Tip #1: Find a fun way to learn English
If you spend 10 hours a week studying English, what’s the best way to spread that time out? Should you spend all day on Saturday reading English books, speaking with a conversation partner, and doing flashcards, then do nothing for the rest of the week?No! Of course not! By the time you return to studying, you will have forgotten most of what you learned the week before. It’s much better to spend a little time each day practicing. It’s even better if you can split it up so that you’re
If you have a chance to study or work abroad, take it. Immersion is the very best way to learn.
Mời bạn tham khảo thêm: luyện nghe tiếng anh ielts thế nào
Tip #3: Learn natural English
A lot of textbooks teach you English that isn’t natural. Textbook writers do this because they feel that they need to make the language easier for English learners to understand. That’s OK at first, but it’s not good to learn too much unnatural English.
Try to expose yourself both to formal English (books, speeches, news broadcasts) and informal (conversations between friends, dialogue in TV shows).
If you have trouble understanding people speaking at a natural speed, try listening in shorter bursts. For example, if you’re watching a video on the Internet, you can pause it after each sentence to try to figure out what the people were saying.
Memorizing phrases is a really powerful tool to help you learn advanced English quickly. Phrases teach you how to use words and put them together. Here are some of the reasons:
You can learn more than one word at a time. For example, by memorizing the PhraseMix lesson, “The jury found her ‘not guilty'” you can learn the words “jury”, “find”, and “not guilty”.
You can learn which words go well together. For example, if you just learn the word “impression”, you might not know that the verb “leave” goes well with it: “A limp handshake leaves a bad impression.” And although you know what “pleasant” means, you might not know how common the phrase “pleasantly surprised” is.
Lots of phrases have their own meaning that you can’t predict based on the individual words. There are phrasal verbs such as “put in”, “bring up”, “think over”, and so on. There are also idioms like “a fine line between __ and __”.
Our brains are very selective. They don’t remember every detail. Instead, they remember the things that seem important, and forget the rest. If you just learn a phrase once, and never read or hear it again, you probably won’t remember it. That’s why it’s important to review.Here are some tips to keep in mind for reviewing what you’ve learned:It’s good to review once within a few minutes after you learn something, again in about a day, and again in a week or so.
Flashcards work really well for review. Flashcard programs like Anki and Brainscape work even better.If you’re living in a completely English-speaking environment, it’s not as important to review because you will probably see or read the same things again naturally. But if you’re only studying English for an hour or two a day, review becomes very important.
You should focus most of your time on listening to English. This is how you’re going to learn to learn new phrases and pick up native-sounding habits. Once you’ve heard something 15 or 20 times, you’ll start to be ready to use it yourself. At least half of your English practice should be listening.However, listening passively, without speaking, can sometimes be a waste of time. If the language-learning part of your brain doesn’t think that it needs to learn something, it will forget it. That’s why it’s important to combine your listening practice with speaking. Talk to whoever you can; if you can’t find anyone, talk to yourself!Reading and writing are important skills too, but you’ve probably already gotten a lot more practice with those. Just make sure to read more than you write.
Tip #7: Have the right attitude
Remember that learning a foreign language takes hundreds of hours! Mastering one takes a lifetime. To keep learning, you need to have the right attitude:
Treat English like something that you want to do every day, not like something that you have to do.
Forget about your old habits. Try to sound, act, walk, laugh, and think like an English speaker.
Remember that there is always more to be learned about every word or phrase. Never believe that you completely “know” something.
When you’re in a conversation in English, be confident. Don’t focus on your flaws.
Remember Tip #1. Have fun!
