What is up guys? I'm Ethan your RealLife
English fluency coach and in today's lesson we are going to
talk about six things that you need to do every day in order to improve your English communication skills
so if you have ever had that feeling where you're about to get into a
conversation and freeze up or that really what you hear
in your head doesn't come out of your mouth then this
lesson is for you! And really the best part is that you
don't need to go live in an English-speaking country you can
create your own immersion experience wherever you are
in the world so I promise you that if you do these six things
every single day you are going to notice a huge transformation
in your ability to confidently communicate in English. So let's get into it but quickly before we do
I want to let you know that if you are new here every week we
make new lessons like this one to help you attain
the mindset, the method and the mastery that you need to go beyond the classroom
and live your English. So if that sounds like something that
you want to be able to do it's really simple, hit that subscribe button and the bell down below so you don't miss any of our new
lessons. Alright so this first one is really
fantastic because it will help you with all the other five tips that I have for
you today. So all the other five are actually going
to be about different things that you can do to
learn and study that will help you improve daily
and one of the easiest way to make different habits like this effortless
is by connecting them to your already existing daily routines. Now although there's a lot of different lessons out there about the same topic
of different things that you should do every day in English
I haven't really seen any other teachers talk about the importance of routines. Now this is really about your mindset for learning English,
for me personally I really like planning out my days and my weeks
on Google Calendars now if you get in the habit of planning out your days
and your weeks and maybe even your years it can be a really
life-changing thing for you because all of a sudden you're in control of where
your life's going, you get to design exactly what you want
to happen in your life. I actually use a guide from a website
called Live Your Legend which is really fantastic and it's also free, I will link
that down in the description below. Now I work a lot and so for me this is
really essential to be able to fit in all the important priorities
around my work that's things like exercising, meditating, cooking,
doing other things around the house,
studying and currently i'm actually learning how to sing. Now you know just like brushing your teeth or showering learning English
should become something that is non-negotiable,
that you do every single day even if it's just 10 minutes
so of course to do this it becomes really important to know
your already existing daily routines. So basically what i'm going to do to help
you figure this out is to ask you some different questions,
now you can just think this in your head but you might also want to actually get
a piece of paper and write it down because this will really help you to
start thinking about your daily planning. So first off, All right now that you have that in your mind or maybe even on paper
it's going to help you a lot to think about how you can fit the next five
activities into your everyday life now as an
English learner listening is essential you need to do it at least twice as much as you speak but the great news is is that listening
is super convenient to fit in throughout your day and there's so
many different ways to do it that you're guaranteed to find some
way that you love so definitely one way that maybe you're
already doing is learning with music now of course it's not enough to just
listen to music on the radio in English while you're driving to work
you actually need to actively learn why you're listening to music so
of course you need to learn with the lyrics now i really like Spotify
because with most popular music they show you the lyrics on screen while
you're listening so you probably can't do this in your
car but maybe if you take the bus to work
or if you're somewhere else where you're sitting and can listen at the same time
this is a really fantastic way to learn and then you can test yourself by going
to LyricsTraining or downloading the app on your phone
and then of course once you've actually learned the lyrics of a song
then a really fantastic way to kind of improve your English on the go
is to listen to it while you're doing other things just have it on in the
background. Now the next thing that you could do is
listening to the radio or listening to an audio book and if you're not already you should definitely give listening to
podcasts a try a really great place to start could be
with our own RealLife English podcast which is a really great way for you to
learn with kind of lessons like this but it's more through informal native
conversations between me and Andrea your other fluency coach and
Justin so you can find that and subscribe on
Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio or anywhere
else where you listen to podcasts. So i'll be sure to link that up here and
down in the description below. Anyways this is exactly why we did that
exercise at the beginning because now you can take a look at your
schedule and think of what convenient moments do you have where you could be listening to things in English. So maybe while you're preparing your breakfast in the morning you could be
listening to the news on the radio in English. you could listen to an audiobook while you're in your car on the way to work
