Best ways to improve your speaking in the absence of native speakers?

[Sahmilat]

Not all of us have easy access to native speakers of our target language, or even to anyone willing and able to speak with us as we stumble through our error-ridden sentences. What are the best ways to improve your speaking if you don't have dedicated help? Has self-talk worked for you? have you found online groups for it? etc.

I'm personally trying to improve my Latin speaking, for which it is obviously hard to find speaking partners. I do self-talk sometimes, but the biggest problem I encounter is I don't really know what to talk about.

[aokoye]

First I think that you need to widen your search to second language speakers as well. You, necessarily, are going to have to do that with Latin, but it would be wise to do it with other languages as well. Outside of classes and living in countries where the target language is spoken, the primary means I've gone about doing this is going to groups that are dedicated to speaking that language. For instance, for a number of years I went to a German speaking group. I, for a lot of reasons, am not someone who is a fan of the idea of just going up to someone who is speaking X language and talking to them for the sake of speaking a language and languages groups are a big way around that. I also have a few friends who I speak German with. I met one of them at the above language group and the other I met on OkCupid of all places (they were looking for friends from around the world and we've been in fairly close contact for well over 5 years).

Another option would be iTalki. Again, I'm not sure how robust their database of people who speak Latin is, but it's worth a try - especially for German and Greek.

[eido]

This is probably not helpful, but I'll give it a shot.

Writing sentences over and over for correction is a good idea. Don't put them in the context of conversation. Put them in an italki journal entry and study the errors you make. Try to write the most correct version of the sentence you can so you're analyzing the grammar and word choice and the "why" of the language.

I try to live by this quote when it comes to languages, since this ideology has worked for me so far. I might change my mind later.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.

If you can write the structure of sentences reliably and correctly without thought after repeated tries, chances are you'll be able to produce them verbally with the same ease, because you'll probably have the memory of writing them or thinking them -- both.

I've been able to fool native speakers into thinking I have a higher level than I do because I have ingrained certain Spanish structures in my brain.

It's an idea.

[zjones]

Self-talk has helped increase my comfortability in speaking, but making recordings is much better for me. I simply turn on my recorder and wander around my house speaking in my TL. Something about having a recording causes me to put more effort into what I'm saying, which is closer to having a real conversation. Since you don't always know what to talk about, give yourself a topic that you're passionate about, or imagine that someone just asked you a specific question.

I've recently started listening to my recordings and correcting them (and then speaking the corrections numerous times), but I noticed an increase in my spontaneous speaking skills within a week of just recording myself.

You can also role-play an interaction on your side, pretending that you're responding to another person. Depending on your goals, this can be even more helpful than self-talk because it allows you to ask, explain and respond instead of simply rambling to yourself. Dream up situations and talk them out: a cop pulls you over so you talk him out of giving you a ticket, you're a super bad*ss detective interrogating a witness, or you simply meet a cute person so you ask them out.

If you are trying to increase your active vocabulary, look up a few new words or expressions and try to use them multiple times while you're speaking.

[dokalthar]

Why not find a teacher who speaks your target language (this might be hard with Latin), as a native preferably, and have one on one conversation classes with them as frequently as possible?

[WildGinger10]

In general my answer would be shadowing, but again, you're going to have trouble with this since Latin is a dead language.

Honestly not sure what to recommend that will work for a dead language. Finding someone who uses Latin in their work and buddying up with them will probably be your best bet (maybe you know someone in a Latin-heavy Catholic Church who can put you in contact with a Priest?).

[Iversen]

Read something and then start thinking about it in the language of the text. Of course you need to know something about the pronunciation rules, and it is probably necessary to listen closely to some native speech to get your head buzzing in the right tonality, and it might be a good idea to run around speaking to yourself in the language - but I feel foolish if I do it, and I also get tired soon and automatically stop moving my mouth. Thinking silently isn't nearly as hard on your physiology.