5 Minutes Is All You Need | Focused English Training

A student from our very own Fluency Circle  English Community recently asked me:

Andrea, can you recommend an exercise  that I can do for only 5 minutes a day  

that would have a big impact on my English?

So, I said, “uhm, that’s  an interesting question...”

You know, I was able to give him some  ideas just off the top of my head,  

but I also said that if he gave  me some time to think about it  

I could probably come up with more ideas.  I also thought I could ask my team for some  

extra ideas because I’m sure they’d all have  some creative 5-minute exercise ideas to share.  

After all, they’re all language learners... Later in this video I’ll let them speak to you,  

so stick around because I  think their tips are amazing!

Before we get into the lesson, myself,  Ethan and the whole RealLife English team  

would be honoured to accompany you  on your journey to English fluency.  

Let’s go on this adventure together. So, please,  do 2 things: give this video a like and two, if  

you’re new around here, subscribe to this channel,  this way you’ll make sure you see our next lesson  

(if you also hit the bell, you’ll  make extra sure you don’t miss it).

Okay, so one important thing to keep in  mind with these powerful 5-minute exercises  

is that they are by no means a replacement  for any of the other more time-consuming  

practice or learning that  you might already be doing.  

If that, whatever it is, has been giving you  results, that’s great, keep at it, don’t stop.

What you can do with these powerful 5-minute  exercises is add them on top of whatever  

you’re doing. It’s going to complement  your existing practice/study routine.

Let’s get to them.

The first idea for a 5-minute exercise  is one that involves an app: Memrise.  

This is an app that specializes in the  science of memory and forgetting. So,  

when you learn a new word or expression,  put it into your Memrise, then let the app,  

precisely its space repetition technology, do  the work. What this means is that the app will  

ask you to review a previously learned  item based on the “forgetting curve”.

Let me explain how that works. Let’s say you  just learned a new phrase, “all of a sudden”  

for example, and you put it into your  Memrise. Based on the forgetting curve,  

the app knows you’re likely to forget that new  phrase 1 day after learning it. So it’ll send  

you a reminder of that phrase the next  day, so that you don’t forget it. Then,  

you’ll get another reminder on the 3rd day, on the  6th day, and on the 10th day. Then that interval  

increases. The app will ask you to review the  word or phrase after a month, then after 3 months.

This whole process might take  more than five minutes to set up,  

but after that it’ll take just a few moments to  review the vocabulary that you learned previously.  

So, in addition to just reviewing, keep in mind  these 2 extra things that have worked for me  

when learning Spanish and that you could  include in your Memrise learning routine.

1- Say the words out loud. I’ve always felt  that this helped me reinforce my memory of  

the new word or phrase. Plus, this helps you  create practice for the pronunciation of it. 

2- Prioritize learning word chunks,  rather than individual words.

Your newly learned phrase “all of a sudden” is  a chunk that is more deeply learned as a unit of  

meaning rather than as the sum of its parts. This  is important for the pronunciation of it as well.  

You’ll learn this not as all-of-a-sudden,  with emphasis on each word,  

but rather as one single all of a sudden.

Now with our Fluent with Friends Course you  get access to Memrise to help you learn and  

remember the vocabulary in each lesson so  that you can confidently use it when speaking  

and understanding it when listening. Not only  this but you'll receive PDF Power Lessons  

for each of the 48 lessons and access to our  Fluency Circle Global Community so that you're  

never alone in your language journey. But the best part is it's FREE so you  

can try it right now by clicking  up here or the link down below.

Moving on, another highly impactful  5-minute daily exercise you can do,  

and maybe you’ve heard me talk about  in the past, is shadowing or mimicking.  

Through the power of repeating  what a model speaker says,  

you most noticeably improve your pronunciation  and things like intonation and connected speech,  

but I also think you can reinforce grammar  patterns and consolidate vocabulary.

Here is how it works…

Choose a model speaker you like. One whom maybe  you like how they speak, or their accent. There  

could be many different speakers, too. Like, if  you choose to shadow or mimic a Friends episode.

Now, you will shadow what they say. This means,  while they’re speaking, you’ll repeat what  

they’re saying. Try copying everything. From  pronunciation, to inflections in their voice,  

tone, intonation. It’d be great if  you can also imitate their emotions.

That’s shadowing in a nutshell. Mimicking is  different in that you listen to someone speak,  

then pause the video, and  then repeat what they said.  

Again, imitate their pronunciation, inflections,  intonation, and if you’d like emotions as well.

Personally, I’ve felt this process is interesting  and fun to do, but only if I don’t do it for  

too long, otherwise it starts to feel boring.  But, if it’s just for five minutes every day,  

you can still get the best out of  it and have a lot of fun with it.

The reason why this method is so loved by  many and recommended so much by teachers  

and language learners alike is because  it definitely produces results.  

I think this is because you can focus 100%  on the production aspect of the language.

Say you mimic this sentence: All  of a sudden we heard a loud noise.

When you do it, you can focus on pronouncing  each sound correctly, the linked features of it,  

the stress and so on. That’s where  all your mental power is focused.

But, in a non-mimicking scenario where  you have to say this sentence yourself,  

it’s like 50% of your brain power  is focused on remembering the words,  

structuring the sentence correctly,  interacting with the person you’re talking to,  

etc. Then, only the remaining 50% is focused on  how you say it, your pronunciation, intonation,  

etc. Because of this, it’s not possible to  completely focus on polishing your pronunciation.

So, the next 5-minute exercise is going  to help your listening comprehension.  

It is transcribing. Now, I have never actually  done this myself, but I’ve heard from a few  

people in the RealLife English team that this  was HUGE for them when they did it. In fact,  

I’ll let Max explain how transcribing had an  incredible effect on his listening comprehension.

