This is Jack from tofluency.com and this is episode 35 of the To
Fluency podcast. It is great to have you here
today. Now, this episode is a little
bit different. It's probably going to be longer
than my average episode. And I'm also going to go through
17 tips so that you can learn English more effectively, which
means that you can learn English faster because most learners,
nearly every learner I speak to is somewhat frustrated with how
quickly they are progressing, how fast they're learning
English. And I know you're listening to
this because you want to learn English and you want to be able
to learn English as quickly as possible.
And it is frustrating if you're not doing the right things, if
you're not happy with the way you're progressing.
So listen to all of these tips. Some are going to focus on
specific techniques when it comes to learning English.
Some are going to talk about motivation.
Some are going to talk about practical tips in order to
progress. But again, listen to all of
these tips, take notes if you need to.
I recommend listening once or twice and know that in the
description of the podcast on your podcast app, you'll be able
to find these tips listed and also any resources that are
going to be useful for you. So for example, on tip #8 I have
a link to my favorite writing tool.
I use this and I recommend. Every English learner gets this
too. So again, we have 17 tips.
Be sure to listen to the mall. Here is tip number one.
The first tip is to set a goal because people with goals
succeed because they know where they are going.
So people with goals succeed because they know where they are
going. And goal setting has completely
changed my life. And over the last 10 years
especially, I've been very excited about hitting goals and
achieving them. And this is really powerful.
So ask yourself, do you have a goal for your English learning?
Do you have a specific goal here when it comes to learning the
language? If not, start thinking about
this a little bit more. Ask yourself, what level do I
have now? Am IA beginner, am I an
intermediate? Am I advanced?
And then decide on what level you want to have and when you
want to have this level. So you're not only saying this
is my goal, but you're saying this is when I want to achieve
it. Because putting a deadline on
your goal ensures that you take action and that you take action
now. And it also helps you do the
right things. And again, if you don't have a
deadline for this goal, then it doesn't give you the urgency, it
doesn't make you really focus on doing this now.
But if you have a deadline, then it makes you take action today.
So have a goal and a deadline and then get excited about this
goal. Get motivated about this.
Now, as you're going to learn, motivation isn't everything
because we need to create the habits in order to progress over
the long term. But that initial motivation
allows you to take action today. Tip #2 is to ensure that you are
using and practising your English daily, that you're
studying or learning or practising your English every
day. Now if that sounds overwhelming,
then know that you can just do a little bit every day.
I talk about something called the 10 plus minute method where
you commit to something for 10 minutes a day.
And if you want to do more, you can.
If you don't, that's fine too. But doing this makes it easier
to start because you only have to commit to 10 minutes and it
creates the habit of doing something daily.
And it's this daily practice, this habit of doing something
every day that is really going to help you progress quickly.
Because when it comes to learning English, it's about
what you do to improve and how often you do it.
So it's what you do, for example, practicing your
speaking, learning grammar rules, etcetera, that's
important. We'll talk more about that soon.
But it's also how often you do this as well.
And by committing to daily practice, you're saying that
this goal is important to me and I'm going to show up every day.
This is a phrasal verb, which means I'm going to do this every
day #3 is to listen as much as possible, to listen to English
as much as possible. Now we can talk about, we will
in a second what to listen to. But this follows on from tip 2,
because we talked about before daily practice.
Well, you can listen every day as well, and I've read lots of
blog posts and met people who tell me that the reason why they
learned their language is because they listened to hours
and hours and hours of audio. There's a guy who has a blog,
it's called All Japanese All the Time and he talks about how he
learned Japanese by listening to 10,000 hours of Japanese.
And that is a lot of time. You know, if you want to
multitask, if you want to get your app out, get your
calculator app out and just calculate how long it will take
to do 10,000 hours of listening. If you listen 5 hours a day and
you'll realise how much this is. Now again, you don't have to
commit to something crazy, but instead get in the mind frame of
thinking, can I listen more or how can I listen to English as
much as possible? Because input in English is so
important. And the more you listen to
English, the more you'll get used to the language and also
internalize the different structures.
Listening to English allows you to get used to the way people
speak. And the good news is it's easier
these days to listen as much as possible because you can listen
to things while doing other things.
