The article deals with the actual problem of improving language skills in English at the level of speech norm. Like other aspects of the language, oral speech has a number of features that reflect the mentality of a given country, therefore, to build an utterance, it is not enough just to translate sentences from one language to another. The statement must comply with the rules of construction adopted in society. This article is devoted to two features of English colloquial speech, which fundamentally distinguishes English speech from Russian speech, namely, the use of vague language and the preferential use of nominative structures. These features are considered within the framework of various scientific concepts, the main of which are the categorical structure of parts, the theory of politeness, the categorical structure of the picture of the world, and others. The concept of Vague language is based on lexical and grammatical lexis, which make speech less direct and categorical, which is generally consistent with the maxims of British politeness. As for the predominantly nominative way of expression, this feature is explained from the standpoint of paradigmatic asymmetry, which is based on part-of-speech transformations that are optimal for use in a given specific speech situation. The paper also provides some methodological recommendations for the formation of students' speech skills. The relevance of the work is due to the fact that errors in the use of parts of speech at the level of the norm of speech, as a rule, do not lead to a distortion of meaning, but create an accent and lead to the formation of an unfavorable image of the speaker.