According to US research, it can take up to ten years to become a near-native English speaker. Asian and Spanish students took between five and ten years to reach native speaker performance in English-only schools. Fluency obviously doesn’t happen overnight. But time can definitely make you a better speaker.
After testing his own memory, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered that humans forget most of what they learn in the first 20 minutes.
So cramming right before a speaking exam is not likely to be as effective as practicing regularly over time. The more you practice, the more familiar new words will become. In the classroom, studies have also shown that repeating oral tasks improves a speaker’s performance.
One of the best repetition exercises is the 4/3/2 technique. Speakers give the same talk to three different listeners with a progressive decrease in delivery time, starting at four minutes, then three, and finally two minutes. This exercise has been proven to help learners speak faster. It can also result in less hesitation and more grammatical accuracy. While time dose make a difference when it comes to speaking perfect English, it would not hurt to brush up on your other language skills.
Studies have also shown that reading can increase your speaking vocabulary. After one month of an extensive reading program, a 27-year-old student of French became more familiar with 65 percent of the new words.
Aside from choosing the right learning methods, having certain personality traits may also help. US linguistics expert Stephen Krashen believes those with high motivation, self-confidence and a low level of anxiety are better equipped for speaking success.
Krashen says students who don’t have these qualities are more likely to have a “mental block”. “Even if they understand the message, the input will not reach the part of the brain responsible for language acquisition,” he writes in his book Principles and Practice in second Language Acquisition.
小题1:According to the passage, if you want to be a near-native speaker, you need _____.
A．long-term speaking practice and much reading
B．speaking practice for ten years only
C．long-term speaking practice, much reading and certain qualities
D．cramming new words every day小题2:The author put forward the 4/3/2 technique just to show that _____.
A．you should speak to 3 different people
B．you should speak to 3 different people at 3 different times
C．it can prevent you from making grammar mistakes
D．it is really a good way to make you a better speaker小题3:The example of a 27-year-old student of French in the passage mainly means that _____.
A．reading can enlarge your vocabulary for your speaking
B．reading can make you memorize just 65 percent of the new words
C．the 27-year-old student of French is very clever
D．in one month, you can improve your speaking ability小题4:The underlined phrase “linguistics expert” means a person who is quite expert at _____.
A．languages
B．spoken language
C．scientific research
D．teaching English
