This is Part 5 of an interview I had with a student who learned fluent and natural spoken English. She discusses the things she did to improve her conversational English. I have written the interview exactly how she said it. You can listen to the audio by listening to it on our samespeak english speaking site.
So do you ah think by practicing a lot with, well native speakers of English I guess, helped you…
It helped a lot and it’s not only native speakers, it’s also, um if you go somewhere and you have foreigners and the only language that you can speak to be understood is English you will learn a lot more than if you were in France speaking English and as soon as you don’t understand something you switch back to French (yeah) so when you’re in total immersion there is no going back to French or your first, your native language…there is no such thing as that so…(right)
The student makes a good point here – she feels that she learned English faster because she could only communicate in that language and was not able to slip back into her native language to express herself. This can be frustrating at times when you are learning a language but you will improve if you keep practicing and using the target language as much as possible. This is particularly relevant to accelerating your ability to think, speak and listen in English.
