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5 ways to improve your English every day!

Hello everyone, and welcome back to English With Lucy. Now, since I’ve been having a little bit of criticism, constructive criticism, over my really, really long introductions, I’ve decided to get straight into the video.

So today I’m going to be teaching you five ways that you can learn English on a daily basis. So you know, in my last video, I spoke about immersion, immersing yourself in the English language. I’m going to be showing you some ways you can do that, on a daily basis.

I know there are a lot of videos on the internet, that talk about ways that you can fit English into your everyday life, but honestly when I watch them, I sometimes think, duh, yeah, obviously, of course I’m going to watch movies, listen to the radio, and read books. That’s pretty obvious.

So I wanted to talk to you about some other ways that you might not have thought of before. We’ll see, you might have heard of some of them. But I often think that the best ideas are the simple ones, that just simply hadn’t occurred to you yet. So, hopefully, I’m going to give you some of those today.

The long introductions, with little updates about my life, and my silly stories, let me know, and I’ll put ‘em back in. But we’re trying something new. Anyway, lets get started. The first tip is switch everything to English.

Now you know when you look at your friends phone, and you’re looking for something, and you say, oy, Tom, why is this in French? And they say, “Oh sorry, I’m just trying to learn French.” Your friend’s a very clever person.

But we can take that a step further. So by switching all of your gadgets, I’m talking your phone, your TV, your microwave, your computer, your tablet, everything, into English, or the language that you are learning, you will be just a step closer to immersion. It will also remind you, on a daily basis, that you are learning English, because it’s easy to forget that you’re learning a language.

I often forget that I’m learning Italian, until I see a pizza, or an aperol spritz, and I think, oh, I haven’t studied anything today. Now it doesn’t have to stop there. Something that I like to do is when I buy a new piece of furniture, or I buy a new hair product, or something, you know you have all of the instructions in every single language? I try to only read the instructions in the language that I’m learning.

And try and work out what they mean, and see if I learn some new vocabulary on the way. So again, this isn’t groundbreaking stuff, but it’s a nice way of incorporating English into your everyday life. You know if I’m reading the nutritional information on a packet of cereal, I’ll read it in Italian, before I read it in English.

Just to see how they would word something. And you can really look into it. You can see how in your language it’s written in a certain word order, but then in English it’s a different word order. It’s really quite interesting.

So try that one out. Now the next one, learn a skill. Now, we always talk about the four English skills, don’t we? Listening, reading, speaking, writing. That’s what we’re always examined on in our tests at school. But I’m not talking about practising one of these skills in English. I’m talking about another skill, like a hobby. Take a hobby, and learn it in English. I personally find it very, very boring to sit down with a book, and learn, and dedicate myself, I’m much more likely to learn a language if I’m doing something that I enjoy.

And I spoke about this in my how I learned Spanish video, the thing I enjoyed was my ex-boyfriend… Not that… Yes… The thing I enjoyed was conversing with my ex-boyfriend. So I was doing that in the language I was learning, but I didn’t even realise it at the time, but I was really, really improving my Spanish skills.

And you can do this too with English. Something I’m really interested in is cooking. So I like to take Italian dishes, and read Italian recipes, and follow Italian instructions, and watch Italian recipe videos. If I make an Italian dish, once a week, then that’s about an hour and a half, or an hour, of Italian immersion, every week.

So, that’s a really nice way of incorporating that language into your everyday, or your weekly life. Maybe you could set out an English night where you try to make an English, or American, or Australian dish, our food really, really isn’t that bad.

Especially our puddings, and our cake. If I have a recipe to recommend to you, I would say try making brownies, which is an American recipe, or sticky toffee pudding, which is, I think, I’m pretty sure, it’s an English recipe. We always have it at English dinner parties. But there are loads of skills you could learn, strictly in English. You could learn to knit, in English. You could play board games, in English. As long as it’s something consistent that you do on a daily, or weekly basis, in English, you’re so much more likely to take it seriously, because it’s something that you genuinely enjoy.

Tip number three is use an app, or programme, on a daily basis, to improve your English. So it’s all very well attending a language course, or a language school, once a week, twice a week, but something else that’s really, really helpful is doing a little bit every day.

