Hi
I want to improve my spoken English skills .I’m not fluent in it.So, please suggest me some novels or other stuff which has a lot of dialogues. Moreover guide me with your suggestions.
Speaking skills do not come from reading. Reading is for building vocabulary. Speaking skills are developed by finding someone, native or non-native, to speak with.
I disagree. Speaking is not improved only through speaking. In fact, people who speak a lot but don’t read very much can end up with very poor spoken English. The reason is that reading teaches the learner not only vocabulary, but also collocations and various sentence structures and expressive possibilities that he could not arrive at through conversations with others. Anyone who has observed a lot of students has noticed that heavy readers speak more fluently and more correctly than those who speak a lot and read less.
I 100% agree with Jamie ,and that was the thing I wanted to say.
So anyone else who can help me in this regard?
Your request was “So, please suggest me some novels or other stuff which has a lot of dialogues.” Those will help your speaking ability no more than will watching American movies five days a week.
Jamie is right in that “heavy readers speak more fluently and more correctly than those who speak a lot and read less”-- but I disagree with his premises. Such a speaker has also spoken a lot, at least as much as the non-reading speakers; the reader has merely added some notches to his vocabulary. Reading, like listening, is a notoriously passive activity, and reading alone may build your passive vocabulary, but it will do little or nothing to improve your speaking fluency-- your ability to walk up and talk to someone in English.
I cannot judge your current speaking skills, Angelic, but I can tell you that reading instead of finding speaking opportunities will be relatively ineffective in improving them.
Micawber, I was disagreeing with your categorical statement that reading does not help people learn to speak better, and that the only thing that helps speaking is speaking. Stated as you did, it’s simply not true. Reading does help people learn to speak better, and even writing helps improve their speech.
Also, you don’t seem to understand that reading does more than improve vocabulary. It also teaches the learner grammatical structures that are not encountered in other forms of language study, and that can’t be learned just through self-directed speaking practice. It’s useful for more than just learning words.
You’re right that one can’t learn to speak without speaking, but reading does more than just build vocabulary. It’s especially necessary for people who have a bad habit of calquing from their own language when they speak.
As a passive method, it remains the poorer choice, Jamie. Readers read for content, if anything. They do not examine the grammatical structure.
You are right Mr.Micawber that reading as well as listening are passive activities.But these are helpful for non-native speakers because we don’t have native English speakers around us.We can go to the institutions which claim that they can help us being a fluent English speaker in just two months or so. But they too teach us just by giving some written material and our success lies in cramming that stuff.So ,what to do in such an environment?
Not an easy situation, especially if that’s what your language classes are like: written material to read. I can offer you this comfort: studies show that it is not critical to speak with native speakers-- if you can find a friend or acquaintance who is willing to try as hard as you to speak in English, then the level of proficiency is relatively unimportant: both will make progress.
A very good way of improving your speaking skills in English is to attend a language travel or just take a trip to an English speaking country like Great Britain or New Zealand for example. If you just think you have a very limited speaking skill you ought to visit an English speaking country on a arranged bus trip for tourists. Then you don’t “have to” speak English just if you like.
But what will happen if we get ill in an English speaking country and don’t know so much English?
/Maria