Tuesday 21 July 2009

Learning Method: How to improve your English skills? (Introduction)

Learning Method: How to improve your English skills? (Introduction)

Which kind of learner are you?
Let me give you 3 choices:

  1. You are too busy to practise.
  2. You are not so busy but you are too unmotivated to practise your English.
  3. You are not so busy and you spend lots of time to practise, but with no success.
If you belong to group 1, you need to realise that you may still have free time, just that you don't realise. If you realise it, you will fall into group 2 or 3.

If you fall in group 2, you need to ask yourself why you are not motivated, and find a good reason to motivate yourself again. I learn Italian and Spanish simply because I want to watch the Italian Serie A (soccer) and Spanish La Liga (soccer) on TV in their native language, because the English commentary is often not original enough.


There could be many reasons why you belong to this group: maybe you belonged to group 3 in the past, but because you have no success in learning English, so you have almost given up; maybe you don't find learning English interesting; maybe there are others things more immediate and more urgent for you to learn, so learning English is in a lower position in your priority list.

If you fall into group 3, you must read on, this is an entry for you.

I believe that sometimes, there are short-cuts to learning, the question is, does anyone bother to spend time to think of one?

I love to think, observe, rethink, and put the methods into trial, if they work for someone, I will share them. They might not work for everybody, but it is worth a try.

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Practise, practise, practise. Every skill comes with continuous practise, from tying shoe laces to producing a piano, no exceptions. You want to win, you need to do homework, put in effort.

At the same time, you must understand that, very often, your gain is not proportional to your level of devotion. That's life! (Can you think of an example to support this?) So if you want to succeed, you must have the will to continue even if you keep failing, and have the mind to persevere even if you feel down and upset. This is never easy, but many people have succeeded, so there is no reason why you can't.

Once you have made your own promise, then you can go and apply the methods or shortcuts.

What are the shortcuts then? Stay connected to this blog (will be out soon)!