Top 17 Strategies for Improving English Communication Skills

Movies not only help improve pronunciation but also grammar and vocabulary. By listening to Americans or Britons, you can learn to speak like them, repeating and incorporating it into your own sentences. This boosts your confidence when communicating with native speakers.

Additionally, movie situations often reflect everyday communication scenarios. Observe how characters ask and answer questions, communicate with each other, etc. Remember these situations, their dialogues, or even mimic the lines of characters. You'll be surprised at your progress!

If you can pronounce like a native, master sentence structures, but lack sufficient vocabulary, you may face significant challenges in communication. Often, in conversations, we prefer delving deep into a specific topic rather than constantly jumping from one to another. However, without enough vocabulary, you might interrupt the dialogue, resulting in failed communication or the need to find another topic to 'engage' your conversation partner.

To succeed in communication, you need to regularly enrich your vocabulary. Every day, explore a topic of interest, discover new words, memorize them, and then combine this with the monologue approach mentioned earlier to learn how to use these words effectively!

This method may sound strange and amusing! However, it not only helps you review previously learned material but also cultivates the habit of using English anytime, anywhere. You can dedicate an hour each day, create a communication scenario, and then practice self-speaking.

It's better to stand in front of a mirror to practice speaking; this way, you can see whether your mouth movements are correct or not, increasing your confidence when facing others. Additionally, you should record your dialogue because after listening to the recording, you can easily identify your mistakes.

Once you're confident enough, communicating with a native speaker is the best way to assess your abilities. Head to places where tourists often gather, and don't worry—foreigners will be delighted to see your enthusiasm for English. They will be happy to help you.

Talking to them, you'll realize your proficiency level, identify areas for improvement, and they can easily point out mistakes you might be making. So, don't hesitate whenever you want to talk to them. With a bright smile, confidently approach them and say, 'Excuse me! Can you talk with me for a moment? I need to practice speaking English!'

For effective communication, you need at least one person to listen to you! While self-practice is good, it has a few drawbacks—it can be boring, and it's challenging to spot mistakes. So, why hesitate? Find like-minded people who share your interests. You can choose a common topic for discussion, prepare for it in advance, and then meet to discuss the predetermined topic.

Talk about topics everyone loves and is interested in. When someone disagrees with pronunciation, grammar, or word usage, you can learn and correct mistakes together. Learning becomes even better with a language partner, doesn't it?

Throughout the journey of learning English communication, many learners acquire vocabulary in a scattered manner, lacking consistency in topics. Irregular usage often leads to the situation of remembering one word while forgetting another. That's why it's advisable to learn vocabulary, idioms, and communication patterns related to a specific topic, such as 'Family,' 'Work,' 'Fashion,' or 'Travel'... Comprehensive learning within a single theme helps you memorize more easily and for a longer duration compared to learning isolated words across various topics.

When engaging in conversation with someone, we often talk based on a theme. It could be Movies, Cuisine,... learning vocabulary by topic allows you to confidently communicate with foreigners. It not only facilitates easy feedback and connection with their stories but also demonstrates your understanding of that specific theme/field.

If you're a student or a professional with limited time for English practice, make the most of your “dead time.” Utilize those empty moments like when you're on the bus, having lunch, washing dishes, taking a shower, cleaning the house, doing laundry, walking... by tuning into radio channels such as CNN, BBC to actively listen.

This passive listening helps you better perceive pronunciation nuances, intonation from native speakers, and gradually your speech patterns will resemble those of foreigners.

This is one of the highly effective techniques that any proficient English speaker knows and applies extensively. The technique is quite simple, just as its name suggests: Listen, Read, and Repeat.

• First, when listening to content, try to listen without translating into Vietnamese, understanding the main ideas.
• Then, listen and read the transcript (record of the words spoken in the listening).
• Listening may seem straightforward, but it is a crucial process. While listening and reading again, your brain will connect the heard sound of a word with the characters of that word. This process helps us review known words, learn new words in audio form, and gradually shift many words from passive to active vocabulary.
• The final step in this technique is reading aloud.

When reading aloud, completely mimic the speaker's intonation, stresses, and pauses. By doing so, you engage multiple senses—hearing, reading, speaking. The neural connections in your English learning will significantly improve when you regularly employ this technique.

Listening is indeed beneficial, but if the listening content is too challenging, or the topic is too specialized, extensive listening only reaches the level of familiarity with sounds. However, if you keep listening without understanding for a long time, it can lead to boredom and, for beginners, even fear of English, like trying to run before learning to crawl.

When listening to content, the ideal scenario for developing listening skills is that you should understand about 80% of the content.

Whether it's in the form of a radio program, podcast, movie, or TV show, it shouldn't be too difficult. If you understand only about 60% of the content, you will likely feel frustrated and lose interest in learning. If you understand 100% of the listening content, it might make you yawn or lose focus, also making it uninteresting. Try to find listening materials suitable for your level—not too easy, not too challenging—with the target of around 80% understanding, which is ideal.

If you're not very confident in your language skills, start with simple children's books. A 'tip' to make reading easier is to choose books you've read in Vietnamese.

The golden rule to maintain this habit is: Only read books that you find truly interesting. Additionally, choose books suitable for your current English proficiency level.

What you need to do is:

• Persistently listen, listen, listen and write down what you hear
• Learn vocabulary
• Practice speaking by repeating the written paragraph

This method requires a great deal of determination and perseverance because for a 3-minute listening, you might have to listen 10 – 20 times to hear and transcribe about 80% – 90% of the content.

However, the compensation is worthwhile. You will quickly memorize new words, and your writing and spelling skills will improve significantly. This method is suitable for those aiming for exams that require writing skills, such as TOEFL, IELTS.

Regularly writing meanings and examples of new words is the most effective way to increase your English vocabulary. Moreover, it helps you remember longer and pronounce more accurately.

When your 'vocabulary bank' is quite substantial, use it to write a short story. This is the most basic grammar exercise that can help you learn how to construct sentences in English, remember the meanings of words, and use them in different contexts.

Depending on the time you allocate to this exercise, you can choose to incorporate 10-15 words into the story. Don't forget to build a meaningful plot. Once completed, you can share it with friends or ask a teacher for feedback and corrections.

While reading, a complex process occurs in the brain. One of them is seeking meaning correlations among the words you encounter.

Changing the language on high-tech products you frequently use, such as laptops, phones, TVs, is a practical and effective way to enhance your English vocabulary. The brain will automatically memorize new words by associating them with the functions on your phone or laptop.

This is a quite effective method to improve pronunciation, memorize new words, and understand unique word usage and sentence patterns.

When singing, pay attention to new words and interesting sentence structures. Write down their meanings and usage on a sticky note, then place it in a visible area. Each time you see it, take a moment to recite and commit them to memory.

Social media platforms are excellent places to hone your writing skills. If writing 200-300-character statuses feels challenging, start with short comments in English. This is an initial step for you to get acquainted with expressing your opinions through words.

Usually, when you speak, you may not be able to listen to your voice and tone. Therefore, record yourself whenever practicing English speaking so you can listen again and identify errors in your pronunciation or intonation.

This is a widely used training method, especially suitable for those who are just starting to practice and may not be confident enough to speak English in front of others.

Instead of searching for information, data on the Internet using the Vietnamese language, you should cultivate the habit of searching in English to enhance your language reasoning skills. Using English for even such small tasks, after a certain period, you will notice a significant improvement in your proficiency. Give it a try!