Easy Daily Study Routine to Improve English - DO THIS DAILY for FAST results!

- Hello, everyone and welcome back to "English With Lucy."

Today, I have brought you to my favourite window

and outside of this window is my favourite tree.

It's a willow tree.

Many of you might not know this about me.

Some of you might know this,

but I live on a farm in England

and I thought it would be nice for you to see

some of the surroundings in the farm

whilst we do this lesson.

Let me know if you like it

or if you find it distracting.

Now in this lesson,

I'm going to talk to you about motivation,

but importantly, about the perfect study routine.

I know that lots of you feel that you lack motivation,

and one thing that can really, really help

is implementing a good study routine.

But that can feel quite daunting.

Daunting means intimidating

or something that seems very difficult or scary.

In this video, I am going to help you out.

I'm going to show you how you can incorporate

and include every English language skill

into different parts of your day.

We will start with the morning,

move on to the daytime, then to the afternoon,

and then to the evening.

Ah, quickly, I have some housekeeping.

If you want to receive news lessons from me,

then sign up to my email list

where I'll be keeping you all updated.

The link is in the description box.

So shall we get started? (laughs)

So let's start with the morning.

Now, are you a morning person?

That's the first question.

A morning person is someone who is great in the mornings.

You can also call them an early bird.

The opposite of this would be a night owl,

somebody who thrives in the nighttime.

Tell me if you're an early bird or a night owl.

My problem is that in the mornings,

my eyes are blurry and I can't read anything,

I can't watch anything on the TV.

So I think that the best skill to practise in the morning

is your listening skills.

And this is a good thing to do because for many students,

the listening skills

are their least favourite skills to learn.

It's the skill that they struggle the most with.

I know this because I learned Spanish and Italian

and I was always petrified,

really, really scared of the listening exams.

Can anyone else relate to this?

Reading up here, speaking, maybe here,

writing up here, listening down here.

It's hard skill, it really, really is.

So don't beat yourself up about it.

Don't give yourself a hard time.

Instead, make your listening skills

the thing that you practise every single morning.

I love it when my students ask

for listening practise recommendations

because I have so many recommendations

and I'm going to put them in the description box,

but I'll talk about some of them here.

A great one is to find a daily podcast,

a nice, short podcast,

something that you enjoy listening to in English

and make a habit of listening to it,

first thing every morning.

Maybe you're in bed, maybe you've just got up

and you're having a coffee.

One that's really relevant at the moment,

the BBC have a global coronavirus update every morning,

and it's only around six minutes long

and it covers the world.

So you could know what's going on

with the coronavirus around the world.

That's a good recommendation

if you want to know relevant vocabulary.

Another is BBC News, I especially like Radio 4,

another really great one is Luke's English Podcast.

This is one I often recommend to my students.

I will leave his website down there as well.

He started that podcast in 2009 and he has made

so many fantastic episodes.

One thing I will recommend if you're listening

to a shorter episode, try to listen to it twice.

I know it can be boring, but it's so helpful

if you can do that.

And if you can find one with a transcript,

listen to it with no transcript first

and then read along with it the second time.

This is more appropriate for the shorter podcasts.

Right, so I recommend listening skills for the morning.

Obviously, you can mix these around.

These are just really good ideas

for incorporating English practise into your daily life.

This is what I would ideally do

if I were learning a language,

but let's move on to speaking skills.

You can do this at anytime of the day.

I prefer to do it in the daytime.

Now this little segment of the video

is sponsored by Lingoda and their Language Sprint.

Now in a perfect daily study routine,

you would be able to take a class with a qualified teacher

every single day.

There is actually a way that you can do this and gain 100%

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You just need to take one of their 24/7 classes

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Click on the link in the description box to check the dates

for this Sprint, but be quick

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The Super Sprint offers 100% refund,

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and business English, from beginner to advanced levels.

I'm really happy to share this opportunity with you

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Lingoda doesn't know this, but I secretly joined

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People do genuinely receive this refund.

Remember, places in the Sprint are limited.

This is a language school, spaces fill up.

So you have the link in the description box.

You have my code, SCHOOL 107 for 10 euros off.

What are you waiting for?

So we've covered speaking with a partner there.

What about practising speaking alone?

Because that's something I know a lot of people

have been asking about throughout the pandemic, especially.

Well, there are so many options

and resources available for you, many of them free.

Something that I loved doing

when I was learning Spanish and Italian,

Spanish in particular, was mimicking people.

And they have no idea that I did this,

but I found someone with an accent that I liked

and I would pause it and repeat it

and pause them and repeat it.

I have actually uploaded quite a few videos with space

for you to repeat the word after me or the phrase after me,

I think I've done done common idioms, common objectives,

common nouns as well recently.

I'll link those down below, but definitely, take advantage

of the space I leave afterwards to repeat after me

'cause it does work.

Another thing that I really love to do

is to narrate what I'm doing.

I act as if I'm in a movie and that somebody

is narrating my life,

but there is one very specific situation

where I do actually explain out loud what I am doing

as I'm doing it in another language.

So for you, this is probably English,

for me, it's normally Spanish.

I like to create my own personal cooking shows.

I live on a farm, I'm marrying a farmer.

I spend a lot of time alone.

So when I cook, I try to make it

a little more exciting for myself.

And I explain to an invisible audience

and invisible TV camera what I'm doing.

