How do you learn how to speak English very fast? Is it possible to accelerate your English speaking ability? Is it possible to make massive improvements in only 2-3 months? The answer is yes. But of course, to make massive improvements requires massive intensity and effort. So, how can you do it? How can you improve super-fast? What do I recommend for this kind of goal? 1. Obsession The first and most important thing you need to achieve this goal is incredible passion. You must have tremendous emotional power to learn super-fast. Why?
Because you must study English 8-14 hours a day and every hour you must be alert, interested, and energetic. To improve that quickly, you must build emotion. You must be obsessed with English. You must be passionate and incredibly enthusiastic. Remember, Emotion is 80% of success, method is only 20%. To create passion, you need very compelling reasons to learn English. Just doing well on a test is not a strong enough reason. Just getting a new job is not a strong enough reason. You need HUGE reasons for doing this. Imagine all the incredible benefits you will have as a fluent English speaker.
Imagine how your life will change 5 years from now. 10 years from now. 20 years from now. If you are motivated by money, imagine how English will make you amazingly rich. Visualize your dream house, your dream car, your dream life. If love motivates you, imagine how English will help you meet incredible people from other countries. Imagine dating beautiful/handsome foreigners! Imagine incredible love and passion, possible because you are a fluent English speaker. You can also exaggerate the terrible things that will happen if you fail to speak English fluently. Imagine all the jobs you will miss.
Imagine all the people you will never meet. Imagine how bad your life will be because you cannot speak English. Make your reasons bigger! Bigger reasons = Bigger Passion. Bigger Passion = Bigger Success. Emotions is the key. Make your emotion stronger! Become obsessed with English! 2. Massive Input The second key to super-fast learning and incredible intensity is to focus on English INPUT. Do not waste time studying grammar or vocabulary. Do not waste time trying to speak. You should spend all of your time either listening or reading. This is the fastest and most efficient method for peaking English fluently. Carry your iPod everywhere. Always have a book with you. Specifically, you should listen mostly to Mini-Story Lessons, Point of View Lessons, and Audio Articles. These are the most powerful kinds of lessons and will help you learn the fastest. You should read easy English novels, starting with novels for children. Absolutely do not waste time reading textbooks! 3. Massive Intensity To be fluent in only 2-3 months, you must create massive intensity. In other words, you have to listen and read 8-14 hours a day, every day. You must listen constantly to English.
You must read constantly. In fact, I recommend alternating the two activities. Listen for an hour, then read a novel for an hour. Then listen again for an hour. Then another hour of novel reading. If you are really focused on speaking well, do more listening. But do not worry, reading will also help your speaking ability. So that is it. That is my simple method for very fast English fluency. Of course, most people do not need to improve so quickly. For most people, two hours a day of listening and reading is enough. But if you need or want to improve very quickly, follow this plan.
Good luck! It’s Possible to Improve Your English Language Skills Very Quickly If You Follow These Easy Tips Many students of EFL/ESL (English as a Foreign Language/English as a Second Language) who have fairly good English skills still want to improve their English skills but they don’t know how. There are however tried and true ways to improve your English skills. Whenever a student asks me how they can improve, I give them a few suggestions and always notice, within a few months, if they follow what I tell them their English skills improve dramatically.
So, if you too want to improve your English skills, follow these few tips and you’ll be surprised at how fast you can learn more English. Watch Television in English – Most of my students in Thailand don’t watch any English language television. It’s not that it’s difficult to find (we have cable TV with more than 60 English channels), it’s just that they’re lazy. When they do have some free time, instead of watching a show in English to improve their English listening skillsand vocabulary, they’ll watch a Thai soap opera instead.
I tell all my students, both children and adults, just 15 minutes every day watching a television show in English will very quickly teach you new vocabulary, new slang and better listening skills. Watch English Movies With English Soundtrack and English Subtitles – Most of my Thai students watch a lot of American and British movies. However, instead of watching them with English audio and English subtitles, they watch them with Thai audio and sometimes even Thai subtitles. Doing this causes them to miss out on an easy and fun way to improve their English.