And I'm sure right now you're probably doing something else
while you're listening to me speak to you.
Maybe you're cleaning the house, you're on the way to work,
you're on the way to university, you're exercising, you're taking
a walk, or maybe you're just lying in bed trying to get to
sleep and you've decided to put on this podcast to help you
sleep. But again, think about your
life, how you can incorporate, which means add listening to
your daily practice and just think about all the different
situations that you can listen to English and do this as much
as possible. Tip 4 is to be grateful for all
the resources that you have available.
Now, I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but I just
want to say when I started learning Spanish, it was very
difficult to find the resources that I needed in order to learn.
The only thing that I could really get was the newspaper,
which was very expensive, and I didn't have access to this
online. And it was very difficult to get
listening resources as well because these came in CDs that
language schools had and it was expensive to find them
elsewhere. But now you have access to
unlimited English Audio, Unlimited English lessons.
It's incredible. You can read articles online for
free. You can access all these
different newspapers from all over the world and read blogs
and read Twitter and go on social media.
This is an amazing opportunity and being thankful for this will
mean that you'll take advantage of this opportunity.
Tip 5 is to do what you do now, but do it in English.
And if you don't, living in English speaking country, you
may feel you're at a disadvantage, that it's not as
easy to learn English as somebody else who lives in the
UK or lives in the US or Australia.
However, you can change your environment no matter where you
live, so you can turn your life into an English life.
And what I mean by that is all you have to do again is to think
about, OK, what do I do now in my native language that I can do
in English instead? You can watch TV in English,
watch movies in English, listen to English music.
You can research the latest iPhone in English and read the
reviews in English if it's something you want to buy.
You can learn new things in English.
You can read the news in English, change your mobile
phone into English. And this makes such a difference
over the long term because you're getting all of this
input. You're getting all of this input
from every angle all the time. So throughout your day you'll be
reading and listening and watching things in English.
And after a while it will become natural to you.
And this is going to give you so much more input, which again, is
really important if you want to reach a high level.
So think about all the things you do now that you can do in
English instead. Tip number six is to know that
native speakers don't care when you make mistakes.
Now the biggest reason why most learners I talk to don't get
enough speaking practice is because they're afraid of making
mistakes. They are scared that others will
judge them or laugh at them. But know this, the majority of
native speakers don't care if you make mistakes.
It's all about making a connection and being able to
express yourself. Native English speakers are used
to hearing people speak English as a second language because
it's the international language of most culture or but you know,
big pop culture of travel, of business, of the Internet, of
social media. And therefore native speakers
constantly hear people speak from different languages in
English. So they are used to hearing
mistakes, hearing different accents.
And most people love speaking to foreigners because they're
interested in where they're from.
They're interested in their accent, the way they speak.
So embrace this, embrace your accent and know that again,
native speakers don't care when you make mistakes.
So don't let the fear of making mistakes hold you back, which
means stop you from practising your English.
Tip #7 is to get out of your comfort zone now.
Your comfort zone is where you feel comfortable, and it's also
a place where you don't make the progress you want to make.
So getting out of your comfort zone means doing things like
taking that first online lesson, booking an online lesson with a
language teacher, and taking that first lesson because a lot
of people are nervous about this.
And it goes back a little bit to tip 6.
They're afraid to make mistakes and to not speak perfect
English. Another example of getting out
of your comfort zone means doing something in English that takes
a bit more focus and is a little bit more intentional.
And we'll talk about some of the techniques soon, But things like
practising speaking and listening to your own voice.
It's never comfortable to listen to your own voice.
It's always a little bit strange.
People don't like hearing their own voice.
But in order to progress, you might have to get out of your
comfort zone a little bit and take it step by step.
So again, if you're thinking about booking or getting more
speaking practice, then book that first English lesson online
where you take 10 minutes to speak to a teacher and the first
step is just a bucket to reserve a time.
Then the next step is to show up for those 10 minutes and to
speak in English. And then the next step from
there is to take in 30 minute lesson and then maybe an hour
lesson and then maybe get more practice by meeting people who
speak English. But you have to get out of your
comfort zone, especially if you're not progressing and
especially if you're not doing the right things because fear is
holding you back. Before we talk about the next
tip, just a quick question. How's it going?
