How To Stay Motivated When Learning English
Well hey there I’m Emma from mmmEnglish and today
we are talking about one of my favourite topics:
how to stay motivated as you’re learning English.
Let’s be honest,
very few of us are able to stay excited about something
a hundred per cent of the time, right?
Especially if that something takes a lot of time, effort or energy
to make it happen like
becoming fluent in another language, for example.
It takes work and effort to stay focused,
to keep on the path, to keep working towards your goals.
So let’s talk about what you can do if you’ve lost the motivation
to learn, to study or to practise English.
Hey Lady! is an online community where women from around
the world meet to practise speaking English together.
It’s the easiest way to find English-speaking friends and to get
regular practice, the practice that you need to speak English
confidently and fluently.
Hey Lady! is a safe and supportive space for women with an
intermediate to advanced level of English.
Come and visit us at heylady.io and discover
the English speaking version of you today.
Do you sometimes lose motivation with your English practice?
I’m curious to find out what you do
to get your motivation back.
Have you tried something that didn’t really work?
Or is there something that you do regularly that does work?
Share it in the comments. I would genuinely love to hear from you.
Motivation is something that we talk about
a lot over inside Hey Lady!
Hey Lady! is my online English community and we’re always
discussing strategies and ideas, especially
about what we can do if we lose motivation.
And this can happen for all sorts of different reasons, right?
If you’re not making any progress or you don’t feel like you are.
If you’re not enjoying studying the language.
Maybe you have other priorities,
family or work or health commitments
and maybe you’re trying to get back into English after you’ve taken
a break and that can feel hard too.
So today I’m going to talk about what you can do in all
four of those different situations
to try and get some of that motivation
back, to get back on track.
But the advice that I’m sharing doesn’t come from me alone,
it comes from all of my students inside Hey Lady! too,
their advice was so spot on when we were talking about it,
I just had to create a video and share it all with you too.
So let’s start here.
I’ve been learning English for a while
and I don’t feel like I’m making any progress.
What can I do?
So the underlying feeling here is:
what’s the point of all of this study and practice
if I’m not improving?
And my question to you would then be:
Well, what are you doing to keep track of your progress?
There is a real difference between
feeling like you’re not making progress
and actually documenting your progress as evidence
and knowing that you’re not making progress.
So two things here. Set clear and achievable goals
and keep a progress diary
so that you can keep track of your progress.
It doesn’t have to be complicated but it should be something
that you do to document the action that you take
along with the success that you have
and the things that you still need to work on.
So let’s look at some examples of this.
I watched a lesson about the second conditional.
I practised writing sentences and sent them to my tutor to check.
I met my speaking partner and talked about what we would do
if we were invited to meet the Dalai Lama.
So some of these things
went really well. Success could be:
I had a really interesting conversation with someone in English.
I feel more comfortable using contractions when I speak.
I seem to be using the second conditional
really well when I write
but then there’s the things that I still need to work on.
I’m not automatically using the second conditional
when I’m speaking.
I hesitate and I think too much about the structure.
So keeping track of this progress
allows you to see what you’ve been doing
and prove that you’ve been doing things,
helps you to see your success and now you also know
what you need to keep working on, what you need to keep
improving so that you can feel that progress over time.
I’ve made you a really simple PDF download that will help you to
set your goals and keep track of your progress as you go
and I’ve linked to it down in the description,
it is such a simple and easy way to record
and measure your progress.
I have to learn English
and I’m just not enjoying it.
What can I do?
This is tough. It’s tough to get your mind out of this place,
we all go through periods like this whether it’s
learning a language or an instrument or a new skill,
whatever it is, sometimes it feels hard and it doesn’t feel fun.
And if it doesn’t feel fun and we find ourselves thinking:
Why am I doing this? What’s it all for? What’s the point?
In these moments we’re often asking ourselves these questions
because we’re not really clear on why,
why you’re doing this. This is your reason,
your purpose for working so hard.
If your reason is strong enough, you should be able to use it
to refocus your energy, to see the big picture and understand
why all this hard work is worth it.
Here are some really powerful reasons why you should be studying
and practising your English.
I’m improving my English so that I can study my Masters abroad.
I can attend conferences
and I can create career opportunities for myself and my family.
Now that I live in an English-speaking country,
I want to be able to speak with my children’s teachers at school
and mingle with the other parents at birthday parties
and become friends with my neighbours.
