(no subject)

[fraufunshine.livejournal.com]

Hello everyone.
My name is Elena, I'm Russian and I live in Moscow.
I've been learning English for 10 years and have quite a good level of it but still I lack oral speech.
So if there are any native English speakers here who live in my city, learn Russian and would like to meet me in order to help each other, I'd be very glad.
Thank you.

Comments

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

I doubt it will be easy to get a hold of someone to converse regularly and much enough to get it right quickly.
I for one, had lots of problems with my Russianish English pronunciation because of the crappy language classes at school and uni. Speech was the least important thing.
Even after I had improved my English grammar through the extensive use of the internet and reading/writing in English at work and in my spare time, I still had problems with understanding what others say (at the normal for the language pace) and speaking.
The dramatic change happened about 5 years ago when I first went to the US. I started to watch (and listen to) the TV and speek to americans. In about few months I began understanding the TV and improving my own speech by trying to mimic them and unlearn all the wrong things I got at school and uni or maybe it's better to say never got them in the first place. Six months after that I was able to talk on the phone well enough. And that's the toughest exercise as the speakers can't see each other and the sound quality is also poor.
So, my suggestion would be to start watching and listening something in English, no matter if you find someone to talk to or not. Tune to something like BBC or whatever you're able to find these days on the short waves. Listen to English at least an hour a day, the more the better. It will help a lot.

[fraufunshine.livejournal.com]

thanks a lot!