Hi, Bob the Canadian here.
Welcome to this English lesson
where I'm going to talk about seven things
that you can do to improve your English learning.
As many of you know,
I have been a high school teacher for over 20 years now.
You can tell by my gray hair
that I've been doing it for a while,
and during that time, there's a few things
I've noticed work really well
when students are learning a language.
Not all of these techniques are exciting.
Some of them might even be a little bit boring,
but all of them work, all of them are very effective.
(charming music)
Well, hello, and welcome to this English lesson
where I'm going to teach you seven techniques
that you can use to improve your English learning.
Before we get started, though,
if this is your first time here,
don't forget to click that red Subscribe button over there
and give me a thumbs up if this video helps you learn
just a little bit more English.
So the first thing you can do,
the first technique, repetition.
Remember, I didn't say these would be exciting techniques.
I said some of them might even be
a little bit boring, but repetition works.
Any time you do something more than once
when you are learning something,
it's just better for you.
In fact, I tell my high school students quite often,
the secret to succeeding in school
is to read everything two or three times.
So as an English learner, here is what I recommend.
If you have a new English song that you're listening to,
read the lyrics once, and then listen to that song
twice a day for a whole week.
If you like to read the news, read it once in the morning,
and read the same news article again in the evening.
Repetition has a way of helping us
remember what we are reading and what we are learning.
So again, I never said
all of these techniques would be exciting.
Repetition can be exciting,
but sometimes it just feels like hard work.
But I think you'll find it very, very rewarding.
The second technique you can use while learning English
is to act everything out.
What I mean by that is this,
any time you learn something
that you can do in a physical way,
like for instance, if you learn the verb
to flick or to punch,
you should actually do those actions.
If you learn the verb,
for instance, to open and to close,
you should physically open a door and close a door.
And while you're doing that,
you should say out loud what you're doing.
Any time you can connect new words and phrases
to actual actions that you are doing with your body,
it will just make them a lot easier to remember.
So go out and jump when you learn the verb to jump.
Make sure that when you learn
to clap your hands or snap your fingers,
you actually do those actions.
It just really helps to act everything out.
The third technique you can use while learning English
to help you remember words and phrases a little bit better
is to draw what you are learning.
Here's what I mean by that.
If you learn a word like cat,
on a piece of paper draw a cat
with the English word cat below it.
Draw a dog, the English word dog below it.
But you can also use this for more advanced vocabulary.
You could, for instance, draw a rainbow
and write rainbow underneath.
Factory, and then right factory underneath.
Draw a tractor and write the word tractor underneath.
Any time you can connect the English word to a drawing
instead of connecting it to the word in your own language,
it's just really good for not only remembering that word,
but it will help you to start thinking in English more.
The more you can distance yourself
from your own language, the better,
and certainly, drawing out new words and phrases,
when it works, is a good way to do that.
The fourth technique that you can use while learning English
is to create charts of the new words
and phrases you are learning.
Now, I know this sounds a little bit like drawing.
It sounds a little bit like technique number three,
but charts are a little bit different.
Charts are a way to organize information
so that we connect different ideas together.
Here's a great example of how you could use a chart
to help you remember verb tenses.
Let's say you learn the phrase
I walked, I am walking, and I will walk.
You could make a chart where you have
the sun coming up, a small stick man walking,
and the phrase below that says I walked.
This morning I walked.
In the middle, you can have a stick man walking,
and a sun in the middle of the sky,
and below you could have the phrase I am walking,
and above you could say right now.
And in the third actual area,
you could have a person walking, the sun going down,
and you could have the phrase this evening I will walk.
So that's a way to organize information in a way
where it's more than just learning the three phrases.
You kind of have a visual reminder of what they mean,
but you've also connected different things together
so you understand how they are different
and how they work together.
So the fourth technique you can use
while learning English, create charts.
The fifth technique that you can use
while learning English is to create flashcards.
Now, this is a very old technique
used for memorizing things.
It's where you put the word in English
on one side of a small piece of paper
and in your own language on the other side,
or if you're smart, you just put
a picture on the other side,
and then you kind of test yourself.
But what not everyone knows is that
making flashcards is almost as important
as practicing with them.
The actual technique of making the flashcard,
when you sit down and you create a set of vocabulary words,
it's quite effective, the process of making it.
Practicing with flashcards is also really, really good,
and I do recommend you use some form of spaced repetition.
There's something called the Leitner system.
I think I pronounced that right.
And there's other ways of practicing with flashcards
that have proven to be very effective.
Here's a simple example of spaced repetition.
That's where you look at a flash card.
If you know the answer, you put it in one pile for tomorrow.
If you don't know the answer,
you put the card at the back of the deck of flashcards
and you just practice that set all day as much as you can,
only removing cards when you know that word.
And then the next day you take that set
and you practice the ones you didn't know.
You mix them all together for the third day
and you start the whole process again.
There are various methods of spaced repetition,
some involve having a series of boxes
where you put the words you know very well
and the words you don't know as well,
and you decide when to practice each set.
But certainly, making flashcards
and practicing with flashcards is still
kind of an old fashioned technique,
but a really, really good one
to use when you're learning English.
The sixth technique that you can use when learning English
is one that not everyone enjoys doing,
and that's taking notes.
When you watch a YouTube video,
it can be enjoyable to just watch it,
but I highly recommend that you get an actual piece of paper
and a pen or pencil, and you take some notes
when you watch an English lesson on YouTube.
Taking notes helps you reflect on your learning.
I would recommend you do this,
write down the things that you already knew.
It sounds kind of funny, but it's a good thing to do.
Say in this lesson, I already knew these things,
and write those things down.
Then write down the new things that you learned.
Take some notes on that, and then make a little,
a few notes about the things you didn't understand.
And if you're doing it with a YouTube video write down,
you know, at what point in the video that was.
Write, like, at the five minute and ten second point,
didn't understand this phrase, and then go back and review
all of the things you had trouble understanding.
Taking notes is a good thing to do,
but it shouldn't stop when you're done taking notes.
You should then review the notes the next day
and watch the video again.
Or if you are just doing it with a song
or other original English text,
do that listening practice again,
or watch whatever you were doing again.
Building repetition into note taking with some reflection
is a very effective way to learn English.
Another very effective technique
that you can use when learning English is to find a pen pal.
A pen pal is someone who you write a letter to,
and then they write a letter back to you.
So I would find another person who is learning English,
and if you want, you can write letters on paper
and send them in the regular mail.
Or, of course, you can do this with email as well,
but going through the process of writing a letter to someone
maybe once a week, maybe twice a week,
and then reading the letter they send to you
is like a slow motion conversation.
So if you're excited to have
actual spoken conversations with people,
writing letters back and forth to a pen pal
can be this nice, careful, slow way of learning
how to have conversations in English.
So the other technique that you can use
when learning this fun language is to find a pen pal
and just start to write letters back forth to each other.
Well, thank you so much for watching this English lesson
where I shared seven techniques that you can use
to help you when you're learning English.
I know not all of them were new.
I know not all of them were exciting.
I know at least two of them might appear
to be a little bit boring, but I know they all work.
Anyways, thanks again for watching.
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 of course, if you have a little bit more time,
why don't you stick around and watch another English lesson?
(charming music)