10 tips for learning English better

Which is the best way to learn English? It all depends on the level of language skills, your goals and personal preferences. Today we will talk about how to master the language in a short time and make it easy to study.

Motivate yourself

• Set yourself a specific goal. It should be clearly stated, measurable, and within a certain time frame. For example: in 3 months, support a 15-minute conversation in English on a free topic. 
• Identify skills to develop. Think about what you are weaker at - listening, speaking, reading, or writing - and focus on that. Or you can emphasize the skill that fits your goals. For example, in the case of the goal in the first point, it's better to focus on the Speaking and Listening skills.
• Observe a clear schedule of activities. For example, take 30 minutes in the morning to study vocabulary and grammar, practice listening at lunchtime, after work repeat the material you learned in the morning, and in the evening watch your favorite TV series in the original. In addition, two or three hours a week is better to devote to conversational practice with a teacher or a native speaker. The intensity and duration of the classes you determine yourself, but watch the regularity: it's better to practice for half an hour every day than 2 times a week for 1.5 hours.

Start with the most common vocabulary

In order to speak English even at a basic level, learn the most popular words and expressions, which will be enough for everyday communication. As a rule, these are the nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs you can't do without when speaking. Make up sentences with them over and over again and master the necessary grammatical constructions to use them competently. Then you will be able to quickly start conversations on the most basic topics.

Repeat the words regularly

If you learn a long list of unfamiliar foreign words in one day, after a month you won't remember even a third of them. German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus came to this conclusion back in 1885, when he experimented with lists of meaningless syllables. 

So how do you memorize vocabulary quickly and permanently? Your best helper is memorization word cards. The perfect card contains a word with a picture illustration on one side, a transcription, translation and examples of use on the other.  That's what they look like in the Skyeng app, for example. There are also the applications Anki and Supermemo, where you can create cards according to your taste and learn not only the vocabulary, but also grammar and pronunciation rules. 

What is the effectiveness of the card method? At its core is a system of interval repetition (Spaced Repetition System). It works very simply: 

• Every day the app tests your knowledge of card material. First it shows you a word, for example dog, and asks you for the translation. 
• If you answer correctly, the card is moved to the end of the list. At the same time the time interval after which you will see it again increases.  Make a mistake - the word will soon pop up in front of you again. 
• The better you memorize a word, the less often a card with it will appear in the vocabulary list for repetition. But it won't disappear at all: the SRS system works in such a way that it will give you the word you learned a long time ago so often that you won't forget it after a while.

In this way, the material will be stored in your memory quickly and last much longer than if you resorted to traditional rote learning.

Use stickers

Another proven way to pump up your English vocabulary: you stick stickers with words on the objects they stand for. The easiest way to do this is at home. For example: you can choose a kitchen as an object and decorate the table with a sticker "table", put "cupboard" on the kitchen cabinet, and stick "dishwasher" to the dishwasher. There are almost no restrictions: you decide which theme you want to pay attention to.

To memorize vocabulary better with stickers, follow these rules:

• Think through your word lists for study. To do this, decide on the topic you need.  Household appliances, furniture, decorations, building materials, personal hygiene items, cutlery - use your own interests as a basis. For example, in the bedroom, you could put a bedhead sticker on the bed and a door handle sticker on the door.
• Use context: add verbs and adjectives to nouns. For example, in the kitchen add to bake and to roast the oven sticker, and on the chair sticker in the living room add wicker, padded, or clear. Good examples will make memorizing new vocabulary as easy and fast as possible.
• Keep track of your progress. Each week, mark the words you plan to learn and mark the ones you have already learned.

Watch movies in English

• Choose to watch films and series that you have already seen in translation. The ideal option is to watch your favorite movie whose plot you know well. 
• Another possible alternative is to watch the original versions of famous Russian TV series-adaptations. For example, The Nanny (My Fair Nanny), Who's the Boss, Everybody Loves Raymond, Married...with Children. The benefit is that you already know the main storylines and characters, and you will understand the basic meaning even if you don't catch every word that is spoken. This way you can train your listening comprehension skills and enrich your vocabulary with interesting conversational phrases.
• As you watch, try to write out the lines of the characters you like best, and then use them in your own speech. Include English subtitles at first. Then you will be able to understand the words of the characters without the accompanying text.

Imitate native speakers

The best way to learn to sound like native speakers is to reproduce their speech as accurately as possible. Read below how to do this competently:

• First, decide what accent you want to speak with. For example, your favorite TV series "Sex and the City" or "Friends" will do if you want to speak with an American accent. And if you want to sound like an English queen, you'd better choose the BBC.
• Make sure the audio comes with a transcript with speech transcription, and the video comes with subtitles. 

