How do you improve your English every day?
The obvious answer is study every day.
But how? That's the real question.
When I work with my students in the Fluent Communication Course here at Go Natural English, I suggest having a focused study session of just 15 minutes each day, and that can help you improve a lot.
But it's not enough to just think about becoming fluent in English.
You have to know how to study to really make a difference and use those 15 minutes a day effectively.
So let me give you some pointers to help you make the most of your time in your busy week.
First of all, I like to use Google Calendar to actually create a meeting with myself for study time.
So for example, I want to improve my Japanese this year.
So I will set a meeting with myself for 15 minutes, maybe 30 minutes each time I decide I want to study Japanese.
So maybe it's in the mornings for you, maybe it's at lunchtime, maybe in the evenings, you get to decide.
The important part is making an appointment, because that makes it a priority for you.
It makes it harder to forget or avoid.
It's like any other important appointment going to the doctors, or a business meeting, you have to make it a priority for yourself.
So schedule that time in your planner.
Second, make use of all the helpful resources at your fingertips.
Seriously, we've never had a better time to learn a language.
There are so many YouTube channels to learn English like Go Natural English, podcasts if you prefer to listen while you do other things.
Go Natural English is also a podcast and so many websites as well with free English learning tips like gonaturalenglish .com.
But seriously, there are so many resources at your fingertips online, at your local library, your community center, and even in your community thinking about other people who could help you.
Now the most important strategy and my favorite one that I use with my students in my Fluent Communication course is called the Plus One Hypothesis, or also known as the Input Hypothesis.
Now I didn't come up with this, I didn't invent it, but I studied it in graduate school when I was getting my master's degree in teaching English as a second language.
It was thought of by Stephen Krashen in the 1970s.
So he's a linguistics researcher and I studied him a lot during my graduate studies.
What this means is that each time you study you add one level of difficulty.
So in theory it's simple but you need to know your present level and then what it means to add one level of difficulty.
So for example, if you find out that your present level is intermediate then you want to give yourself high intermediate materials.
So for example, if you're reading an intermediate level Voice of America news article, now this is a website that you can look up, voiceofamerica .com, maybe in your next study session you could try an authentic English article from the newyorktimes .com or bbc .com and these articles are meant for native
speakers, so they're going to be more difficult.
If you need help selecting materials to give you that Plus One level of difficulty then let me know in the comments.
This is something that I do with my students in my fluent communication course.
We build on each lesson that came before with a little bit more difficulty in a structured and organized way but I'm happy to help if you post your question here as well.
Maybe if you're looking for something more difficult but you're not sure where to find it just let me know and also we can help each other out if you see a comment asking for recommendations for good places to find English articles or books or movies you can certainly help each other out.
I love that so much.
Also it's really important to track your improvement so you know you are actually improving each day.
I like to do this with a journal you could do it by taking quizzes you could do this by tracking your progress maybe not daily but monthly using the CEFR scale which stands for common European framework for reference for language learning.
It's a great tool to use to track what you're able to do today and what you want to be able to do in the future.
So track what skills you're able to do in listening, speaking, reading, and writing and the scale is a great reference to do that.
And this is another tool that I use you guessed it inside my fluent communication course.
If you want more information about this course that I keep referencing you can come to gonaturalenglish .com slash pre -reg that's P -R -E -R -E -G.
I'll put the link in the description and that's just a place where you can sign up your email to get information about the course and find out when it will be open for new students again in the future.
Okay so let's dive a little bit deeper for those of you still watching and you want more information about how to improve every day then let's go.
Let's get fluent. So each day I do suggest immersing yourself in English as much as possible.
For me when I'm learning other languages I love listening to music especially in Spanish, Portuguese, French.
It's so much fun to learn the lyrics to a song and sing along to improve your vocabulary, your listening skills, your pronunciation, but try to immerse yourself in something that you enjoy.
That's the key point here.
If you enjoy reading stories then do that.
If you want to keep up on world news then do that in English.
But it's not really enough to just immerse yourself in English.
It's enjoyable but we need to work backwards from our goal.
What is your end goal?
What is your reason why you are learning English?
And I would love to know in the comments tell me your reason why.
Many of you will write because you want to become fluent but I challenge you to ask yourself again why.
Why do you want to become fluent?
Why is that important to you?
Think about it ask yourself why a couple of times and then tell us in the comments.
I'd love to know. Think about what is missing from your English skills currently.
This will keep you focused and motivated some days when you just don't feel like it because let's be honest everyone has days like this.
You wake up and you just don't feel like studying.
But when you remember your reason why and what you want to be able to do with your English skills that will keep you motivated.
And then the activities that you do to study English should be aligned with your reason why you want to learn English.
So if you want to learn English to be able to give a presentation then you're not going to just read news articles.
You're going to watch people giving speeches.
You're going to shadow them.
You're going to improve your diction pronunciation your speaking skills more than others.
There are so many exercises that you can do even on your own without joining a course and I've made other videos about techniques for learning English that I can link to in the description so you can check those out.
You can also do a search at gonaturalenglish .com on strategies methods to improve your fluency but try to make English a part of your day and an enjoyable part of your day because think about it this way what do you learn faster something that you enjoy or something that feels like a chore and I know
that learning English can sometimes feel like a chore maybe you were forced to study it in school and it didn't go so well but now you're an adult and you have control over the way that you study things over what you study over why you study so again think about that reason why think about what you
enjoy the ways that you enjoy learning maybe you enjoy reading maybe you enjoy dancing listening to music like me okay I learn a lot of Spanish from dancing salsa now that might sound crazy but it's because I learn all of the lyrics of the songs that I enjoy dancing to so for example you might learn
English through songs you might learn English through taking a martial arts class in English doing another activity in English so is there an activity that you can do in English that you enjoy for me it's dancing salsa that's how I improve my Spanish quite a bit these days it might sound silly but I'm
out on the dance floor singing along with the songs for example I really like this song by Ruben Blaudes maybe you know it it's called Chica Plástica and it goes like this now maybe my Spanish is not perfect but I'm really happy and I enjoy being able to use it and improve it when I'm doing activities
I enjoy like dancing so what do you think do you speak Spanish was my pronunciation okay don't comment on my singing I know it's not that good and that's not the point the point is to enjoy learning English so the last thing that's important for improving your English is to simply believe that you can but it's
not so simple because everyone has negative thoughts running through their mind like I'll never be fluent in English or everyone else learns faster than I do but these thoughts are not true so try stopping yourself when you have these thoughts and replacing them with positive ones like I am learning
a little more each day I'm becoming more and more fluent every week I'm able to learn English 100 % I can do this so come along with me and go natural English if you'd like to learn more about English fluency and how you can do it in an enjoyable way and improve a little bit each day make sure to subscribe
make sure to come on over to go natural English comm and check out all of the free English tips over there thank you so much for watching and I'll see you again next time bye for now
