Everyday habits to improve your English

Hello I'm Emma from mmmEnglish!

In this video, we're going to talk about four things

that you can do every day to improve your English.

I think we can all agree that learning English

or learning any language takes time

and effort and dedication.

But the most successful language learners, they find

a way for their language to become

a part of their daily life. It just becomes a habit

like brushing your teeth.

If you want to improve, your English practice should

become a daily habit.

To help you with this I'm going to share four things

that you can and you should be doing every day

to improve your English and yes, I am suggesting

that you do all four things every day but they're not

huge tasks

and we're going to talk about how you can make them

a bit of fun too

so come check it out!

Before I share these four things

that you should be doing every day,

I want to thank our friends Lingoda

who've partnered with us to bring you today's lesson.

In particular, I want to share how the Lingoda Language

Sprint offers you daily English lessons plus

up to a hundred percent refund on your lesson fees.

Lingoda is an online language school.

You take classes with qualified native speaking

teachers, class sizes are small

and all of the learning materials are provided. Plus

Lingoda are now Cambridge certified so you'll get free

access to the Cambridge online language test as well.

And in exciting news, the next Language Sprints

are starting soon.

The Super Sprint is the biggest challenge,

thirty classes a month for three months.

When I decide to do something, I like to go hard

and that is exactly what the Super Sprint

demands of you.

English classes every day for ninety days

but here's the thing,

if you complete every one of those classes,

Lingoda will give you your money back,

a hundred percent of your class fees refunded

or you can use the credits for even more

English classes. Now if that feels impossible for you,

then you can choose to do the Regular Sprint,

fifteen classes a month for three months.

If you complete all of those classes, you'll get a

fifty percent refund. So are you up to the challenge?

You can register for the Sprint promotion right now

but registrations close on the 24th of March.

The link is in the description below and if you use

this code JOIN1, you'll get ten euros off your deposit.

So the very first thing on my list is pronunciation.

Yes you should be practising your pronunciation

every day.

And it's not to try and get rid of your accent

but to make it clear enough that others

can comfortably understand you when you speak.

I can't tell you the number of advanced English students

I've had

who've had amazing grammar and vocabulary skills

but so much trouble communicating

because their accent makes it quite challenging

for others to understand them.

So of course, all of this affects smooth, positive,

comfortable conversation.

And depending on where you learned English,

your teacher may not have focused on pronunciation.

It may not have been the priority at the time.

You see, if you learned English at school,

your teacher's main aim was probably to get you

high marks in your exam. Pronunciation was

probably not their focus at that time

but in the real world when you're using English to speak

with other people, your pronunciation, your fluency

when you speak, it's so incredibly important.

Get into the habit of learning and using the correct

pronunciation today because it's going to save you

lots of headaches and confusion down the track.

Plus, practising your pronunciation every day

consistently, it's gonna help you to make noticeable

improvements in a short space of time.

So how can you start doing this?

I recommend that you learn the IPA,

the international phonetic alphabet.

If you've never heard of it before

or you don't know a lot about it,

then watch this lesson up here.

But learning the IPA will allow you to correctly

pronounce every single English word

using

the

correct

English

sounds.

Another great way to practise your pronunciation

is with my imitation lessons

so in these lessons, I help you to copy me

and shadow me as I speak.

They're really awesome, quick ten minute videos

that you can practise with regularly so add them

to a playlist and keep coming back to them

and practise with them often.

After you've practised a lesson for a few times

make a recording of yourself

and compare it to my voice.

Try to identify some of the mistakes that you're making

with your pronunciation.

I've added a link to my imitation lessons

in the description and I'll add one at the

end of this video as well that you can check out.

You can also simply read out loud to improve

your pronunciation.

Doing this every day will help your mouth muscles

to get working and creating English sounds

and get more comfortable doing it.

It's as simple as that

and it doesn't need to take you long

just five or ten minutes a day is plenty.

Just make sure you're doing it consistently.

You could even do it by singing English songs.

Create one opportunity to absorb English every day.

To absorb is to take in information

so you're like a sponge soaking things up, taking in

new ideas, new words,

new ways of expressing yourself

and you can do this in lots of different ways,

so many ways.

Listening to a podcast or an audiobook,

you could watch an English movie

or any video on Youtube.

Read a book or a blog post, In fact,

you probably want to mix this up during the week, right?

To keep things interesting.

A podcast on Monday. Read a book on Tuesday.

Whatever floats your boat.

Now again, this doesn't have to be a huge

time-consuming task but it's worth spending some time

searching for the right type of content.

It must be stuff that is interesting for you.

If you're into football or you love makeup tutorials

or romance novels or soap operas.

If you love the idea of sailing around the world,

I've been watching a YouTube channel called

Sailing La Vagabonde and they vlog about their life

sailing around the world on a yacht.

In fact, if you're interested,

I've added the link in the description below.

