Ask HN: How to master verbal communication?

Watch a lot of American television and mimic the characters as they speak. Try to imitate their tone of voice, their facial expressions, body language, etc. You will feel a bit silly, but I have found no better way to improve one’s speaking ability in a foreign language.

The one suggestion I keep hearing for native speakers is improvisational theatre.

I haven't personally tried it, but it makes sense to me based on what I know about training for expertise: it simulates a wide variety of situations that you have to tackle from start to end, but with space to review your efforts in between.

I don't see why it would not work for non-native speakers as well. You just have to set the expectations lower and work your way up from the point you are.

There is a language exchange subreddit where you can find someone to have Zoom calls with: https://www.reddit.com/r/language_exchange/

There is an organization called Toastmasters [1] which has the goal of helping people become better public speakers - it is often populated with professionals seeking to improve their communication skills and would certainly give you plenty of practice in speaking and formulating speech.

Similarly, you could probably enroll in a night-class for English at a local community college.

[1] https://www.toastmasters.org/

I don’t know if people still use Meetup, but back around 2013 when I was living in California, Meetup events were popular with people who wanted a way to socialize and improve their language skills. I was a part of a Meetup that went on hiking trips. I enjoyed the cultural exchange, but the foreigners who participated also told me that it was a good way to learn many of English’s colloquial expressions in a low-pressure environment.

As someone who taught English as a foreign language for many years, I'd say it really depends on where your specific difficulties lie.

If you're looking to improve your verbal fluency, I would absolutely recommend lots and lots of television. Find a show you love, watch it lots, and try to copy what the characters say -- in rhythm and intonation. Even better if you can find a show where there's a character you identify with, an actor who is similar to you in "type". Get closed-captioning transcripts of episodes and try to say each line before and then compare with how it's actually said. I would say this is absolutely #1.

I see other recommendations here for Toastmasters and for improv comedy. Toastmasters is specifically about public speaking -- if that's your goal then absolutely, but if you're looking to improve personal conversation I'm not sure it will help much. And while improv comedy is a blast (I've done lots myself), I don't think it's going to help much with linguistic fluency. There's a ton of focus on physicality and teamwork, but it will go much better if you're already very comfortable with your speaking.

All of the best students I ever had in English classes would basically watch the TV show "Friends" for like 2-3 hours a day, I'm not even joking. It's surprising how well the TV route works. And after that it's really about practice -- figure out whatever situations you can have a lot of conversation with native speakers in, if there's some kind of local club/activity you can join.

mindset shift - every encounter as an opportunity to practice the language. The grocery store, the bus stop, shopping at IKEA - whatever the circumstance where there are other people, go do the thing you were going to do, but also have an objective to have an engagement of some sort with somebody every time

Read more. And say it out loud.

Recording yourself is not a bad idea. Try reading a page from a book or a newspaper, then play it back, and see how it sounds. Good use of pauses and emphasis helps listeners too.

It depends on what your goal is. Different communication needs different practice styles.

I'm an American who emigrated some years ago to Eastern Europe and work in IT with a lot of persons from Eastern Europe, and we do some trainings on working with clients (particularly Americans and UK folk) in IT settings.

All my colleagues are near native fluent in English but what they sometimes struggle with is figuring out the nuances of effective business and technical communication, or both at the same time. Putting aside how a lot of technology terms get absorbed into non-English languages, the main issue is that the speech and stylizing of ideas in their native languages don't translate well to English.

The good news is that even for native English speakers, effective speaking is typically at a fairly low level, and business and technical talk have similar things to practice.

1. Ensure you're on top of articles in English and when to use which one. Even native speakers confuse them for otherwise educated persons and for non-native speakers, it tends to be noticed a bit more. (My Russian speaking colleagues struggle with this sometimes as they don't have articles really)

2. Focus on clarity of thought instead of specific high-level words. I personally think that tests like the TOEFL set non-english speakers up for disappointment as a lot of the items they check on are not common terms in every day speech.

3. English is a bit more "fluffy" than other languages which can come off as direct to native English speakers, and to make it worse, many English classes teach overly formal English to compensate for this. Go to a bar or out to eat with native speakers with the understanding that you want to practice with them and just study how they say things. Keep in mind many native English speakers don't remember the proper terms for rules of English grammar, and you may know it even more than they do. Instead, focus on just mimicking their style and asking how phrases sound to their ear (do keep in mind that everyone has a style of speech, so try to get a few sources to practice with)

4. I actually would advise against watching TV/Movies to learn how to improve communication -- these are highly stylized conversations with a pacing that is only found in TV/movies, you really will find it difficult to convert it. Some podcasts/youtubes might be better, but focus on the more casual channels as popular ones have a specific style meant to be attention grabbing to viewers. An example of one I think isn't bad is LockPicking Lawyer; he speaks about fairly technical things and definitely has settled on a calm and cadenced style, but at the same time the word choice and way of presenting is fairly normal and well received. Find ones like that.

5. Effective business communication is usually about brevity and presenting a large volume of information in a simple and evocative way; that is, you can say something like "our current estimates for the project have exceeded the initial projections and we expect to have to adjust the desired deadline to a more achievable goal". Or you can just say "The current evidence suggests we will miss our initially projected deadline, so we will need to adjust it to a more realistic point." The difference is adding in a lot of excess terminology that really isn't used in every day speech; the concepts are taught in business classes to allow for a teaching framework, but just like latin phrases aren't typically used in US legal proceedings, no one communicating effectively actually uses such terms unironically.