or you could even listen to songs while you're in the shower and sing along and
this is a great way to improve your pronunciation. So as you can see if you're creative there's a million and one ways to
improve your listening and it's really convenient so if you do
this then you can actually add hours every day of english listening and
really take your skills to the next level. And by the way a really fantastic way to build your listening habit and to take
your English comprehension vocabulary pronunciation and confidence
to the next level is with our RealLife Native Immersion
course now in this 41 week course you will
learn with episodes of our podcast and it's really a great way to expose
yourself to native English as it is spoken in the
real world. Plus you get PDF power lessons,
vocabulary memorization software, access to our fluency circle global
community and so much more and you can try for free right now with
our Power Learning Week simply click up here or down description
below to learn more and sign up. And on a final note do things because
you enjoy them don't just go and start listening to the
radio in English because i suggested it to you. If it's not already something you enjoy doing in your native language
because the most probable thing is that if you start some new habit
but you don't really enjoy it then you're probably going to give up after a
short amount of time. So choose things that you already like
doing and that way you'll have fun, you'll make it convenient and you're really going to
see a huge impact on your English. Alright so we have talked about building routines, we've talked about
building different convenient habits into your day, now let's talk about how
you can develop some other habits that will really help take your English to
the next level. I have a few suggestions for you but
then I want you to get kind of creative and think of other things
that you could do. So my first tip for you is actually
journaling, now various studies have shown the
benefits of journaling for things like reflection stress relief
and increased gratitude now as an English learner if you start
doing this in English it's a really great way to start practicing your
writing every single day and don't worry so much about mistakes
most learners think that that might make their English worse,
it will not, really the important thing to focus on
is the actual daily habit of it the actual practice
of writing and one thing that you could actually try doing is once you've built
a habit of this then go back like two weeks or so and
look at the mistakes that you made then kind of from
the lens of what you've learned since then and you can probably find some
mistakes that you've made and correct them yourself
now another really great idea could be getting a teacher because they can
actually correct it for you and they'll also hold you accountable to
maintaining that habit. Now my recommendation
for you to get started with this is to just start small by writing down
three things every day that you're grateful for,
you could do this while you're having breakfast in the morning or coffee or
you could even do this just before bed but i guarantee if you start doing this
after a few days you're going to notice that you're more positive
and happy throughout your entire day. So the next thing is meditation this is one of my own personal favorite habits
that has made such a huge impact on my own life, now one benefit
of meditation is that it helps to make you more present
now obviously the benefit of this is that you enjoy every moment more,
now of course it won't be all the time at first it takes a little while to feel
the effects of meditation but if you do actually make a daily
practice of this I guarantee that you're going to notice it's just
made a huge difference on your life. It can also help you to be less reactive
now this means you know with people that you work with or your family members
then maybe you won't be so quick to get angry about things you'll be able to
reflect on them more and see other people's point of view
more this is really helpful when you're learning another language
and you're more exposed to people who have different points of views they're
from other different cultural backgrounds, also different
studies have shown that this helps to reduce stress
and of course for you as an English learner one of the most important
benefits is that it helps to improve your focus
so that when you actually study English you'll get more benefit from it. Now some of the most successful people that you can think of swear by
meditation just to give you a few examples Lady
Gaga, Will Smith, Katy Perry and Bill Gates are just a
few names of people who practice meditation every day and
rave about the benefits of it. So if you want to try meditation and
feel its benefits then I'll definitely link a couple resources down below,
like two of my favorite apps that have definitely helped me a lot
Inside Timer and Waking Up and the great thing about both of these is they are
guided meditations in English which is another great way to practice your
listening and finally we actually have an article
on our blog explaining to you how meditation can help your English so go
check that out. Now the other habit that you can try
building is chatting using apps like Whatsapp, Telegram or others and joining different groups to practice your english
now i talked about in the introversion lesson that i made a couple weeks ago
that this is just a really great way for you to lower the bar
and get some confidence communicating. Now this is really fantastic too because
