Filed Under: English fluency, Speaking English

How do I speak classy English?

July 23, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

How do you sound classy when you speak English?

Good question.

Let’s look at the dictionary definition:

Classy: adjective
Stylish and sophisticated.

Speaking English well requires far more than just English. You’ve also got to have intelligent and interesting things to talk about.

Knowledge.

Stories to tell.

Ultimately, no matter how fluent your English is… boring is boring.

So it’s not about learning big, complicated words or rare grammar constructions. Instead, the first step is developing a stylish and classy personality (whatever that means to you, in your personal situation). Once you’ve got that, it’s all about communicating with other people in a natural, clear way.

Hope that helps.

I send free daily email tips to help you speak better English — you can get them by going here.

Best,
Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: English fluency, Improve in English, Speaking English

How can I improve my English when I speak fast?

July 22, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

Well, the brutally honest and probably not what you want to hear, answer to this is: SLOW THE FUCK DOWN.




You see, there’s this myth that native speakers of English speak very, very fast. And because you believe this myth, you imitate what they do, so you speak English like a teenager driving a car down country lanes at a maniac’s speed.

But this myth isn’t true at all. Most native speakers don’t actually speak really fast.

Sometimes, to non-natives, they only sound like they’re speaking fast. But what they’re actually doing is chunking and articulating their speech well.

And, you know, speaking fast doesn’t mean you’re actually fluent at all.

There are a couple of reasons why people may speak too fast in English:

  1. Their natural rate of speech (some do speak fast, some don’t).
  2. Their first language has a high average rate of speech compared to English. (e.g. Italian)
  3. Their fear of making mistakes (therefore they speak fast to cover it up).
  4. They want to impress people (they won’t).

When you talk about covering your mistakes and impressing people to sound fluent, what you’re actually doing is the complete opposite of that. People won’t understand you when you speak English fast and incoherently.

So instead of speaking fast, speak CLEARLY.

Focus on the clarity of your speech and of your speaking.

Work on the naturalness of your speech (native-like selection), which is speaking in high-frequency, native-like chunks of English. That way, you’ll sound better when you speak English.

If you want to learn more about how to speak better English, have a look at the free training I made. It goes into detail about how native speakers speak, and what learning (and speaking) in chunks means.

Hope this helps.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: English fluency

Hard-coding your English so it just runs on autopilot

December 25, 2020 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

Just over a year ago I ran the Taipei Marathon, which was particularly difficult as I was having several “daily issues” at the time.

And I sent an email about it to the Doing English Daily Newsletter, as I do with most things.

Anyway, one of my Top MEFA Girls replied with this:

Oh wow, Julian congratulations.

Thank you for sharing with us the details of this experience. It’s so great to know that once we reach a level our overall performance won’t be affected by daily issues.
Congrats again and have safe travels.

And my reply:

Thank you!

I’ll be honest and say there was a point I desperately wanted to quit… but REALLY glad I didn’t!

The “daily issues” she’s referring to were my super-hectic schedule, insomnia and overall lack of training (I did LOADS in the months before, just not in the weeks before).

But she’s totally right.




Get the ‘Good Shadowing Guide’ to build physical fluency fast here.

With any skill, once the motor skills and neural routines are hard-coded, they run largely automatically.

Yes, more sleep, rest and training probably would have shaved a few extra minutes off my time. But those extra benefits would have been minimal.

The months of preparation beforehand, building muscle, practising controlling my breathing (the big breakthrough for me that time) and doing a shit-ton of interval training to build stamina ensured that.

English is the same.

Factors such as how tired stressed or “out of practise” you are will make a difference. But once the hard-coded routines kick in, the English skill you’ve built will just flow on autopilot.

Well…

Assuming you’ve hard-coded the right English in the right way.

‘cos if you haven’t even done that you’re fucked.

But don’t worry: when it comes to building “muscle memory” for speaking English well, ‘shadowing” is an excellent exercise to use. Trouble is, the way many people use it is totally wrong… and so they’re just spinning their wheels and not getting anywhere with it.

Which is why I create the Good Shadowing Guide, which you can get here:

https://www.doingenglish.com/shadowing

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

P.S. Here’s a mid-race selfie: