English is a subject that stresses out many students. It is considered as a confusing and a complicated subject by most of the students. For a student to become more successful in future, having an international language such as English in their skill-list is important.
Following are 50 tips that you can follow (in no particular order) to improve your English with First Gate Student Services:
1. Be confident. Don’t get anxious while making mistakes. When people see you making mistakes, they can assist you in correcting them.
2. Surround yourself with the language. Get yourself in an English-speaking environment. By doing so, you can learn passively. Listening is one of the best ways to learn and improve your English-speaking skills.
3. Practice makes everyone perfect. So, do a lot of practice. Make a study plan for yourself. Make a routine and decide how much time you can dedicate studying English.
4. Share your study plan with your friends and family. This way they can push you to study and they will not interrupt you.
5. It is very important to practice the 4 basic skills i.e., writing, reading, speaking, and listening. You have to work on these skills to improve.
6. Maintain a notebook and write down all the new words that you learn every day.
7. Make use of your body clock. Study in the afternoon, if you are not a morning person.
8. The most common way of learning vocabulary for a test is to memorize the lists but this exercise is only good for short-term studies. The reason being, you are not able to recall the information that you have gathered for a test.
9. Rather than using a word on its own, try to remember the words by using it in a sentence.
10. Take a test. You will notice that when you study for a particular thing, you work harder.
11. Try to think bigger. Think, what else can you do when you already have a good command over a language?
12. Make a long-term goal and concentrate on achieving it.
13. Make short-term goals and reward yourself each time you achieve a goal.
14. Create such an environment in which you want to learn.
15. Try to find out what works best for you. Recall the methods that you have been using in the past and stick to them if those methods have been successful.
16. Know how you learn. It can be any method like reading, speaking, summarizing, memorizing, etc.
17. Figure out how you want to study. You can either study alone or in a group.
18. Take someone’s assistance. If you have got to ask something or gets stuck somewhere take help. Ask your family, friends or teachers. You can also take
19. Review the things that you have already studied in the past.
20. Don’t study continuously. Take regular and short breaks. Go out, get some fresh air and then start again.
21. Don’t be so quick to move up to a new level. Focus on completing the level you are at now.
22. Rather than watching TV, watch DVDs because you can watch it again and again. You can also catch the information you have might have missed earlier.
23. Make a habit of reading graded readers as these books are written according to the level of students.
24. You can also read children’s books as these have easier words.
25. To find out passive constructs, newspapers are the best place. Read an entire article in see if you can find out passive sentences.
26. Try to learn root words. These words assist in guessing the meaning of words. For instance, min- small and scrib- write.
27. If you are not able to understand the meaning of a word used in a sentence, look at the other words around it. You can guess the meaning of a word from the context.
28. While learning a new word, think of it in all the forms. For example, Beautiful (adjective), beauty (noun), and beautifully (adverb).
29. Try to learn the suffixes and prefixes. This way you can build your vocabulary.
30. Make use of English whenever you can.
31. You cannot learn this language by reading a book. You have to do it yourself and practice a lot.
32. Talking is the most common way to use grammar in practice.
33. Brainstorm all your ideas on a paper without stressing about the spelling mistakes or grammar mistakes. After that think about a structure and write your piece by using good grammar. At last, read your piece yourself or give it to someone else.
34. You can also start an online blog to share your writings with everyone.
35. Punctuation has a power of totally changing what you are trying to say. Hence, it is very important to keep a check of it.
36. Use chat rooms, forums or community sites. If you are not able to speak to someone in English, then this is the next best alternative.
37. Use English CDs. Concentrate on the rhythm and intonation.
38. Ask your teacher if you can record his or her lesson.
39. Make use of an English dictionary. This way you will keep thinking in English rather than translating.
40. Make dictionary only your aid and not your primary teacher. Instead of going straight for the dictionary, try to guess the meaning of words.
41. Stay positive. Don’t ever think of giving up. In the end, you will definitely get there.
42. Enjoy learning and improving your English, you will always learn more when you are enjoying it.
43. Before saying something, take two deep breaths if you easily get nervous while speaking. When you are feeling relaxed, you will speak better.
44. Procrastination can act as a hurdle. To overcome it, it is essential to understand that is it your bad habit or it is just to avoid studying.
45. Use sticky notes and stick them around your home. You can utilize these notes to label things.
46. If you scored bad in a test, don’t be put off. Sometimes, the students who score good marks in an English test are often not able to communicate well with English speakers. You should feel proud if you are able to speak freely.
47. To make your English lively, make use of idioms. These can be sometimes difficult to memorize but are great fun to use.
48. Use the internet as it is full of resources that can assist you to learn and improve.
49. Find out your strong and weak points. Jot down the areas where improvisation is required.
50. Once you have reached a basic level of English, the next step is to discover other new ways to learn and improve more.