Are you enjoying this? If you are, then be sure to
share this episode or this lesson with a friend.
But let's get to tip 8. Now, tip 8 is to keep a journal.
To keep a journal. Now this means to write a diary,
and I actually do this. I'm currently using Apple Notes
right now to give you this lesson.
I've made notes for this lesson and I have a little section
where I have my thoughts and I have 900 entries here where most
days I'll just write down what I'm thinking and things I want
to do today and things I did yesterday and any thoughts I
have now. I recommend doing this in
English as well because it's just a great way to get that
daily practice and to get right in practice.
Now, I think practice in writing is such a powerful way to
improve because when you're writing, you can take your time
to create sentences. There's no rush.
For example, when you're in a conversation, you have to speak
at a certain pace. You have to listen to what the
other person is saying and respond.
But when you're writing, it's all about you.
There's no one else interacting with that.
And you can take your time to create correct sentences.
And there are a few tools here that can help you with that.
You can use a general spell checker, you can put sentences
into Google to see if they're correct, And then you can also
use a grammar tool, a grammar writing tool, which will correct
your grammar and your sentence structure.
And again, I'll leave a link to this in the description for you
so that you can download that. There's a free version and a
paid version. And again, I use this because it
helps me improve my writing even though I'm a native speaker.
But tip 8IN general is to keep a journal.
Just write down your thoughts. Write down what you want to do
today, what you did yesterday. It's a great way to practice the
different tenses as well. Tip 9 is to avoid learning
single words now. No matter your process for
learning new vocabulary, I recommend to not focus on single
words when you're learning. Instead, learn sentences and
phrases. Learn sentences and phrases.
So for example, let's say you want to learn a new word which
is excited, Excited and you learn the word in the dictionary
and you write it down and you try to memorize it.
That's learning the single word. However, let's say if you take
the word excited and you write down 3 sentences, for example,
I'm excited about going to the party.
She was excited about seeing her, and he's going to be
excited about going there by those.
By learning those three sentences, you learn so much
more. You learn grammar, you learn
sentence structure, and you learn the word in context.
So in all of those sentences you heard excited about, doing,
seeing, seeing. So you know, after excited, we
use about and then we use the gerund, the ING.
But if you just learned the word on its own, then you wouldn't
know this, You wouldn't internalize this.
So what you're doing is you're learning a new word in the
context of other words, and therefore you're learning
grammar and you're learning sentence structure.
So learn sentences when you learn new vocabulary.
Tip 10 is to focus on the English you need to know, to
focus on the English you need to know.
And what I mean by that is focus on words and phrases that are
useful to you and then also focus on topics that you like to
speak about. So for example, if you need
English for business meetings, then focus on business English
phrases. And another example is if you
enjoy having conversations in English about football because
you love football or soccer in American English, then learn
football related phrases. Because you're going to be
learning the English that you're going to use when you have
conversations with people, you normally talk about things
you're interested in. So learn about what you're
interested in. And the good news about this is
when you make English a part of your life, when you listen to
things, choose things that you're interested in.
So again, if you like football, then listen to football podcasts
or watch YouTube videos about football.
This makes learning so much more exciting and you're actually
just doing what you normally do, but you're doing it in English
like we learned about before. But also for this tip, focus on
commonly used phrases, phrases that you're going to use again
and again because we need to. It just makes it so much more
efficient. If you're learning phrases that
you're never going to use, then you're not completely wasting
your time, but you're not being more efficient with your
learning. And a lot of what we've talked
about is being efficient because you have limited time.
So learn the vocabulary you're going to use, learn commonly
used phrases, and also learn the topic of English that you're
going to talk about and that you're going to use in the
future. Tip 11 Don't worry about grammar
rules. Don't worry about them.
Don't worry about grammar rules, or don't worry completely about
grammar rules, because what I'm about to say may shock you.
But if I asked 10 of my friends to give me an example of the
second conditional, at least nine and probably 10 wouldn't be
able to do it. If I said, OK, give me an
example of a second conditional sentence, they look at me and
think, I've no idea what you're talking about.
However, all ten of these friends use the second
conditional all the time. They know how to use it.
They know how to form sentences, They know how to use the correct
grammar. They know how to use it in the
right context because they have internalized it.
