We’ve compiled a useful list of tips for learning English, a set of tricks that will hopefully help you communicate more fluently in less time. Learning English or any language for that matter can be a tricky thing, and as not everybody learns in the same way, it’s good to know that there are many useful tips and tricks to help every kind of learner. So, with this in mind and to help you on your journey, we’ve put together our 10 Tips for Learning English:
One of the most important tips for learning a language is to have fun. Whether your motivation is personal or perhaps for business, English can unlock a host of exciting opportunities for you, such as travelling abroad or getting that great new international job. And remember, everybody has the capacity for absorbing a new language, we all did it without even thinking when we were toddlers, so all you need to do is find a way that works for you.
In addition to our English learning tips, you can find both free audio books and free eBooks to help with listening and reading practice. Once you feel confident enough, you can even try reading and listening at the same time, where audio books and eBooks are combined, another tip that we highly recommend for learning to speak like a native.
Remember you can discover thousands of free audiobooks and ebooks in English on our main site.
This may sound like an obvious tip for learning English, but repetition is one of the key fundamentals of learning any language that’s new to you. By making yourself speak English out loud (ideally without peeking at your book), you will quickly find out what you’ve mastered and what you need to keep working on.
Whichever way you’re attempting to learn a new language, be it in the classroom or via your laptop at home, using what you’ve learnt in conversation helps enormously to reinforce it, especially when done on a regular basis. Speaking your new language out loud is also something that helps get over the common problem of being bashful about using it in front of other people and in particular, native speakers.
No one knows your mind as you do, so a great tip for learning English is to tailor your learning around when it best suits you. A lot of us aren’t too great at focusing in the morning, so leave the time you set aside to a period of the day when you’re most receptive to absorbing information and when you have no distractions.
Most people find the evening as the most suitable time to learn, especially if they’ve got kids!
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there are currently 171,476 words in use by English speakers across the world. By anyone’s reckoning, that’s a lot of words and whilst there are quite a few innovative ways to help learn the language, there will have to be some of the ‘hard yards’ done to get them into your head.
The most common way to achieve this is to set yourself a target of words to learn each day and test yourself regularly on what you’ve already learnt in previous days. There’s no easy way around this one ladies and gents, so get your nose in the vocab book and get swotting!
When you’re finding your feet in a new way of speaking, you’re going to make mistakes. It’s a natural part of the process. The mistakes you make are what teach you the right way of doing things, as the next time you encounter the same situation, you’ll likely remember your last mistake. You may do it wrong again several times, but you WILL eventually get it right. This tip is here to remind you that the 3-year-old version of you did, so why can’t you?
The best way to learn English is to immerse yourself in the language, by going to the country itself and living it. However, that option isn’t open to everyone, so instead, you should be listening to the language you’re trying to learn as often as is practical.
The purpose of this method is to get you used to listening to the way English is spoken. Each language has its own melody and once your brain becomes accustomed to it, you’ll find listening to it that much easier. To help you with your listening practice, we provide a huge archive of free audio books that you can either search or browse and then listen to at your leisure.
Essentially, words have different components that help them to convey their meaning. One of those components is the root of the word and it performs a very useful role within it. What’s more, you can work out the meaning of a word if you’ve not encountered it before.
For example, The word ‘Unusually’ is comprised of a prefix, the main part of the word and the suffix. So, we can work out from here that ‘Un’ means ‘not’ and ‘ly’ is the way something is done. Therefore something that is being done in a not ‘usual’ way, translates to unusually. This is just one of many English words that can be broken down to work out its meaning, even if you haven’t come across it before.
This might seem tough to begin with, but the more you learn about the different parts of words, the easier your learning process will be.
So far, we’ve mentioned listening and speaking English, which are both great ways of familiarizing yourself with the language. However, if you want to be thorough and give yourself the best opportunity for success, then this needs to be backed up by the other two fundamentals of language learning: writing and reading.
Newspapers are a good place to start looking for reading source material and there are literally thousands of things you can look for online to read. Practice this often and you’ll soon find that the little things you’ve picked up from here and there will help you comprehend much more of your chosen language.
Exams and tests are what best focus the mind when learning anything new and in the absence of anything official, you should be looking to your friends and family for assistance. Whether you are simply getting a vocabulary test or something more complex, then a second person acting as the examiner can be a very useful tool for the English learner.
If you have any friends or family who speak the language you’re learning, then they would be the perfect resource to use to help you achieve the fluency you’re seeking.
Confidence and encouragement are wonderful things when it comes to language learning, which is why it’s important to generally stick to material that’s within your ability level. That’s not to say you shouldn’t challenge yourself, but in the earlier stages of your journey, graded reading is a good idea, as the books you’ll find in the genre help you progress.
What you don’t want to do is lose focus because you’re trying to read Guardian Newspaper political articles, which are tough for even fluent speakers. Stick to what you’re at least capable of doing to begin with and your enthusiasm will remain intact.
The last item in our 10 tips for learning English is to remember to regularly review things you’ve covered in the past. Learning a language is a compound process, where each week, you learn something new and have to retain what you learned the previous week. Reviewing will not only help remind and reinforce your memory of previous work, but it will also highlight anything you might have forgotten.
In summary, learning a language like English is an amazingly rewarding experience, and although the task of reaching competence can be a bit difficult, by employing a few of the tips listed here, you’ll be chatting away with native speakers before you know it.
We hope that this article has given you that helping hand you need and all that remains is for us to wish to all the best on your learning journey. Good luck!
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