How to improve spoken English

If you are trying to improve your English speaking you absolutely need to learn the type of vocabulary that is used in daily spoken English between native speakers.  Schools and textbooks often teach a type of formal vocabulary that might be good for reading novels or the business section in a newspaper, but it’s horrible for day to day conversation.  I’ve seen so many students who are able to use many big words, but they “freeze up” when they are having a pretty basic conversation with a native speaker.  They might think the problem is they don’t spend enough time practicing speaking or they don’t have a big enough  vocabulary.  To be honest, neither of these reasons are usually true.  Students often know a lot of words but they know the wrong words.  They don’t know the vocabulary that is used 90% of the time.  If I taught you how to use just 300 new commonly used words that you don’t already know, your English would get a lot better very quickly.  The trick is that I need to pick the right words for you.  These words need to be words you don’t already know, AND words that are used a lot in spoken English.  You will notice that native speakers use the same words over and over.  If you learn these well, you will be able to speak like them and understand them when they are talking together.  I’ve spent my last 4 years paying close attention to native English dialogs and carefully choosing the best words to teach non native English speakers.  I usually know what students know and what they don’t know because I’ve been all over the world teaching English.  Follow my advice and I guarantee your English speaking will improve faster than you ever thought possible.