And it is so good for practising your speaking.

Honestly, try it.

And if you dare, film yourself.

I'll watch you later, hilarious.

Those videos will go with me to the grave.

That means that I will die with these videos.

No one else will see them.

Right, so we move on to the afternoon. (laughs)

So in the afternoon, I recommend that you practise

your writing and your reading skills.

I just feel that this is the perfect relaxing time of day.

If you are a student, you can take a break from studying.

If you have a job and you work throughout the day,

and I'm talking about taking a short break or doing this

when you get home from work.

Now reading's quite an obvious one.

I can recommend any sort of media like books,

fiction, nonfiction, newspapers.

One thing that I've discovered recently

that I absolutely love is the "Happy Newspaper."

I was getting really, really down and depressed about

all of the negative news in the world.

And whilst I still think it's important to read that news,

I needed something that I could have for a bit of me time,

a bit of positivity.

And there is a newspaper called the "Happy Newspaper."

I've checked and it's available internationally.

It's a small newspaper that shares only happy, good stories.

And so that could be a really nice option for you

if every afternoon you just sit down

and choose a number of good, happy stories

that you are going to read.

It could be five, it could be seven,

they're quite addictive (laughing)

or you could time yourself and say,

right, I'm gonna do 10 minutes of happy reading.

I will link that particular newspaper down below.

I am a subscriber, let me know if you go for it

because I'd love to share opinions on the stories.

I absolutely love it.

What a great idea.

Now obviously, there are books as well.

I feel like I should make a separate video on books

that are appropriate for each level of English,

but there is one in particular that I will mention.

And it's actually a series, it's Olly Richards'.

He runs the website, IWillTeachYouaLanguage,

and he has a series of books called "Short Stories"

in so many languages.

There is one in English.

I've just ordered the Swedish one as well

because I'm feeling particularly drawn

to that language at the moment.

So they're stories for beginners,

but you can read at a nice pace, pick up new vocabulary.

They're really, really fantastic.

Again, link down below.

I just think it's so lovely

that there are short stories available

for any beginner in a language.

Now let's move on to writing.

So in the afternoon or potentially the evening,

I feel like some people might prefer the evening.

It depends on how chaotic your household is.

If you have a more peaceful time in the afternoon,

then the afternoon is best.

One thing I really recommend is looking

into bullet journaling.

This is something that has been talked about

extensively on YouTube.

There was a real trend a couple of years ago

with people showing their bullet journals,

but don't discount how effective this can be

for language learning.

You can use bullet journals to track your exercise,

your sleep, your food,

but I would use it to track your vocabulary

and your language skills that you've picked up

and how you've been feeling when speaking

in the other language and documenting what you've practised.

Another thing I will recommend is real pen pals, okay?

So a pen pal is somebody who you write to.

And now there are lots of language exchange websites

which are fantastic, I also recommend that you do that.

But one thing that must not be forgotten is the power

of a written letter and how it can make you feel

and how it can motivate you.

Receiving a letter that somebody has written to you by hand

and having to write a written response,

it almost provides an obligation to you.

You feel that you must understand it completely

and you must respond adequately.

Sometimes in English, when we want to refer to postal mail,

not email or anything online,

we call it snail mail 'cause it takes such a long time

to travel like a snail.

And there's a website called globalpenfriends.com,

and you can use that website

to find a physical snail mail pen pal.

See if you can find an English speaking pen pal

or maybe another pen pal that is also learning English

and start a pen friendship with them.

You can send gifts, postcards, talk about where you're from,

what you like to do.

It's a really fantastic way of practising your writing.

And if the other person agrees to it,

you can ask them to send back your letter with corrections,

but only if they are up for it.

If they are writing to you in your language

that they are learning, you can also return the corrections

Right back to the evening.

I really, really recommend going back to listening skills.

You want to rest your eyes and just have something

that will help you drift to sleep.

And I found a fantastic app for this.

It's called Calm.

A friend actually recommended this app to me

because I was having some trouble with some stress

and I was struggling to go to sleep.

I was struggling to let go of my phone as well.

So now I can use this app,

put my phone away and just listen.

This app Calm has guided meditations and relaxing music,

but most importantly, it has bedtime stories in English.

And sometimes these stories are read by celebrities

with very appealing voices.

And as soon as I heard these stories,

I just thought of my students, what a lovely way

to go to sleep with English in your brain,

but in a relaxing way, one final bit of language practise

before you hit the pillow.

There are also many other apps

that have bedtime stories as well.

I'm sure you can search for those,

but I found calm very good.

Right, that's it for today's video.

I hope you enjoyed it.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my favourite tree,

but do let me know if you found it distracting

or if you didn't like it.

I won't do every video like this,

but I enjoy showing you a little bit more about

where I am and what I do.

If you are interested in what I do in my daily life,

then you can follow my vlogging channel.

It's called "Lucy Bella."

I've put the link down there as well,

and I show my life on a farm in the English countryside.

Don't forget to check out Lingoda to as well.

Click on the link in the description box to check the dates

for the latest Sprint and to sign up

and use my code, SCHOOL 107 for 10 euros off.

Don't forget to connect with me on all of my social media.

I've got my Facebook, my Instagram and my email lists.

So you can receive emails from me.

I will see you soon for another lesson.

(bright upbeat music)