- 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.
- Practise 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.
- Visit EC’s free learn English website at least once a day and complete a lesson.
- 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! Review! 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.
