I struggle with 'on the spot', immediate English communication. Answering questions like "how is X work coming along?", "how was your week?", "what did that customer say?", "how was your weekend?" at the coffee machine or hallway. It is a problem with both 'what to say' and 'how to phrase it'. These instant responses from me turn out almost always grammatically incorrect. This is very important for my career since I'm a PM. I don't visibly struggle as much with writing emails, documents, technical conversations and I really nail it when I'm "prepared" for a meeting. English is not my native language, I never spoke English everyday until I went to college and spoke with professors. But I've always read English in school and college. Vocabulary was never a problem, I scored 1590/1600 in my GRE, I can speak 4 languages etc. I do not wish to pick up an American accent, I do have a strong Indian accent like Sundar Pichai does, but I'm cool with that. Did any of you face this problem, how do you fix it?
Speak slowly as you gather your thoughts and structure it in your mind . Use long pause words other than Aaah while you gather your thoughts. Pause words can be “ i wasssssss” or “yeserdayyyyyyy” etc . As you do this over time you will get better .
Got it, will try this
Are in thinking in English?
Hmm... No. Interesting thought, you can think in a foreign language?
Yes. You can make the mental switch by speaking, listening and reading the foreign language all the time. It can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 2-3 months, but once you make that switch, you'd never have any problems.
Toastmasters is ur best friend
The road does not meet the rubber
Find someone on your team who is friendly who you can practice with, and tell them to please correct you so you can get better. It's not polite to correct mistakes in public, but you need correction to learn the proper way to speak the language
Talk to a friend/spouse/partner in English about everyday life. Mix in sarcasm that you would probably use in your native language.
Join Toastmasters. There is an impromptu speech section in a Toastmasters meeting that will help you.
What 4 languages do you speak?
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Practice. After several months of speaking English exclusively at home and at work, I got way better.
What do you mean? We do speak English at the US workplace... Some other special conscious practice?
Do you then go home and speak something else to family and friends?