Effortless English: Learn To Speak English Like a native

Mini Story Retells
We have discussed natural conversation situations and how to approach them. In this
last section, I’ll teach you how to practice speaking and improve your
pronunciation. Though you’ll always spend the vast majority of your time listening,
advanced learners can also benefit from a little bit of speaking practice daily.
Speaking practice is only recommended for advanced learners who are already

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speaking effortlessly. At that point, you are ready to work on your pronunciation
and speed.
One of the easiest ways to practice speaking is to do mini story retells. As the
name suggests, you will use the same mini stories described in Rule Seven: listen
and answer mini stories. You will continue listening to the stories daily. You’ll
continue shouting your answers to the questions.
Then you will add this next step. After you finish listening to the story, turn off
the audio. Stand in front of a mirror. Get yourself into a peak emotional state —
jump, shout, smile. Get energized!
When feeling great, retell the mini story you just heard. Do not try to tell the story
exactly, word for word. Do not try to memorize it word for word. Rather, as quickly
as possible, retell the story using your own words. You can even change the story if
you want.
The most important point is to do this quickly. Strive for speed! In a loud and
energetic voice, tell the story to yourself in the mirror. This will only take you a few
minutes. When you finish, take a short break and then repeat the process again. Try
to retell the story even faster the next time.
The purpose of fast retells is to bypass your logical (and slow) left brain. By
speaking quickly, you are forced to speak more naturally and more intuitively. As
you do this daily, your fluency will increase. You’ll speak faster without effort.
English will flow out of you more and more easily. At this point, you are ready for
the final step: pronunciation.