My best students even watch the movie in Thai first, then they watch it again with English audio and soundtrack so they can be sure they understand what’s going on. The students who do this improve their English skills very quickly. If you do the same, you can too. Read English Books – One of my best Thai adult students reads at least one book a month in English. She usually sticks to books that are fun, about pop culture and easy to read (a teenage level is very good for many EFL/ESL students). So books like the Gossip Girl series, Harry Potter or The Twilight Saga series are great for learning new English vocabulary.
The language they use is quite simple, but they also use a lot of slang terms. My student writes down every word or phrase she doesn’t understand while she’s reading the book then, every time I see her, she asks me what they mean and writes down the meaning in a notebook she keeps for this purpose. In the nine months I have been teaching her, her grasp of the English language and especially slang has improved so fast it’s almost like speaking to a Westerner when I speak to her now. So buy an English book from your local English language bookstore.
If you’re not sure what books are good, ask one of the store assistants and tell them you’re looking for a book for teenagers. Read an English Language Newspaper – If you live in a country that doesn’t speak English as its first language, it’s still possible to get English language newspapers and, in most places now, they’re pretty cheap. Buy an English language newspaper at least once a week and read a few of the articles. I always suggest to my EFL students that they read the first page, scan the business section and then look at the lifestyles section.
This will give them a quick overview of what’s going on in the world while giving them exposure to language about important national and international news, business, and pop culture. Again, write down the vocabulary and phrases you don’t understand and either ask your teacher, look them up in a dictionary or on the internet, or ask a friend. The only way you will improve your English vocabulary is to be constantly exposed to new vocabulary. Reading an English newspaper now and again is a great way to do it.
These are just four ways to improve your English listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. There are many more. None of these suggestions takes very long and can actually be done in just 15 minutes every day. But those 15 minutes you spend every day will go a long way to making sure your English language skills improve and your self-confidence about new vocabulary and grammar also improves. Learning a new language isn’t easy but those who are consistent with their approach to learning will find it becomes easier every day. How I study well • Manage your time.
Make a weekly schedule and devote a certain amount of time per day to studying. This will improve your grades also. That amount will vary depending on whether you’re in high school or college, and also varies by field of study • 2 Study in 20-50 minute chunks. It takes time for your brain to form new long-term memories, and you can’t just keep studying flat out. Take 5-10 minute breaks (no more! ) and do something physically active to get your blood flowing and make you more alert. Do a few jumping jacks, run around your house, play with the dog, whatever it takes.
Do just enough to get yourself pumped, but not worn out. •Make enough time in your schedule to get enough sleep. Think of it this way: If you sleep only 4-5 hours, you’ll probably need to double your study time in order to be as effective as if you’d gotten 7-9 hours of sleep. Study more and sleep less? That doesn’t sound like a very good deal. Get a good night’s sleep every night and you’ll be making the best of your study time. If you end up a little sleep deprived despite your best efforts, take a short nap (20 minutes) before studying.
Then do some physical activity (like you would do during a break) right before you start. • 3 Find a good study spot. You should feel comfortable, but not so comfortable that you risk falling asleep–a bed isn’t a very good study spot when you’re tired! The place where you study should be relatively quiet (traffic outside your window and quiet library conversations are fine, but interrupting siblings and music blasting in the next room are not). •As far as music is concerned, that’s up to you. Some people prefer silence, others prefer music in the background.
