چگونه به زبان انگلیسی مسلط شویم؟

Hi, I’m Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com

do you need to feel more motivated to speak English?

Let’s talk about it.

Have you ever felt really excited to learn English?

You were really pumped up.

You had a lot of great plans for the things that you were going to do to improve your English, and then after a few weeks you slowed down and you felt a lot less motivation to keep going.

Maybe you started to feel disappointed in yourself.

Why can’t I keep studying?

Am I lazy?

I thought that I wanted to be a fluent English speaker, but I just can’t keep my motivation.

Today I’d like to share some top tips to help you stay motivated.

These tips apply to learning English, but they also apply to really any area in life.

This lesson is a gold mine, so feel free to watch this any time that your motivation needs a boost in life.

To help you accomplish your goal, I want to give you this free Maintaining Motivation PDF worksheet that you can download.

There’s a link up here and also in the description where you can download that.

All of the tips that we talk about today will be included in that PDF, as well as a lot of helpful links to help you get started and create a personal motivation plan today.

Let’s get started with the first tip.

The first tip is a doozy.

That means that it’s long and involved, but it is essential.

So put on your seatbelt and let’s get started.

My first tip to maintaining motivation is to create a clear goal, long term and short term.

Let’s talk about what is a goal.

Well, a goal is not, I want to be a fluent English speaker.

But Vanessa, that’s what I want.

I want to be a fluent English speaker.

Nope.

You need to define.

Remember I said clear goal.

You need to define what is a fluent English speaker to you.

You need to define that first.

Doesn’t mean that you make no mistakes.

Doesn’t mean that you can talk about every topic comfortably.

Doesn’t mean that every native speaker can easily understand you and you can understand them.

Well, when you define your goal of fluency clearly it’s going to help you to succeed and reach that goal much better.

Well, let’s say that you decide your goal is to talk about every topic comfortably in English.

I’m going to be using this as a sample during this lesson.

Well, once you have this goal, this is your goal in the end, we need to talk about a long term goal and a short term goal for this.

Well, what is a long term goal?

A long term goal could be 10 years in the future, but for me, I personally have trouble thinking about what my life will be like 10 years in the future, so let’s be a little more realistic and let’s make your long term English goal one year.

And then a short term goal, let’s say that your short term goal is what you’re going to accomplish in one week.

So you’re going to have short term goals and then you’re going to have a long term goal that’s going to be one year from now.

For example, your long term goal might be in one year, I want to talk with a group of native English speakers about any topic comfortably for two hours.

This is a beautiful goal.

It’s so clear.

It gives you a timeframe in one year.

It gives you the exact thing that you want to do, talk with a group of native English speakers.

And for how long?

For two hours about any topic.

Oh, this is a beautiful goal.

What about a short term goal?

How can you reach that long term goal with a short term goal?

Your short term goal might be, each week I want to comfortably talk about a new topic.

Great.

That’s 52 new topics in one year.

That is a lot of topics.

Usually in daily conversation we talk about the same things often again and again.

So if you can comfortably talk about 52 topics after one year you are on the way to success.

In the free Maintaining Motivation worksheet, I’ll share a link with over 200 conversation topics and several questions for each topic.

Some are simple like, tell me about your family.

Were your parents strict?

Did you help with household chores when you were a kid?

And some questions are more difficult.

Why are people vegetarians?

How would the world be different if no one ate meat?

You can find a link to all of these questions that will help you to expand your vocabulary and expand your confidence talking about a variety of topics in a link in the Maintaining Motivation worksheet.

The next step in creating a clear goal is to find out your why.

This means why do you want to have a two hour conversation with a group of native English speakers?

Maybe for you, you’ve always had a dream of living in New York for a month or watching English TV shows and movies, or maybe talking with your international coworkers.

Everyone has a why.

Your why might be really simple.

It’s my lifelong dream to improve my English skills and to speak with people around the world.

That’s really simple, so don’t worry if your why is really simple like this.

It might be more complex depending on your situation, but a main part of the Maintaining Motivation worksheet is trying to figure out your why.

I want to tell you a little something between you and me.

Accomplishing your goal is tough.

It won’t just fall out of the sky and land on your lap.

You’re going to need to work hard.

It’s my job to give you the tools to succeed, but you’re the one who’s going to have to take those tools and use them.

We can imagine that you are going through the thick jungle on the other side of the jungle is your goal.

How are you going to get through that jungle?

Well, I’m giving you today a big machete.

That’s a big knife to cut through the jungle and to reach your goal, but who’s the one who’s having to cut through the jungle?

That’s you.

You’re going to have to do the hard work, but everyone is capable of reaching that goal.

For some people it’s going to be a little bit harder.

For some people it’s going to be a little bit easier, but you are capable of doing it.

Especially if you follow these tips in today’s lesson.

After you’ve written your short term and longterm goals, it’s finally time to move on to tip number two.

Tip number two for maintaining motivation is to track your progress, preferably with someone else.

I hear from a lot of my students that they feel like they’re not improving, that they’ve reached a plateau.

I feel like when you’re first learning something, especially English, you see your progress because you knew nothing and now you know something.

