5 Powerful Habits to Master for Success in Speaking Fluent & Natural English

If you speak with an accent or suffer from a language barrier, you might have difficulty being understood by your audience. Perhaps you feel like you're not getting the attention or respect you deserve.

People are most likely to understand and listen to someone who speaks fluent English, yet mastering the language takes time and it's not always easy to learn on your own.

To be the person that everyone can talk to effortlessly in English, learn the key elements of an accent and how to pronounce words better than before. With these habits, you'll experience less hesitation and be able to speak more comfortably in no time.

The trick is to start now.

1. Listen to yourself speaking

In order to sound more professional and improve, it's important to understand what your current way of speaking sounds like. This is an often overlooked element of pronunciation that can literally change everything.

Take a moment to record yourself speaking - take a recording of a Zoom meeting, if you like!

Listen back to the recording and write down what you notice that makes you sound unnatural.

Not sure what it is exactly?

Start by writing the words and parts that sound strange. Later, you can figure out what exactly the issue is.

2. Clarify (and remind yourself of) your goal.

This might seem a little bit obvious at first, but hear me out.

If you don’t know what you’re hoping to sound like, how can you expect to get there?

For one, be very clear on whether your goal is sounding more British, or if you’d rather speak with a North American pronunciation.

Beyond that, you’ll notice that even within regional variations, each group and person has their own way of speaking.

Of course, always be yourself, but knowing if you’d rather sound like Cardi B than Obama is a very good start.

Once you’ve done so, listen more attentively to (and speak with) people who sound like how you’d like to sound. When you speak to anyone else, notice what they do differently.

This next habit is something you definitely can’t do alone, but it’s probably the most important. Ignore everything and do only this, and you’ll have no shortage of progress.

80/20 at its finest.

If you don’t know what you’re hoping to sound like, how can you expect to get there?        

3. Get Personalized Feedback on your pronunciation.

That’s right. Listening to others is great, and listening to yourself is key, but unless you have feedback, you’re likely to end up repeating mistakes over and over again.

That’s where feedback is so key.

It’s too easy to accidentally build bad speaking habits when we think we’re doing it right.

Once you’ve figured out what you need to work on, you need to practice and make sure you’re actually making the right mouth movements at the right time.

To do this, find a very (very) patient friend who will listen to you attentively, and bribe the hell out of them.

Attentively listening and giving accurate feedback on pronunciation takes an enormous amount of patience, especially over a long time, so be sure to treat that friend well.

Of course, you can also hire professionals to help you with this.

4. Daily coordination practice and mouth training

Could you walk smoothly if you didn’t consistently move in a left-right-left-right pattern?

Unlikely!

Same goes for pronunciation. You have to make the right mouth movements in order to make the right sound.

It’s the only way.

Pronunciation is above all a physical process, so put some time aside in your day to see what happens when you touch different parts of your mouth together, try releasing air in different ways, etc.

Practice moving from one challenging sound to another, over and over.

It doesn’t have to take long - as long as you do it often.

5 minutes a day is plenty, but you can easily do it for 20 seconds 3-4 times a day as well.

5. Listen to and repeat after native speakers

Now that you’ve decided what you want to sound like, you know what you currently sound like, you have a good grasp of what happens when you move your mouth in certain ways, and you have someone to give you constant, specific and helpful feedback, all you have to do is listen!

If you live in an English-speaking country, this should be easy.

If not, just turn on your favorite podcast or TV show, then follow along!

Now, you might be thinking “This is crazy! I don’t have time for all this!”

Possible.

Personally, I’ve worked with high-level executives who succeed every day, as well students, new parents, and people in the middle of a major move.

If you already speak English on a regular basis, and you have 15 minutes per day (it doesn’t have to be all at once), there’s no reason you can’t implement these habits right away and start seeing a massive improvement within weeks (maybe even days).

Now, if you think this sounds difficult, you don’t have a patient and helpful friend, or you’re worried about not being consistent enough, that’s where I come in.

Working with us, you'll get a personalized action plan, specifically built to fit your needs, your goals and your schedule.

Part of that means the flexibility and accountability to help you focus on what's important to you - without falling back into old habits or forgetting what you've learned.

No, it doesn't take a lot of time.

Yes, it's often a lot of fun.

To find out more, check out our website and apply for a free discovery call to see how we can help.

Yours truly,

Ben Latour