ABA English got in contact with me, awhile ago and asked me to have a look at their product, and services, and I did have a look and they’ve kindly sponsored today’s video. You can access all of their grammar for free, and they’ve also got 144 video lessons for free as well. It’s a very well priced subscription based platform.

They encourage learning with a natural method, that simulates the intuitive learning process of your mother tongue, in an online environment. So you learn in a really natural way, via short films. They have two tiers of access. You can have the free access, which has all of the grammar, and 144 video lessons. And then you can sign up to premium, where you get a dedicated teacher, who will answer all your questions.

You can practise your pronunciation, through listen, record, repeat, exercises where you listen to a word, you record yourself, and then you compare it to the native pronunciation. There are so many cool things on ABBA English.

I suggest you check it out for yourself. You can sign up using the link in the description box for the free access, and then you’ll get an email inviting you to join the premium version of the website, if you want to, and if you do want to they will add a special discount for English with Lucy viewers. Everyone gets a discount, but the discount varies depending on where you are in the world, because it’s calculated differently.

Number four, is one of my favourite words, multitasking. I always talk about multitasking, because multitasking has changed my life. I was never productive, I never got anything done, I would always prioritise my leisure time, over my work, and once I learnt to multitask, I realised that I could have leisure time and do the things I was obliged to do, at the same time. And you can do this too. I want you to learn to multitask effectively, and use that to improve your English.

So, Think of the mundane tasks that you do everyday. Obviously commuting is a big thing. Going on public transport. For me, it’s something that takes a massive, massive chunk out of my day is… It’s my hair and make up.

I have to be on camera. I like to look a certain way on camera. So I have to spend a little while doing my hair, and doing my makeup. And I find it really, really boring. I enjoy hair and makeup, but every single day it feels like such a waste of time. So, I started watching educational videos, whilst I was doing my hair and makeup, because I didn’t have to concentrate 100% on what I was doing.

So, for me, the thing I’m learning at the moment is about filming, and video production. I’m trying to make my quality better. I’m really, really trying. And so that’s very time consuming, and I have to watch whole videos to learn one small skill, so I’ll have them on, whilst I’m doing my hair and makeup, and I’m learning something, whilst doing something I have to do.

But, another really, really cool thing is that I’ll see a video that’s maybe 30 minutes long, and I will challenge myself to complete my hair and makeup in those 30 minutes. So you’re saving time. You’re doing something you have to do. And you’re learning something new, do it with English, there are so many fantastic English Youtubers, or English TV programmes, the world is your oyster. Go for it. It can really, really transform your productivity, as it did with mine.

Now, number five is something that can improve your grammar, your vocabulary, your pronunciation, your speaking, your listening, your writing, your reading, it can genuinely improve everything. And this is identifying where you are lacking. And this is something you will have heard me mention before in videos, but I’m reiterating it, and repeating it, because I think it’s so, so, so important. You might have heard me say before don’t wait for somebody to educate you, educate yourself. Don’t sit in a classroom and wait for a teacher to teach you the present simple. Teach it to yourself. And identifying where you are lacking really plays a big part in this.

On a daily basis, if you’re using a little bit of your English language, and you see that you’re really… You can’t use the conditional, write it down, and make a note that that day you are going to study what you don’t understand.

The next day, if you were listening to the news, and they were talking about a storm, and you really couldn’t understand what they were saying, that day you have to study storm vocabulary. The next day, if you’re having a conversation with somebody from Scotland, and you’re really struggling to understand their pronunciation, that day you have to revise Scottish pronunciation, and then, instead of being in a classroom of 30 people, who are all studying the same thing, you could call it one size fits all, one teacher is giving knowledge to everyone, some may need it, some may not. You are taking in the knowledge that you need, nothing more, and nothing less, and day by day you will start improving so much more quickly than your peers.

So, I do think that number five is my favourite tip, actually, in English, identifying where you’re lacking, and then educating yourself. There are all the resources in the world, on the internet, you can have private teachers, you can use grammar videos, like the ones on ABBA English. You’ve got Youtube here, there are loads of fabulous, native teachers here, and just ready to explain things to you.

If you have a question, it’s highly likely that 10’s of thousands of people before you have also had the same question. The real question is finding the answer, and you should be able to find it because it will be there.

Right guys, that’s it for today’s lesson, I hope you enjoyed it, I hope you learnt something.