There are thousands of English schools, sites, apps, and teachers making big promises. You’ve heard the reach-native-level-fluency-by-following-my-97-step-plan spiel before, I’m sure. The Speaker Habit may feel like another hollow promise screaming into the abyss of language learning advice. But, if you’ve read this far, you sense something different about the Speaker Habit. One enormous difference is that this routine is designed for a very particular type of language learner. You’re not some American trying to learn Italian. Nor are you a lazy beginner, wishing to attend Harvard without ever cracking open a book. This is for experienced English language learners seeking mastery. Most advice is not designed for you.
Another reason why you haven’t heard of the Speaker Habit is that I’ve worked almost entirely with TOEFL test-takers. I built the Speaker Habit through a process of trial and error over the past decade while working with a niche of English language learners facing a very particular problem. For example, if you were born abroad but wished to become a licensed pharmacist in the States, you had to obtain the Foreign Pharmacy Graduate Examination Committee (FPGEC) Certification. One requirement was a 26 in the TOEFL Speaking section, and many were stuck between 20-24. This differs from most other language learning environments because the goal was specific. Their goals were not only Not only were not only specific, but highly relevant. Going from pharmacy technician to licensed pharmacist includes a significant pay bump that would push their annual income north of six figures.
Teaching pharmacists how to improve their TOEFL scores also forced me to be better. I had skin in the game. Each student represented an opportunity to make or break my reputation. I was a solo teacher with a private business who relied on word-of-mouth marketing to make a living. No one would hire me if I couldn’t find a way to improve their TOEFL Speaking scores. Compare this to a school classroom where tenure and a teacher’s union protect educators. Relying on the achievements of the students to survive pushed me to experiment, test, tweak, and reiterate over and over again, crafting a unique approach to improving spoken fluency.
The second reason you haven’t heard of this approach is that it leverages recent technology. Traditionally, measuring your speaking meant sitting down with a teacher. You’d answer questions while your teacher consulted a grading rubric with general criteria like Pronunciation, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Grammar. After the interview, the teacher informed you of the parts you did well, a few words you mispronounced, and some vague ideas on how to improve. You earned a score without really understanding why or how to do better next time.
Recent technological advances – along with more robust knowledge of native-level fluency features – provide learners like you with the tools required to measure and assess your own speaking. Voice recorders have been around for decades, but now they’re paired with speech-to-text technology. You speak, and magic software transcribes what you say. This everyday technology can be leveraged as a pronunciation tracker. If a word is transcribed incorrectly, for example, it implies that you have to tweak your pronunciation or intonation. You no longer have to rely on the ears of others for feedback. More advanced tools can measure syllable stress and intonation patterns. Sites like ELSA Speech Analyzer and My Speaking Score have narrowed the gap between language teachers and language learners. We’ll discuss using technology throughout Parts Two and Three.
That leaves just one obvious question yet to be answered....
What Is the Speaker Habit?
A heartbreaking number of English language learners are stuck on the same intermediate plateau and see no path forward. You now know why. Traditional solutions to intermediate English-level problems rarely lead to native-level fluency. Not books. Not classes. Not tutors. None of them empower you to learn how to practice purposefully. And if you don’t learn how to practice well, you are doomed to work like a hamster, running hard and heading nowhere.
You don’t want to be a hamster.
The Speaker Habit has been designed to get you off the hamster wheel and onto the path to native-level fluency. So how can a single 15-minute habit help you reach fluency? Understand, Dear Speaker, that growth won’t come only from the habit itself. It will seep into your thoughts every time you speak, listen, or practice English. You’ll begin to recognize mistakes in your voice and in others. Different accents will no longer mystify you because the Speaker Habit trains you to focus not just on words and their meanings, but in the way the words are expressed. Also, understanding the tenets of purposeful practice will reshape how you approach practice moving forward. Hamster work in crowded classes or dry textbooks will feel like a waste of time.
Get excited. The Speaker Habit is going to transform your English. All you have to do is follow these five simple steps.
Step 1 → Set your goal. Avoid wandering around when you practice, praying to pick up a new word or phrase. Your time is precious, don’t waste it. Set a specific, measurable goal before you practice each day. Whether or not you reach that goal is unimportant. What matters is that you devote mindful, purposeful attention to how you speak.
Step 2 → Record your response. Every day, you will speak for at least 30 seconds to a single question. Even if you aren’t interested in the question, try to answer it anyway. The point of the exercise is to get more comfortable speaking for an extended period of time. Most language learners provide clipped answers to questions because they fear making a mistake or sounding silly. Don’t turn conversations into police interrogations with answers like Yes or No or I don’t know. Those conversation killers stunt fluency growth. You must speak and embrace the fact that you’ll make mistakes. Mistakes aren’t just natural, but a necessary prerequisite to growth. Any great musician, athlete, or entrepreneur will confess that a willingness to experiment and make mistakes fueled their eventual success.
Step 3 → Transcribe your response. Performances come and go. Memory provides only a vague outline of how well you did. Right now, if someone asked how you spoke, you’d probably say It was okay or It was terrible. Taking the time to listen and transcribe forces you to be specific. In fact, you’ll hear more mistakes than you imagined. There will be vocal fillers you hadn't noticed, mispronounced words, and improper intonation patterns. All of these factors impact your intelligibility. At first, it will be hard, no doubt, especially since you’ll need to replay the same sentence multiple times to write it all down. But take heart, after just a few days of transcribing, you’ll notice significant – significant – improvement in your speech.
Step 4 → Measure your response. Speaking is notoriously annoying to measure. Consider your own experience. You may have felt like your pronunciation needed work, or that you had some spoken grammar mistakes, but finding concrete metrics to assess and learn from was lacking.
This changes with the Speaker Habit.
You may wonder, How can you measure something like spoken grammar? And even if you could measure spoken grammar, how would you practice spoken grammar? And even if you could practice spoken grammar, how would you know you’re getting better?
At all costs, you want to avoid feeling like a hamster on a wheel, so you must measure your speaking in ways that lead to results you can feel and calculate. In Part 2, Chapter 5, we’ll cover some key grading dimensions to focus on while you practice. In Part 2, Chapter 6, we’ll take a closer look at ELSA Speech Analyzer and how tools like it provide the actionable data needed to track your progress.
Step 5 → Repeat your response. Your speech will never be perfect. There will always be pieces you wish were better. After speaking, transcribing, and measuring your recording, it’s time to take action and apply what you’ve learned. In the last step of the Speaker Habit, you repeat the response, focusing on one or two areas you believe could be better. Repeating helps solidify the day’s lessons and provides ideas for what to work on tomorrow.
That is the Speaker Habit in a nutshell. This process is much different than traditional speaking practice because it follows a purposeful practice model. It is personal, requiring mindfulness and a desire to improve. Only a motivated language learner – like you, Dear Speaker – would endure setting goals, speaking, transcribing, measuring, and repeating your English day after day. That willingness to engage in purposeful practice is what separates you from the average English language learner stuck on the intermediate plateau.
If you’re ready to start, skip to Appendix 3 and start answering questions. That may not be a bad idea, actually. You learn more through personal actions than printed words. But like anything new, you may still have more questions. That’s natural, which is why in Part Two we’ll do a deep dive on each step of the Speaker Habit: what each step is, why it matters, how to do it well, and common mistakes to avoid. If you have the patience, I recommend you keep reading.