Hello and welcome back to the Easy English Podcast.
I'm your host Oliver, and today we are looking at how you can plan to learn English better and more effectively in 2026.
That's this year.
As always, we are going to be looking at this topic in slow and clear English.
If you're new, make sure that you follow and subscribe to learn more English vocabulary and practice your listening skills every week.
So it's 2026.
You have a pocket translator, so on your phone, your tablet or even your computer and it's 99 accurate a lot of the time.
You have AI that can now write messages and I see them sometimes in English, written by ChatGPT or other softwares and it can do this in seconds, easy and free.
So why are you still learning English?
What's the point?
Why do you still learn the language?
Why do you still want to be fluent?
Well, the answer is very simple.
Connection in a language cannot be replaced, at least not yet.
You don't want to simply know English.
You want to be yourself in English.
You want to experience things through another language.
Maybe you want to express yourself freely in that language without depending on a translator, whether that's digital or not.
When we think in a language and communicate in it, it is totally different.
And I understand that.
And the problem is that most study plans a lot of advice from teachers and YouTubers and all sorts of influencers out there are about how to learn English like a subject to learn.
So you're looking at it almost like a subject and we're not looking at it rather than almost a lifestyle or life habits that we lead.
Today we're going to throw away the to-do lists.
We've had plenty of episodes on advice around study plans and certain types of learning, and today we want to throw that away.
And we're going to talk about the high signal plan.
And I'll explain in one moment what that is.
A high signal plan on how to stop simply consuming English and how to start processing it better.
This will make more sense in a little bit.
But, as always, first what I would like to do and I think it's very important is teach you some key vocabulary and phrases for this episode.
And I want you to listen out for these phrases, these vocab and phrases as we go through today's topic and to try and remember them.
We also have for each of these words, flip cards and some additional ones available on Patreon.
So if you join, become a Patreon supporter, you can not only get bonus episodes every single week, Extra series as well, where I read news articles in English and explain them to you.
You get PDF transcripts and access to the Quizlet vocabulary flip card class.
So if you want it, and most actually importantly, you support the show too.
So if you want to get access to that, you can click the link in the description below and become a Patreon supporter.
Let's look at our key vocabulary today.
The first phrase that I want to teach you, it is an adjective and it is high signal in this case.
So high signal.
We talked about high signal plan, but what does high signal mean?
And high signal as an adjective here means information that is valuable, relevant and high quality.
So high signal content is very high quality.
It's very relevant and I hope that this episode is high signal content for you learning English.
Our next phrase is passive consumption.
Passive consumption.
And passive consumption means watching or listening to something without actively thinking or responding or maybe processing it.
So when something is passive, it's the opposite of active.
You're not actively doing it.
Our next phrase is output driven, output driven.
And when something is output driven, it's focused on producing so speaking and writing in the case of language rather than just receiving, so listening and watching.
Our fourth vocab word today is a noun and it is curation.
Curation is a great noun, and it means the act of carefully choosing what you allow into your environment.
And there's a verb version of this, which is to curate. to curate and the process is curation.
And our final word for today is and it's one that I've had in two other episodes recently, but I want to do it one more time because I think it's a great word
And that is nuance.
Nuance.
And nuance means a small, subtle difference in meaning or expression.
So I hope you remembered it from last time.
So try to keep it in your mind.
Okay, so look out for these words in today's episode and let's go through to talk about our main topic.
Now first, when most learners are thinking about English.
To be honest, they probably have a plan that spends about 90 of the time in the day today in what I call ghost mode.
Ghost mode.
So you're watching Netflix.
You're maybe listening to podcasts like this one, which is fine.
It's good.
It's good.
You're going to learn from this podcast and maybe you're scrolling through the news and consuming some stuff in English.
You feel like you're learning, but your brain is actually asleep.
It's not actively learning.
This is passive consumption.
But in our 2026 plan.
So my tips for the rest of this year the high signal rule that I want you to apply is simple.
Try not to consume without a reaction.
What does that mean?
Try not to consume without a reaction.
Or maybe to reframe that, try to react when you consume.
And this subtle change makes a very big difference.
We could say it's a nuance of learning.
Because consuming is great, but when you react, it completely changes how you learn.
So for example, let's take a one minute reaction.
So, after you've watched a video in English or you've read an article, a news article, try to summarize it or to answer some questions about it.
You know, maybe try to rewrite what you just read or even in your head to try and summarize that.
So you don't even need to say it out loud.
