Hello I'm Emma from mmmEnglish and
today I'm sharing four daily habits that will help you to improve
your English because learning English is a marathon, not a sprint
which is exactly why creating really simple, achievable goals
that you can work on every day is the right strategy
to improve your skills.
The most successful language learners find a way
for the language they're learning to become part of their daily life,
just like locking the door on your way out of the house.
Your English practice is just part of your daily routine, no fanfare
no applause, it's just what you do.
And to help you with this, I'm sharing four simple things that you
should do every day to improve your English and you'll soon see
that creating daily English habits is easy and your success
is inevitable as long as you set yourself up with a simple system
to follow and that's what we're doing right now.
Let's get into it!
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Our first habit is to listen to English every day.
And this is a really easy place to start because there are
lots of different ways to do this with podcasts, with audiobooks,
TED Talks, TV series, YouTube, there are lots and lots
of different options but to create a successful and simple habit
around your English listening practice,
make sure you set an achievable amount of time to do it in.
Five minutes, ten minutes a day, that's all you need.
If one day you feel like doing more, awesome, go for it
but set your daily goal at ten minutes right because that's
achievable and that's what we want to work towards,
is just something that we can manage every single day.
I also want you to identify the source of your listening early
so don't sit down in the moment that ten minutes you've got
to do your listening practice and think:
What am I going to listen to?
No.
Find a great book,
have a couple of really good podcasts on the go,
have a TV series that you're watching that you can come back to
again and again. If you have to think too hard about
what you need to do to make that listening practice happen,
you'll find an excuse, it'll become too hard.
If you pre-plan, pre-prepare what you're going to listen to
it's going to be much easier for you to just stick with it.
Hey what are you listening to at the moment?
I'm very keen for some recommendations,
some suggestions from you so add your favourite podcasts,
TV series, books, whatever you're listening to at the moment,
add it down in the comments below.
Now if you're thinking: Do you know what Emma?
I'm more of a reader than a listener. I prefer to read.
Well that's great, awesome!
But I want you to try reading with audio
so as you're reading, you get to associate the sounds
and the correct pronunciation with the words
that you're seeing. You've probably heard me talk about
Audible before. I'm a big fan. There are thousands and thousands
of books there, your favourites are probably already available.
I've added a link to Audible if you want to check it out,
you can use it to get a free audiobook and try out this technique
for yourself.
The brilliant thing about this listening practice
is it gets to inform your pronunciation skills as well.
It will help you to recognise the sounds,
identify these sounds in English and you'll be able to practise
making these sounds yourself which is really great because the
next daily habit that you should be doing
is your pronunciation practice.
Yes absolutely, you should be practising your pronunciation
every day. It's not to try and get rid of your accent completely,
it's to make sure your English is clear enough
that others can
comfortably understand you when you're speaking.
Great grammar skills, great vocabulary skills
they're not enough, your pronunciation is just as important.
Do you give the same amount of attention to your pronunciation
skills as your grammar and your vocabulary?
Your pronunciation impacts your fluency, your confidence
and your ability to connect with others so it's crucial.
So here are my tips to help you get daily pronunciation practice,
a really great place to start is simply by practising
with imitation lessons.
I've got a whole playlist of them right here,
you can watch them, do them as often as you like.
I've also included a link in the description.
By practising out loud with me, you'll start to identify some of the
sounds that you get a little stuck on, feel the spots
where you get a little tongue-tied and right there,
that is a good indication of what you need to focus on,
that sound or that combination of sounds that are difficult.
So identifying where you need to do your work
is a really important first step for you and it's the type of thing
that you can do every morning you know,
just after you brush your teeth, practise making those sounds,
practise saying those words and build up the muscle memory
in your mouth.
Tongue twisters are another really great way to practise.
You could do the same thing, stick them up on the mirror.
Reading out loud is another really great way to improve your
pronunciation. Doing it daily is going to help to just
work those mouth muscles of yours you know, and create
the sounds that you need for English.
It really doesn't need to be more complicated than that,
it doesn't need to take you long, it might be five minutes,
it might be two minutes but you just build it into your day.
All right before we move on, I've got a supercharged
recommendation.
Do this pronunciation practice with your listening practice.
Stack the habit together. When you're listening to
the audiobook that you're reading,
listen to that for five minutes then press pause,
then read the same paragraph again yourself
while it's fresh in your mind and do your pronunciation practice.
