hello Fearless Learners it's Halima and welcome back to this channel. In today's lesson, we're going to learn about how to learn English effectively.
Setting goals
First, let's talk about setting goals. Why do you want to learn English? You have to ask yourself this question. Is it for school, work, travel, or personal development? What is your reason? It's important to have specific goals in mind to help you stay focused and motivated, and to actually see your progress. The other day, I asked a few students: "What keeps you motivated? What's the one thing that you could say, this keeps me motivated?" And a few of the students actually said, "keeping a record of what I'm doing." For example, knowing: "Okay, I never knew how to use collocations related to food, and now I'm able to use it in conversation. I was afraid to talk to people that are strangers, and now I can talk to them." So, keeping a record of your learning, setting goals, and then keeping a record of your results of what you're doing is highly motivating. I suggest you do that.
Practice regularly
The next thing is obvious, and it's to practice regularly. What I want you to do is set a time. Put some time in your calendar each day to practice speaking. And I know this is obvious, but many people do it irregularly. This means that maybe on Monday you won't do it, on Tuesday you'll do it, and then two weeks later you'll study again. Remember that the more you practice every single day, the more consistent you are, the better it is in terms of seeing actual progress.
All right, now what I want you to do is to practice all the different skills like speaking, listening, reading, and writing in English. This will help you improve all the different skills, and what that will do is it will build your confidence in all the different areas. Making sure that if you're listening to someone, you feel confident. If you're speaking, you're confident. When you're reading a book, you feel good about it, you're not struggling. And when you're writing, it doesn't feel like you have no idea what you're doing. So, make sure the four different skills get given attention, so it's not just speaking, because I know a lot of you are focusing on speaking, but by focusing on all the different skills, it actually strengthens everything else.
Immerse yourself
Let's move on to the next one. I want you to immerse yourself. What does this mean? Immerse yourself in the language. This means that you are covering yourself when it comes to all the books you're reading, the things you listen to, the podcasts, the YouTube videos, the TV shows, the movies. Imagine if you look at the dictionary. There are two different meanings. The first one is to dip or submerge yourself in liquid, which is basically completely covering yourself in water. Imagine that. But it also has another meaning, which is involving yourself deeply in a particular activity. So if I say to you, "Immerse yourself in English," this means that you are doing everything you can to surround yourself with the language. Now, if you're in an English-speaking country, this really helps, but if you're not, you can create the type of environment that's similar to being in an English-speaking country by making sure that you're listening to podcasts all the time, when you're cooking, cleaning, when you are traveling. Let's say you're listening to English, it can be a series, it can be a book, audible, it can be anything really that involves English. You are there, and you are covering yourself in this language. This will help you become really familiar with the rhythm, with the patterns, and how the language sounds, so that you can start speaking naturally.
Flashcards
The next thing is to use flashcards and other study aids. I've created lots of lessons around memory and so on. What I want you to do is create, find out what works for you. Find out what types of learning and memory style activities that help you. So, for me, I love flashcards. For those of you that don't know what that is, it's just a simple card. You write the word on the front or the phrase, and at the back, you write the meaning. Now, there are ones you can use online, which is called quizlet.com. This is a virtual one that you can use, and you can start creating your own flashcards, or you can use other people's. Some other people have already created flashcards on Quizlet as well. But remember, while you're studying, while you're practicing, it's important to actually make mistakes. It's important for you to be okay when you make mistakes because that's part of learning. You can't be perfect in something, even people that are born with the English language still make mistakes, they still pick up the wrong pronunciation. So don't worry about that. I want you to make that part of the process. Mistakes are your friend. Each time you don't know a word, run to the dictionary, find out, get curious, find out the meaning, find out all the different ways to say it and so on.
Join a club
All right, finally, you can also join an English language club or take some sort of class that will help you provide a structured learning environment, and the opportunity to practice with other people. I have a club which is called the Speaking Cup, that I designed to help people practice speaking English. Now it's only for women, so if you're interested, all you have to do is go to www.blackboardenglish.com/cup. If you're interested, I'll put the link in the bio. But there you go, those are all the tips I have for you today to help you in your language learning journey.
Thank you so much for coming to class today. Happy learning, see you next time.