Good morning, good afternoon and good evening!
Welcome to Smashing English!
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If you're new here my name is Laura and I am an English teacher.
I've taught around three and a half thousand English lessons online, the main issue I come
across is people telling me: ‘I feel like I'm not improving I feel stuck I feel like
I've hit a level and that is where I will always be, I can't get any better,’ so let
me give you some help if you're feeling a little bit like this.
This is why you are not improving your English.
Okay reason number one: I love books I think books are brilliant reading books are a fabulous
way of improving your vocabulary you can learn grammar from books fabulous, however if you
are just reading and writing you will not find the right level of speaking Improvement
that you want to see.
If you want to walk into a coffee shop and order something in English like a native you
won't be able to do that if you are just reading books you need to be speaking speaking speaking
speaking, and one of the cheapest easiest exercises you can do is every day make a little
Vlog for yourself: Vlog- a video blog = Vlog.
Record yourself telling a story of what's happened to you today or maybe you are going
to record yourself in your kitchen and it only needs to be maybe 30 seconds and you
say hello today I'm in my kitchen as you can see I'm cooking, just something where you
are speaking to camera and the reason why I say record it is you can go back watch it,
listen out for any mistakes because most of the time when we listen back we can hear mistakes
that we don't realize we are making when we say them.
Okay reason number two why your English isn't improving: you've lost motivation you are
simply learning English for the sake of learning English and that is a very tricky place to
be if you want to keep motivation so I suggest setting a goal you can even sign up for it
set a goal of taking an English test like the Cambridge English test or an IELTS test:
i-e-l-t-s.
If you set a date and you book that test you are going to find this sense of motivation
because you know in six months time I've got that test I've paid for that test I need to
take it so I better practice because I want to get a good result putting pressure on yourself
is the best way to get motivation especially if it's pressure that you've created yourself,
you know, if you don't need to take an English test then it's quite a nice pressure because
you've decided to because you want to for yourself it's not like if I don't pass this
bad things will happen but it's a good level of pressure, so book an English test for six
months in the future, trust me!
Okay reason number three: you're not speaking to a native, now this is harder than it sounds
obviously if you're living in a country with not a lot of native English speakers that's
quite hard to do but the internet is your friend there are websites like iTalki, Cambly,
and many others I'll link some down below!
It feels really scary the first time because you're talking online with someone who is
a native speaker and it's very nerve-wracking but it is the best thing you could possibly
do, again, there's that pressure that you have suddenly you're face to face with a native
speaker and you have to find conversation that pressure does wonders for your improvement
I promise.
Okay reason number four: you're not consuming media in your target language.
If you're saying to me: ‘I feel like I'm not improving with my English I feel stuck’,
but then you also tell me that you don't listen to any English speaking podcasts and English-speaking
TV shows anything then I don't know what to tell you!
This is a must for your listening practice and for your vocabulary you need to have at
least one TV show that you regularly watch that is in English or one podcast that you
regularly listen to that is in English it's just a must, even TikTok!
You can set the languages on your TikTok to I understand English, I'm sure you can do
that and then you will get English speaking content and this is fun this is an easy one
you just get to watch funny things so find something that you really enjoy but watch
it in English, okay?
Okay reason number five: you are in your vocabulary comfort zone your vocabulary comfort zone
is a lovely little place where you can use the words that you are comfortable with, I
have it with French when I speak French I always use the word: bizarre for everything,
I'm like oh c’est bizarre, c’est bizarre!
That's it because it's my comfort word I know that that will work you know but I need to
push myself I need to expand that vocabulary, so here's an exercise you can do to stretch
your comfort zone: find a video on Youtube, silent movies are really good and Mr Bean
videos are really good, I want you to watch 30 seconds then I want you to say out loud
what you just saw in detail, what did you just see happen?
Then I want you to say it again, I want you to go back, tell me those same 30 seconds,
what did you see?
But use completely different words, different sentences then do it again, I want three times
of you saying the same 30 seconds of video describing what happened but in different
ways, ideally if you can record yourself doing it that's even better, then keep going the
next 30 seconds okay watch it in enjoy, what happened there?
Say it once, say it twice, say it three times- if you start to struggle and you're really
thinking: ‘Oh I can't think of any other words I can say here’ that's when you get
a thesaurus out, so thesauruses are not always reliable sometimes they might give you a word
that isn't great in that context but it's good to try and the internet like I said is
your friend, okay this is a really good exercise just to stretch that comfort zone.
Reason number six: and I'm going to take you straight to Pride Rock for this one, I think
a big reason why a lot of English students find themselves not improving is because they
have too much pride, and I get it if you're speaking English at a really good level and
your English teacher says to you okay I think we should revise the past tense you might
feel a little- oh but I know the past tense I'm I'm a good English speaker, and that's
true but grammar will always be something that you need to keep practicing and sometimes
you might have to go right back to the basics because we develop habits so it's really hard
to to get rid of that habit so sometimes you might have to go all the way back and go back
to the grammar and look at it with new eyes because if you're a bit older if it's been
10 years since you've done grammar you might see it in a different way so don't have pride,
pride kills language development because you're too busy thinking about oh but I don't want
to sound stupid I don't want to sound like my level is lower you need to make those mistakes
you need to just be as open as a child learning a language and that is the best best way to
develop.
Okay reason number seven why I think you're not improving: you're not having fun!
You're treating learning English as this homework this school assessment thing where you've
got a teacher who's going to, you know, I don't know- hit you with a stick!
It's it's not fun if you are just reading grammar exercises and doing nothing else,
oh my goodness who wants to do that?
Whereas if you're using video resources you're using English speaking media you're speaking
to a teacher that you really connect with and you have so much fun and you laugh it
doesn't feel like work and it motivates you to to do it, and of course books and reading
help but you will learn just as much going for a walk outside and maybe filming all of
it, come home, watch the video and you're going to narrate everything, you know, you
might say okay so here I'm walking to the left and I see a roundabout, but you'll learn
just as much.
Have fun!
But listen I am a language learner myself I understand how it feels I get it there are
just walls that we hit sometimes and we feel as though I'm never going to get any better
but I read somewhere from the author Paul Noble, he says learning a language is a bit
like keeping a fire going, you have to keep adding wood to it, if you leave it alone it
will get smaller and eventually go out so you have to keep adding to it, and also language
development is a little bit like growing older, think of the difference between a newborn
baby and an 18 year old it's massive you see those developments like whoa!
And that's like the beginning of language learning, you see these huge improvements
because you're starting from nothing and then you learn the past tense the future tense
it's like it grows so big, whereas when you're aged 20 the aging between 20 to 40 is isn't
that crazy, you know, it's not as obvious as from a baby to a 20 year old, for example,
so the more advanced you get with your English the progress is going to seem so much smaller
and it will feel like you're stuck like I'm not making progress I'm not getting any better
but you are it's just way less obvious because you're not learning these huge big Leaps and
Bounds so that's why you've got to unlock the language make it less stiff make it fun
experiment go out of your comfort zone that is how you beat the block.
Thank you so much for watching I hope this was helpful if you have any questions you
can leave them in the comments, be sure to give this video a like and if you want an
online one-to-one English lesson with me or my partner the link for that is down below,
thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time, tata!