Establish a learning habit

Whether you are learning a language, guitar or touch typing, it’s best to practice everyday—even if for just 15 minutes. It’s much better than doing two hours on the weekend. It’s easy to start with great goals of (for example) an hour a day, but that approach is almost guaranteed to fail. Life will happen!

One of the most popular ways of listening to English (and the most enjoyable!) is watching movies or TV shows, perhaps using the popular streaming services. If you’re not confident, listen to the English soundtrack with your native language in subtitles. The next stage is to have English subtitles and finally, no subtitles. Another method is to listen to podcasts on a subject that you’re interested in, or English language radio. Audiobooks can work well too—especially if you commute each day.

There is a huge selection of English fiction available both in print, online and downloadable onto a reader, tablet or laptop. Books, magazines, newspapers, online publications, and websites all have incredible amounts of material.

I encourage the reading of actual paper books for many reasons. Students of all levels will enjoy ‘The Little Prince’ by Antoine de Saint Exupéry and ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho. Other stories like these include,

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.

• The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway.

• Around the World in Eighty Days, by Jules Verne.

• Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

• Watership Down, by Richard Adams.

• Moby Dick, by Herman Melville.

As well as good practise for reading, all these classic books provide plenty of topics for discussion. A number of these stories have been made into movies.

You might also like to read non-fiction, although the vocabulary may be challenging. Whether you enjoy motor racing, travel, ballet or computer gaming, there is plenty to choose from!

Writing tends to be the least practised skill in English. However, those who need English for work will often need writing skills to send email, write reports, and make presentations. Students might need writing skills for assignments, notes, and theses. For these purposes, spell checkers such as that in MS Word and AI-driven aids, (such as Grammarly) are very useful and prevent most mistakes.

The possibilities of writing practice are endless. They range from writing a short, formal letter of complaint, or a poem, to an opinion piece, a personal journal, a book report and so on. If you’re interested in creative writing, check here for a list of useful podcasts—which are good listening practice as well!