Everyday habits to improve your English
Hello I’m Emma from mmmEnglish!
In this video, we’re going to talk about four things
that you can do every day to improve your English.
I think we can all agree that learning English
or learning any language takes time
and effort and dedication.
But the most successful language learners, they find
a way for their language to become
a part of their daily life. It just becomes a habit
like brushing your teeth.
If you want to improve, your English practice should
become a daily habit.
To help you with this I’m going to share four things
that you can and you should be doing every day
to improve your English and yes, I am suggesting
that you do all four things every day but they’re not
huge tasks
and we’re going to talk about how you can make them
a bit of fun too
so come check it out!
Before I share these four things
that you should be doing every day,
I want to thank our friends Lingoda
who’ve partnered with us to bring you today’s lesson.
In particular, I want to share how the Lingoda Language
Sprint offers you daily English lessons plus
up to a hundred percent refund on your lesson fees.
Lingoda is an online language school.
You take classes with qualified native speaking
teachers, class sizes are small
and all of the learning materials are provided. Plus
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access to the Cambridge online language test as well.
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If you complete all of those classes, you’ll get a
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You can register for the Sprint promotion right now
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The link is in the description below and if you use
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So the very first thing on my list is pronunciation.
Yes you should be practising your pronunciation
every day.
And it’s not to try and get rid of your accent
but to make it clear enough that others
can comfortably understand you when you speak.
I can’t tell you the number of advanced English students
I’ve had
who’ve had amazing grammar and vocabulary skills
but so much trouble communicating
because their accent makes it quite challenging
for others to understand them.
So of course, all of this affects smooth, positive,
comfortable conversation.
And depending on where you learned English,
your teacher may not have focused on pronunciation.
It may not have been the priority at the time.
You see, if you learned English at school,
your teacher’s main aim was probably to get you
high marks in your exam. Pronunciation was
probably not their focus at that time
but in the real world when you’re using English to speak
with other people, your pronunciation, your fluency
when you speak, it’s so incredibly important.
Get into the habit of learning and using the correct
pronunciation today because it’s going to save you
lots of headaches and confusion down the track.
Plus, practising your pronunciation every day
consistently, it’s gonna help you to make noticeable
improvements in a short space of time.
So how can you start doing this?
I recommend that you learn the IPA,
the international phonetic alphabet.
If you’ve never heard of it before
or you don’t know a lot about it,
then watch this lesson up here.
But learning the IPA will allow you to correctly
pronounce every single English word
using
the
correct
English
sounds.
Another great way to practise your pronunciation
is with my imitation lessons
so in these lessons, I help you to copy me
and shadow me as I speak.
They’re really awesome, quick ten minute videos
that you can practise with regularly so add them
to a playlist and keep coming back to them
and practise with them often.
After you’ve practised a lesson for a few times
make a recording of yourself
and compare it to my voice.
Try to identify some of the mistakes that you’re making
with your pronunciation.
I’ve added a link to my imitation lessons
in the description and I’ll add one at the
end of this video as well that you can check out.
You can also simply read out loud to improve
your pronunciation.
Doing this every day will help your mouth muscles
to get working and creating English sounds
and get more comfortable doing it.
It’s as simple as that
and it doesn’t need to take you long
just five or ten minutes a day is plenty.
Just make sure you’re doing it consistently.
You could even do it by singing English songs.
Create one opportunity to absorb English every day.
To absorb is to take in information
so you’re like a sponge soaking things up, taking in
new ideas, new words,
new ways of expressing yourself
and you can do this in lots of different ways,
so many ways.
Listening to a podcast or an audiobook,
you could watch an English movie
or any video on Youtube.
Read a book or a blog post, In fact,
you probably want to mix this up during the week, right?
To keep things interesting.
A podcast on Monday. Read a book on Tuesday.
Whatever floats your boat.
Now again, this doesn’t have to be a huge
time-consuming task but it’s worth spending some time
searching for the right type of content.
It must be stuff that is interesting for you.
If you’re into football or you love makeup tutorials
or romance novels or soap operas.
If you love the idea of sailing around the world,
I’ve been watching a YouTube channel called
Sailing La Vagabonde and they vlog about their life
sailing around the world on a yacht.
In fact, if you’re interested,
I’ve added the link in the description below.
But the point is, find something that interests you
and excites you because
you need to look forward to doing it every single day.
It shouldn’t feel like you’re doing English practice.
So I have two little recommendations here.
Firstly, you need to find the time that you’re going to
do it and declare it. That is your daily time
to absorb English so it could be on the bus
on your way to work or while you’re eating breakfast.
