Ways to learn English efficiently

So, you have decided to study English. It doesn’t matter what pushed you – a desire to develop your skills and get a better job, a wish to travel around the world, an inquisitive mind or simple boredom – it is a great, life-changing decision. The only thing left now is to come up with effective ways to learn English quickly. This article will offer you a number of solutions, both traditional and non-conventional, that will help you create your own unique study plan and follow it to proudly call yourself an English-speaker one day.

Study when you have a chance

When we are young, we care about a thousand of different things around us, but education isn’t one of them most of the time. We find schools boring and choose to spend our time with friends. When we go to college, we start partying or working and pass most of our classes just for the sake of passing them. Point is, we miss out on many wonderful opportunities to learn English systematically and do so completely free of charge. If you are still at school or university, take advantage of every class you have, no matter how useless it seems to you right now. If you aren’t a student anymore, talk to your relatives’ and friends’ kids about the importance of taking everything the school has to give to them. Who knows, maybe your words will serve as an inspiration for a younger generation of language learners.

Go for language courses

Even if, like most of us, you graduated from university without extensive knowledge of English, you can still fix it in no time. The first option you should check out is the language courses – a special adult education establishment that provides individual and group classes based on the level of the student or the special needs he or she has. Look up the list of the local courses on the internet, compare prices and read feedbacks of people, who have already studied there. Then go to their office and see what they offer. Good language school will first give you a test to see what level you are currently at, and only then will offer you various schedules. Most of them also provide free trial lessons and conversational clubs for their students. Make sure that groups aren’t too big (an optimal size is 5-10 people) and that the teachers are qualified enough to provide students with various ways to learn English. Do not be discouraged if your first experience with language schools is unsuccessful. Keep searching until you find the right one just for you.

Find a tutor

The group education doesn’t sound good enough for you? There’s still an option. If you like it when your teacher only pays attention to you, you need a private teacher or a tutor. This solution is more convenient, as the two of you can work out a perfect schedule and study more often when it’s appropriate and the study program is tailored to fit your needs. A private tutor can easily come up with ways to learn English fast and prepare you more effectively for a job interview or an international exam. On the other hand, services of tutor are quite costly and you should only go for them if you are confident that there will be good returns on this investment.

Learn while travelling

A classroom may not be the most convenient place to study in. There are people who choose a much more pleasant and somewhat more expensive way to learn English – traveling. Educational tourism is becoming one of the most popular ways to learn English by the year. Schools in the UK, Malta, the USA, Canada and New Zealand gladly accept students from all over the world and provide short-term and long-term courses to them. Many find this way to be highly effective, as you put yourself into the circumstances where using your native language is not an option. Others go for educational tourism just to have fun and meet new people. Both are fairly happy with the result. Remember that you don’t need to spend a lot of money to travel. If you are fit and brave enough, you can hitchhike and stay in hostels on your way to a music festival or take a low-cost flight to finally take a picture with the London Eye. One way or another, you will get some truly priceless experience.

Study at home

The 21st century gives us thousands of ways to learn English at home. Loads of digital books, lectures and YouTube video channels can become your guiding light in the world of English, especially if you are new to it. What’s good about it is that you can actually use English as a tool to learn other important and useful subjects like Math or Social Science. To do that you need to check out Coursera – an online service which offers courses in many different fields of human knowledge, most of them in English. There is also a possibility to order a certificate of a course completion for an additional fee. This and other websites have applications for electronic devices, so you don’t need to be attached to desktop computer.

Host an exchange student

If you have kids and live in a big city, you can apply to be a host parent of a foreign exchange student who can come to your country for 1 to 9 months. Hosting involves providing food and a place to sleep in return for intercultural exchange and free English practice for the whole family. It is a huge responsibility and should only be done by financially and mentally secure people, but it’s also a very rewarding experience that may help you when bringing up your own children. Besides, it brings you one step closer to speaking English fluently.

Use social networks

Statistics tell us that 74% of all Internet users have at least one social network profile. While some may simply waste their time posting pictures of their lunch and updating statuses, smart English learners may take full advantage of great specialized social networks like Speechyard. There you can find everything you need to improve your English vocabulary as you view video clips or read books and click on words to see their translation. You can then complete a variety of exercises to make sure you remember the words and use them when speaking with one of thousands of members of the website’s community. It’s one of great ways to learn English vocabulary and grammar with ease and pleasure.

Play video games

10 years ago, when our mothers were trying not to let us play video games, hardly any of us could come up with a brilliant excuse like “Mom, I am studying”. Even though PacMan or Grand Theft Auto don’t seem like ways to learn English grammar and vocabulary, video games have huge educational potential. Not only they teach us high concentration, teamwork and multitude of problem-solving skills, they also make us use English because that’s the language they are made in. A necessity to understand what to do in the game world can make us speak English even faster than a promising job opening . Fighting games enrich our vocabulary with names of various garments and weapons, while epic games and world simulators show us phrases used on standard conversations as well as the accent, pitch and tempo they are said with. Video games are a great way to teach English to kids, but they may be useful to you even if you are an adult. And, of course, there’s a multiplayer, where you can hear British, Australian, Canadian and American English from different players.

Sing along

It’s hard to find a better collection of words about love, relationships and human life in general than the one in song lyrics. Every year hundreds of new songs are written. Nowadays there’s hardly anything people don’t sing about. A great aspect of songs in terms of learning English is that you don’t just learn the words, you hear their pronunciation and can repeat the whole phrase after the artist – it’s even easier when the music is playing. Who would have thought that you could learn how to speak English with help of karaoke system? However, if you can’t sing (or if you think you can, but your friends have told you otherwise on multiple occasions), please, do not exercise your English singing in public places. Do it when you are alone in the comfort of your own home and don’t forget to pick up pieces of shattered glass after you’re done practicing.

In the course of studies you may find even more ways to study English. If they work for you, share them with your friends, motivate other people to join you in your studies and always stay optimistic. English may seem hard, but it’s not too hard for you to learn it . And, of course, remember, that the best day to start studying a foreign language is today, so get to it!