But the point is, find something that interests you

and excites you because

you need to look forward to doing it every single day.

It shouldn't feel like you're doing English practice.

So I have two little recommendations here.

Firstly, you need to find the time that you're going to

do it and declare it. That is your daily time

to absorb English so it could be on the bus

on your way to work or while you're eating breakfast.

I've always found that attaching an activity to the task

helps you to make it part of your routine.

And while you're doing it, just keep a notebook handy

so that you can write down expressions or new words

which you can look up and check later on.

Simple as that!

Writing every day has some amazing benefits.

But before I talk about that I want to make it clear,

I'm not talking about writing an essay, okay?

I'm just talking about writing a few thoughts or a few

ideas down. It only has to take a few minutes

and nobody ever has to see it.

It's just for you. So there's a few reasons why writing

every day is an excellent habit to get into.

It helps your vocabulary to stick.

Writing is one of the best ways to recall

new words and expressions that you've come across.

When so many of my students have asked me

"What is the best way to remember vocabulary?"

this is my recommendation.

As you're reading or watching TV shows or books,

you come across new ideas and words

and you write them down but

then you start to use them yourself.

You think of sentences and your own ideas about

how to use these words.

That way you're producing your own sentences

rather than just listening to other people's

and it helps it just stick in your mind.

And then you can improve it.

Once you've written something,

you can do so much with it.

You can copy/paste it into a grammar checker

like Grammarly to help you to identify some of the errors

that you're making.

So Grammarly is free to use,

I've included a link in the description below

because it's awesome.

It helps you to see the mistakes that you're making

like maybe you're using the wrong preposition

or

you don't need to use an article when you've written one.

So I really recommend that you take a look to help you

see and realise the mistakes that you're making

and you can also review your own work.

Once you've finished writing, leave it for a few days

or a few weeks, come back to it.

See if you can make any improvements

or if you can use a thesaurus

to look up synonyms and replace some of the words

with more advanced ones.

These are just a few ideas but getting into a daily

writing practice creates so many opportunities for you

to apply what you've learned or what you've seen

or what you've experienced in English

and then review it and improve it.

Lastly, join an English discussion

about stuff that interests you.

Now this sounds serious and may be complicated

but it's not, I promise. I'm just talking about joining an

active group or online community

where there are people interacting.

They're sharing their ideas, they're giving opinions

and you're able to respond.

So you can comment and actually be part

of the discussion as it happens.

Now this could be in person but it can easily

be as part of an online community.

Plus that makes it, you know, even easier to create

a daily habit around it

because it's simply about checking in

and seeing what everyone else has been talking about

and giving your two cents worth.

So how do you find these places?

It takes a little work. You can't just Google 'cooking'

and join the first group that you find.

Join a few different ones, see which one is the most

active, which one has really interesting discussions

happening in it.

Sometimes nothing gets posted in these groups

for days and that's not really helpful for you, right?

So I would start by writing down

your top five hobbies or interests.

Don't start with English language.

What else are you into? Are you into

politics or yoga or marketing,

photography, sports. I mean you probably already follow

people or a part of groups that are like this.

So all you need to do is commit to checking in

once a day and write a comment.

It's not more complicated than that.

If someone shared something and they're asking

for opinions, don't keep scrolling.

It's an opportunity for you to share so stop,

think of a way that you can contribute.

Now I'm gonna add some great, really active

and interesting groups in the description below

just to give you a few ideas of what I'm talking about

but I want to know if you're already part of some

lively Facebook groups or other online communities.

What kinds of things do you discuss

and do you ever contribute?

So if you can bring those four things

into your daily routine in some way,

you will absolutely, without a doubt

improve your English.

Remember that it takes a little bit of time to create

good habits. It's not as simple as

deciding you're gonna do it.

So I've got a couple of extra tips to help you get started.

Do your research first.

Find a blog or a TV series that will keep you

interested so you don't have to look for something to do

okay? Give yourself a week or so to find the right

type of community to join and be part of the

discussions with.

Then create a regular schedule to help you get started

and really I just mean decide when you're going to do

these four things so for example,

pronunciation practice might be in the bathroom

for five to ten minutes every morning

as you're getting ready for work.

Then listening to your favourite podcast

on your way to work and you're writing down

your words on the bus.

On your lunch break, might be the time to check a

Facebook group and write a group comment.

Then spend ten minutes at the end of your day

writing about what you did

or what you learnt before dinner

and simply put that on repeat.

Very quickly you'll realise that English has become

a regular daily part of your routine.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

You can connect with me

on Instagram and my Facebook here.

I hope that you found all of these ideas

and these suggestions useful.

Let me know if you're doing some of these things

already or if you're planning to put any of them

into practice, let me know how it goes.

And as promised, here is one of my imitation lessons

to help you work on your pronunciation.

I'll see you in there!