Whenever I ask questions, on the podcast, for example try to answer, leave a comment and answer the questions.
And if you don't want to leave a comment, try to answer in your mind.
Getting that active thought process and thinking about what is being said allows you to react and it allows you to become actively engaged with the passive content that you're consuming.
And it really doesn't need to be much.
It just has to be something to keep you keyed in and get your brain working on that active learning.
And it helps move, I guess, things that you're learning from the part of your brain that is recognizing it into the part that is producing and even storing it more long-term.
Now, I don't know a lot about the science of that.
We've talked about it in some episodes but all I do know is that if you use it and you engage with it, you most certainly remember it a lot more than if you just listen and consume it.
And you'll know this is true from other areas of your life, whether from school, from university, from the job and the career that you've learned.
When you put something into practice after learning it, or you engage with it and react, you learn it faster, better and you remember it longer as well, which is excellent.
Okay, let's take a look at tiered energy management.
Now, what does that mean?
That's a complicated phrase, right?
So stop trying to do deep study all of the time whenever your brain is dead and tired.
I recommend in 2026 that you take the approach of using some kind of a free-tiered system.
Something that depends on your mental bandwidth, the energy that you have in your mind at the moment.
Kind of how tired you are, but how tired your brain is, right?
So, for example, whenever your mental bandwidth, so your mental energy, is very high, so you have plenty of energy, like in the morning, if you feel fresh.
Maybe you're a night person.
You prefer this in the evening.
You want to do some more active learning.
So write something, record something, try some speaking, something where you're producing.
And then that will help push the boundaries of what you're learning.
So you want to engage more.
If you're listening to the podcast, maybe in the car, try to think in your mind, or maybe use your notepad, if you can, and engage with the content.
But of course, if you're driving, don't use your notepad.
Then when you have medium energy level, you want to maybe adjust as well.
So perhaps during your lunchtime or when you're traveling home after work, you might want to use more active input.
So listening to this podcast, perhaps shadowing some speech, or listening to something in English that you want to more passively listen to, but still engage with a little bit,
And then when you're tired.
So times of the day where you feel really tired and low energy, you could use some English entertainment with subtitles as an example.
So in this way, you're taking more of a lifestyle plan rather than forcing yourself to learn and do something at a time when your brain really isn't in the right shape or form to be able to learn.
And creating this more of a lifestyle approach.
It allows us to learn English for longer because we're building it in and around our days, our lifestyles and our routines.
And the rule I have for this is if you have only five minutes in the day, do a low energy task.
Don't force yourself to try and do something really difficult.
If you're having a bad day or a low energy day, do something, but make it as low a bar to entry as possible.
So just a low energy, easy task for you to do with your learning.
It's better to do something, even just a little bit, than to do nothing.
And if you do that just a little bit, you might find that more than more often than not, you will end up doing a little bit more and you'll you'll.
You'll find that because it was easy to start, you end up learning and doing more.
Whereas if it was a hard task that you wanted to do to learn and you feel low energy, you're probably not going to do it at all.
Okay, so now is the time where we're going to take a little bit of a break and go to our listener spotlight.
So in last week's listener spotlight, I asked if you could ask me a question.
So usually I ask you questions, but I decided to make the questions for you to ask and I will answer.
And we had plenty of great comments and great questions, but I've picked a couple today for you.
The first was from Hanako from Japan.
So Hanako said, hi, Oliver.
It's so nice to meet you.
I'm from Japan and I'm listening to your podcast from Indonesia.
I have used English during working, however, my speaking and listening skills are not perfect.
Don't worry, Hanako, almost no one's skills are perfect, not even mine.
Therefore, I caused some trouble.
I would appreciate it if you could advise me how to improve my English skills as soon as possible.
I'm sorry if there are any mistakes in my writing.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for your comment, Hanako.
That was a lovely comment.
Very well written.
And do not worry because there were no major mistakes there at all.
It was an excellent comment.
So I would advise you know if you want to make immediate improvements in your English.
It's taking a look, a good look at your plan, at how you learn English and thinking at the start.
You know how can I improve this plan.
Maybe why am I not getting the progress that I want?
Is it because you're not consistently learning?
Maybe you're not producing English like practicing speaking as much as you need to.
You need to look at what you want to improve and why it's not improving.
So don't focus too much on increasing how much you're learning, more about where you're learning to get the result that you need and want.
So I would advise, if you're really looking to improve your speaking and listening skills, the only way to do that is going to be to actually do it.
