Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Be confident. People can only correct your mistakes when they hear you make them.
Surround yourself in English. Put yourself in an all English speaking environment where you can learn passively. The best way to learn is through speaking.
ractise every day. Make yourself a study plan. Decide how much time a week you are going to spend studying and stick to it. Establish a routine.
Tell your family and friends about your study plan. Get them to push you to study and also don’t let them interrupt you.
Practise the 4 core skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. They all need to be worked on for you to improve.
Keep a notebook of new words you learn. Use them in sentences and try to say them at least 3 times when you speak.
Do a lesson at least once a day.
Memorisation of lists is one of the most common ways of learning vocabulary for a test. It’s only a good exercise for short term studying because you often do not retain the information that you have learned for a test.
Use your body clock. If you’re not a morning person, study in the afternoon.
You will find words easier to remember if you try to remember an example sentence using that word rather the word on its own.
Plan to take a test. You’ll find that you work harder when you need to study for something.
Saying that, it’s better not to study just to take a test. Think of the bigger picture. What can you do when you have a good command of English? How will the quality of your life improve?
Give yourself a long term goal. Focus on working towards it.
Give yourself short term goals too and reward yourself when you achieve each one.
Create an atmosphere in which you want to learn, not because you have to. You’ll learn more when you’re learning because you want to.
Know what works best for you. Think about what methods have been successful for you in the past and stick with them.
Figure out how you learn. It can be by memorising, reading, speaking, summarising or other methods. Find out how you study best. It can be in a quiet place by yourself or with a group.
Get help! If you don’t understand something you’ve got to ask someone. Ask your teacher, classmates or friends for help.
Review and review and review! Make sure that you take the time to review things you have studied in the past.
It’s not a good idea to study on your own for more than 30 minutes at a time. Take regular breaks, get some fresh air and stretch your legs.
Don’t be in such a hurry to move up a level. Concentrate on the level you are at now.
Watch DVDs rather than TV. It’s better to use something that you can watch over again to catch information you might have missed the first time.
Watching TV only gives you the chance to hear something correctly first time. This is better for high level students. It can be great practice for speaking to native English speakers so you don’t have to ask them to repeat themselves!
