How can you practise and improve your English in your everyday life?
The best thing to do is to talk with a native speaker. What if you don’t know anyone who speaks English or what if you simply don’t feel confident enough yet to converse with a native?
Don’t worry. There are many other options you can practise and improve your language skills on your own. I am going to explain how.
Here are 7 helpful tips for you:
- Listen and repeat! Do you like listening to english songs? Use them to improve your fluency. While listening to the song look at the song text and sing along. Try to match the high and low tones, the accent and the speed. Try to sound just like that singer.
- Instead of words learn phrases! Every language has common phrases and if you know your commonly used phrases in English it will make a huge difference in your spoken English. Sometimes it can sound unnatural to translate word by word. Instead learn phrases like: “What’s up?” or “How’re you doing?” instead of “How do you feel today?”
- Learn expressions by heart! Expressions can’t be translated word by word. In fact, one has to learn them by heart. You couldn’t say in English “I understand only train station” for “Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof”. An english native would be very confused about that sentence.
- Learn each adjective with its opposite! Instead of learning just the adjective “white” you could learn with it the adjective “black”. If you just learned the word “pretty” you should also learn “ugly”. That way you learn two words instead of just one. This method will expand your vocabulary immensely in a short period of time.
- Relax when reading or speaking! Focus on fluency rather than on grammar. Focus on understanding a text without having to understand each word. Take the pressure of having to be perfect off you and you will feel more relaxed. Feeling relaxed will make you feel also more confident. Remember: Learning a Language is fun!
- Read texts which are of interest for you! Choose an article or book which you find interesting. If you love soccer read the articles about soccer in the newspaper. If you love poetic language read poems. If you love animals buy a magazine about pets or wildlife. You get the idea. Not only will you learn the vocabulary you like but at some point you will be able to use it and talk about the topics you love.
- Talk to yourself! Whenever you are alone you can practise speaking with yourself. Talk about anything for just about 1-2 minutes and keep talking without worrying about the grammar. Just keep the fluency up. The great thing is that you won’t feel embarrassed because you are talking to your favourite person. Yourself. You will quickly notice that it will get easier and easier to talk to yourself and you can expand the time soon to 2-3 minutes. You will also notice that you are starting to use a couple of new words each time. It’s a great way to improve your confidence, fluency and vocabulary.
You can see you can enhance your language skills without anybody to assist you. However, if you feel lonely and would love to chat to a native you will be able to connect in the world wide web with native speakers on blogs of your interest or Facebook. A great idea would be to find a pen pal and start sending postcards. Postcards are less scary because of the limited space and in no time you will be able to write letters effortlessly. Personally I love to connect with people on Facebook. It’s a great way to keep a conversation going and the small messages make the writing process less daunting.
Last but not least, improving your English should be fun and enjoyable. The only way to success is the path of least resistance. That is why fun is so important in anything you do. Take delight in chatting to friends in English, enjoy writing and reading in English and take pleasure in listening to it. Don’t pressure yourself in the process but be proud of every new word you are learning. Start with learning the phrase “Don’t worry, be happy”.