I started learning English when I was 10 years old. However, after finishing high school, all I could do was making simple greetings. It was intriguing that most of my friends shared the same problem. Since I was a university student, I started re-learn English. My goal was that I could speak English clearly and easily to understand. If you have the same target, I hope you can find helpful tips in my post.

Focus on improving your pronunciation

Back then, most people when they heard what I said, even a simple word they had to ask me again and vice versa. So I realized that pronunciation plays a vital role in acquiring a new language. If not, people hardly understand what you mean. Some sources I highly recommend you to begin with:

  • The Sound of English: learningenglish-pronunciation – an initial step to improve your pronunciation and take 3 – 5 hours to finish all the episodes. You can re-watch these episodes later to cross-check your pronunciation and continue to improve from there.
  • VOA Learning English: VOA Learning English_Youtube – an American channel which helps you practice English every day. I suggest you should imitate each video for 20 minutes again and again for one month. After roughly 21 days, you can find your English have a significant improvement.

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Relax and enjoy English stuff

Depends on your hobbies you should choose one type of entertainment (music, movies or books) or combine them all to learn English with joy. By immersing yourself in the source of learning and relaxing, you find yourself not only acquire English naturally but also can understand the culture.

Among plenty of options, some of my recommendations are:

You can learn songs and record by yourself! It works to me 🙂 You can find your mistakes by yourself.

Just start talking, do not wait

Just remember how kids pick up their mother tongue, they do not begin with writing or reading. They simply listen, observe, then repeat others. Yes, the approach is applied into when you acquire a new language. Let’s start from today. You can find someone to talk with you. It may be face-to-face conversations, using an online platform, or joining an English club. All you need is to be CONFIDENT and PRACTICE MAKE PERFECT! We are not native speakers, we may make mistakes and it’s fine. 

When I was in Hoi An, I just went to the ancient town and tried to talk with foreigners as much as I can. It was easy peasy. Truth was that I got butterflies in my stomach every time I did. However, I was braver each time, the same with my English speaking ability. Another truth was the more you know about a language sometimes bring you more difficult to speak. You are prone to mistakes because you have known too much. That’s why it is even more important to grow all your language skills to some certain level together.

Keep in your mind that:

“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great”

― Zig Ziglar

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There are so many other tips/tricks you can take beside what I have shared. Additionally, you can find out more interesting tips via this link: https://trinhthai.com/category/digital-career-talk/.

I do hope you enjoy the ride and find your own ways to grow your English skill.

Good luck and stay safe.

The original post was posted years ago on my blog at below

How to speak English naturally and smoothly

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