How to perfect your English in five steps

Learn what to do to improve your language skills

People are constantly searching for good tips to learn English. English is known as a universal language and being able to speak it can bring you a number of advantages, including being able to consume foreign content and communicate on an international trip.

While it is not difficult to improve your foreign language skills, it is nice to know how you can do it and select the best techniques to ensure effective use of your time.

Below we have listed five recommendations that will help you learn in a more effective way and help you achieve your desired results in less time.

Five tips to learn English that make a difference

As opposed to tips on what not to do to learn English, putting the following recommendations into practice is quite a huge step towards achieving your goals.

1 – Know your learning style

Not everyone knows this, but there is one thing that allows for more effective learning. Before diving into and using these tips to learn English, get familiarized with your learning style.

Basically, you should compare, among the following, which options enable you to perform better when studying:

• Visual: greater understanding of what is explained in the form of texts, images, video lessons, charts, among others, i.e. visual aids.

• Auditory: you get and assimilate information in auditory formats, such as podcasts, class audios and audiobooks.

• Kinesthetic: a little different from the other techniques and consists of activities that stimulate movement, such as body expression and drama performance (either in groups or individually).

Test each type and find out which one best suits your way of learning. Then, you are more likely to assimilate new concepts in a more assertive way.

In addition, it is important to note that all three techniques can be useful to a person, except that one technique tends to be more effective than the others.

2 – Diversify your reading

Obviously, reading is one of the best tips to learn English, as it allows you to become familiar with the vocabulary of the language. Nevertheless, readers tend to only read contents that please them.

One way to improve learning is to get in touch with other contents, such as books, magazines, newspapers, articles, and social media texts, both in informal and formal language, but without giving up on texts and contents in classic English.

You can take a bit longer to adapt, but diversifying your reading will bring you a lot of understanding about how the language works, and this will certainly make all the difference in the process.

3 – Subscribe to YouTube channels and podcasts in English that address subjects you like

Tips to learn English don’t always have to address subjects that are beyond your main interests, quite the contrary. A great way to learn English is to listen to native people communicating with each other.

For them, speaking English is something natural because it is their native language, and this means they will not communicate slowly or emphasize certain words, just like us, who also don’t take these precautions when speaking in our native language.

Getting in touch with the speaking part of the language can be challenging, especially at the beginning, when everyone will seem to be speaking really fast and understanding will be impaired. But you have to go through that process until it becomes natural.

Even if you can’t understand what people are saying, persist until you get better at your listening skills. Thus, in addition to developing your understanding, you will also be in touch with subjects that please you, and this becomes an incentive.

4 – Chat with other people in English

It’s impossible to talk about tips to learn English without mentioning communication and how fundamental it is for those who want to achieve remarkable language skills.

Communication may be easier for those who take group English classes because these classes include other people who you can talk to. Also, in some schools and depending on student’s level, classes are taught only in English.

However, whether you take group classes or not, it is worth diving deeper in this aspect and trying to find other people to talk to. This has become much easier with the Internet.

Websites such as italki and Conversation Exchange help a lot in this regard, as both pages bring together people who are interested in speaking other languages. Besides, practicing alone is also useful.

5 – Don’t give up

While not a tip to learn English itself, it is important to highlight the value of being consistent when studying something. Consistency will make a difference between deep or shallow learning.

Keeping up your pace and motivation can be difficult, especially at the beginning, when every written or spoken word seems strange and it often seems that the process is not evolving, but this is not true.

At every new attempt, the brain gains a little more understanding. It is only natural that it takes time and even effort, but results are sure to make it all worthwhile.

Improve your English skills and have plenty of possibilities at your disposal

Learning English may not be mandatory, but it is very important. According to John Knagg, a member of the British Council, there are 1.5 billion people learning English worldwide, representing 19.48% of the world’s population.

In addition to being able to consume content from other countries in their original languages, putting tips to learn English into practice opens doors professionally, academically and personally, especially if you get a proficiency certificate such as TOEFL iBT or CAE.

Take advantage of your opportunities to put tips to learn English into practice and broaden your knowledge. So, in addition to all the new possibilities, you’ll also understand a little of how professionals in a translation agency need to perform to provide their clients with high-quality services.