Mind your words! with"Mind word essays"(normal speed speech recording) - a podcast by Alan Palmer

Hello everybody

Today I want to talk about a new idea I have had to do some language practice on our own with no more than a piece of paper and a pen. I call this idea “mind word essays”. With this idea, you can practice:

Thinking in a language
Writing
Reading and grammar
Speaking/Listening

You can do this anywhere, whilst travelling, at home, with friends. I had the idea when I was flying to Germany and I wanted to practice German but I had nothing with me except a pen and paper.

The idea is simple and you can do this in any language. I will demonstrate it here using English.

You start with a simple sentence:

“My friend has a car” – you write it down

Next, you quickly think of extra words to make the sentence bigger

For example:

“My good friend has bought a new car” – you write this down under the first sentence

Now, you make another sentence from your head – don’t worry about making mistakes

“My good friend from London has bought himself a new red car which he likes very much.”

You write this down also

Then you make a bigger sentence

“My very good friend from London, who I spoke with last week, told me he has bought himself a new red car which he likes very much”


4 sentence are probably enough although you could write more.

You can then check the sentences as well as you can for grammar and spelling and then read each sentence out loud and listen to how you say it.

So, from four sentences, you have a lot of chance to practice many different language skills.


I believe that this will help also improve fluency


The important thing is to think of it like a game and enjoy it, getting the words from your head as youy can. This will make you think more clearly in the language and help you to think of the words you need when you have conversations with people.

Enjoy your mind essays, you can keep them and look at them again a few weeks later and try the same sentences again to see if you can think of words more quickly than before.

Be good, be happy

Bye for now

Further episodes of Alan Palmer's Language Chat podcasts

Further podcasts by Alan Palmer

Website of Alan Palmer