Are You Challenging Yourself Enough While Learning English?

So there's a term in English called the comfort zone.

When you're in your comfort zone,

it means you're doing something

and it's really, really easy for you and enjoyable

and you just really like doing it

and you don't have to work very hard.

When I teach, when I'm in a classroom,

I've been doing it for over 20 years,

I'm in my comfort zone.

It's really easy for me to do that job

because I've done it for so long.

But if you are in your comfort zone

while you are learning English,

that's not always a good thing.

You should be in your comfort zone

sometimes when you're learning English,

but you should also push yourself out of your comfort zone.

You should do things that maximize the time

you are spending learning English.

In this English lesson, I'm going to show you

five different things that you can do

to get yourself out of your comfort zone a little bit

and to learn even more English for every minute

and every hour that you study each week.

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Well, welcome to this English lesson

where I'm going to help you get out of your comfort zone

a little bit while you're learning English.

If this is your first time here, though,

don't forget to click that red subscribe button

and give me a thumbs up if this lesson helps you learn

just a little bit more English.

Well, what's the first thing you can do

to get out of your comfort zone a little bit?

Well, the first thing that I recommend

is that you identify the weakest link in your learning.

If you are spending some time each week

reading, writing, listening, and speaking,

find out which of those four

is the one that you're not spending enough time on,

or the one that you're avoiding

or the one that you don't enjoy doing,

and then prioritize the weakest link.

So let's say you love reading, writing, and listening,

but you don't do very much speaking,

identify that as the weakest link

and then plan to spend even more time

having English conversations.

This isn't fun.

Actually, none of the things I recommend

in this lesson will be fun,

but I guarantee you, if you prioritize the weakest link

in your learning, it will accelerate,

it will speed up your English learning

and you'll learn English even faster.

The second thing you can do to get out of your comfort zone

is to make sure you're not always talking

about the same things.

Let's imagine you have an English conversation

with someone once per week.

There's a possibility that you talk about

the same things all the time.

You might talk about work, you might talk about school,

you might talk about the latest TV show that you've watched

but it's important to talk about other things.

Here's a great suggestion.

There is a website called Wheel Decide.

Put a whole bunch of English subjects into the wheel

and spin the wheel and then force yourself

to talk about that subject

the next time you have an English conversation.

One of the ways to get out of your comfort zone

is to deliberately choose different subjects

to talk about when you have an English conversation.

And of course, this also works for other areas,

it's not just for English conversation.

You should be choosing a variety of things to read.

You should be watching a variety of things.

And when you are writing, you should force yourself

to write about a lot of different things.

So try Wheel Decide, it's a lot of fun.

I really enjoy it.

It might help you get out of your comfort zone a little bit.

The third thing you can do

to kind of get out of your comfort zone

is to make sure you are reading above your level

at some points during the week.

It's good to read things in English

where you understand all the words and all the phrases.

That's good practice as well,

but you should be reading some things during the week

that are really hard to read.

You should find some things to read where

you do have to look up a lot of the words

so that you're learning new vocabulary

and you're seeing more complex English phrases.

So the third thing you can do to make sure

that you are not staying in your comfort zone

is to find books that are harder to read.

Maybe you are reading on the webpage

called Simple Wikipedia, which has simplified English.

Try starting to read articles on the normal Wikipedia.

Maybe you're using the simple Wiktionary webpage

which has simple definitions of English words.

Try using the real Wiktionary

and see if that helps you kind of push yourself

out of your comfort zone

to do something that's just a little more difficult

and a little more rewarding.

The fourth thing you can do to get out of your comfort zone

is to do something called intentional verb tense usage.

And this works really well with writing.

So you can try this activity,

it's called later today, right now, and earlier today.

And the way this writing activity works is like this.

You sit down and you write a sentence, or more,

about what you're going to do later today.

This forces you to use a future tense.

Then when you are doing that thing,

you sit down and you write about some of the things

that you are doing in that moment.

And you start by saying right now

followed by a good sentence.

Then when you are home, you do the earlier today portion.

You sit down and you write about things

that you did earlier that day.

Here's a quick example using one sentence

for each verb tense.

You could say this, "Later today, I will go to the park."

When you're at the park,

you would then sit down maybe at a park bench

and write, right now I am at the park.

I see a man walking his dog.

Then when you are home, you sit down

and you write in the past tense.

Today or earlier today, I went to the park

and I saw a man walking his dog.

So writing practice with intentional verb tense usage

can be a great way to push yourself out of the comfort zone.

The fifth thing that you can do

is you can think about how you're using subtitles

when you're watching videos.

There are a wide variety of ways to use subtitles

including not using subtitles at all.

But here are some suggestions.

If you are watching a video

and there are subtitles on YouTube,

you can actually open up the full transcript.

This opens up a lot of possibilities as well.

You could read the transcript before you watch the video.

You could watch the video

and then read the transcript afterwards

and then watch it again.

You could use the actual subtitles

and have them on while you watch the video and read them.

You could watch the video with the subtitles off,

then watch it with them on.

You could watch it with the subtitles on

and then watch it with them off.

I think you see where I'm going here.

Subtitles and transcripts for videos

and for when you are doing listening practice are awesome,

but there are a lot of different creative ways to use them,

including, like I said at the beginning,

turning them off completely eventually.

So make sure you are being creative

with how you use subtitles and how you use transcripts

when you're watching videos.

It can just be a really cool way

to enhance the learning you're doing

and the other cool thing is it kind of tricks you

into watching things more than once.

And any time you can do something over and over again

when learning a language, it just increases

the amount of English that you will remember.

It's an awesome technique.

So just be very creative with how you use subtitles.

They're awesome.

We have a phrase in English to get more bang for your buck.

And I would say this, if you are studying English

and you are only doing the things you like and enjoy

and maybe the things you find easy,

you're not getting a lot of bang for your buck.

For every minute or hour that you put into studying English,

you're not learning as much as you could.

I think it's important to always have this thought

when learning the English language,

what am I going to do this week that is hard?

You can certainly plan to do a whole bunch of things

that are easy or at an intermediate level,

but you should always think to yourself

what one or two things am I going to do this week

that are hard, that are going to push me

out of my comfort zone,

and help me learn just a little bit more in English?

Anyways, Bob the Canadian here.

Thank you so much for watching this little English lesson.

If you're new here,

don't forget to click that red subscribe button over there

and give me a thumbs up if this video helped you learn

just a little bit more English.

And if you have the time,

why don't you stick around

and watch another English lesson?

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