(upbeat music)
- Hello, everyone, and welcome back to English With Lucy.
Today, I'm going to talk to you
about how you can implement a plan
to improve your English as quickly as possible.
These are five things that you will want to do
every single week.
Some of them are also daily tasks.
I can pretty much promise you that if you follow these tips,
you will notice a huge difference in your language skills.
Let's get started with tip number one.
The first tip is to create a realistic schedule
incorporating a variety of English skills.
Whether you write this on an Excel spreadsheet,
or you write it beautifully on paper
and stick it to your wall,
try to practise at least one different language skill
every single day, each week.
This doesn't need to be boring.
You can plan to watch an English movie or series.
You can even schedule in listening to English music,
just as long as you get into the habit
of constantly immersing yourself in English.
Other ideas include listening to a podcast,
reading a newspaper.
I really recommend the Happy News
and the Positive News companies.
Every quarter, they send you a newspaper
and they've collected all of the best,
most positive news stories.
You could follow a recipe in English.
You could attend a virtual conversation class.
The possibilities are endless.
My next tip comes,
thanks to the sponsor of today's video, italki.
The tip is to schedule in a weekly conversation class,
even more frequently, if you can,
but a weekly one is a really good place to start.
And there has never been a better time to do this
because italki are celebrating their 14th anniversary,
and they have got an amazing one of a kind offer.
You will save so much money, it's absurd.
I actually have quite a lovely story to share
about the magic of weekly English classes.
I started giving one-to-one online English lessons
to students from all around the world
when I was at university.
My final year of university was a really,
really hard time for me,
both in my personal life and in my professional life.
And I honestly think that teaching those students
from all across the world
is what drew me out of that darker place.
It was seeing them improve each week
and pick up on new things.
I could just see a real difference in them,
I loved seeing them become proud of themselves
and so confident as well.
I just find it really funny
because they were paying me to provide them a service,
but they had no idea how much they were helping me too.
So yeah, I hope that you can find a teacher
that you really bond with.
And italki is a great place to start to search for that.
If you haven't heard of italki before,
it's a huge online database of language teachers
who give one-to-one video lessons 24 hours a day,
seven days a week.
So you can schedule in that class at any time you'd like.
You can learn English and over 130 other languages
from anywhere in the world.
It's an incredibly affordable way of learning a language,
much cheaper than language academies or offline tutors.
So many people message me and ask me
how they can meet and talk to English speakers
because they don't have the opportunity
to meet many in their everyday life.
italki is a really good option
because not only do they have qualified teachers,
they also have community teachers
who will practise conversation with you.
Italki started in 2007
and to celebrate their 14th anniversary,
they are offering $140 worth of italki credits for free
when you sign up.
Just click on the link down below
to read all of the relevant information,
sign up and claim those coupons.
Right, let's move on to tip number three.
Tip number three is to use a habit tracker.
And this is a tool that I've discovered only recently,
only over the past few months, but oh, my word,
it has changed my productivity
and I think it will help you change and transform
the way you learn a language.
It's such a simple concept, it's a grid.
And you use this grid to write out some habits
that you either want to eliminate,
or you want to do with more frequency or more consistency.
And then as you go through each day,
you colour in a square if you have performed
or avoided that particular habit.
And at the end of the month,
you'll have a really, really nice visualisation
of how you've progressed,
whether you've performed really well in some areas,
you've done your writing every day,
but you've not practised speaking everyday, for example.
And the really beautiful thing is achieving
a sort of pattern when all of these different squares
are filled in at the end of the month.
You can find lots of templates for habit trackers online,
or you can make on yourself as well, if you so wish.
Just a really nice way of keeping yourself accountable.
And also, I just find that filling in that little box
gives me so much satisfaction.
So it'd be great, if you can have that too,
with your English learning journey.
My next tip, tip number four
is take the lead from somebody that you enjoy listening to.
So every week I want you to schedule in dates (laughs)
with a celebrity or somebody that has a great voice
that you enjoy listening to,
or you find them really interesting.