If you belong to the latter group, stick to instrumental music (music that has no words like classical, soundtrack, trance, or some celtic) and that you’re already familiar with (not something that’s bound to distract you)–otherwise, your brain will “multi-task” and not be able to retain information as well. [1] •Having the television on while you study is generally a bad idea. • 4 Clear your mind. If you’ve got a lot on your mind take a moment to write yourself some notes about what you’re thinking about before you start studying. This will help to clear your mind you focus all your thoughts on your work. 5 Snack smart while you study. Have your snacks prepared when you begin a study session–don’t wait till you get hungry and go rummaging for food. Avoid any snacks or drinks that will give you a rush of energy, because with every rush comes a crash in which all the information you studied is lost to an intense desire to sleep. Focus on “slow release” carbohydrates, which not only give you a steady stream of energy, but they also boost serotonin, a brain chemical that makes you feel good:[2] • 6 Rewrite your notes at home. When you’re in class, emphasize recording over nderstanding or neatness when you take notes. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to understand or organize your notes at all; just don’t waste time doing something in class that you can figure out or neaten up at home. Consider your in-class notes a “rough draft” of sorts. Rewrite your notes as soon after the class as possible, while the material is fresh in your mind and so you can fill in any gaps from memory. The process of rewriting your notes is a more active approach to studying–it engages your mind in a way that just reading the notes doesn’t. You may find it easier to keep two notebooks–one for your “rough draft” notes, and another for your rewritten notes. •Some people type their notes, but others find that handwriting enhances their ability to remember the notes. •The more paraphrasing you do, the better. Same goes for drawing. If you’re studying anatomy, for example, “re-draw” the system you’re studying from memory. • 7 Learn the most important facts first. Don’t just read the material from beginning to end, stopping to memorize each new fact as you come to it.
New information is acquired much more easily when you can relate it to material that you already know. •When you are beginning to study a new chapter, it will make the information it contains much more meaningful and easier to learn if you first take a few minutes to read the introduction, the headings, the first sentence of every paragraph, and the chapter summary to get a good idea of what the chapter is about before going on to read the chapter as a whole. (Word for word, these portions also contain more information that is likely to be asked about on a test! •If you can, use a highlighter, or underline the most important points in the body of the text, so that you can spot them more easily when you review the material. It also helps to make notes in pencil in the margin in your own words to summarize or comment on important points. (These practices may make your textbook worth less when you sell it back to the bookstore, but it may make it worth a great deal more to you at test time! ) •You can also read just these portions in order to quickly review the material you have learned while it is still fresh in your memory, and help the main points to sink in. This is also a great way to review the most important ideas just before a test, when your time is especially limited. •It’s also a good way to periodically review in this manner to keep the main points of what you have already learned fresh in your mind if you need to remember a large amount of material for a longer period — for a final examination, for a comprehensive exam in your major, for a graduate oral, or for entry into a profession. •If you have enough privacy, it also helps to recite your summaries aloud in order to involve more senses in the activity of learning, like listening to music over several channels at once.
Incorporate your summaries into your notes, if there is a connection. •If you’re having trouble summarizing the material so that it “sticks” in your head, try teaching it to someone else. Pretend you’re teaching it to someone who doesn’t know anything about the topic, or create a wikiHow page about it! For example, Memorize the Canadian Territories & Provinces was made as a study guide for an 8th grade student. • 8 Make flash cards. Traditionally, this is done with index cards, but you can also download computer programs that cut down on space and the cost of index cards.
You can also just use a regular piece of paper folded (vertically) in half. Put the questions on the side you can see when the paper is folded; unfold it to see the answers inside. Keep quizzing yourself until you get all the answers right reliably. Remember: “Repetition is the mother of skill. ” •You can also turn your notes into flash cards using the Cornell note-taking system, which involves writing grouping your notes around keywords that you can quiz yourself on later by covering the notes and trying to remember what you wrote based on seeing only the keyword. [3] • 9
If your textbook has a vocabulary section, a glossary, or a list of terms, make sure that you understand these completely. You don’t have to memorize them, but whenever there is an important concept in a particular field, there is usually a special term to refer to it. Learn these terms, and be able to use them easily, and you will have gone a long way towards mastering the subject itself. (Besides, teachers frequently draw from these lists as a quick and easy way to make up test questions! ) • 10 Make associations. The most effective way to retain information is to tie” it to existing information that’s already lodged in your mind. •Take advantage of your learning style. Think about what you already learn and remember easily–song lyrics? choreography? pictures? Work that into your study habits. If you’re having trouble memorizing a concept, write a catchy jingle about it (or write lyrics to the tune of your favorite song); choreograph a representative dance; draw a comic. The sillier and more outrageous, the better–we tend to remember silly things more than we remember boring things! •Use mnemonics (memory aids). Rearrange the information is a sequence that’s meaningful to you.
