Analyze2Imitate 

The first step in improving your spoken English phrasing (a.k.a. collocation) is to increase your ability to hear phrasing errors as errors. One way you can develop this ability is the following:

1. Select a short TED talk or podcast from Scientific American's "Science, Quickly" that you find interesting.

2. Under the TED talk video, click the "Read Transcript" button so you can copy and paste into a Microsoft Word or other document the part of the transcript text you find interesting.

3. Record yourself reading the transcript aloud (perhaps using a tool like the Online Voice Recorder from VirtualSpeech) as naturally as possible, pretending you really are giving the talk

4. Highlight in different colors all potential locations of the types of phrasing/collocations you find difficult. (e.g., Highlight all verb + noun objects in your transcript in green if you often don't know what verb to use with particular nouns. On a second copy of your transcript, highlight all noun-preposition-noun or just preposition-noun combinations in your transcript in yellow if you often don't know what preposition to use with particular nouns.)

"Unless we do something to prevent it, over the next 40 years we’re facing an epidemic of neurologic diseases on a global scale. A cheery thought. On this map, every country that’s colored blue has more than 20 percent of its population over the age of 65. This is the world we live in. And this is the world your children will live in. For 12,000 years, the distribution of ages in the human population has looked like a pyramid, with the oldest on top. It’s already flattening out. By 2050, it’s going to be a column and will start to invert. This is why it’s happening. The average lifespan’s more than doubled since 1840, and it’s increasing currently at the rate of about five hours every day. And this is why that’s not entirely a good thing: because over the age of 65, your risk of getting Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease will increase exponentially. By 2050, there’ll be about 32 million people in the United States over the age of 80, and unless we do something about it, half of them will have Alzheimer’s disease and three million more will have Parkinson’s disease." (Gregory Petsko: "The coming neurological epidemic," TED)

"Unless we do something to prevent it, over the next 40 years we’re facing an epidemic of neurologic diseases on a global scale. A cheery thought. On this map, every country that’s colored blue has more than 20 percent of its population over the age of 65. This is the world we live in. And this is the world your children will live in. For 12,000 years, the distribution of ages in the human population has looked like a pyramid, with the oldest on top. It’s already flattening out. By 2050, it’s going to be a column and will start to invert. This is why it’s happening. The average lifespan’s more than doubled since 1840, and it’s increasing currently at the rate of about five hours every day. And this is why that’s not entirely a good thing: because over the age of 65, your risk of getting Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease will increase exponentially. By 2050, there’ll be about 32 million people in the United States over the age of 80, and unless we do something about it, half of them will have Alzheimer’s disease and three million more will have Parkinson’s disease." (Gregory Petsko: "The coming neurological epidemic," TED)

5. For each highlighter color you used, listen carefully to your recording one time, paying close attention to what you actually said for the phrases highlighted in that color vs. what the transcript indicates you ought to have said. Mark in bold any highlighted phrases on your transcript in which you made an error.

6. Rerecord yourself giving the talk one more time, paying particular attention to any words marked in bold on your transcript (but don't worry about listening to/checking this second recording again unless you want to).