you can just do it during a five-minute break at work while you're having your
coffee just jump on the app and read some
messages and respond and you'll be getting a little bit of your English
practice in. Now I might be biased but the Fluency
Circle community is probably one of the best places where you can practice your
English by chatting now we have groups on both
Facebook and Telegram and this is included with all of our
courses such as the ReaLife Native Immersion course that i told you about before. Next our TV series, now if you're like
the average person you probably already watch at least some TV
so why not actually practice your English while you do this
now i'm not going to get into too many tips for you here
we can definitely do another video on that but we already have a fantastic
resource for you to practice your English with TV
Series on our Learn English with TV Series
channel here on YouTube so be sure to check that out. Now like TV series, if you enjoy reading
this is another really great thing that you can try doing in English
of course start out slow maybe pick something that you have already read in
your native language my first book that I ever read in
Spanish was Harry Potter, that's a fantastic series to get started with if
you like them and be patient recognize that you don't
have to understand every single word as long as you understand the context. Now i would love to give you some more tips that have helped me learning
language with reading and if you would like us to make a
lesson on that then please give us a like down below to let me know and then you can also check out this lesson that I
made about six books that will change your
English and your life. And then the final one
is to do things that aren't related to English learning in English
so to give you an example I had a friend who was a
huge fan of Game of Thrones and he actually really enjoyed participating in
different fan forums talking about different fan
theory and this was a great way for him to connect with natives and other
English learners around something that he's really
passionate about. So get creative, think about the things that you enjoy
doing and research what different resources are out there
where are people talking about this thing and be sure to check out our
Instagram because we give you more tips like this over there. Alright so if you are really committed to reaching the really advanced levels
of English then it's not always going to
necessarily be fun actually maybe if you're a bit of a geek like me
you will actually find it fun so you actually need to spend
some deliberate study time every single day in English. Now what does deliberate mean? Deliberate means doing things that challenge you
to practice certain details that help to sharpen your skills
now if you're serious you must do this every single day
even if it's just 10 minutes with your breakfast so let me give you some
examples of different things that you could do
so you could actually do some exercises in a good
grammar book, I'll actually link one of my favorites down below. So another really great thing you can do is drill exercises now drilling is
repeating the same thing over and over again and this can maybe
be a little bit more boring but it is very effective so you can do this with
pronunciation one way that helps with this is by
practicing minimal pairs and a minimal pair is two words that are
the same except for one vowel sound so for example one of the most common
examples is ship and sheep now i'll link a website that
actually can help you to practice with these
you can also drill with different youtube videos that focus on
pronunciation or you could try tongue twisters which
is a more fun way to do it another really great thing that you can
do is learn the International Phonetic Alphabet now this will help you learn every single sound that exists in English
and this is important because many of those sounds might not exist in your
native language now I highly recommend that you actually
record and listen to yourself because you might actually be able to
hear a lot of your own errors and of course it can be really
beneficial to watch videos on YouTube just like this one
but it is only deliberate if you actually take notes and then you
actually apply what you learned from that video now if you're
watching TV or reading books in English one thing that you can do is actually
take note of the new vocabulary and expressions that you're learning
and then the next day during your deliberate study time you can
look up the definitions and do not just translate these actually
look up the definitions in an English dictionary and then add them to a
vocabulary memorization software like Anki and then you can actually practice these or you could also write example
sentences of these or if you are picking up a journaling habit
then why not try using these new vocabulary or expressions in your
journal so of course I'm sure you're learning
English because you actually want to speak it so you should actually try to
practice this every single day. Now you don't need to go live in an
English-speaking country you can find ways that you can do this in your own
city you have to be creative now you have to be open to opportunities
to speak wherever possible whether it's by skype or in person so
you can consider you know joining the comments down below
and meeting people there or over on our Instagram you could also
be looking for opportunities like this in person maybe you could go stay in a
hostel if you're in a touristic city and you can meet foreigners this way and
start talking with them another really great solution is by