They have internalized these structures, but they can't
explain them. And the way they've done that is
through #9 by learning sentences, because native
speakers learn through sentences too, and also through tip 12,
which we'll talk about in a second.
Now, it's OK to learn grammar, to know the rules, but no, in
order to use them correctly, you're going to have to
internalise grammar. You're going to have to reach
the stage where it just feels right, where it comes out of
your mouth and you're not thinking about the rules.
And this is the stage you want to reach.
This is the stage where you want to be as an English learner.
Now, you're probably excited about TIP 12 because I just
mentioned it and it's this. Repetition is key.
Repetition is key.
I always make that joke, But basically what we're saying here
is instead of learning the rules of grammar, if you repeat a
sentence again and again and again, and if you see similar
sentences and you repeat them and hear them and see them again
and again and again, then this is when you're going to
internalize it. This is when it's just going to
feel right. So let's bring tip 910 and 12
together by saying find sentences that are specific to
you, the English you need to know and repeat them.
So find sentences that are specific to you and repeat them.
Now you can do this with a notebook where you write down
the phrases and then you write them down again and you repeat
them and then you repeat them again.
But there's a smarter way to do this and it's to use spaced
repetition software apps like Anki.
Again, all links are in the description and I'll I'll link
to a video that goes through this in depth.
But what you do basically is you enter in these phrases with
audio, then you repeat them. So on day one, you repeat it
three times until you feel comfortable with it.
Then you repeat it the next day, and then two days later, four
days later, 81632, etcetera. Because we don't have to repeat
something five times every day, each day, in order to memorize
it or to internalize it. We want to be efficient with our
repetition. We want to ensure that we're
using the smallest amount of repetitions in order to remember
a phrase. And that's what this software is
going to do for you. So repetition is key in order to
internalize something. In order to memorize something,
you need to repeat it. Now, Speaking of repetition, I'm
repeating tip 13 is to repeat phrases out loud.
And this is one of my favorite techniques for learning English
and languages in general. What you do is this, you find a
phrase in English, a sentence, an audio phrase, you repeat it
and record yourself. So you use your mobile phone and
you say this phrase into your mobile phone or your computer
and you record yourself. Then you listen to your version,
which again, you might need to get out of your comfort zone.
You listen to your version and then you compare it to the
original and you think, OK, how can I improve the way I'm saying
this? You give yourself feedback.
You don't ask a teacher for it. Instead you give yourself
feedback. So you might think, oh, that
sound isn't quite right, or I didn't link those words
together, or I didn't use the retraction.
My intonation isn't quite right. And the more you practice this,
the better you will get at being able to evaluate yourself and
give yourself feedback. And then once you have mastered
the phrase so that you're happy with the way you say it, use tip
12, get lots of repetition, repeat it today, repeat it in
two days, 48, etcetera, so that you can practice using the
muscles in your mouth to be able to say this phrase fluently and
accurately. And then you'll be able to use
it over the long term. And this method is not just
practicing your speaking, you're memorizing grammar, you're
memorizing vocabulary, you're listening to a phrase, you're
reading a phrase as well. It's such a powerful method, but
by speaking the phrase, it really helps you improve your
speaking, your fluency, your accuracy, and it also just helps
you connect with the phrase in a more meaningful way.
We have 4 tips to go, so let's continue.
Tip 14 is to find someone to practice with.
To find someone to practice with because working on English on
your own is great. Think about this as as training,
like soccer training, where you train with the team, you work on
your shooting, your skills, everything else, but it's not
quite real. But having a conversation with
someone is real. This is like playing a match.
And this is where you really just fine tune your English,
where you feel good about speaking with somebody.
And then you also gain confidence because you notice
that your English is improving. But it also helps you just get
that practice that you need in order to use your English in the
real world. So find somebody to practice
with. Again, this is part of getting
out of your comfort zone and it can be difficult to find
someone, but make it a priority to find someone.
So overcome this obstacle. Use a link in the description
where I give you some websites where you can find people online
and also where you can find language exchange partners.
And this is where you speak in English for half the time and
you speak in your native language for half the time.
