To become a good speaker, you must have exceptional listening skills. They say:

A trained ear will never put you in trouble

Therefore, I will teach you how to develop your speaking skills through your improved listening skills. The problem with most Spoken English courses is that they do not focus on the importance of natural speech; rather they focus on the academic, or in plain words, bookish knowledge, which is perfect though, yet it confuses non-native listeners when they experience connected speech. It is very important to train the ear for the sound system of English Language, both when it is written in grammar books, phonetic dictionaries and when it is spoken spontaneously. There are two major factors which contribute a lot in seemingly changed sound system of certain words, hence creating confusion in understanding the language. These are contraction and assimilation. I will present two examples of each to make it clear for you:

1. Example of contraction in English: You are = you’re (which seemingly sounds like your)

2. Example of assimilation in English: football = foopball (the pronunciation of /t/ sound in football becomes /p/ when spoken in natural connected speech.

Now, for students, this should not be a bad or horrible news. This is a very good and promising news. In order to speak English, you need to focus on Spoken language and how the pronunciation of certain words changes in connected speech in order to improve understanding. Once you master that, you will be a fluent speak of English. So happy speaking!