That's right! For a while transcription was  actually part of my job. We've now switched  

to software transcription but before I had to  actually manually transcribe the RealLife English  

Podcast episodes, and what I would do basically is  just play a bit of audio, pause and transcribe it. 

For the most part this was fairly easy. However  there were some parts that were particularly  

challenging and this was when Ethan or  Justin spoke too fast and basically just  

couldn't recognize what they were saying. So what I had to do was to slow down the  

audio a little bit, or even sometimes just  listen to it a few times until I got it  

and just the practice of doing this I felt had  a big impact on my listening comprehension. 

And the way I realized this is one  time I asked a friend who was a more  

advanced English learner than I was at the time. I knew he had a better listening comprehension,  

a better ear than I had at the time, and  so I asked him to actually help me with the  

process of transcribing the podcast. The parts that he found challenging,  

I realized I was not having trouble actually  transcribing those parts so I realized that  

my ear had developed further than the level he  was at at the time. So that's how I realized how  

powerful the practice of transcribing can be and  so this is the reason why I think this is an ideal  

quick 5-minute daily exercise that anyone can  do and can safely expect big big results from.

And Max isn’t the only one that swears  by transcribing, a lot of people do. An  

alternative to this, that’s actually quite a bit  easier to do, and that still conserves some of the  

benefits, is doing a watch-read-watch  again exercise. Here’s how it works.

Step 1: Take any stretch of audio or  video that you can get a transcript for.  

It could be a 30 second clip from  an episode of your favorite TV show.  

Watch it, listen to it, say 30  seconds of it, without subtitles  

or without looking at the transcript.  Don’t do anything but just watch or listen.

Step 2: Take that same 30-second clip and  watch it while following the transcription.  

You’ll notice, if the 30 second clip is the right  level of difficulty, that with the help of the  

transcript it is much clearer. You can now hear  the words that you previously perhaps missed.

Step 3: Watch the same clip, but this  time without the help of the transcript.  

You’ll notice that the difference in  your comprehension is jaw-dropping.

This is what we call the  watch-read-watch again method

If you’re part of the Fluency  Circle you may know Ksenia.  

This is what they suggested  for 5-minute exercises:

Okay what you can do if you only have five  minutes a day to work on your English vocabulary,  

this is what I did. Going to bed I tried to  reflect on my day: What I did, what I learned  

or people I met. Maybe even talk about my  feelings. I had that day, I also used to plan  

the next day and this is, I can tell you,  an effective way to boost your vocabulary.

In addition to what he said  about transcribing audio,  

Max suggested a tip for working on your fluency:

Another idea for a five minute daily exercise I  think is more for advanced English learners but  

if you're an intermediary beginner I think  you can give it a go and see how it goes,  

and this exercise is very challenging  but it's very fun at the same time. 

And what you have to do is tune into a talk  show on the radio in your native language  

and live translate what they're saying. You could either like do it simultaneously  

or maybe just let them speak and then translate  what they're saying. Again it's very challenging  

but is all kinds of fun and  you get some good practice and  

it pushes you to think on your feet and  I think it activates that fluency, right?

Now, Izzy had this idea,  

which I know can be a game-changer to  improve your writing skills in English.

Do you feel like you always struggle  to create and establish new habits? 

Well maybe what you actually need is  just a little bit more of awareness,  

being aware of what's really going on with  yourself. So here's what I recommend you do. 

Every day, at the end of the day we're  going to ask yourself these three questions: 

1) What went well? What are  the things that worked for you. 

2) What didn't go well? And 3) How to improve? 

So by asking yourself these three  questions you're just going to be aware  

of what's working and what can you do more of. To what's not working just recognize those things  

being honest with yourself and then three have  a real plan. Establish, create a real plan on  

how to improve, how to overcome those issues  and by doing this you're going to be holding  

yourself accountable every day and just be making  more progress more consistently in your learning.

Next up is Diego. Take a look at his  tips for improving your pronunciation  

and speaking by only doing this 5 minutes a day.

Hey there, this is Diego here. Something  that I do that really helps me with my  

speaking and that I can do for just  about five minutes a day is singing! 

I love music, I'm a big fan of Rock and Hip Hop.  

However I find it easier to sing Rock because  I have been listening to it since I was a kid. 

As for Hip Hop, I started  listening to it later in my life. 

So I go for Hip Hop with my practices, I choose  a song and sing just a verse or two of it until  

I have mastered the intonation and cadence for  those verses. If I keep doing it consistently I'm  

able to sing the whole song in no time and it's  noticeable how my speaking improves over time.

Finally, here’s Lucas’s idea  for a 5-minute daily exercise.

Hello everybody! So one exercise that  I've developed daily to develop my fluency  

and my pronunciation skills was  

picking an episode of a podcast and choosing  a specific part of it. Maybe you like how the  

speaker is talking at that specific time and  you repeat it over and over again. You don't  

have to be very accurate but you have to try to  copy the intonation and pronunciation as it is.

Let me know down in the comments, which  of these 5-minute exercises the RealLife  

English team and I shared you think  would be best for improving your English.  

Have you ever done other impactful 5-minute daily  exercises that we didn’t mention in this lesson?  

I’d love to read about your experience!

You’ve made it this far in this lesson.  Congratulations! It shows you’re very  

committed to improving your English. Here’s  another lesson that will help you do that.  

We know how important daily practice is,  and especially conversation practice.  

However, you might not always have the opportunity  to speak with someone in English. If that’s  

your case, watch this lesson on how you can  learn and practice English at home, alone.