It doesn't have to be a lot, a paragraph a day but that is a really
awesome way to combine your listening, your pronunciation
along with reading and vocabulary building skills.
Supercharged.
Daily speaking practice and this is different to
pronunciation practice. It's about fluency.
But my students often see this as a really big hurdle
and they say things like:
But Emma I don't live in an English-speaking country.
I don't have any English-speaking friends.
Honestly, the world that we live in today makes speaking in English
every day completely possible so let's try to stop making excuses
and find a way to make it happen.
I've got a few ideas to share with you because there are plenty of
places where you can find a speaking partner online.
There are also lots of places where you can pay a tutor
quite affordably. There are lots of language exchange apps
or you can join an online English community,
a community like Hey Lady! where you get the support
of English coaches plus you get to surround yourself with other
English speakers who you can meet with and you can practise
with regularly and that really is the beauty of Hey Lady!
It allows you to immerse yourself in English and to easily access
opportunities to practise speaking every day.
So even if you can't make this goal happen every day,
that's okay you know, maybe you try and do it every second day,
maybe twice a week.
Whatever it is, set the goal and make it consistent,
promise yourself that you're gonna see it through.
Write in English every day.
Okay so the biggest barrier that I hear from my students is:
Emma I don't really know what to write about.
I haven't got time to write.
Again this is just our brains trying to make some excuses for us
to get us out of trouble but the truth is we really just need to find
what works for us and we're all different.
Some people are really creative, others are more practical,
some of us feel like writing might be a bit of a waste of time right?
So let's play to your strengths.
I want to give you some really simple
ideas that you can use to start building your daily writing practice
and I want you just to find one or even two that suit you.
You don't need to do them all and it's totally okay if you just toss
a few of them out the window and go I'm never doing that.
First idea.
Write about your dreams in English. As soon as you wake up
in the morning, keep a notebook beside your bed and write down
your dream as soon as you wake up.
So a really cool story from a student of mine.
She was doing this activity. She had a recurring dream,
a recurring dream is one that continues again and again
night after night and so by writing about this dream, over time
the dream started taking place in English
so she started dreaming in English through this process
which is super cool.
Now if you're a creative type of person, another idea might be to
write a poem or a paragraph of a story, one that you can
continue writing over time over the course of a week.
You could easily review the TV series that you watched last night
or the movie. If you enjoyed it,
what were the characters like? What happened in the story?
Where was it set? All of these things can prompt your
short writing practice the following day.
You could use your writing time to reflect on
what happened during the day so at the end of the day,
write about what happened, who you met, what you did.
You could make a plan for what you're going to do tomorrow
and write about that. It really doesn't have to be any more
complicated than that. I'm a very practical, purposeful person so
I know that writing a story or writing about my dreams is
not going to be something that I can stick with. It just doesn't feel
productive like it feels like a waste of time
so if I'm gonna stick with a habit like
starting a daily writing practice,
I want to focus on things that are purposeful.
Planning what I need to do tomorrow,
reflecting on what happened today and I know that's the strategy
that's going to work and that's the whole point.
You've got to do what feels right for you and what makes sense
to you. You focus on a really simple daily habit, five minutes,
ten minutes of writing practice, that's it.
So if you can bring those four things into your daily routine
in some way, you will absolutely, without a doubt
improve your English but just remember that it does take time
to create these habits right?
I think that's the hardest part. It takes time which is why I say
please don't be super hard on yourself if you miss a day.
Don't throw your hands up in the air and say: See!
I knew it. I told you,
I told you it wouldn't work. I can't do a daily habit.
My rule is I can't miss more than one day in a row
so it doesn't mean that I've ruined my chances of reaching my goal
if I miss a day, if I mess up, if I sleep in, whatever.
I can still pick up again the next day and keep moving forward
towards my goal.
Make sure you keep it short and sweet, okay?
Ten minutes a day, that's it.
You are much better off spending ten minutes a day every day
rather than spending one hour and then not doing anything
for a whole week. It's not the amount of time that you spend
studying each day. It's the frequency and the consistency
of showing up
that's going to help you to reach your English goals faster.
Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope that some of
these ideas were useful and that you found something to
implement yourself.
Let me know if you are already doing some of these things already
and if you're planning on trying any of these suggestions
let me know how it goes.
As I promised earlier, my full imitation playlist is right here
and I've also added the link to check out
Hey Lady! here, my online community.
Thank you so much and I'll see you in there!