6. Follow the idea of Richard Feynman and first ensure you understand the concept of what you want to discuss. Feynman famously tried to explain a complex subject to first years and gave up saying: "I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don't understand it." This isn't specific to English, it's just general communication skills, so make sure you kno...

If you enjoy reading, I would recommend reading books in English and referring to an English to <your native language> dictionary to build your vocabulary. Not only will this teach yourself more words to choose from, it will also promote a more natural flow in speaking and writing.

As a lost in translation person myself, I would say that you are just fucked.

The automatism of your natural language are always going to kick-in.

The best way is to speak slowly and to plan each word that you are going to say. For every speech, I give, I wrote it and works every word before hand.

Success

Three things:

1. Practice talking out loud, possibly in front of a mirror. Hear the sounds of the words as they leave your mouth. Speech is a function of motor processing that can be improved with practice like any other muscle memory.

2. There is a time aspect to speech, like music. Once speech has left your mouth in front of an audience you cannot take it back. It is spent, like time. Think about it like plumbing, like the words are sewage. Your mind runs about 2.5x faster than your mouth. Stay calm and be very deliberate with each of your words. If your mind runs out of control the words cannot escape fast enough and things get backed up. Keep a slow constant rhythm just to get your words out perfectly. Once you master confidence with your speech your faster mind allows you to think ahead to the next wonderful thoughts while your mouth is speaking.

3. Use your education to influence your spike vocabulary. This sounds obvious, but it isn’t. You must reinforce your spoken words with the strengths of your advanced writing skills to ensure your statements are clear, concise, and logically connected. This takes practice and it all comes down to confidence.

Check out https://ultraspeaking.com — it’s a web app and cohort-based course built around deliberate practice through speaking games.

I took their course after reading about how the company's founders reached the Toastmasters world Championship finals in record time. The course was transformational — so much so that I joined their team!

Play Diplomacy.

If you want a fast map of english diction, consume all the standup comedy and prize winning literary fiction you can find. Also, read P.G. Wodehouse, and then watch it performed. Churchills speeches are good to read too. Consider reading or watching Richard Feynman's lectures to get a sense of how a great mind operates.

To be concise and eloquent is also the downstream effect of values that form a personality. It's not something you can affect by imitating, it is the effect of cummulative competence and practice over time. You need the intellectual confidence to ask questions and interrogate your surroundings with benevolent and sincere interest. That confidence comes from finding a kernel of moral clarity that enables you to relate to the world by assuming its approval, to be a protagonist in it, and not a guest or subject who must be meek or deferential to it. Value pith, grit, vision, and humility, but postpone being too humble until you are sure you are great.

"Brevity is the soul of wit," isn't just about humour, it's about intelligence. The essence of english comedy is our surprisingly many synonyms that have wry and ironic collisions in their meanings. Absorbing the comedy practices a sense of humor, which becomes a new sense for interpreting your surroundings. Teasing out the same sense of paradox using humour leads you to the crux of literally every topic. If you can find the joke, you have found the edges of truth and belief.

I used to worry I wasn't being concise until I saw other people try, so take heart.

[dead]

I have a friend from Egypt who is light years ahead of every other immigrant I know in terms of fluency, accent, etc.

His secret? He watches a ton of Seinfeld, haha. I mean a ton. And I think what really happened is he formed a sort of identity with the show- part of him is truly “American” at this point.

Something I never hear anyone mention, but if you have social anxiety, work on that too. It's hard to put together a coherent sentence if you're anxious.

Hey man, I’ve been exactly in your shoes back in 2019. I had moved to a new country, and suddenly realized that my communications skills were way behind.

I ended enrolling in an intensive English course at an Oxford School from the city I was based, and later decided to enroll on a full-year course.

Today, I feel sharper and able to communicate my ideas more efficiently. I still make mistakes, but as far as communicating ideas goes, I am far better.

PS: This year, I am enrolling again just because I want to become ever sharper at communicating, and because it gives me an advantage even over fellow people with English as a first language.

That’s what has been worked for me.

Train, train, train. Read books out loud, try to find a buddy that will correct you every time you make a pronunciation mistake... if you can afford it, there are voice coaching services and of course language training services.

Your ability to speak fluently your professional language should be your #1 priority. I'm not an English native myself so I went through this as well.

I’ve been amazed at how much the desire to mutually communicate gets undermined by the anxious anticipation of both parties to reach a conclusion that was their desired outcome going into the conversation. I would take special pains to be absolutely calm when communicating complicated ideas to others. I would also do everything in my power to listen to their ideas, understand their idea, and convey this understanding.

The most important thing about communication is to be aware that these three things might not be the same:

- what you intend to say

- what you actually communicate

- what the other person takes away from what you said

If you say a factually true thing in a very insecure way for example, the other side might not be convinced. If you mean to say something, but always find yourself to lack the words to communicate what you wanna say, chances are that what you actually communicated was not the thing you intended. It can also be that everything you say is alright, but your articulation and levels are off (too silent, too loud, slow, fast, unclear etc).

As with any thing you want to get better in the first step is to figure out which thing specifically needs improvement. A good way to do this is to record yourself and listen to it.

Hey, talk slow and pick up audiobooks in local language. References, cultural context awareness and a bit of slang go a long way. Also make jokes, it puts you amour if your comfort zone in a safe way, makes you likable and almost guaranteed to work. Jokes from a non-native speaker are 2x funny