Why is your English not improving? Tips to improve your English
Sabrena Doherty 
This article is taken from the conclusions of my Book IMPROVE YOUR ENGLISH AND SPEAK FLUENTLY.
This guide gives you step-by-step instructions on how to create your personal English improvement plan.
You can download it free HERE.
If you have been learning English for years and you are not reaching the level you want, you are very possibly frustrated and feeling lost - not knowing what to do to reach that level of fluency and confidence that you need.
It is likely that you have been trying hard at various periods of your life, but stopped either out of frustration, lack of progress, or just life getting in the way.
Or maybe you are being consistent, studying, going to classes, and doing all the things you think you should be, but you are still not reaching your goal, or at least not fast enough.
This article will give some advice on where you might be going wrong.
But first, be sure that you have carried out the following steps:
1. Made specific goals in relation to your English. e.g. Be able to contribute to meetings in English in 3 months. Read more about this HERE.
2. Have a personal routine or program, of activities that you do on an almost-daily basis that work on the areas you need. e.g. speaking classes, listening activities, and grammr resources to improve speaking, understanding, and fix basic mistakes.
3. Have set a realistic deadline to achieve your goals.
If you have missed any of the above steps, download your free copy of my Book IMPROVE YOUR ENGLISH AND SPEAK FLUENTLY. This will take you step-by-step through numbers 1-3 above, giving you a personalized English program to improve quickly and effectively.
If you have indeed been trying hard to improve, read the following suggestions.
- Are the activities that you are doing boring?
Change them for more interesting ones.
Better to watch a movie you like in English than try to do grammar exercises (that you never do because they are boring).
- Do you not have enough time?
You will find the section on combining and maximizing your time on page 10 of the eBook useful for finding activities that combine several areas or that you can do while doing other things.
Do activities that practice several skills at once.
- Are you not improving quickly enough?
You will need to make your existing English activities more active - try to concentrate more on the podcast, movie, song - whichever activity you are doing.
Think about adding more activities to your schedule, especially active ones - an extra class, speaking activity, online course. You also need to think about exchanging an interest or activity you are doing
and replacing it with an English activity for the moment until you reach your goal.
- Every month you should also review your objectives for English and check if your activities are incorporating all of them.
When you are half-way to your deadline, you should do the same level tests you did earlier in the course (or check the assessment grid, or ask your teacher to reassess you). You should see some improvement already. If not, go back to the course and look at your activities - are they active enough? Could you combine more existing activities with English? Look at the checklist below - are you doing them all?
- Consider doing a challenge to improve an area of your English.
You can do this by committing to doing something in English every day in a certain area for a certain period of time.
For example we have a listening challenge inside our online membership platform that improves your understanding in one month, simply by listening every day for one month.
Make sure you are doing everything in the checklist below:
CHECKLIST TO IMPROVE YOUR ENGLISH
- I have some active learning activities
- I am doing enough hours a week in English
- Some activities improve more than one area
- I am clear on my goals
- I am clear on my deadline
- I am clear on my current level
- I am clear on my desired level
- I am reviewing my schedule regularly and changing anything that
isn't working - My schedule is realistic
If you haven´t been able to say yes to all of the above, make the relevant changes.
This video also has some useful tips for improving your speaking:
HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR SPEAKING IN ENGLISH.
A few more things to remember when trying to improve your English:
❖ Improving your English is a process and it will not happen in one day. Try to maintain your motivation by keeping your final goal in your mind. It will seem like you are not improving but with every
activity you do you are learning something new or consolidating something you have already learned.
Adjust your schedule, do your best, but be patient.
❖ Lose the embarrassment and shame - this may be your biggest obstacle. Remember all the people you have heard speaking YOUR native language - did you notice their mistakes? Most probably not.
❖ If you can be understood, and understand, then you have already achieved so much.
❖ Everyone makes mistakes - even the ones with the highest level, trust me! Would you rather have perfect grammar, but you cannot understand the other person or tell him or her what you want to say in a fluent way, or would you rather make mistakes and speak fluently and understand well? Making mistakes is how we learn.
❖ Ignore anyone who says anything negative - you are doing something incredible for yourself. Remember how proud you will feel when you reach your goal. And you WILL reach your goal if you
make the effort.
❖ Accept any challenges in English - accept that project in English, speak up in class, for example.
❖ If you feel overwhelmed, break it down more into smaller baby steps. Think of the next month only.
❖ Think about and visualize how you will feel when you reach your goal - how much more confident you will be, and how many more opportunities you will have.
OK, so now you have taken control of your learning, you should feel excited, motivated and ready to go -well done!
Be not afraid of going slowly, be afraid of standing still - Chinese Proverb
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