For example, if one wants to remember the notes of the treble clef lines in music, remember the mnemonic Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge = E, G, B, D, F. It’s much easier to remember a sentence than a series of random letters. You can also build a memory palace or Roman room to memorize lists like the thirteen original colonies in America, in chronological order. If the list is short, link the items together using an image in your mind. •Organize the information with a mind map. The end result of mapping should be a web-like structure of words and ideas that are somehow related in the writer’s mind. Use visualization skills. Construct a movie in your mind that illustrates the concept you’re trying to remember, and play it several times over. Imagine every little detail. Use your senses–how does it smell? look? feel? sound? taste? •Make a study sheet. Try and condense the information you will need into one sheet, or two if absolutely necessary. Bring it around with you and look at it whenever you have downtime during the days leading up to the test. If you type it up onto the computer, you can get a lot more control over your layout by changing font sizes, margin spaces, etc. • 11
Make it a group effort. Get some friends together–friends who are actually interested in studying, that is–and have everyone bring over their flash cards. Pass them around and quiz each other. If anyone is unclear on a concept, take turns explaining them to each other. Better yet, turn your study session into a game like Trivial Pursuit. •Exposure to new information (you give your attention to reading, a lecture, a video, an audio tape, a television program, a computer application, or a multimedia presentation) •Encoding information (you intend to remember it) •Storage (the brain remember it for later use) Retrieval (you pull it out of memory when you need the information) KEY POINTS If you don’t pay attention, you don’t learn. Your brain won’t remember things unless you tell it to do so. If you don’t mark the data as something to remember, it won’t go into memory (that’s why you underline or highlight written material, or make a mental note to remember something that is said, or write down important information). You learn best when you actively process incoming data (this means you need to be an active learner, thinking along with the speaker in a lecture, or following the main ideas of the author of a book).
You forget–not because it isn’t still in memory–but because you can’t retrieve it. Successful learners use strategies to encode their information so they can readily retrieve it. ________________________________________ Types of Learning Rote Memory – you learn by repeating something over and over again. Examples include reviewing flash cards, listening to something several times on a tape, writing something over and over, going over the words of a speech again and again. Associative Memory – you use mnemonic strategies to help you remember.
This includes anagrams or abbreviations, poems or jingles, picturing items in different locations in a garden or other familiar place, or making a word picture of the item, (so catabolize becomes cat • a ball • lies), or matching words with fingers and toes. Cognitive Mapping – forming a conceptual matrix for understanding. This is also called deep processing or mind-mapping. Superlearning – you use multi-sensory modalities, emotion and imagination to fix information into memory. This is usually done in a light state of hypnotic trance, called an alpha state.
KEY POINTS A lot of people use Rote Memory strategies to cram for a test. But Rote Memory is usually not retained for very long after you take your test. You typically forget this type of information unless you refresh it regularly. It’s good for learning multiplication tables, names of state capitals, and other factual information, but it isn’t helpful in trying to learn abstract, conceptual information. Associative memory strategies can help you retain information, but doesn’t help you really understand it.
Cognitive Mapping promotes genuine understanding, and allows you to retain information for a long time. Superlearning makes new information easier to grasp, but it is sometimes hard to retrieve information learned in an alpha state. ________________________________________ Tips for Successful Studying •Relax before tests, and get into a calm state of mind. Anxiety shuts down the cerebral cortex, and locks you into the flight-fright mode of your limbic system. You don’t think well in a state of panic, and you don’t remember well, either. •Get enough rest, so your mind is clear. Feed your brain before a test. Make sure you are getting sufficient choline and the other B-vitamins, phosphorus, essential fatty acids, good quality proteins and carbohydrates that are easily digestible. •Study regularly throughout the week, not just at the last minute. Cramming is not a successful strategy to do well on a test. •Put emotional problems out of your mind when you are in class, while studying and while test taking. Schedule time to think about your problems and work them out—just don’t do this during your learning time. •Have a regular, quiet place to study.
