This one piece of advice from Vinh Giang boosted my confidence as a communicator
A year ago, I think it was a month before my TOEFL exam when I felt completely lost because despite studying from an English-medium school for my whole life, I cannot speak English fluently. I could understand things; I had thoughts in my head, but when I tried to speak… it just didn’t come out right. I will just ramble out words
It was because throughout my life I never spoke English with anybody because it was never needed. In school you just had to pass the exams. At home, my parents speak in our native language, the same with my friends, so I never spoke in English, and when I had to give the TOEFL, I was feeling disgusted due to low grades because everyone told me it's a simple exam, you just need to know basic English, and you know as you studied in an English-medium school.
Then I came across this advice from Vinh Giang. (for those who don't know he is a famous magician turned speaking coach on YouTube.) In most of his videos He kept repeating this one thing:
record yourself speaking for 5 minutes every day
convert it into text
and review it
And do it "Daily"
I said, "Let's give it a try. I had a month; I will give 5 minutes daily to do this."
The first few days were really painful to watch. But then slowly I realized, Now I know what the problem is, and after doing it consistently for a while… something changed.
I started noticing my patterns.
I started correcting myself while speaking.
I felt more in control.
In just 20 days, I felt a lot more confident in speaking
Not only that, I even scored 28/30 in speaking test
I have understood one thing:
if you really want to improve your speaking, then "practice." nothing else.
BTW, I also built a tool to practice speaking in this way; if anyone wants to try it, they can try it here: Spokena
Anyways, what I wanted to say was if anyone wants to improve their speaking start with this simple advice of recording yourself and reviewing it and do it consistently