I’ve always found that attaching an activity to the task
helps you to make it part of your routine.
And while you’re doing it, just keep a notebook handy
so that you can write down expressions or new words
which you can look up and check later on.
Simple as that!
Writing every day has some amazing benefits.
But before I talk about that I want to make it clear,
I’m not talking about writing an essay, okay?
I’m just talking about writing a few thoughts or a few
ideas down. It only has to take a few minutes
and nobody ever has to see it.
It’s just for you. So there’s a few reasons why writing
every day is an excellent habit to get into.
It helps your vocabulary to stick.
Writing is one of the best ways to recall
new words and expressions that you’ve come across.
When so many of my students have asked me
“What is the best way to remember vocabulary?”
this is my recommendation.
As you’re reading or watching TV shows or books,
you come across new ideas and words
and you write them down but
then you start to use them yourself.
You think of sentences and your own ideas about
how to use these words.
That way you’re producing your own sentences
rather than just listening to other people’s
and it helps it just stick in your mind.
And then you can improve it.
Once you’ve written something,
you can do so much with it.
You can copy/paste it into a grammar checker
like Grammarly to help you to identify some of the errors
that you’re making.
So Grammarly is free to use,
I’ve included a link in the description below
because it’s awesome.
It helps you to see the mistakes that you’re making
like maybe you’re using the wrong preposition
or
you don’t need to use an article when you’ve written one.
So I really recommend that you take a look to help you
see and realise the mistakes that you’re making
and you can also review your own work.
Once you’ve finished writing, leave it for a few days
or a few weeks, come back to it.
See if you can make any improvements
or if you can use a thesaurus
to look up synonyms and replace some of the words
with more advanced ones.
These are just a few ideas but getting into a daily
writing practice creates so many opportunities for you
to apply what you’ve learned or what you’ve seen
or what you’ve experienced in English
and then review it and improve it.
Lastly, join an English discussion
about stuff that interests you.
Now this sounds serious and may be complicated
but it’s not, I promise. I’m just talking about joining an
active group or online community
where there are people interacting.
They’re sharing their ideas, they’re giving opinions
and you’re able to respond.
So you can comment and actually be part
of the discussion as it happens.
Now this could be in person but it can easily
be as part of an online community.
Plus that makes it, you know, even easier to create
a daily habit around it
because it’s simply about checking in
and seeing what everyone else has been talking about
and giving your two cents worth.
So how do you find these places?
It takes a little work. You can’t just Google ‘cooking’
and join the first group that you find.
Join a few different ones, see which one is the most
active, which one has really interesting discussions
happening in it.
Sometimes nothing gets posted in these groups
for days and that’s not really helpful for you, right?
So I would start by writing down
your top five hobbies or interests.
Don’t start with English language.
What else are you into? Are you into
politics or yoga or marketing,
photography, sports. I mean you probably already follow
people or a part of groups that are like this.
So all you need to do is commit to checking in
once a day and write a comment.
It’s not more complicated than that.
If someone shared something and they’re asking
for opinions, don’t keep scrolling.
It’s an opportunity for you to share so stop,
think of a way that you can contribute.
Now I’m gonna add some great, really active
and interesting groups in the description below
just to give you a few ideas of what I’m talking about
but I want to know if you’re already part of some
lively Facebook groups or other online communities.
What kinds of things do you discuss
and do you ever contribute?
So if you can bring those four things
into your daily routine in some way,
you will absolutely, without a doubt
improve your English.
Remember that it takes a little bit of time to create
good habits. It’s not as simple as
deciding you’re gonna do it.
So I’ve got a couple of extra tips to help you get started.
Do your research first.
Find a blog or a TV series that will keep you
interested so you don’t have to look for something to do
okay? Give yourself a week or so to find the right
type of community to join and be part of the
discussions with.
Then create a regular schedule to help you get started
and really I just mean decide when you’re going to do
these four things so for example,
pronunciation practice might be in the bathroom
for five to ten minutes every morning
as you’re getting ready for work.
Then listening to your favourite podcast
on your way to work and you’re writing down
your words on the bus.
On your lunch break, might be the time to check a
Facebook group and write a group comment.
Then spend ten minutes at the end of your day
writing about what you did
or what you learnt before dinner
and simply put that on repeat.
Very quickly you’ll realise that English has become
a regular daily part of your routine.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
You can connect with me
on Instagram and my Facebook here.
I hope that you found all of these ideas
and these suggestions useful.
Let me know if you’re doing some of these things
already or if you’re planning to put any of them
into practice, let me know how it goes.
And as promised, here is one of my imitation lessons
to help you work on your pronunciation.
I’ll see you in there!