Organize your study materials. •Study with a group to go over the key concepts, and to quiz one another. •Protect your study time. Don’t allow others to distract you. •Don’t study with music, TV, or other noise in the background. It makes it harder to concentrate on your study material—and it may actively contaminate what you are trying to learn with extraneous, unrelated information. •Set goals for each study session. Review what you have learned before retiring. •Determine when is your best time to study. Try to study at those times if possible. Make study and learning a top priority. Say no to demands that take you away from studying. ________________________________________ Studying for Understanding When you study, study for mastery of the concepts of your topic. Start by having questions, by actively inquiring about your subject matter. You acquire knowledge by remembering information; understanding by seeing how this information fits together as a whole. Try asking questions like this as you do your study [We use as an example questions you may ask to study a Vocational Nursing textbook]: 1.
What is the purpose of this body system or body part? How does it affect the body as a whole? 2. What is the function of this body part or system? What do its constituent parts do? 3. What are the gross structures of this body part or system? What are its parts called? What are its microscopic parts? What important biochemical molecules does it secrete or produce? 4. What is healthy or ordered functioning of this body part? What major tests measure its functioning? What are normal ranges of these tests? 5. How does this body part or system interact with other body systems?
How do changes in the internal or external environment affect its functioning? 6. What are diseases or disordered functioning of this body part or system? 7. What tests or diagnostic procedures are used to determine the disease of this body part or system? 8. What medical procedures are used to restore normal functioning to this body part or system? 9. What medications are used to treat disease in this body part or system? 10. What nursing procedures will I use to help my patients get better? What are key points that I need to keep in mind to make sure my patient gets better? 11.
How can I specifically apply this material in my clinical experience as a CNA or VN? ________________________________________ Deep Processing Building a cognitive map will help you organize the data into understanding of the topic you are studying. It allows you to clearly explain the concept to others or write about it in an essay test. When you use Rote Memory or Associative Memory strategies, this may help you retain information to recognize it in a multiple-choice question, or to fill in a word on a short answer quiz, but it doesn’t give you a real understanding of your subject matter.
You gain understanding by actively questioning •gathering information to fill in the gaps in your knowledge •organizing your knowledge in a easily retrievable schema •reviewing the material you have learned to see if you truly grasp it •creating analogies to make the concept understandable to you •thinking about the topic to see if you can discover connections, similarities and differences Make Deep Processing, or acquisition of understanding, the primary goal of your studying.
Use Rote Memory and Associative Memory strategies to learn new vocabulary, names of medications and medical procedures, but use Deep Processing to understand why these procedures and medications are used, and how you will apply this knowledge to your job as a CNA or VN. [You can use a similar procedure to study your current study topic and apply it in whatever career you pursue. ] ________________________________________ Superlearning Superlearning begins with a deep fascination, an insatiable curiosity about the topic.
You wish to learn everything about it. You devour knowledge. You read multiple books. You think deeply and often about the material. In this heightened state of awareness, you begin to engage all of your senses, your imagination, with intense concentration. In Superlearning, you become one with the topic of your study. You don’t merely read or think about a red blood cell—you become a red blood cell. You see it, you hear it, you taste it, you smell it, and you feel it. You travel in the blood stream.
You feel what it feels like to incorporate an atom of oxygen, and release it across a capillary membrane. You feel how it is different to carry an atom of carbon dioxide. Insights pour into your mind during this heightened learning state. Your intuition becomes extremely penetrating. You understand systems from subatomic fields to the living organism, from environment to universe, as a seamless holism. East Indian philosophers have referred to this state of mind as Samadhi. Western philosophers have called it Illumination or Enlightenment.
It is a very ecstatic state of experience in which you acquire knowledge at an accelerated rate. Some people believe that by entering into a mild hypnotic state or alpha rhythm, that you can stimulate Superlearning. New multisensory teaching strategies also seek to evoke this heightened learning state. What is likely true about this state? Its profound insights may not be readily accessible in normal awareness. You cannot force or trick the mind into this mode. It usually arises as an intense, absorbing quest for knowledge. It is a highly creative, temporary
