READ FIRST

Speaking is hard for more reasons than missing sentences. Repeat a safe introduction and a partner will call you fluent; a month later there is no new line. A mouth that only performs will close. Pick one line that must come out today, awkwardly if needed. That beats a perfect script you never use. The feeling of knowing and the sentence you can retrieve are different. The café always takes the second one. Shadowing or self-talk — keep the material short. Thirty seconds with a script, the same clip Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Tuesday and Thursday: only the line you smeared. Skip the recording because it is embarrassing and speaking collapses back into listening. Play the original beside your take. It usually breaks on stress and chopping, not on the one consonant you have been ashamed of. Keep last week’s file. It is the only honest baseline. If you exchange languages, put a timer in the middle of the table. The easy language always wins without one. After you stand up, ten minutes: write two new lines, say them once before the next meeting. A sentence that has already been in your mouth is the one that appears at a counter. The meeting count is not the class. Those ten minutes are. Show up with nothing prepared and you will collect ten versions of hello.