i’m about to say something. it’s almost as if i didn’t know any words… like. i don’t know any other english words other than the basic stuff. how can i improve?? please help me. thank you
- Read books
- Read books
- Read books
I’ll recommend you to the author Henry James. He’s a romantic, and much of his way of writing is beautifully easy to digest, with clear reason and intent behind why he writes.
He is an author who lived from 1843 to 1916, which is right around when our current English language stopped evolving so quickly. So much of what you will read from him is applicable to the English language of today (as opposed to other great authors from earlier, such as Laurence Sterne, where the language is understandable but many nuances have evolved). I suppose I should also mention John Milton and E.M. Forester as verbose but easy to understand authors.
When you’re learning, don’t be afraid to read slowly. Note the way in which articles (a, the) are used. For example, the importance of an object can be established whether it is the piece, or whether it is a piece. To this example, James Joyce has a novel, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”. It is just a portrait, but it is of the man.
When learning another language, it’s really normal for your comprehension to be way better than your production. Input > output. Just keep talking to people and consuming English media and it will come to you. The more you increase your input, the more fluently and naturally you’ll speak – it won’t sound like you’re speaking from a textbook.
Like you I also struggle with vocab though. What I like to do for focused study is watch a show or some piece of media and pick out some words I want to learn in context and make flashcards from them.
You need to find people at your level or a bit highter or using chatgpt with voice
I may not have a big tip, but here’s what I’ve done when learning other languages…
I listen to people speaking and try to repeat it to myself. If I can hear it in my head, it will sound normal. So when I need to, I can remember how it sounded in my head, and decide if it will sound good in the Curr context.
Have you read proper English literature?
yes!!
Then you have the base… Just got to practice with somebody who uses the fun words enough for you to pick up how they are used socially
I learnt english by reading books. That might help, although reading can be quite a passive activity, so you might want to couple it with some writing activities to make sure you’re actually doing something so it sticks better. I’m also not sure how well that will work for your specific problem of struggling with conversations, but tbh I’m not great at speaking to people irl myself (although that applies in my first two languages—english is my third—as well so I don’t think it’s a language barrier thing so much as my brain thing) so I dunno what would help with that specifically.
As most others already said, the best solution is immersion, ideally by talking with someone. If you can’t find someone to speak with that would make it quite a bit harder to improve, but not impossible.
For your situation (being able to understand but unable to express yourself in English) I’d reccommend the stereotypical “think in english”. I’d recommend talking with someone (ideally a native speaker, but even a fellow learner is incredibly efficient, followed by writing a diary abd participating in online forums (like you currently already are!).
It’s best to have input from someone else who can correct you if you make a grammatical mistake, give general advice on what sounds ‘more natural’ or ‘better’ in the language and answer any questions you might have, as well as help you if you’re “missing one word” (from personal experience when learning a language it’s rarely a ‘it’s at the tip of my tongue’ situation. It’s more like I just don’t know this one word and I need someone to give it to me).
Another thing I can say about your problem is I also suffer a bit from it. Whenever I try to talk in German I need a few hours to ‘warm up’ - to just get my brain to switch to German and having a speaker on the other side really helps. I can hear the language to jog my memory and the other side can (and often does) give me input on what they think I might be trying to say. (I’m a B1-level speaker so not even close to fluent but more than enough for doing basic interations within an environment open to helping with language issues).
What I liked to do when I was actively learning German was trying to come up with different ways of saying ‘the same thing’, seing how they differ in their meaning, potential usecases, complexity, grammar, etc. It helps with vocabulary as well as the “thinking in German” part, as languages differ greatly in the ways they package the same message and taking a comparative approach helps greatly with being able to (casually) converse later. Having a fellow learner or a fluent speaker give you multiple variations of the same thing and analyze the differences for/with you would be a godsend for this approach.
Read as much good, entertaining, engrossing, addictive fiction as you can.
For example if you like sci-fi, read The Expanse series. It’s 9 books. Thousands and thousands of pages, and it’s all entertaining.