You're going to have to join some conversation classes or find a language exchange partner or something along those lines.
Without practicing speaking, your speaking is not going to get better.
And for listening.
You can listen to shows like this podcast and other content, but try to actively listen and engage with that content and it will really, really help you.
So thank you very much for your comment.
We'll take a look at our next question today.
So we had another question and it was from Lena from Columbia.
And Lena said, Hi Oliver, I love your podcast because I learn a lot of new things.
I have a question about an issue that I don't understand about English, and it's the pronunciation of the determiners a, an and the, or the omission of those.
Thanks for all of your helpful episodes.
Finally, as a follower for sure, I'd like to know more about you, and how do you get so much knowledge about issues that are not necessarily related with the English language?
Regards, Lina from Colombia.
Okay, thank you very much for your comment.
I'm not sure I fully understand around the pronunciation of a and the.
Although I can think about, you know, explaining when or why you use them.
So the general rule when you're using a or an and the and I hope this is the question you're asking is a we pronounce and use it before consonant sounds.
So more for general items like a book.
A city, a table.
And those consonants, those are harder letters like B, C, T, and not vowels like A, E, I, O, and U.
And if the following word has an A E I, O and U and it's more of a general word again, like an apple, an orange, then we use the an as the article before that.
But the one bit that a lot of people miss out is that it's also not just vowels, but it's vowel sounds.
So any kind of soft sounds that sound like A, E, I, O, and U.
For example, an hour, you know, the time.
Or an honest man.
So even though it starts with an H, we still use an before that.
And when we use the instead of a and an, we use the when we're pointing to a specific thing.
So like the dog in the story or on the are or the apple.
And that is for both consonant signs and vowel signs.
And those are the general rules.
There are of course, exceptions like with everything in English.
But that's the general sort of gist of it and general rule of thumb there.
So hopefully that helps.
And to answer your other question about myself, so how I know so much about maybe other topics?
It's really just researching for each episode.
So when I have an episode idea, I like to read about it, make the episode a little bit of the script and the plan and then record.
But as well, I also have a big interest in reading.
So I love to learn a lot about international politics, about history I love as well, and geography too.
And I love to travel.
So I suppose just all of those things I pick up little bits to talk about on this podcast, about cultural things and learning about differences between countries.
So thank you very much for your lovely, lovely comment.
And I look forward to hearing from you again in the future.
Okay, so for next week's episode again, remember to leave your questions any question at all about myself or about yeah, about English or language questions, and I'll be happy to answer in our listener spotlight as well.
And you can leave me part of your comment about the episode's content too.
And the one thing I'll ask you, before we go back to our main episode, is to remember to have rated the podcast five stars on Apple or Spotify, wherever you listen.
It really, really helps more people to find the podcast and to get better discovered, even more on Spotify or other platforms.
So if you go onto the podcast page and you click the star button and give us five stars, that really helps.
Okay, so let's take a look at the social anchor.
Really, fluency can die in a vacuum.
So when you are not using or being surrounded by English at all.
If the only person you're speaking English to this year is yourself or an AI, that's probably not a great plan.
I'm a very big advocate, a very big promoter of using English.
So the social aspect of language is very important because languages fundamentally are social.
So find a community, find a group, find a class.
Build it into your routine and your lifestyle.
And it will really, really help you this year.
If you meet people, you make friends and you learn English.
You're not just you know, you're not just learning and practicing, you're building it into your routine and your lifestyle.
You're communicating while you do things and you practice.
It's a wonderful thing.
So in 2026, the person who is going to speak the best English or learn the best English isn't the one with the biggest vocabulary.
It's the person who has curated their life, their routines and their English learning plan so that English is a natural part of that.
It's built into a natural routine of learning.
And what that means will be different for each and every one of you.
But the most important thing is that you find a way to blend English into your life in a natural, lovely routine that suits you, that isn't too stressful and that allows you to improve regularly without stressing and ultimately not enjoying studying the language.
So I hope this was an interesting episode.
I hope it maybe reframed the way you think about a plan for learning the language.
Probably coming into this topic, you thought I'm going to tell you exactly what to do and when.
But more I want you to take away from this episode is how you can sit down and think about how you can build English into your routine and your everyday life.
So thank you very much for listening.
And I hope to see you in our next episode.
Remember, if you want bonus content, you want to ask me more questions and get bonus series, flip cards, PDFs to sign up to the Easy English Patreon.
The link is in the description below.
Thank you very much.
I will see you next week.
Goodbye.
