Rules for learning English

There's a very basic formula for learning a language.

It's: input (reading and listening) + practice (speaking and writing) learning! 

It's simple! 

1. Practise every day.

Make sure you practise a bit every day: reading an article, listening to a song, chatting with an English-speaking friend etc. Doing 10 or 20 minutes every day is far better than doing four hours just once a week. With just 20 minutes a day, you can really improve your English. Read for 10 minutes and listen for 10 minutes (a YouTube video, the news, your favourite TV series, etc.). You'll soon notice the difference!

2.   Surround yourself in English. Put yourself in an all English speaking environment where you can learn passively. The best way to learn is through speaking.

3.    Create an atmosphere in which you want to learn, not because you have to. You’ll learn more when you’re learning because you want to.

4.    It’s not enough to only learn English words. You can teach a parrot English words but that doesn’t mean it can speak English!

Learn phrases, word-expressions, not words. Native speakers do not learn English by remembering single words. Native speakers learn phrases. Learning with phrases is 4-5 times faster than studying individual words. Also, students who learn phrases have much better grammar. Your speaking and grammar will improve 4-5 times faster. Always write the complete phrase.

ð  Keep a notebook of new words you learn. Use them in sentences. You will find words easier to remember if you try to remember an example sentence using that word rather the word on its own.

ð  Try to use these words and expressions when you're speaking or writing.

ð  When you learn a new word, think of all its other forms: Beautiful (adjective), beauty (noun), beautifully (adverb).

ð  Learn prefixes (dis-, un-, re-) and suffixes (-ly, -ment, -ful), these will help you to figure out the meaning of words and build your vocabulary.

ð  Try to learn 10 English words every day. In one week, you'll have learnt 70, in a month about 300, and in a year over 3,000! The average British person has an active vocabulary of about 5.000 words. So, it won't take you long to learn all the most important terms in English.

5.    Listening is the key to language learning. So, listen to English as much as you can! Just 10 minutes a day (but every day!) is enough to realty help you improve your listening ability. Listening to English regularly will help you develop an ear for the language. Eventually, you'll be able to distinguish words and sounds, and then you'll start learning really quickly.

ð  Repeat words and expressions after you hear them. This will develop your ability to produce language.

ð  It'll also help you memorise any words or expressions.

ð  Dictation. Listen to a CD and write down what you hear.

ð  Remember, listening is extremely difficult. However, it comes with practice, and the more you listen to English, the easier it gets.

6.  Reading is a great way to learn. As you're enjoying a book or article, lots of new words and expressions will flow into your brain. On top of that, you'll see how the language fits together. And this will help with your understanding of grammar, language structures and collocation.

Read and listen to as much English as you can. It's the best way to improve. You can read online articles, listen to songs, watch films, TV series, YouTube videos ... the options are limitless.

7.  Learn English without studying grammar rules. Grammar rules teach you to think about English, you want to speak automatically– without thinking! You don’t need grammar rules, you have to feel grammar. The most natural way to learn grammar is through listening, reading, talking.

8.    Slow, Deep Learning Is Best. If you learn a lot of words in a short time, your learning will be short and shallow. That's why you quickly forget the words. That's why you cannot use them. Learn every word & phrase DEEPLY. It’s not enough to remember for a test. You must put the word deep into your brain. To speak English easily, you must repeat each lesson many times.

Review! Review! Review! Make sure that you take the time to review things you have studied in the past.

9.    Speaking. You can’t learn English from a book. Like driving a car, you can only learn through doing it. Talk to yourself in English to help you improve your speaking fluency. Tell yourself what you've done, what you're doing or what you're going to do. It's all good practice! Don’t translate into English from your own language. Think in English to improve your fluency. Talk to yourself…but not on the bus otherwise people will think you have gone crazy!

10.Don’t be afraid to make mistakes - it's all part of the learning process. The most important thing is to read and listen a lot so you get a feel for the language. Then, you can start correcting yourself.

Practise the 4 core skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. They all need to be worked on for you to improve.

11.Work on your pronunciation.

ð  Learn about sentence stress! An important aspect of pronunciation is sentence stress. English is a stress-timed language. This means that the stress falls on specific words in a sentence while quickly gliding over other non-stressed words. Stressed words mostly include nouns (dog, table, etc.), verbs (sit, run. etc.), adjectives (beautiful, wonderful, etc.) and adverbs (quickly, slowly, etc.). For example, a native speaker would probably stress these words (marked in bold) in the following sentence:    I left at midday to catch the train. If you put the stress on the other words, people might not understand you.

ð  Improve your speaking with "simultaneous repetition". Select a phrase or sentence in English from an audio file. Then, as the audio is playing, try to repeat the words at exactly the same time as the speaker. This is also a great way for memorising language and for improving your pronunciation.

ð  Speak the language out loud. Read paragraphs from online articles, newspapers and books, or sing along to your favourite songs. Transferring language from your mind to your mouth is an effective technique for improving your pronunciation.

ð  Listen to people on the news, on TV shows or in films and try to copy the way they speak. Watch the position of their mouth and try to follow what they're saying. Newsreaders are good as they speak directly to the camera. Hear how the pitch goes up and down, and try to copy the intonation.

ð  Record your voice and listen to your pronunciation and intonation. It will help you to identify your problem areas.

12. Use positive emotions.  Positive emotions help us to learn faster, while negative emotions slow our learning.

13. Make use of the internet. It’s full of resources to help you learn: BBC Learning English; learnenglish.ecenglish.com

14. Keep an English diary or journal. Start by writing a few sentences a day and then get into the habit of writing more.

15.You are never too young or too old to start learning English. Don’t make excuses not to learn. What are you waiting for?

16. Remember, you learn a language by reading it, listening to it and using it!  It really is that simple. And the more you read, listen and use it, the better you’ll be.

Good luck!