6 Awesome English Learning Tips (Just for You!)

Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson

during a tiny snowstorm.

It's not too bad out here.

It's actually not too cold,

but it's supposed to snow quite a bit.

Anyways, I wanted to talk to you today

about things you can do

to make your English learning more effective,

not easier, not things that will make it super easy to do,

but things that will make it more effective,

things that will make it worth your while.

I think I have about six of them

that I'll talk about in this video.

I think they'll help you a lot.

(upbeat music)

The first thing you should do is the hardest thing.

You should start your day or your week

doing the thing that you find the hardest

when learning English, let's say between reading, writing,

listening, and speaking,

you find writing the most difficult.

You should do that first every day.

Or if you learn English throughout the week,

you should do that on Monday or Tuesday.

You should always get the hardest thing outta the way.

This doesn't just work for learning English, by the way.

It works for almost everything in life.

When you do the hardest thing first,

then you have a lot to look forward to.

You have the easier, more enjoyable things.

And the flip side of it is do the most enjoyable thing last,

because at the end of the day or the end of the week,

you might be tired, and so it's kind of like a reward.

So recommendation number one, do the hardest thing first,

do the easiest thing last, or do the hardest thing first

or the thing you don't like first,

and do the thing that you do like

at the end of the day or the end of the week.

This next recommendation is from Jen.

She suggests that you break things down into smaller tasks.

Break your English learning down into smaller tasks.

When you plan to study for an hour,

don't study one thing for an hour.

Decide on five or six things that you're going to do,

and study each of those for about 10 minutes.

This just makes the whole hour

of learning English more enjoyable.

When you know that you're going to do

a little bit of reading and then a little bit of writing,

you're going to learn a little bit of vocabulary,

study some grammar, and then do some speaking,

and then some listening.

It just makes the hour go faster.

It helps your brain to do different things

and learn different things,

and it will overall just make

the whole learning English experience more enjoyable.

So number two, break things down into smaller pieces,

and enjoy each small piece as you do it.

The third thing you should do is think about the future.

I always like thinking about

how will I feel if I don't do this today?

So think about how will you feel on Saturday

if you don't study English every day of the week.

How will you feel on Saturday

if you do study English every day of the week?

So if it's Monday and you don't feel like learning English,

think about how can you make yourself happy

later in the week.

It's really cool after five days of learning English

to sit down on a Saturday and look back,

and celebrate what you've done.

It's really cool on a Monday

to kind of give yourself on Saturday a little gift,

a little bit of happiness, so that when Saturday comes,

you can just be super excited that you worked hard

learning English all week.

Another thing you can do

is do a lot of the thing you like doing.

I think this is a good idea,

especially when learning a language.

Usually, the two things that people like doing

when learning a language like English,

they usually like listening to a lot of stuff

and they usually like reading.

But listening is probably the number one thing

that people enjoy doing.

So do it a lot.

Do as much listening as you possibly can.

Listen to music, listen to podcasts.

Listen to YouTube videos after you've watched them once.

In fact, my Friday lessons,

I often release a shorter version of it,

and you can listen to that while you cook,

while you ride the subway,

while you go for a run, or while you exercise.

So another thing that you can do,

do a lot of what you like, like overindulge.

Have the radio on in English at work.

Do as much listening or as much of the thing

that you like as you possibly can.

Another thing you can do is set a quitting time.

Decide how many minutes or how long you'll study English.

Maybe set a timer so that you know when you'll be done.

When you do something hard,

when you do something that maybe you don't enjoy that day,

if you set a time so that you know

when you're going to be finished,

this can be really, really exciting.

It can be exciting to know

that you only have five minutes left or 10 minutes left.

Now I know learning English for you

is enjoyable and exciting,

but I always equate it to exercise.

When I go for a walk, I really like walking,

but I also like knowing that I'm almost done.

I like knowing when I'll be finished.

So you can do the same thing with English.

Set a quitting time.

Set a time in the future

when you know you'll be able to stop studying,

and then enjoy the studying

while you watch the clock go down.

Another thing that I think is important

is to make sure that if you forget to study one day

or if you don't meet a goal,

if you decide you're going to study for an hour,

and then you just don't have time to do it,

don't let the fact that you didn't get it done

demotivate you or make you feel bad about your learning.

What you should do then is just shake it off.

I mean, life happens.

Sometimes, we get really, really busy

and we aren't able to do the things

that we wanted to get done.

So the last thing, if you don't have a good day

of English learning, just shake it off.

Just think, "Oh, well, that's how life goes.

I'll hit the books hard again tomorrow.

I'll do as much studying as I can,

and I'll get right back on track learning English."

Well, thank you so much for watching this English lesson.

I hope you enjoyed watching the snow

accumulate on my head as I walked around talking.

It's just a small storm now,

but it's supposed to get bigger.

We're supposed to get lots of snow later today.

I do actually have to go to work.

I hope we don't get snowed in at work.

That wouldn't be fun.

Anyways, thanks so much for watching.

If this is your first time here,

don't forget to click that red subscribe button,

gimme a thumbs up if this video helped you learn

a bit more English,

and if you have some time, why don't you stick around

and watch another English lesson?

(upbeat music)