What if you want to learn English fast? Then there are some steps you need to take so you don't waste your precious study time or lose interest in studying.
Step 1: Find a GREAT reason to learn English
Are you surprised that the first step is not about how to learn English words or grammar lessons online? Do not be! Finding your great why is much more important than knowing which words to learn ("the what") or the best study methods for English ("the how").
Before "what" or "how", start with "why". Get a pen right now or open a text document on your computer and write down why you want to be fluent in English.
Don't write a reason just because it sounds good. Really think about why learning English is important to you. You don't have to show it to anyone. Just make sure your reason is big enough to motivate you throughout your mission in English. The more motivated you are to study English, the easier it will be to learn English.
During the remaining eight steps of this article, if you ever find that you are losing interest in studying English, come back to this step and remember why learning English is a great idea.
Step 2: decide exactly what you want to do in English and when you want to do it
I have studied many languages in the last 15 years. I have learned that I progress much faster when I have a clear goal in mind than when I am studying aimlessly.
In this step, take the same sheet of paper that you used in step one. Write down exactly what you want to achieve and when. If you are reading this article, you probably want to learn English fast. In that case, your goal must be ambitious. Even if you're not in a rush to be fluent, make your goal clear and specific.
Notice how bad goals have no time limit. When do you want to complete your goal? This is important. If you have a time limit, you can evaluate your progress during your studies and find out if you need to change your routine to reach your goal. Each of the good goals has a very clear deadline.
Bad goals also don't include a clear measure of success. What do you mean by "fluency"? What university do you want to attend and what are the English requirements there? If you want English friends or romantic partners, what do you want to talk to them about?
Before moving on to step 3, write down a clear, well-defined goal you want to achieve in English.
Step 3: Find resources in English that are just a little bit challenging
If you want to learn English fast, this step is key.
If your English is still basic or low intermediate (for example, if you find this article a bit difficult to read), don't try to read the New York Times just yet! It will only put you off. Instead, look for resources like VOA Special English News, where you can hear news in clear, slow English.
Make sure your study resources aren't too easy, either. If you are an intermediate English speaker, reading children's story books or Wikipedia in plain English can make you feel confident if you understand every word. But in fact, you are just wasting your time. Are you really learning English if you only see words that you already know?
The perfect English resources will be easy enough that you can understand the basic ideas without looking up any words in the dictionary, but difficult enough that you have to look up several words if you want to understand everything in detail.
Try as many different English resources as you can. Discard the ones that are too easy or too difficult and keep using the ones that are appropriate for your level.
Step 4: find English resources that match your goal
Make sure that everything you do in your English studies brings you closer to your goal.
If your goal is to talk to native English speakers about movies, watch movies in English. If you want to pass an English test so you can study abroad, get a qualified tutor to prepare you for that test. If you just want to learn how to have informal conversations in English, go to meetings and language exchanges where you can chat about everyday topics.
That is why it is try this out so important to have a clear and good goal. If you're not sure where you want to be in three months, six months, or next year, then you don't know where to start looking for good practice material.
Step 5: Learn new English words, lots of them!
I have met too many English learners who put all their effort into perfecting their accent and grammar lessons online. They're already trying to sound like a Wall St. stock trader or a BBC Brit, before they know enough vocabulary to talk about these topics.
This is a mistake. Your English will take you much further if you have a large vocabulary than if you speak with a perfect accent but don't know many words. Most of the world's English speakers speak English as a second language. Almost everyone speaks it with a foreign accent. That's why native English speakers are used to hearing foreign accents and we don't care at all.
Perfect grammar is also not as important as vocabulary at first. Many native English speakers are not fluent in English grammar and they cope very well. You can still speak English fluently and make some grammatical mistakes. But you can't speak fluently if you only know a few words.
What you can say has a greater impact than how perfectly you say it. Even the president of the EU speaks English with a foreign accent! So don't worry about it. You can still go a long way in life even if you don't sound like a native English speaker.
Step 6. Speak! Speak! Speak! Speak English!
No amount of listening, reading, or writing practice will make you a good English speaker. If you want to speak English, you should practice speaking it from english speaking course for kids.
The easiest way to do this is by taking English lessons for children at home on Skype. Start by looking for tutors on italki. If you don't have money for tutors, you can find conversation partners for a free language exchange. A language exchange is a conversation you have with a native English speaker who wants to learn her native language. They take turns speaking in English and their native language.
There is no substitute for oral practice. Do it as often as you can.
Step 7. Practice your English every day
Daily practice is important for several reasons.
Keeps you motivated
If you do something every day, it will become a habit. Once you create a habit, you will be motivated to continue it.
Save time
When you only study once or twice a week, you forget many of the new things you learned in your previous study session. Therefore, you should waste much of your valuable study time reviewing what you have already learned. If you study every day, the material you learned the day before will be fresh in your mind, which means you will spend less time reviewing it.
Step 8. Take time to study English actively
Reading online in English, watching television in English, and having conversations in English will help you use what you have learned. But you still need to set aside time for active study every day. This is the time when you do flashcard exercises, quizzes, lessons with a teacher, or other structured study. This way you will ensure that you are actually learning new material rather than just reusing what you already know.
- Make mistakes! Fail fast and fail often
Failure is an essential part of language learning. Mistakes are a really easy way to improve your English.
If you're like me, you've probably been taught that mistakes are bad. That might be true if you are an engineer, but not if you are an English student. You will never be fluent in English if you are too afraid of making mistakes while learning then you can try english course for children. The more mistakes you make, the sooner you will be corrected and therefore the faster you will learn.
Don't worry about sounding silly when talking to native English speakers. Most English speakers do not speak any other language. So we are very impressed when foreigners communicate with us in English, even if they make mistakes. If you make a genuine attempt, English speakers will be more than happy to help and encourage you. Try it and you will see!
Above all, don't give up
I know you can learn English fluently. How can I know? Because millions and millions of people around the world have shown that it can be done. The more you practice, make mistakes and speak, the faster you will master English.