How To Improve Your English And Enjoy It A Lot

(Pixabay)
Your English is bad, why should I learn from you – can you say, but you would change your opinion if you knew how my skill was 2-3 years ago. Surely you have seen people going abroad to live, and speaking those language relatively well after 1-2 years.

Other people are making one language course after the other and never learning it really, for them that seems so be a real money pit. And there are other seemingly talented people who almost never leave their rooms and learn a new language every couple of years.

Method for school haters

I hate schools, language books and exercises, artificial dialogues and many other things of language classes. But I realized I can learn having fun, just using it. Do you know role playing computer games, where the skills you are using are improving, the skills you aren’t using, not? (Elder Scrolls series, for example.)

Two years ago I decided speed up my slow English learning process. Since then I’m watching almost every night 1-2-3 episodes of some good series I really like, for example Star Trek, Breaking Bad, mostly some of the best series of the world. I’m enjoying it from the first minute, although at the beginning I understood, I think, only 30-40 percent of it.

Limit the dictionary

Now, may be, that’s by 70-80 percent and advancing. I couldn’t imagine writing blog posts in English two years ago, now I’m just doing it. (The great tolerance of steemians is helping me a lot, too.)

What if you don’t understand? May be you should lower the level, don’t begin with philosophy, start it with light entertainment. If you are searching for every word in the dictionary, you ‘ll loose a lot of time. Search only the most important words. Better try to figure it out, with the help of the context. Try to concentrate in the most important parts, in the bottom line, the essence, the main point, don’t get lost in details.

Bartender, doctor, policeman

Why, do you think, people abroad are learning the language faster? Because they are using it all the time, sometimes they are forced, too. On the street, in the bar, in the office of immigration, in the shops, in the police station, in the boring subway waggon reading the stupid advertisements, by the doctor.

But in modern times, you can easily create an atmosphere at home or in your work, even on the road or everywhere, that seems to be like abroad. Watch your favorite programs you are interested in, in the other language. You can hear radio in the shower or in the kitchen (TuneIn), or use D.tube, Youtube as a background program.

Look for new friends

In the Bus, you can read the news, there are special news readers for any country. In the gym, may be, hear an audiobook. Change the language of your smartphone, of your TV, of your favorite software. Imitate the full foreign environment.

Sing up on some mailing list or Facebook group of emigrants or expats in your country with this language, go to their cultural events, parties. Hear their best music of the style you like and try to understand the lyrics. (Pick up a native speaking friend/girlfriend, if you can, language learning can be very effective in the bed.)

16 languages

All that is not only my idea, others are sharing similar experiences.

Become interested in what you're learning

– wrote Psychology Today about how to memorize knowledge. That’s it, and enjoy it.

Kató Lomb Hungarian translator earned money with sixteen languages (Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Ukrainian). Wikipedia
Her keyword was also interest, motivation. She said if there is true motivation, one can spend some ten minutes a day even with the busiest job.

Three important autos

She drove three autos in the world of languages, namely autolexia, autographia and autologia. Autolexia means reading for myself: the book I discover by myself. Autographia means writing for myself, when I try to write about my thoughts, experiences, everyday things in the very language I'm just learning, no matter if it's silly, no matter if it's incorrect, no matter if a word or two is left out. Autologia means speaking with myself, when I try to express my thoughts or what I see on the street

And

Get adequate sleep to consolidate and retain memories
– an other advice from Psychology Today.

So, sleep more today, Good Night, people.