You learned English through grammar, repetition, written sentences, memorisation and boring old textbooks. In fact, the only speaking practice you might have had was to repeat after your teacher OR repeat after an audio! Unfortunately many schools only teach English as a language of study and NOT a language of communication. You probably know what a "relative clause" is or "the use of modals" because that is how English was taught to you. You therefore never got to really practice how to communicate in a meaningful way. Well English is a live language and it is fun to communicate on things that really interest you. So you will therefore need to think differently about how you can learn faster and in a much more interesting way and not like the way your school taught you.

Here is a fun way to begin...Listen to natural English...Listen, listen, listen - to native speakers! You need to tune in to natural English and do this on a regular basis. This will give you a great foundation. I have taught students who only listened to movies and radio programmes and when they came to me, their ability to reproduce natural language was amazing!

This is what I recommend using movies:

1. Select an English speaking movie that you love and that has subtitles in your own language.
2. Select a scene that you enjoy, turn down the English sound and then watch it with the subtitles so that you know what it is about.
3. Then, turn on the sound, listen and watch it with the subtitles.
4. So now, turn off the subtitles and watch it while listening.
5. Do this over and over again and then test yourself by replaying the scene and see if you can speak the lines just like the actors.
6. Fabulous - you are now listening to native speakers and speaking like them as well.

It's the same technique with music - that's how we learn in natural life if we really like a song. We listen to it over and over and then all of a sudden we know all of the words and we can sing it naturally by ourselves. Sounds help us learn faster so learning a language that is set to a tune will help you remember it better. This is great too if you love karaoke and singing along to music videos, MP3's or itunes.

This is what I recommend using songs:

1. Select a song with a tune that you especially like and that is sung by a native speaker of English.
2. Find the words online for the song.
3. Practice with the chorus first because it usually repeats itself through the song.
4. Read the words while you are listening to the chorus.
5. Listen again without looking at the words.
6. Listen and sing the words with the singer.
7. Do this until you can sing the words without looking at them.

Listening to your favourite English songs and English speaking movies will help improve your listening and speaking skills. You can use these two techniques everyday and they will cost only your time as you can easily download music and movies from the internet.

Rowan Pita (MA Applied Linguistics) is CEO of http://www.samespeak.com Samespeak is an innovative and easy online platform that offers English conversation lessons and real live native speakers to practice with. The mission is to make language education accessible to all people regardless of race, creed, country or culture. She has been in language education for 25 years and taught English extensively in Japan and New Zealand. She has worked for the Ministry of Education and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and as an education consultant to New Zealand High Schools and Universities specifically around language, literacy, teacher training, curriculum, assessment, qualifications and quality management systems. I believe that effective communication will break down barriers between people and bring our world closer together - learning natural spoken English is one way to achieve that.