Why You Can't SPEAK English + How to Fix It

You can understand English, but when you try to speak to other people, the words just don't come to mind. Does that sound like you? If so, I'm going to show you how to fix that problem in this video, so that you can speak English easily at school, at work, with your friends, anywhere. If that's your goal, I hope you'll watch this whole video, because if you follow my advice, I promise that your English-speaking skills will improve very quickly. Let's get started. Most English learners make a huge mistake without knowing it, often for years. They think that if they memorize lots and lots of words and grammar rules, they will eventually become fluent. And so they buy textbooks and courses and watch English movies, and maybe even read books in English. But after all that time and effort, they still find that it's hard to speak comfortably. They need to keep translating words and sentences in their head. So why is that? It's because they've learned English passively. They're taking lots of information in, but they're only putting a tiny amount out. They don't practice speaking out and writing out their thoughts. So when it comes time to talk with another person, their minds don't know what to say, and they get stuck. But you can absolutely change that by learning in a different way, a better way. And I'm going to tell you how to do that right now. Now, as we said, there are many different ways to put English words and grammar into your brain. You might watch YouTube videos or take a course or listen to podcasts. But how can you help those words come out? Well, the first step is to focus on individual topics. Don't try to learn all of English at once. It's too much. So you might focus on talking about your family or work or food. Those are all different topics, right? And I want you to get a notebook or open a Google Doc. And at the top of the page, put the name of a topic that you want to speak about confidently. And let's say it's food. So on that page, you're going to practice building sentences about food that you might really say. So let's start with something very simple. I like pizza. Great, easy. Now we're going to build on it. I like to eat pizza. We've added a verb. Excellent. Let's keep going. I like to eat pizza for lunch. Okay, we've added some more detail. And then what about, I like to eat mushroom pizza for lunch. And maybe you can be even more specific. I like to eat two slices of mushroom pizza for lunch. Do you see what we're doing? We're helping our brains to practice building advanced English sentences. And by taking the time to write this out, you're gathering a list of useful phrases that your brain can recall when you're talking about food. So the next time someone asks you, what do you like to eat for lunch? You won't go, I like pizza. You'll simply say, I like to eat two slices of mushroom pizza for lunch. It's easy. Now, how do you find the right words to build these kinds of useful sentences? Well, let me show you. This is a completely free website called ASNIC.com. And it's an English collocation dictionary. So what we're going to do is type in a word here that we want to make a sentence with. And let's try lunch. So we type it in. And then we get a list of words that are commonly used with lunch. A cold lunch, a delicious lunch, a hearty lunch. And look down here. We've got a lunch box, a lunch break, a lunch date. These are all phrases that English speakers use regularly. And you should practice adding them to your sentences. I ate a hearty lunch this afternoon. Or my daughter brings a lunch box to school. And this will help you learn new words like hearty and lunch box in a much more natural way. Because rather than just memorizing them from a list, you're connecting them to your own life experience, which makes it much easier to remember them when you're speaking. So you're building all these useful sentences about food or work or family, whatever it is. And once you come up with 15 or 20 of them, you're ready to start speaking about your topic out loud. And you're going to start by speaking to yourself. And I know that might sound a little strange, but trust me, it's very helpful. So again, let's say your topic is food. You're going to have a conversation with yourself about food. You're going to ask yourself questions and then answer them. What food do I like? What food do I not like? Why do I not like it? How does that food taste? And if you can't think of enough questions, just open up chat GPT and say, ask me 20 questions about food and you'll get a list. There you go. Now your job here is to find ways to use all the different words and phrases that you've written down. Try combining phrases, mixing words around, be playful with them. And over time, as you keep adding sentences to your notebook and speaking them out loud, you'll find that you start to feel comfortable talking about food or whatever it is, because your mind now has these words and phrases to call on. And they all come from experience, not from some list of random words. And if you want to go one step further with this, you can join my website for learners, English with Brian. I post new videos and learning materials every week. And you can also join my private live streams and ask me all of your questions. If you use the link below, you'll get one month free. And after that, it's just five dollars a month. I hope to see you there. OK, but what about talking to other people? How can we make that feel easy? Well, for most learners, the hardest thing about speaking English isn't that they haven't studied enough or that they don't know enough words. It's fear, the fear of not knowing what to say or of saying the wrong thing. And I've certainly felt that when I speak Mandarin or Arabic or Japanese with other people. I get nervous. But here's the thing. Every mistake that you make speaking English will only help you get better. And in fact, the only way to get better is by making mistakes. So don't put the pressure on yourself to be perfect. Embrace your mistakes. Welcome your mistakes. That's step one. Step two is to find a practice buddy. English is the most widely spoken language in the world. So no matter where you live, with a little bit of effort, you can find someone to speak with. You can search on Facebook groups or WhatsApp. You can use meetup.com. Anything. Just find a partner to practice with. And step three is to use these five words a lot. Who, what, where, why and when. Pick a topic with your practice buddy and keep asking each other those five questions. So if the topic is food, you might ask, who do you usually eat with? What's your favorite dessert? Where do you buy groceries? Why don't you like Brussels sprouts? When do you eat dinner? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Those five questions will give you all the practice you need to improve your speaking skills quickly. So just keep asking them and keep going. If you enjoyed this video, please leave a comment and hit the subscribe button if you haven't already. Even those little actions help me keep making these videos and I really do appreciate your support. Thanks for watching. Good luck with your studies and I'll see you soon.