5 Tips on How to Reach Your English Learning Goals

Conor Monaghan
Insights into improving your English by setting measurable goals. You can also improve your English by working with native English speakers

Learning English is a difficult task. English is a more difficult language than one may think since there are so many exceptions, slang expressions and rules you’ll need to learn. With that in mind, here are five tips to help you reach your English learning goals.

To reach your goals, you should first set a schedule and dedicate yourself to it. You cannot learn a language if you aren’t practicing consistently. From there, you should try to learn from native English speakers, watch movies with subtitles, use apps and other resources, and speak with native English speakers.

The rest of this article will cover five tips to help you reach your English learning goals.

5. Set a Schedule

Without dedicating yourself to a schedule, you’ll forget much of what you learned. The only way you can learn a language in an efficient manner is by setting a schedule for learning. You should try to learn English for at least one hour every day, with an occasional break on weekends.

As you become more advanced, you can limit your schedule. In the beginning, you need to practice as much as possible or you’ll forget. It is recommended to spend at least an hour every day learning, but you’ll learn faster if you study for two or more hours for about six days a week.

This schedule doesn’t have to be just listening to English, either. Experiment with the types of studying you do. One day, watch the news in English and see what words you can pick up on. The next day, write the alphabet out a few times so you can memorize it.

Make your schedule unique to your learning methods, and you’ll find yourself learning English at a much faster rate.

4. Learn from Native English Speakers

Although there’s nothing wrong with learning from people who aren’t native speakers, you’ll always get the most education out of native speakers. This is because English native speakers know the most about the English language as they grew up with it.

Learning from an English native will benefit you in the long run because you’ll learn much more slang. English native speakers also tend to understand the grammar rules better since they grew up learning them.

If your goals for learning English are to write and read, then learning from a native speaker is even more beneficial thanks to their understanding of grammar and spelling.

3. Watch Movies with Subtitles

Watching movies with subtitles gives you two benefits: you get to hear English in action, and you become more educated on pop culture movies. You should try to watch TV shows and movies in English and have subtitles on.

Or, you can have the movies and TV shows in your language and put English subtitles on. Either way, you’re training yourself to see how the English language is applied in popular media such as entertainment and pop culture.

Try to put it on your schedule that you watch one movie or one TV show episode per week. Alternatively, you can do work while having an English news broadcast playing in the background. Although this may not seem important, hearing English every day for extended periods of time helps your listening skills.

2. Use Apps and Other Resources

You’re not going to learn English by studying the same things over and over again. Instead, you need to look into new resources that can help grow your vocab and confidence. For starters, apps you can download on your phone are great for expanding your vocab.

Although learning from an app is not the best for sentences, expanding your vocab will help you with understanding and listening. Along with that, you can pick up English learning books. Look for books that have English short stories you can read and translate.

Lastly, there’s social media. Social media has its ups and downs, but a major benefit to having social media is how connected you are with others. Try downloading Discord and joining English learning servers.

When you join a server, you can practice using the resources the server supplies while also speaking with others who are learning English.

1. Speak with English Native Speakers

Like learning from English native speakers, speaking with them is also extremely helpful. You’ll hear how each word is pronounced, which can help you get the right accent and pitch. It’ll also grow your confidence since you’re speaking to fluent English speakers.

Whether this conversation is over text or voice, you should try your best to converse with English native speakers at least once a week. They can also connect you to more resources and tutor you in the language.

Many language learners reported that they learned a new language faster when they had friends or lovers who spoke the language fluently. At the very least, you should try speaking with a native speaker to give you more experience with the language.

Written by Conor Monaghan for EnglishClub.com
Conor runs the popular website called One Minute English. He has been an English teacher for ten years and wants to help you to improve your writing and speaking skills in English.
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