Somebody that you aspire to be like.
I know for a lot of people, this is Emma Watson.
She seems to be somebody that comes up a lot.
For me, I really enjoy listening to Stephen Fry.
I find that when I listen to him,
I pick up on so much vocabulary
and I find myself mimicking him later on,
and that's exactly what you want to achieve.
Find somebody who speaks English
in a way that you find inspiring and follow them around.
Follow them on social media, search for their interviews,
search for their podcast episodes.
It's fine to get a little bit stalker-ish.
I'm not condoning stalker behaviour,
but really find everything that they have to offer.
You'll find that they start rubbing off on you.
Somebody rubs off on someone,
it means that parts of them
start transferring to you, hopefully.
Hopefully little elements of their pronunciation,
or you pick up on some of their vocabulary
or in some of their mannerisms and confidence.
I really recommend this technique,
it's quite a pleasurable one to do.
And if you are finding it boring,
then you've picked the wrong person
and you need to find somebody else.
My last tip is incredibly important.
It is actively take note of new vocabulary.
You may or may not know, but I have recently released
a series of vocabulary diaries and study planners,
but this tip is relevant to everyone
whether you want to purchase one or not.
Every single day of the week,
you need to write down the vocabulary that you're acquiring,
because trust me,
your brain will be a little bit like a sieve
and you'll pick up on words and you think,
"Yeah, I'll remember that."
And then the next day, you absolutely won't remember it.
It's like when you come up with a really good song
or tune in your head and you think,
"Oh, I'll remember that tomorrow,"
and then you never, ever, ever think of that tune again.
It's like me with video ideas.
I come up with the perfect concept of a lesson for you guys.
I don't write it down,
and then I never ever make that video.
I will die without making that video, that's so depressing.
So this is why you really need to take charge
of your vocabulary.
So I'm talking about going through your daily life
thinking, "Do I know that?
Do I know that?"
What's this in English?
If there are any gaps in your vocabulary, write it down,
and then when you get home,
you can search for these words in English.
And you will slowly start building up
this amazing portfolio of vocabulary
that you can refer back to and review from time to time,
making sure you're forgetting none of it.
Having a vocab diary and actively using that vocab diary
was such an important part of my journey
to fluency in my second language, which is Spanish.
I was obsessed, I would not let a single word go.
If you are interested in learning a little bit more
about vocab diaries I've created,
which is called "The English Plan,"
then I have recently posted a video
where I explained all about them.
I will link that down below
and you can go straight to the website,
shop.englishwithlucy.co.uk where you can see all the pages
and see everything that this book has to offer.
They come in four colours.
Each one is 90 days,
and each one has a different set of idioms within it
because each page has an idiom of the day.
If you buy the four book bundle,
then one of the books is free.
At the moment, we are running
just a two-week sale on these books.
We don't know if we're going to release them again.
So do hurry if you want to get your hands on them.
Right, that's it for today's lesson.
I really hope these tips have helped you.
Don't forget to check out italki.
You can click on the link in the description box down below
to claim your 140 italki credits,
that is in celebration of their 14th anniversary.
I cannot believe that 2007 was 14 years ago, oh, my word.
Don't forget to connect with me on all of my social media.
I've got my Instagram,
and I've got my website, englishwithlucy.co.uk
where I've got really cool pronunciation tool
that you can use to hear
how different phonemes are pronounced
and you can hear me saying those phonemes
and words that contain those phonemes.
Ee,
no,
ey.
It's very cool, if I do say so myself.
You can also check out my vlogging channel,
where I document my life here in the English countryside
and every single vlog is fully subtitled.
So you can use it for listening and vocabulary practise.
I will see you soon for another lesson. (lips smack)
My first tip is to create a realistic schedule.
Oops, I've mispronounced schedule, who am I?
(object beeps)
- [Man] Schedule.
- This doesn't need to be boring.
Just scheduling in a movie or a film.
That's the same thing.
(upbeat music)