Top tips to read and speak English like a native speaker-Develop your Vocabulary

Practice Spoken English - Develop your Vocabulary-Through Newspapers

 
It’s a common advice that we receive from many others to develop the language or speak fluently in the language of our choice in this case English. If you happen to ask someone for advice the very next moment they would say is “Read newspaper” or few others would say “Read newspaper in front of the mirror”



Reading a newspaper is an excellent way to practice spoken English no disagreement about it. Most newspapers use important English words, it will give you many colloquial, political, scientific, economic and technical words.

However, using a newspaper to study spoken English will require (some additional effort) that you do more than merely reading it.

<I suggest you to have 26 or more white sheets (additional sheets), and label each sheet with one alphabet each, thereby when you encounter a new word write that word in the sheet destined for it. For e.g. if you come across suggest as the new word write it on the sheet labelled “S” and all “S” words will fall on this sheet.
<Say you are practising a newspaper article of about 50 words, you may find 7-10 new words, so practise these 7-10 words for the next 6 days, i.e. one or 2 new words in a sentence each day. Revise & recollect the meaning on the 7^th day. Now start with a new article next week and do this for 3 weeks and pool all the 20~30 words in the last week and by the end of the month you should be able to pronounce, spell, use in multiple sentences, like a native speaker. So, follow the same strategy for a year and you’ll be surprised to have learnt 120~180 new words… always keep monitoring your practice, numbers will determine your progress.


Now let’s focus on the following tips while learning English through newspapers.

• Select the article: Cut or Print an article from a newspaper or website. (Always select newspapers from the country where you are living, you could connect it easily)
• Read Consistently: one article for a week or until you familiarise with the words.
• Read Aloud: Firstly, just read the article aloud. - A scientific theory states that reading aloud speeds up the learning process of the new language, let the volume be 20% more than the known language, for e.g. if you are speaking Tamil / Hindi at the decibel of 35Hz let the practice of English be 40~45Hz.
• Read Aloud: secondly read the same article again for meaning looking for new vocabulary words. If you do not understand a sentence, stop and figure out exactly what it means, focus on getting the meaning of the word. (Remember-Think in English). If a word you do not know is used more than twice in an article, put a check (ü) by it for special study.

• Look for meaning: If you are unable to get the meaning relating it with the context there is always a dictionary. Whenever you read a word you do not know, stop and look it up in your own language English dictionary. {English-English-Tamil (known language)}
• Develop database: Your own vocabulary list: Write the new English words that you just learn and then write the meaning of the word in your own language, citing the sentence from the article.
• Focus on conceptual meaning: If some of the meanings you have written in your notebook do not make sense in the article, lookup for the word again in your dictionary and see if it has other meanings. Write the meaning in your notebook that makes the most sense as a second meaning for that word for that context. For e.g “SET” is the word in English that has vast definitions or wide range of usage.
• The stage was set before the ministers arrived.
• I don’t understand the set theorem.
• Can you give me a set of books?
• Do 4 sets of push-ups.
• He won the tennis match in two consecutive sets.
• The sun is set, we all can play now.
• These are new documents, can you return the old set?
• My TV set is giving trouble.
• Cement becomes harder when set. And more…

• Familiarise the new words: After you finish reading the article and identified the new words, review the meaning of all the new vocabulary words you wrote in your notebook. Study these words enough so that you know what they mean when you read the article.
• Fluency: Now read the entire article aloud for fluency. Practise reading the article as smoothly as possible without stammering or stopping. Read it aloud twice, thrice, until you are familiar with the sentence. Remember the goal - Our purpose is pronounce it clearly so that a native English speaker could easily understand what you are saying.
• Imitate: For more fluency practice, continue reading the article aloud until you can read it at the same speed that an English speaker talks. Practice until your pronunciation sounds like that of an English speaker.
• Avoid Nouns: Abstain writing names of places or people in your notebook though it may be new, however use them to construct sentences with the new vocabulary.
• Investigate: If you still cannot figure out the meaning of a sentence, it may be because two or three words are used together as an expression. Try to determine the meaning of expressions. Look for similar expressions in other articles. If you cannot determine the meaning of an expression, you may need to ask an English speaking person to help you.
• Parts of Speech: Identify expressions as you read. Use a special mark to identify them in the articles. This is discussed in detail visit here.
• Practise: Select other newspaper articles and continue reading aloud while you look for new vocabulary words. When you find a word in your notebook that you have already checked (ü), place a second check (üü) by it. Any word in your notebook with two checks should be memorized as an important word to know.
• Frequently review the English words in your notebook. Try using each word in a sentence. Use these new words when you talk with an English speaker.