Many of my students tell me that their biggest problem is that they don’t have a chance to speak Greek where they live, because there are no Greeks and nobody else around them speaks Greek. However, there are ways to practice your Greek even if you are not in Greece. If you follow the 5 steps listed below, I am sure you’ll soon get much better at speaking Greek.
Record yourself speaking Greek
Nowadays we all have mobile phones that can make recordings. This feature of our mobile phone provides us with a great opportunity to practice our Greek. Record yourself speaking Greek! I did this exercise when I was learning English and it really helped me too. When you press the button to record and see the time running, you’ll feel the same pressure that you feel when you are talking to a person. You think that someone is listening to you and you have to do the best you can. So you get a chance to practice your speaking.
To do this exercise you must first do two things:
- Select a topic to talk about;
- Keep repeating the exercise until you manage to say everything you want to say, in half the time you took at first.
Memorize entire sentences in Greek, not individual words.
This is a very important exercise. Try to learn new vocabulary by learning entire sentences or phrases, rather than individual words. This will enable you to achieve two things:
- You’ll learn more words all at once;
- You’ll accustom the muscles of your mouth to the pronunciation of the language.
Find someone online who’s interested in practicing with you.
Almost everyone nowadays has internet at home. I believe that with home internet, we can’t make the excuse that we are too far from a city and have no opportunities to practice speaking Greek. There are so many opportunities to find someone online to talk to and to practice your Greek with. Furthermore, you can make friends by using this method. When I was a student and was learning English, I had the opportunity to speak with an American, who turned out to be really helpful to me in improving my English.
I am still in touch with this American and I believe that this kind of connection can be a very good thing. If you are looking for someone to practice with and learn Greek online, let me suggest two websites to you:
You have also the option to have one-to-one online Greek lessons with us.
Learn more about us and how we can help you with our Greek courses online.
You can also book your free trial with us here
https://www.mylanguageexchange.com/ (This is the site that I used when I was learning English and here you can find some good people to practice with as well.)
Use your mirror and talk to yourself.
This may sound stupid, but it’s really very effective. Find a private spot, close the door, decide on the topic you want to discuss, set the timer for two or three minutes, and begin to speak. Repeat that 3 or 4 times.
The point of this exercise is to watch your face and mouth and observe your body language as you speak. It also makes you feel like you’re actually talking to someone: it’s like having a discussion with a study buddy.
Talk for the full 2 or 3 minutes. Don’t stop! If you get stuck on a word you don’t know, try expressing your idea in a different way. You can always look up the word at the end of the 2 to 3 minutes. This will help you find out what kinds of words or sentences you have trouble with.
Listen to songs or video clips and repeat what they say.
Another way to practice is to listen to Greek songs or video clips and repeat the words while trying to imitate the way the singers speak. A good method is to repeat each sentence they sing while trying to achieve the same speed, the same tone, and even trying to imitate their pronunciation (if you can).
For songs, you can find lyrics and video clips on this website: http://www.stixoi.info/
For video clips from TV series (with subtitles), you can listen to the video lessons I make available every week and again, try to imitate the way the actors speak. For more information and to register, click HERE