What does it mean, “stock phrases”? Fixed phrases you can use in a conversation, for example, to say you agree with your conversation partner, to ask something about them, to express a feeling (e.g. surprise, disappointment or excitement).
Practise such phrases in advance and have them to hand, and fall back on them whenever you feel you need them. They’ll make you sound more fluent and more confident about your language level.
Similarly, it’s useful to consider some possible conversation starters in advance.
What can you talk to your conversation partner about?
Can you ask them about their interests, what they think about this and that, or tell them about an interesting book you’ve been reading?
Try to practise these in advance to feel that you’ve got something up your sleeve if you’re ever feeling stuck.
Listening for sound combinations
This is something that’s also really helped a lot of our students take their listening skills in a few languages to a new level.
They used to listen for comprehension but focus only on individual words and phrases. But something new for them is listening for sound combinations!
For example, what does X sound like when it’s followed by Y?
What does it sound like when it’s at the beginning of a word compared with when it’s at the end? Is it ever silent?
When listening for sound combinations, it’s useful to forget the meaning of the message altogether and just focus on individual sounds. It helps so much!
