6: Speak, Speak, Speak!
The Daily Learning Cycle and other language learning techniques emphasize speaking. After all, the purpose of learning a language is to communicate. The best way to learn a foreign language is to speak it. Reading and studying grammar only improves your ability to read and understand grammar. If you want to learn to speak a language, you have to practice speaking it.
The ability to speak a language is an entirely separate muscle from what you use for studying and memorization. It needs to be exercised regularly along with everything else if you want to become fluent. Just as no one ever learned how to swim by reading a book, no one ever learned to speak a language without speaking it. At some point you have to jump in and start swimming in the language.
Whenever possible, speak the language aloud rather than reciting it silently to yourself. Say vocabulary words out loud, read passages in the text aloud, and do pronunciation activities orally and not just mentally. Write out the answers to activities rather than gliding through them in your mind. Read aloud entire sentences in an activity rather than just reading a fill-in response.
Transferring language from your mind to your mouth is a skill that requires a great deal of practice. Even if you have learned your dialogues, memorized tons of vocabulary, and studied grammar, if you can’t pronounce it correctly, nobody will be able to understand you. All you’ll get is a lot of confused looks.
One method for learning correct pronunciation is called language shadowing. In the language shadowing technique, you practice repeating sentences over and over again after a native speaker. Pay attention to their pronunciation, tone, pitch, speed, and rhythm, and try to duplicate it exactly!
Practice Amharic here!