These reasons are huge motivators, it’s about
identity, recognition, friendship,
these are really strong human desires.
Here’s a less powerful reason why.
I want to be able to speak with native speakers.
This one is not specific enough, it’s not meaningful enough.
When times get tough and you feel unmotivated,
having that really strong reason why, that strong purpose
will encourage you to pick yourself up and get back to work.
So I want you to tell me, what is your reason for learning English?
Tell me down in the comments
and try and make it as powerful,
as meaningful as you can.
What about your life will change if you can speak English
clearly and confidently?
Next, create an English learning journey that excites you.
If you’re going to boring language classes and you’re complaining
about not enjoying it, it’s up to you to mix things up a little,
to try some different classes or work with a different tutor,
see if you have more luck joining language exchanges or
online communities like Hey Lady!
Everything is in your control
so if you’re bored and you’re feeling uninspired,
do something different.
Here are two interesting ways to mix things up a little,
delve into your existing hobbies
and find other people who share your interests.
No matter what your hobby is, there is definitely
an English speaking space out there for it.
Are you into gaming? Play online and talk to your opponents.
Find forums or discussion groups to talk about the latest games
and stuff.
I mean other gaming stuff, I guess.
Or cooking. What about cooking, movies, music,
meme-making, bike riding, gardening,
whatever it is,
there are forums, discussion groups that you can join.
I know we have lots of interest groups that have formed inside
Hey Lady! for this exact reason so that you have a way of sharing
and exchanging your passions through your English.
You want to engage with someone so you can try different
social media platforms, especially those that are tailored
for discussion and interaction:
Reddit,
Twitter,
Instagram,
where you can reach out to people that you follow
and start a conversation.
When you do find someone to chat with and you can see how
your English skills are creating new opportunities and experiences,
well that is a huge motivator.
Okay how about this one.
To be honest, I have other priorities right now.
I just can’t focus on my English.
This is a tricky one because life happens, doesn’t it?
A family member becomes ill, work gets really busy
maybe we have problems in
relationships with the people around us.
We have to manage all kinds of different stresses
and sometimes your English practice has to take a back seat
and that’s okay.
But there are a couple of things that you can do
to take a break when you need it
but then make sure you get back to your practice after that.
And I think the secret is to allow yourself to take a timed break.
Maybe a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, maybe a month.
If you can put a deadline on it, do it.
The problem is with an open-ended break,
we can just keep putting it off,
pushing it back again and again.
So write the date down, put it in your calendar,
set the intention by telling someone else your plan.
These are all really small things but they will help
you to stay true to that date.
It’ll allow you to give yourself
the permission you need to take a break,
know that that break is specifically to help you heal, recover,
rest and come back to what you’re working on with full energy
and optimism and motivation to keep going.
And even if you are on a break, you can still immerse yourself
in other ways. Your English practice doesn’t have to be
a hundred per cent study all of the time. Ask yourself:
How can I keep English around me in my life even if I’m taking
a break from formal study?
Music or podcasts or movies. There are so many different ways
to keep engaging with English unofficially.
Okay so I took a break
but now I feel like I’ve forgotten all the English I know.
How can I get back into it?
Well firstly, you’re never back at square one again.
If you’ve started learning something then that information is
stored somewhere in your brain somewhere,
you just need to access it.
So start by doing a little revision, go back through your old
coursework or books. Test yourself on what you remember,
you probably remember a lot more than you think.
But find those areas where you’re getting stuck,
spend some time revising,
revising what you know and it will come back to you
faster than it came to you the first time around.
So give yourself ten to twenty minutes every day
to get back up to speed.
And be reasonable with yourself, if you’ve taken a long break
I’d say you’d need around one month of daily practice
to get yourself back up to speed, back to where you were
before you first took that break.
And it’s at that point that you can start talking about
taking on new knowledge and learning new things and really
seeing that improvement.
Okay my friends, I really hope that this advice helps you to find
some of that lost motivation again. Work on it regularly,
find the favourite parts of learning English and run with those.
Take time out when you need to, rest, recharge,
come back stronger than before.
And don’t forget to download my progress tracker
so that you can prove to yourself that you’re heading in the right
direction. The link is down in the description below
and I’ve also created this video right here about habits
that you can do daily to improve your English every day.