Next, structure your workouts as follows:

• First, just listen to the material to get the main idea. It is best to work with small video and audio clips of 2-3 minutes in length. Repeat the recording several times if necessary;
• In the transcript or subtitles, find unfamiliar words or expressions and learn their meanings;
• Listen to the speech, press pause and repeat what you hear;
• Then try to repeat almost simultaneously with the speaker, this time trying to adopt the speech tempo, intonation and pauses as accurately as possible. Pay attention to the semantic accents and accents;
• When you know the text almost by heart, repeat it simultaneously with the speaker. Don't forget to add emotions and use your imagination! For example, imagine being cast in the same show.

Why does the shadow repetition method really work? First, you sound more natural because you adopt the intonation of native speakers and the patterns of foreign words and phrases. Second, you enrich your vocabulary with slang and various idioms that are specific to the English-speaking country. As a result, the imitation of the actors' speech will allow you to quickly master lively, conversational English, and at the same time correct your pronunciation.

Practice the language in your head

• Start by translating your thoughts. The easiest way to do this is right after a class with a teacher or a conversation with a foreign friend, when the language constructions are still fresh in our minds. The method works best when we are thinking about upcoming cases or problems we encounter
• Later you can have imaginary conversations with friends in different situations on any topic. For example, when you go to the gym, in between exercises, think about how you would talk about your workouts to a native speaker friend if he went there with you.
• Use English-English dictionaries that define words using the most commonly used vocabulary. You can use resources such as: Free Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary, Dictionary by Merriam Webster. 
• Also read first-person literature. Look for the young adult (teenage) trend. Quite often these books have a first-person narrative. Some of the most famous examples are John Green's Blame the Stars, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, and Susan Collins' The Hunger Games. Watch how the characters formulate their thoughts (how they build sentences, what vocabulary they use) and take it from there when you describe events from your own life in your head. This approach will allow you to learn to think immediately in the language, rather than translating.

Make English-speaking friends

There is no point in learning a language and not practicing it as often as possible. An hour of conversation with a native speaker can easily be equal to several online lessons and 5 hours of an audio course. Foreign friends will help you better practice listening comprehension, diversify your vocabulary with useful phrases, and most importantly: use the language for its direct purpose - to communicate.

The easiest way to make an English-speaking friend is to find someone who is learning your native language and establish a language exchange with them. You can use resources like Italki and Tandem to do this. Here are some rules on how to make meetings with your language partner productive:

• Meet regularly. Ideally 2-3 times a week for at least 30 minutes. Agree in advance on the format of your conversations: how much time you will practice English, how much time you will practice Russian.
• Decide on the topics of your meetings. At the beginning you can practice the materials of your lessons: role-play dialogues from the textbook, practice grammar and vocabulary. Later, you can choose one or more topics that interest you and discuss them throughout the meeting.
• When it is your turn to practice language with your partner, try to speak in English most of the time and not switch to Russian. 
• Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Your main goal is to keep the conversation going, not to focus on your gaps in English, since you're not in class. If you get stumped, use the phrase "How do you say..." ("How do you say?") + the word you need to translate. 

Immerse yourself in the language environment

It's time to surround yourself with language. Do what you're used to doing in English. How you can subordinate your daily routine to learning the language (using the office worker's schedule as an example):

• In the morning, devote the morning to improving your listening skills. Choose what you like best: BBC news, Netflix series, Youtube videos, Spotify podcasts, radio shows. Focus on content that you can watch or listen to for a leisurely breakfast and learn something new at the same time. 
• On your way to work you can listen to your favorite music in English or the same radio shows or podcasts.
• During tea and coffee breaks you can repeat previously learned words in Anki or Skyeng and learn new ones.
• At lunchtime read a chapter from your favorite book or an article from a magazine. The most important thing is that the material should be interesting and you don't have to force yourself. Choose non-adapted literature and American or British online publications (The Economist, Atlantic, New York Times, The Guardian). If you don't have time to read, take easy and entertaining quizzes in English, like BuzzFeed Quizzes or Zimbio.
• During the day, you can correspond with a foreign friend on a convenient messenger (WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram). By the way, change the layout of your smartphone to English beforehand. And in the evening you can call him and chat about how the day went.
• In the evening you can practice your writing skills: talk on various topics on Reddit, publish a mini-post on Instagram, or comment on someone's video on TikTok. If you feel you have potential, you can start your own English-language blog and publish regular posts there. 
• On the weekends, pay more attention to any of the above activities, or find a new one, like finding a recipe in English and cooking something delicious with it.

Develop yourself professionally in English

Identify a prospective area of expertise and train in it in English. Working as a psychologist? Read professional literature in the original language, take courses from the best universities in the world on Coursera.org, and attend events with expert speakers. Want to learn a new profession? Study with international professors, and then use what you learn in your work. 

Bonus tip: have fun! 

Most importantly, whatever you do in English, you should enjoy it. Look for people you're interested in talking to. Choose books you'll read in the same breath. Watch TV series you can't tear yourself away from (but don't overdo it). Take part in activities where you can practice the language and make interesting acquaintances. Talk about topics you are personally interested in. You can't learn English once and for all, it's a lifelong journey, so enjoy it.