So you're finding someone who wants to learn your language,
but someone who speaks English. So make it a priority to find
somebody to practice with and then get practice once a week or
maybe twice a week so that you're committing to this
conversational practice. Tip 15 is to commit over the
long term, to make a commitment over the long term.
And this goes back a little bit to your goal where you said, OK,
I'm a intermediate speaker. I want to be an advanced speaker
within eight months. So what you need to do here is
to have this commitment over the long term, because you can have
the best methods, you can have all the motivation when you're
first starting, but if you don't have this daily practice, which
is what we talked about, and the long term commitment, you're not
going to make progress. It takes hours and hours and
hours and hours of practice to improve.
And sometimes you're going to improve without noticing this.
Not all improvement is easy to notice, and it might feel like
I've not really improved this week, haven't made progress.
And if you feel like that, then think, OK, is what I'm doing
efficient? Can I improve the way I learn
English and also think, all right, sometimes I'm going to
have weeks like that. But I'm committed to the long
term and I'm going to keep going and in a month I'm going to see
an improvement. But you're not always going to
notice that you improve. Know that improvement might mean
just learning 20 more sentences this week.
That's improvement to know that you have memorized 20 sentences
and you can use them. So focus on doing the right
things consistently. 2 more tips to go tip 16 is to have fun, to
enjoy it, to enjoy this this this whole process.
Now there are a couple of things to think about here.
Firstly, having fun means doing things that interest you.
So again, learn the English that interests you.
Do things that you think are fun so you don't have to read a book
if you don't like the book. There are so many different
books out there so that you can enjoy, you can enjoy this pro,
this process. You don't have to watch the news
in English if you don't watch the news in your native
language. So do the things that interest
you. But also having fun means
smiling while you learn when you're doing the sentences out
loud. If you make mistakes, laugh,
enjoy it. Know you're going to make lots
of mistakes when you try to improve quickly.
Enjoy it, have fun, smile while you do it.
Let's say you're writing your journal in the morning.
Have fun with this. Put on some nice music, get your
favorite drink, get a pen out, enjoy the the whole process of
doing it. So be in the moment with your
English learning and have fun while you do it.
Which again means using the right resources so that it's
enjoyable, but also just whatever you're doing, have a
smile on your face and enjoy it #17 is to be proud of the
progress you have made. I think a lot of people don't
spend enough time thinking about this because it's very easy to
forget how much we've improved. And I think the reason is where
we are now just becomes normal. So for example, I was writing
down in my journal today talking about how I was disappointed
with the latest videos I've made on YouTube because on YouTube it
tells me where these videos are in terms of views related to the
time that they have been released.
So my latest video right now is 7 out of 10.
The one before that is 9 out of 10, and then the one before that
is, well, 2 out of 10. So that one was good.
But the last two, 7 and 9 out of 10, I felt a little bit bad.
And then I was writing down about how well my YouTube
channel is going at the moment right now.
I've had record views over the last few months, so I just took
a moment to be proud of the progress I've made.
And when I wrote this Lesson plan planner originally, I wrote
here, wow, 80,000 people have subscribed to my YouTube
channel. So I wrote this quite a long
time ago now. And since then I now have over
500,000 subscribers. So again, I should just focus on
and just take a moment to think about the progress I've made
here. And this is what you should do
for English as well, to think about how far you have come, to
think about how much progress you've made.
To go back two years and think what was my level like then and
what is it like now? And to be proud of this and a
good mantra is thank you more, please.
So be grateful of what you have now, but also be ambitious and
want more. Be proud of where you are, but
want more. So those are the 17 tips to help
you improve English quickly. I, if you're listening right
now, congratulations, you made it to the end.
I want to thank you for listening to this and I hope you
did find it useful. Again, I highly recommend
opening the description for this podcast episode and just having
a look at the tips and the resources I'm going to leave for
you as well. And I'll leave a link to my
website where you can get lots more information about these
things. Now, if you have found it
useful, then I'd be very grateful if you shared this
episode with a friend. So just send this episode to one
of your friends through Messenger, through your iPhone,
your Android phone, send a message or post it on social
media to share with people, especially if you're in groups.
And then if you want to spend more time learning with me, then
go through my other episodes and take a look at them.
Listen to those ones too. OK, Thank you again for being
here and I will speak to you soon.
Bye for now.