joining Facebook groups now I don't just mean joining Facebook groups for English learners actually look for Facebook
groups around things that you're passionate about
about your deepest interests now one thing that I'm actually doing right now
is I'm looking into adopting a dog so i've been joining different dog
groups on Facebook and this has been a really great way to
meet other dog lovers and to practice my vocabulary around
dogs in Spanish and as I mentioned before we have our
Fluency Circle community where you have learners from all around the world who
are dying to speak with you now if you don't have anyone else to
speak with one day then the best thing that you can do is speak
to yourself and when you do this again I highly recommend that you actually
record yourself and listen back and correct your
mistakes now it can be really useful to actually pick different topics
because it will kind of build your abilities to talk about that and then
actually when you get to speak with someone it will come really easily to
you. So this is a great way to start thinking
in English as well so a couple tips for how you could do this is for example
if you like reading the news then maybe look for a news story that interests you
and talk about that just as if you were talking to another person or an article
about something else or after you finish this video for
example why not record yourself talking about what you just learned and this is
also going to have the other benefit of really grilling this information in
your brain all right are you ready we are down to the final habit so
this is all about getting accountability. Now if someone holds you accountable it basically means that that person makes
sure that you're going to do what you committed to doing, now
certainly one of the simplest ways to do this is by having a teacher or coach or tutor or language exchange partner
who makes sure that you're going to show up to class or to that skype session
that you have talked about now it doesn't necessarily need to be
this though if you have someone close that you
live with or that you see every single day like your husband or wife your child
or maybe someone you work with then you can have them hold you accountable
so a really great tip that I just heard on podcast is getting an accountability
partner and actually sending that person a
message every morning telling them what you're going to do,
so for example for your English you could tell that person what you're going
to do for your deliberate study time and then at the end of the day you write
them again and you tell them what you actually did so you could do the same
for them and then that way you're helping each other grow
all right so finally maybe you need to raise the stakes a little bit to give
yourself that extra push to do that thing so basically
what you would do is set up something that if you don't do
the thing you're supposed to do you have to do something else that you
really do not want to do so probably the easiest thing would be
using money so for example you could tell some friend
every day that I don't do my deliberate studying in English
I will pay you twenty dollars and you can bet that that friend is going to
check in every single day to make sure that you are studying
and you're probably not going to want to miss that time more than once or twice
but it doesn't necessarily have to do with money maybe if you don't have a lot
of it you could choose something else so for
example say that your husband takes out the trash
every single day now you could tell your husband any day
that I don't do my deliberate study I'm going to take out the trash for the
next week and i'm sure your husband will also check with you
to make sure that you're doing your study every day as he's probably not
going to want to take out the trash either. or you could actually take away something that you really enjoy
so for example if you really look forward every day to watching TV
after work then you could say well if I don't do my studying in the morning
then i do not get to watch TV at night now you can get really creative with
your own solution but basically the idea of this is to choose something
that's going to make sure that if you go to bed at 10 p.m and it's 9 30 p.m
and you have not yet done that thing that you're really committed to doing
that you are going to be sure to do it before going to bed because you do not
want to suffer the consequences. All right so that is all of the habits
that I have for you but I want to remind you again to take a
look at your schedule, to plan some convenient things that you
can do to improve your listening, to develop some new fun habits to get at
least 10 minutes of deliberate study time per
day and of course to speak whenever you can and
find the people who can hold you accountable but also just
a warning to pace yourself because generally people get really
excited about trying something new they try to take on everything at once
and when you do this you will probably just end up getting burnt
out and giving up so i want to hear from you comment down
below and let me know which of these new habits is the most
useful for you and which one are you going to try. Now it's time to go beyond the classroom and live your English, awww
yeah! Hey everyone, I'm Andrea your RealLife English fluency coach
and today's lesson is really going to help you with those
pains you have about learning English. I'm going to give you the best
tips and tricks that you can start learning and
using so that you can speak English faster but also understand
natives better even when we speak fast.
