It’s always said that if you want to improve your spoken English, you should practise a lot. But when I meet a foreigner, I often miss the chance. I am afraid I have nothing to say. I worry about the topics. What should I do?
人们常说，要想提高英语口语，你就应该多多练习。但每当我遇见外国人，我经常抓不住这样的机会。我担心我没有什么可说。我所担心的是该谈什么主题。我该怎么办呢?
Yes, it is quite true that you can improve your spoken English by practising a lot, but don’t depend on meeting foreigners (by which I suppose you mean native speakers of English). If you do, you will severely reduce your opportunities to practise your English. First of all, it’s often hard to meet foreigners; second, they might not wish to be‘used’by you so that you can practise your English; third, if you are speaking to a foreigner, you might become very self-conscious about your English and be unable to express yourself at all (as seems to be the case here). So what do you do? You seek or create opportunities to practise speaking English with people in your own culture who are faced with the same problems you are faced with. You do this either by regularly attending English conversation classes, so that you have the supervision of a teacher, or you get together with other people like yourself and meet on a regular basis in order to talk. Choose topics you know about and enjoy talking about in Chinese. It’s an old truism that when you really have something to say, you will find the words you need to say it.
不错，平时多练习以提高你的英语口语，但不要指望遇见外国人(我想你所指的是来自说英语的国家的人)这个办法。如果这样的话，你练习说英语的机会就少多了。首先，经常遇见外国人是不容易的；其次，他们可能不愿被你用来练英语；再者，如果你与一位外国人交谈，你可能会对自己的英语水平不甚清楚，无法表达自己的思想(就像你所提的事例一样)。那么，你该怎么办呢?你可以给你自己创造机会。你可以找与你有相同的文化背景、面临类似问题的人练习英语口头表达能力。你可以定期参加英语会话课，在老师的监督下练习，也可以和与你情况相当的朋友聚会，共同敲定一个谈话的主题。可以选一些你们讲中文时了解或愿意聊的话题。当你心中感到言之有物的时候，你就会找到你所需要用的词来表达你的思想，这是个自明之理。
文：路易亚历山大 新概念英语作者