I’m really excited for this! If you’re someone who wants to improve your English in the year to come, we’ve made this lesson for you.

We’re going to talk about twelve effective tips and ways of improving your English.

1. Start right now

Start today, right this moment. You’ve made the wise decision to click on this video, now keep your progress going! Putting things off only slows down your ability to become fluent in English.

Why put off to tomorrow what you can do now?

We encourage you to continue to make the decision every day to block off time to develop. Whether it be during your morning coffee, your break at work, after the kids are in bed, or before class starts, make the decision now that you’re going to consistently commit to your future by improving your English speaking, listening, reading and writing.

Don’t get discouraged if you miss a day or two. You can’t change the past but can start your future this very moment.

2. Practice every day

Practicing and challenging yourself regularly is the key to acquiring a new language, and perhaps the most important thing you can do to continually improve.

Language learning is something that requires daily development. If you take days or weeks off, you’re going
to spend time relearning words and remembering knowledge that you’ve already learned.

Keep track of the days you’ve practiced and keep the streak going! Remember it’s a marathon not a sprint. Even small progress each day will eventually lead you to English fluency.

Reward yourself once you’ve reached a consecutive day goal and do whatever you can to motivate yourself to progress and improve.

3. Quality over quantity

Prioritize quality learning time over a lot of unengaged, passive learning. Make the time you spend learning English a time of mental focus and clarity.

This means minimizing multitasking and concentrating on what you want to accomplish. Fifteen minutes of focused reading, speaking or grammar practice is far more valuable than thirty minutes of a video in the background that you’re not really paying attention to.

Set aside and devote as much time as you can to observing an English conversation, enhancing your vocabulary, or listening to an English podcast with undivided attention.

Identify when you’re most alert and capitalize on those times in your day when you’ll effectively retain what it is you’re learning.

4. Remember, you have a number

What number, you might ask? Every person has a number of quality learning hours to reach their desired level of English fluency.

This number depends on an individual’s learning style, ability to acquire and retain knowledge, their first language, their amount of immersion time, along with several other factors.

One person’s number of required hours may be more or less than another’s, but everyone has a number!

Even though you don’t know what your number is, it does indeed exist. Anything and everything that you can do to put the hours in is bringing you closer to your goal.

5. Listen to English as much as possible

Immerse yourself in the English language as much as you possibly can.

There are so many ways of reading and listening to English. Watch English news, movies, TV shows, YouTube videos and social media content. Discovering and prioritizing content on topics
that you find interesting will make it more enjoyable and encourage you to take more in, as you’ll be more easily engaged.

It isn’t difficult to find English content on any subject or area of interest in today’s online world. Listen to English music, podcasts and radio stations whenever you can, to get familiar with different English accents and fluency levels.

Repeated viewing or listening will increase your ability to understand faster English speech, as you’ll be able to understand more words and phrases each time you listen.

Take in English at and above your current fluency level. Read and listen to English of a fluency level
you would like to attain, on a regular basis along with less challenging material.

6. Speak English as much as possible

Use English in your everyday life as much as possible.

Start with conversations that you’re able to have in your everyday life. This may include ordering food, booking accommodations or flights through a conversation, going to the grocery store, asking for directions,
joining English groups at work or online.

The online and social media opportunities to learn English are plentiful. Visit English speaking countries or communities when possible. Seek out ways of taking part in English conversations any way you can, and as much as you can.

The key is to go outside of your comfort zone and challenge yourself. This doesn’t take much when you’re learning a language that you’re not yet comfortable speaking!

It’s okay to make mistakes, even fluent English speakers make mistakes. Work to identify your common errors and gradually eliminate them from your English.

Try to speak with fluent English speakers as much as you can and ask for their feedback on your word choices, grammar and pronunciation.

7. Read often, and read out loud

Read English as often as possible.

It doesn’t take much to find compelling and challenging material online to improve upon any English fluency level. There are tremendous international news apps, English grammar and vocabulary websites, media and current event blogs.

Whatever you’re interested in, or whatever professional field you’re striving to advance in, there is almost an overwhelming amount of free online reading awaiting you.

When reading, you can gain a lot from recording yourself reading out loud and listening back. This gives you a chance to compare your pronunciation with fluent speakers. You’ll also notice encouraging improvements
over time if you go back and listen to recordings from months before!

Even simply reading out loud will give you valuable practice of speaking without a conversation partner.

8. Read and write slower

Advice to read and write slower may seem strange. This is counterintuitive and runs against the goal most people have, which is to seamlessly read and write at the speed they’re used to in their first language.

When learning English, a useful way of gaining a firmer grasp is to read slower and to write slower. Don’t rush, particularly when you’re reading, as you may miss subtleties when a letter or two can change the meaning of what you’re reading.

Take your time and concentrate on the order of words before you, the tense and meaning they convey. You’ll notice how important a few minor details are in the text.

You’ll be able to read and write faster with practice, but don’t let your desire to be fluent now slow your progress to fluency!

9. Focus on word chunks

Common word pairings and phrases are crucial to understand English speakers, particularly faster speech. Don’t spend all your time memorizing individual words.

Instead, focus on common word chunks.

For example, the words  “thank you”, “thank you very much”, or ”thank you so much”. “I’m doing well thanks”, “I’m great”, “I’ve been better”.

These phrases are ones you’ll hear all the time, and are worth studying as you’ll use them on a daily basis when conversing with English speakers.

It can be difficult to tell when one word ends and another begins when learning a language. By focusing on word chunks and common parings you’ll be better able to identify them in common, regular English conversations and be better able to use them yourself.

Identify common English phrases and the subtle differences in how they’re pronounced with repeated listening and by saying them repeatedly. You’d be surprised how knowing a few common
statements increases your ability to carry on English conversations with greater confidence.

10. The goal is to communicate

Keep this in mind and have this principle guide your entire learning process.

Be easy on yourself and remember that it takes time and you will make a lot of mistakes. Take your progress one step at a time. Start with basic conversations, simple words, statements and phrases.

Work on developing your vocabulary and knowledge in an effort to build up to more advanced phrases, idioms and appropriate grammar.

It’s okay to have an accent, we all do. Just remember that your goal is to communicate with another person, a group of people or a reader.

In some contexts perfect English is not expected or required. Will you be able to communicate as clearly
and succinctly as you can in your first language? One day perhaps. Until then focus on improving your English communication skills one day and one step at a time.

11. Take advantage of technological tools

Use all the tools at your disposal, but don’t let them replace a genuine desire to improve your English reading, writing, speaking or listening skills.

Download a translation app and translate five to ten words or sentences every day. Create a list of phrases, signs, terms or sentences that you’ve encountered and use one of the free apps or websites available to translate them and commit them to your memory.

Learning and retaining these translations mentally is extremely important. There will be times that having English conversations without the aid of an app will serve you well.

As we’ve touched on a few times in this lesson, there are a great deal of English learning opportunities through websites, social media and the online world in general.

There’s never been a better time in history to learn English with the tools available to us. Keep in mind that not all the English speaking or writing you come across will be perfect, but take advantage of the sheer amount of great, interesting online content.

12. Find structure to your development

The sheer number of free videos and advice you can find online may be overwhelming, and even counterproductive if you don’t know where to start.

Given the less than perfect English content you’ll often find, there is real value in finding someone to help guide your English learning journey.

Finding structure for your development and receiving in-person feedback on what you can work on to reach your English goal is something we, at English Perfectus can help with.

While there is a great deal of free content to work with online, you may find quicker more efficient learning paths with professional guided classes, coaching or courses from English Perfectus.

I hope you’ve found these tips helpful. Until next time, keep learning and we’ll talk soon.