You can improve your spoken English if you practice regularly and follow these simple techniques.

1. Listen

The first step in improving your speaking skills is actually working on your listening. 

Listening to English has several benefits. Firstly, it allows you to pick up new words, phrases, and ways to respond in conversations. Secondly, listening provides opportunities to understand pronunciation, how some words are omitted when speaking, how some are joined together, the rhythm, the intonation, and the sounds of language. 

There are many free resources available. You can start with short English clips or videos such as your favorite English TV show or YouTube channel. Listen to a clip and notice carefully what the characters are saying. Repeat any dialogues or phrases that interest you. Replay the same clip until you understand every word. You could also turn on the subtitles or look at the transcript of the video if available and practice saying the dialogues with the characters.

English podcasts are another popular way to listen to English and improve your listening and speaking skills. Podcasts are short audio clips that are available online on various topics. They are usually released regularly as episodes on a larger theme or range of topics. 

The third most interesting way to improve your listening and speaking is by listening to audio books. Audio books have become very popular over the past couple of years. They are great for people who have no time to invest in reading books. They are also a wonderful way to perfect your pronunciation. 

Finally, nothing can beat actual English conversations with people. Listen to your colleagues speaking in English, listen to your boss giving presentations and conduct meetings in English, listen to your teacher speaking in English – all of these real-life conversations will help you become a better listener and a better speaker of the language. 

2. Imitate

Now that you have listened to lots of English conversations, it’s time for some imitation. Imitating or copying someone is a wonderful to improve your speaking skills. 

Another benefit of imitation is that it will help you become more accurate in English without having to learn grammar rules. With lots of practice you will begin to remember chunks of words and phrases. This helps in remembering word patterns in a sentence and how certain words go with others. 

To effectively improve your speaking skills, you need to follow these steps:

• Listen: Pick your favorite video or audio clip from any of the sources provided in the earlier section of this article. Play the audio and listen to it carefully. Play as many times as you like to understand how each word is spoken.
• Repeat and record: After playing the audio, repeat saying the words and conversations exactly as you heard. Pay special attention to the intonation, stress, and rhythm of language. Record yourself while repeating the words. Recording will provide you an opportunity to listen to yourself and self-correct. So, do not skip this step. 
• Compare: Listen to the audio again and compare it with your recording. Does it match? Note down changes that you may need to make.
• Correct: Repeat the entire process again until you get better and more accurate. 

As this process involves listening to the same audio clip several times, choose a topic that is interesting to you. If you stick with the routine, you will see improvement in your pronunciation, vocabulary, accuracy, and overall speaking abilities in no time!

3. Read

Reading is yet another important skill to have when learning a language. Whether you prefer a novel or an article, reading a few minutes every day will help you acquire new vocabulary. 

The most common reason why people hesitate with reading is that it takes quite a lot of time to read a book from start to finish. However, when learning English, reading even for a few minutes is greatly beneficial. Short articles or notes in English are great for this. They only take a few minutes to read and are quite easy to find.

You can start with materials you find every day. Think of notes and memos at work, pamphlets and brochures at your local supermarket, or notices and safety instructions in the elevators – wherever you are there is always something to read.

4. Reflect

Reflection is a very useful step in improving your speaking skills. Reflection is nothing but asking questions to think about what you learnt, how you learnt, what progress you see, what could be done differently, and how to change the way you learn to allow progress.

It is important to reflect on your language learning abilities on a daily basis, especially if you are learning a new language independently. Reflection is another way to provide yourself some good feedback in the absence of a teacher.

Say you had a great conversation in English. After your conversation is over, take a moment to reflect. Ask yourself questions such as the following: 

• How was it?
• How much did you understand the other person?
• How confident did you feel in responding to the questions asked or continuing the conversation? 
• How comfortable did you feel about the topic of discussion? 
• How quickly were you able to think of the right thing to say or the right word to say? 
• Did you come across any unfamiliar words? 
• What did the other person do when they couldn’t think of the right word?

Thinking about these questions will help you see your strengths more clearly and gain confidence. You will also find opportunities for improvement and specific areas to work on. 

You could also reflect after reading or listening to something in English. Ask yourself these questions. 

• What are some of the key points you learned from the article or podcast?
• Can you summarize them in your own words? 
• Are there some words or ideas that were new to you? 
• Can you use the words and sentences around the new word to guess the meaning of this new word? Look up a dictionary soon after to confirm if you really got the meaning right. 

Recording your reflections in a notebook after every learning session will help you see your progress over time.