How to Improve Your Spoken English

r fear of losing face. 
In contrast, only 12.12% of successful learners avoid speaking in English. The 
results strongly suggest that if you want to speak English well, you must 
overcome your fear of losing face and begin speaking English with others. 
I have always found this ironic. Students attempt to save face by hiding their 
poor English skills, while this prevents them from gaining face by improving 
these skills. Which is better? To save face by hiding your mistakes? Or to 
gain a lot of face by improving your English skills, even though you may lose 
a little face along the way? The answer is obvious. The honorable thing to do 
is overcome your fear! 
How to Improve Your Spoken English 
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18
LEARNING GRAMMAR 
I suggest that you will acquire language best when you study in such a 
way that you 1) listen to large amounts of comprehensible input, 2) have 
opportunities to use the target language to communicate with others, and 3) 
support your learning with some grammatical learning (focused on making 
input comprehensible and developing awareness). 
In days old, teachers and students spent countless hours talking about 
grammar. Often these students had a lot of knowledge about the language, 
but little ability to use it. In recent times, some teachers (mostly in the west) 
have claimed that grammar teaching is useless. Grammar will be learned 
naturally through listening to comprehensible input and interacting with 
others. Often students taught in this way can communicate very well, but 
often do not speak accurately. What is the right way to study grammar? 
I believe grammar study should focus on two areas: 1) making input 
comprehensible and 2) developing awareness to help the learner notice the 
grammar of the input. 
First, a little knowledge of grammar can make input a lot more 
comprehensible. For example, when I studied Chinese, I had great difficulty 
with the passive voice. When I first heard it in a listening passage, I had no 
idea what the sentence meant. It was completely incomprehensible to me, 
and therefore simply noise. Now, if I listened to hours of input, I might have 
been able to eventually learn the passive voice. But that is too long and 
difficult. Instead, the textbook gave me a little information on passive voice 
sentences using “ba” and “bei”. After reading the explanation, I could 
comprehend these sentences. A little knowledge of the grammar made the 
input comprehensible. I went on to learn the passive voice very well and 
much quicker than if I had not studied any grammar. 
Second, when learners are concerned only with communicating their 
meaning, they often do not need to be grammatically accurate in order to 
accomplish their goals. For the passive voice, I needed to know the grammar 
in order to understand what was being said. But for other aspects of language 
this is not the case. For example, in English, subject-verb agreement is 
completely unnecessary to comprehend the meaning of the sentence. Thus, 
because a student can subconsciously ignore the grammar, he may not learn 
to speak accurately. This phenomenon is called “fossilization.” Fossilization is 
when a student, though he may speak fluently, continues to make the same 
mistakes over and over again even though he has heard the correct way to 
say them a thousand times. 
How to Improve Your Spoken English 
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19
Some scholars believe that when students learn about grammar, this 
knowledge can help them “notice” (pay attention to) not only the meaning of 
the input, but also its grammatical form. Even though they might not yet 
speak the form correctly; if they are aware of the correct form, they can then 
“notice” it in the input. Eventually, after “noticing” a grammatical feature 
enough, they will use it correctly. 
Although unable to test this idea of noticing directly, I wondered if there was 
a difference between successful and non-successful students in the amount of 
time they spent studying grammar. 
Question: On an average 
DAY of study, how much 
time did you spend 
studying English 
GRAMMAR? 
A: 
0 hours 
B: 
Less than 1 
hour 
C: 
1 hour or 
more 
Successful Learners 24.24 % 66.67 % 9.09 % 
Non-successful Learners 36.36 % 30.30 % 33.33 % 
Apparently, successful learners claim to spend more time each day listening 
to English than studying grammar. Therefore, a reasonable inference is that 
the majority of successful language learners in this study use grammar in a 
subordinate role; their primary focus is on communication, using English as a 
tool to receive and send messages. 
Accordingly, if the goal is to improve your spoken English, you would do well 
not to let the memorization of grammatical rules and such activities 
dominate your English study. Rather, make listening and using the target 
language the focus of your study. I recommend studying grammar for the 
following reasons: 1) to make input comprehensible and 2) to develop 
awareness to help the learner notice the form of input and their own output. 
This may help you eventually internalize these grammatical rules rather 
than storing them up in your short-term memory where they will be quickly 
forgotten after the test. 
Remember, the advice for studying grammar here is designed to help you 
improve the accuracy of your spoken English. You may need to study 
grammar in additional ways to prepare for certain exams or writing projects. 
Tips for Grammar Study 
• Study grammar to help you understand input. 
• Study grammar to help you notice grammatical features in 
input. 
How to Improve Your Spoken English 
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20
• Do not be frustrated that you can not apply the grammar rules 
you learn in spontaneous speech. This is perfectly normal. 
Continue to notice these troublesome features in input. 
CONCLUSION 
In conclusion, I confess my knowledge of SLA theory is incomplete and the 
scope of my study is limited. I do not claim to have a magic formula for 
language learning. Nevertheless, based on theory and data from real 
successful language learners, I suggest you will improve your English skills if 
you do the following: 
• Move beyond a motivation that simply desires to pass a test to one that 
views language as a key that unlocks opportunities. 
• Listen to comprehensible input on a daily basis. 
• Overcome fear of losing face. Find and take advantage of opportunities 
to use English to communicate with both native and proficient non-
native speakers. 
• Study grammar in a way that supports the purpose of language, 
communication, not as an end in itself. 
Do not fear losing face. Fear poor English skills! Do not complain about your 
environment! Do the best you can in the environment you are in! As the 
Chinese National Anthem declares, “Stand up . . . Stand up . . . Stand up!” 
Stand up and study English with the right attitude in the right way! 
How to Improve Your Spoken English 
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21
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How to Improve Your Spoken English 
 This document may be reproduced and distributed freely. However, the contents must not be changed. 
22
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