Fancy a threesome?

This is not what you think, not at all. I'm just talking about chat here. Nothing more. Nothing to see here, people, move on please.

I've run conversation classes. As a teacher I matched students with volunteers. Gave them prompt sheets to give them something to talk about.

Usually there would be several English learners with one volunteer, or, if there were enough, we'd pair them up: one on one.

But these conversations would often turn into mini-lessons, mini-classes. Which isn't ideal.

And then I'd sit in and try to gently steer the activity towards regular conversation. That involved me responding to the volunteer in a manner in which I wanted the students to adopt, and also model for the volunteer how I'd like he or she to interact.

It struck me then that it is very valuable for students to see, and be a part of, a group that had native speakers speaking with one another.

They'd see the conventions we use. They'd be able to sit back and then join in when ready. This reduced any pressure that they might be under. And the language used would as a result approach more authentic English.

I've since read in Kato Lomb's book: Polyglot, How I Learn Languages that she encourages the same approach. 

Converse with a chatbot

Why not engage in some lighthearted conversation with a chatbot? Bots are good to banter and hang out with. They are addictive. They are fun. They don't correct your mistakes; instead, they make their own!

I've only ever managed to have a typed conversation with chatbots, but by now there are probably voice-recognition applications out there.

Speak from Day 1?

Some people (and I'm looking at you, Benny Lewis) would tell you to speak from your first day of learning a foreign language. That's advice that most people ought to weigh up very carefully.

Maybe it would work for you. Maybe you are that sort of person, so it may be worth gold in your particular currency. But I would warn that it's not a universal rule.

Me, I prefer to wait before speaking. I need to wait. Speaking too soon would simply stop me in my tracks. It would kill off my second language aspirations.

For many people, and for entire cultures (I'm looking at you now, Japan) speaking is simply too stressful. So for those of you . . . us . . . in that camp, don't do it!

Einstein didn't speak until the age of 4 or 5, I read. And he ended up doing quite well, I believe. 

Autologue

There’s an idea that I tried out several times in the past. Then, I discovered that Kato Lomb suggested it too. She is a world-famous polyglot from Hungary.

What you do is to converse with yourself from time to time.

You do that, because it isn’t always easy to find someone to talk with. And then it often makes you nervous. And although you don’t actually learn anything new by doing it, (you are not a rusty machine that a drop of oil will free up) you DO develop your speaking muscles to some extent.

Anyway, Dr Lomb recommends it, so it’s probably worth trying.