Doing this will make you better at composing sentences of all types, short, long, simple, complex, future tense, past tense, complex construction, you’ll encounter hundreds of examples of each when you read a novel.
My Spanish and especially my French are like 1000% better if I have had a little alcohol to drink. It’s not an awesome tool and I don’t use it anymore, but it definitely helps build confidence that I kept after drinking.
Eh. This is stupid don’t do this.
A friend of mine who was learning English said that translating song lyrics from her native language into English really helped, 'cause you have to kind of get the meaning across and not just a literal translation of the words. Dunno if it works for everyone but she swore by it!
That requires you to interact with music in your native language which for people from most countries would be rather unpleasant
I think that singing English songs would be very, very helpful. It forces you to use the phrasing, pronunciation, and emphasis of a native English speaker.
I think that’d only help improve your confidence, because you could so easily be translating wrong thinking you’ve done it right, then establishing what you’ve wrongly said as a habit.
If you’re the kind of person to think in words, try to practice thinking in English.
As someone who has studied and speaks multiple languages, the only way to get better at speaking is to do it. For sentence formation and such, talking to yourself or narrating your day can help. For conversations, you basically need conversations.
This advice is also true for reading; to get better at reading, read me (which I think applies most if your native and target languages use different writing systems. I can read and pronounce Finnish, for instance, but won’t know what more than two or three words mean. I find it far more difficult reading Japanese even though I speak it well enough to do basically anything I need to in the language).
Sounds like you just need to practice. Maybe find a friend who can video call you a few times a week just to chat until you’re feeling confident?
yes most likely. thank you!! i also need to read more to expand my vocabulary
I teach English as a foreign language and if any of my students wrote the same way you do I’d cry with joy. You have no problems with accuracy but if you’re having trouble speaking then it’s fluency you need a hand with. Conversation classes would be a good place to start or as someone mentioned just chatting to someone over the phone or zoom.
Also if you really want to expand your vocabulary, try learning lists of phrasal verbs. Even my most advanced students find them difficult, but native speakers use them all the time so it helps with understanding and will make your English sound more natural.
noooo i don’t have a problem with fluency. i just don’t know what to say!! when i think of words in my mind. i have no idea how to say them. i don’t know of any cool or good phrases in english and when i read in english. i usually struggle with reading some words and i end up reading something else entirely. hmmmm… and thank you so much for that
Maybe watch some movies and steal good lines. When I hear someone use a phrase that I like I steal that and try to add it into my vocabulary.
I don’t know what language you natively speak, but I would love to learn! Pm me if you’re interested and we can call and just talk. That’s typically the best way to learn the finer details of a language, just speak with a native speaker regularly. As far as grammar and vocabulary, though it doesn’t always show in my comments, I’m quite adept.I also used to be a tutor for a ton of people, although I never taught anyone English, so I’m quite good at teaching and communicating as well.
thank you very much!! i speak spanish natively. and that’s really good. i hope those years of being a tutor have given you a lot of knowledge and experience!!!
your vocabulary is fine. your active vocabulary needs to grow. that’s why you can passively understand most of what you read and hear. your production of the language is what you need to improve.
that’s practice. Speak as much as you can.
I recommend reading with a Kindle or other e-reader so you can look up unknown words as quickly as possible.
On the kindle paperwhite, pressing your finger for a couple seconds will pull up the dictionary entry for that word. Sometimes instead of the dictionary it shows the wikipedia article entry if it’s a proper noun.
I read in Spanish on my kindle paperwhite because it’s about 20-50 times faster to look up a word on the screen than it is to switch to a physical dictionary.
As had been said - practice. It’s how native speakers of a language get good at it.
You can improve your vocabulary, comprehension and accent by watching TV shows and movies (I remember meeting Dutch kids on holiday who I thought were American as they learn so much from the screen), and grammar and the like can come from reading. However, that ease of conversation and the speed of your recall of words just comes from talking a lot. Try finding an intermediate to advanced language class where they insist on people talking in that language all the time.
