Ok, so here's the situation...

You've been trying to improve your speaking for so long. The problem is, that you can't always find someone who can help you with it, especially when feel you need to work harder to make yourself understood.

Or like when you go into a store and ask for something, and the salesperson comes back with something completely different, and then you realized that it was because they didn't get what you meant to say. While it may be true that that person's understanding of English isn't up to a good international standard, it could also be because the way you said it wasn't clear enough.

Sometimes it gets even worse, you've been saying something in such a way that others understand, but no one has been kind enough to correct. 

This is where I step in.

My name is Frank, and I've been working as an English teacher for more than 20 years and as a speaking examiner for more than 5. Every week, I will listen to what you say in English and let you know what you're doing great, and what you will probably need to improve on. I will cover areas such as use of grammar, vocabulary, discourse, or pronunciation. And how can I listen to what you say in English? Easy, just go to my website: whatyousayinenglish.wordpress.com, check the questions of the month and select the activity according to the level you feel more comfortable in. Then, go over to send your recording, and voilà! You'll be featured in one of the episodes! I will try to give you meaningful and useful feedback which you can use to your advantage. Especially if you have an exam like IELTS, TOEFL or Cambridge to prepare for.

Even if you don't want to send in your recording, tune in every week to listen to others receive advice and tips to improve on their speaking. I'm sure you'll find something useful.

And what can you do now? Subscribe to my podcast here on Anchor or any other podcast service where it's available. I'll be happy to listen to what you say in English!

In the first episode, I wanted to cover some of the basic concepts to understand the type of feedback I give to my students. I will cover other ideas as what we look at when we analyze grammar in speaking in the broader concept of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)

Useful resources:

• The CEFR (The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages)
• The ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) and its levels.

Intro music: Natural duality (Theme) by Joseph McDade

In this episode, I take a closer look at what makes vocabulary in speaking, also called "lexis". The different levels and the things I pay attention to when I have to give my opinion about how English learners use vocabulary.

In this episode, I'll introduce you to the concept of Discourse and how it can help you keep your speech coherent and unified. It's something very extensive, as it touches other areas such as grammar, vocabulary, and even pronunciation. I've tried to keep it as simple as possible but retaining the necessary terminology that will help you identify the elements you need to improve on your speaking.

In this episode, I discuss some important aspects of pronunciation that teachers should consider when giving feedback on pronunciation. I explain why intelligibility is more important than accent, as well as what specific phonological elements are crucial to sound clear and understandable to other speakers and trust me, it's not precisely to sound like a native speaker.

I used two segments to illustrate the concept of intelligibility: Tory MP fails to understand the Scottish accent and The Two Ronnies skit: The Grocery Shop.

And remember, go to my website https://whatyousayinenglish.wordpress.com/ to do any of the tasks (Questions of the month), choose the easiest one for you and send me the recording, either via Vocaroo or from your mobile phone to my email podcast@languageteaching.es. You can also leave a message on the podcast Anchor website https://anchor.fm/whatyousayinenglish

In today’s episode, Daniel Goodson joins us to talk about how much he loves learning languages. We discussed what he loves about learning English, what he finds difficult, and, most of all, what he does to improve. I believe he’s a great example of self-determination and motivation to learn English. We spoke about a lot of things, from accents, receptive and productive skills, code-switching and many more things.

Daniel manages the website My Fluent Podcast and from there, you can subscribe to his two podcasts: My Fluent Podcast and My Fluent Podcast (Vocabulary). Hosting the podcasts has given him the opportunity to learn English and overcome his shyness. In this interview, he showed very good control of many complex structures, combined with discourse markers that helped him stay in focus. Daniel gave us some good examples of wh- cleft sentences, relative clauses, and a not so common comparative form: the double comparative, which is a form of parallel structures. His discourse management was what stood out the most, using a wide range of ways of directing his ideas to guide us through what he was saying.

Next week, I'll recycle some of the concepts I spoke about in this episode, especially the one about backchannels. I'll tell you how to improve the way you tell stories by looking at how people use anecdotes and how others react to them. I'll speak about the common problems that learners usually have and give you some ideas on how to improve.

Remember to like, share, rate, and review this podcast on any platform you're subscribed to. Also, you should check out my website What You Say in English! to see how you can send me your recording to receive feedback and appear on the show. Be brave! I promise we'll have a nice conversation and you'll get to show the world what you say in English.