But after you’re already an intermediate English learner, it’s a little bit harder to see your progress, but part of maintaining your motivation is tracking your progress.

So how can you do that?

Let’s go back to my sample long term goal where you’re talking with a group of native English speakers about a variety of topics for two hours.

And every week for the previous year, you’ve been practicing speaking with a new topic, talking about different vocabulary with that topic.

Well, how can you track your progress?

The best way is to speak with someone else once a week, even if it’s just 30 minutes.

This is great.

If you speak with another English learner, you can plan in advance.

We’re going to talk about our vacation experiences, and during the week you’re practicing vacation vocabulary.

You’re thinking about how you’re going to describe your vacation and then you talk about it together for 30 minutes.

During that conversation and at the end of that conversation you can track your progress.

Could I express myself?

Did I use the vocabulary expressions that I learned in the previous week?

Did I feel more comfortable talking than the previous week?

These are great questions that you can ask yourself to track your progress.

In school you had tests and exams to track your progress, but let’s be honest, after every test, I forgot pretty much everything I learned and maybe it was the same for you.

Now this is real life.

You don’t want to forget what you learned right after you studied it, so by practicing with someone else, you’re giving yourself a deadline.

Kind of like that test.

I know that on Saturday I’m going to need to know how to talk about my vacation because I’m going to be talking with this other person.

And you’re testing yourself.

Can I accurately talk about this topic that I’ve prepared?

Another way to track your progress, besides speaking with someone, which I recommend first, but another tip is to use an app system like Anki to track your vocabulary progress.

This uses kind of a virtual digital flashcard system and you can learn new words.

You can test yourself on those words, preferably before you speak with someone else at the end of the week.

As you learn new words, try to do all of this in English.

The definitions in English, your sentences in English, so that you’re going to be immersed and surrounded by it.

Let’s go on to tip number three for how to maintain motivation.

My tip number three is to be kind to yourself.

What will you do when you lose motivation?

I say this a lot, but be kind to yourself.

It is realistic that sometime between today and one year from now, life will happen.

Things will come up that will get in the way of your plan.

Maybe you’ll move to a new house.

Maybe you’ll go on vacation for the holidays and forget some of your plan.

Maybe you’ll have a new baby like me or maybe you’ll get a new job, something that’s going to interrupt your routine and your plan.

The most important thing to do is just to acknowledge that this is realistic.

At some point, you will feel unmotivated or less motivated and you can plan for how you will react.

That’s important.

Will you feel disappointed and give up?

Or will you give yourself a hug and say, it’s all right.

I need to give myself a little break for this period of time while I adjust to some new things going on in my life.

And then after two weeks I’ll get back on track.

This kind of sounds like you’re planning for failure, but in my mind it’s just realistic, so make sure that when things come up you take a deep breath and realize this is very normal.

Plan for how you’re going to react in those situations.

Be kind to yourself.

Tip number four for maintaining a motivation is to reward yourself.

I had a friend in college who would give herself one M&M after every 30 minutes of studying.

Or maybe you want to get a special bonus at work.

A bonus means one time extra money, usually that happens at the end of the year.

So you work really hard to get this reward.

Rewards can be related to your goal such as, after one month I’m going to go to a British pub in my city and I’m going to practice speaking English, or it could be unrelated to your goals such as I’m going to give myself one M&M like my friend did.

A reward can also be to simply cross off something on your list.

If you decided that today I’m going to watch one video about family and I’m going to write some new expressions in my notebook that I heard from that video.

When you finish that, cross it off on your to do list.

It feels so good.

For me, that’s the biggest reward is simply crossing something off when I have decided to do.

I can go back at the end of the day and see that I’ve accomplished what I wanted to accomplish and it’s directly related to my goal.

I want to do these things and I can see I did it.

So a reward could be something as simple as that.

Let’s go on to the final tip for maintaining motivation.

My fifth tip is to follow some motivational speakers.

To succeed, you need to surround yourself by successful people, right?

This isn’t always realistic in daily life because maybe your friends and family have different goals than you have, but with the internet, anything is possible.

If your goal is to speak better English, speak more confidently, speak fluently, I recommend following other people who have already done this.

You can type the word polyglot into YouTube and see lots of cool people who are learning multiple languages.

They usually give good advice about how they’re learning languages and it’s also great for motivation.

Or you can follow some motivational speakers who aren’t related to English.

You can type motivation Ted Talk into YouTube.

And there are a lot of different Ted Talks that focus on how to stay motivated, the topic of motivation, and that will help you to be surrounded by people who are successfully motivated at what they want to do.

In the free Maintaining Motivation worksheet, I’ll include links to some of my favorite polyglot videos and Ted Talk motivation videos to help you get started.

Let’s review how you can stay motivated.

I’d like you to speak out loud, exercise your speaking muscles, and remember what we’ve talked about today.

So please read these out loud with me and it will help you to get started on this journey.

Number one, I will create a clear goal for the long term and for the short term.

Number two, I will track my progress, ideally with another person.

Number three, I will be kind to myself when changes happen.

Number four, I will reward myself for successfully following my plan.

Number five, I will follow motivational speakers and surround myself with success.

And now I have a question for you.