Advice to improve your English language skills

It is a popular question asked of teachers and native speakers alike – “How can I improve my English?”  Well in this issue of istudent we will give some simple and cheap ways to improve your skills in English.

READING

First, let’s look at reading skills. Reading can be a difficult skill to improve in any language. For most people it is not something we do everyday. Unfortunately the only real way to improve your reading skills is to READ!! But what to read?

There are two answers to this question. Read what you know – this means read a book that you have read before in your first language.  This is an especially useful activity to do for learning new vocabulary without having to use a dictionary every 5 seconds. By reading a story that you already know will help you to relax and guess unknown vocabulary better as you know what happens already.

The second piece of advice is to read what you love. Are you interested in fashion, cars or science? Then find texts on the subjects you love. This will keep you motivated and makes it easier once again to guess the meaning of those annoying words we don’t know.

So where to get these texts? There are many good book stores and newsagencies that sell texts on a variety of subjects, but this may not be the cheapest option. Why not join your local library? Most libraries are free to join and you can borrow up to 10 books/magazines/newspapers at a time.

If you’d like to own books try second hand shops like St Vincent de Paul’s and look out for second hand book fares where you can pick up books for as little as 20 cents!

LISTENING

Another really important skill when learning a new language is the ability to understand what people say to you. Listening and understanding can be a difficult skill to master, especially in telephone conversations.

One fun way to improve your skills is to listen to songs in English. Find an artist or band you really enjoy listening to. Listen to their songs first without knowing the lyrics and try to get the message of the song. Sing-along if you want to also! When you have heard the song a few times check the lyrics to see how much you understood. This can very funny to see how many words you misheard but also trains you ears to hear new words. 

A very cheap and easy way to improve listening skills is to just turn on the radio. There are a few studies that show that by passively listening to a language greatly improves a person’s ability to recognise more words. Just put the radio on in the background when you’re studying, on a bus or doing housework. After a few weeks you will be able to tune in and understand what is being said.

Another cheap and easy way to improve listening skills is to watch television. Like reading, a good idea is to watch television shows you have seen in your home country and watch the same episodes in English. This will make it easier for you to follow the storyline as you know what is happening. This will allow you to learn how intonation can influence the message in the speech. Make it more fun by grabbing some friends and watching the shows together and discussing the things you didn’t understand and help each other to improve faster.

WRITING

Yes writing is a difficult skill to improve especially as English spelling is so crazy! Unfortunately, the only real way to improve your writing is to write!  Practise writing things you may need to write such as letters, essays and reports. There are many websites that give tips and key phrases to use in these text types. Also, libraries and bookshops can also help you improve as there are many books on how to improve writing skills.

In fact, believe it or not just reading will also help you to improve your writing as you are exposed to a lot of grammatical structures and can copy common phrases.

Joining a class could be a way to improve your writing if you can afford it. This is a really good way to have someone you can trust to check your mistakes and give specific advice on how to improve.

If you don’t want to join a class, get someone you can trust to check your writing, such as a friend who is a native speaker or an old teacher you have kept in contact with. Remember reading can also be very useful for looking at good examples of writing as well as learning key phrases and how words are used.

SPEAKING

Last but not least, speaking is an essential skill to learn. After all we learn language in order to communicate, and speaking is the main way we do it!

Classes can be expensive and very few only focus on speaking skills so they can be a waste of money.

Many students work, so why not use your workplace as a place to improve your speaking skills. At work we can learn key vocabulary important to our jobs as well as being a really good place to learn informal language. Don’t be afraid to ask your fellow workmates “what does that mean?” or “How can I say…?” You will be surprised how happy people are to help you.

Another excellent way to improve your speaking skills and learn exactly what you would like to learn is private one-on-one lessons. These can be expensive however, so find someone you like or know is a good teacher, so you don’t waste time or money.

One excellent and very cheap alternative is exchange lessons. How an exchange lesson works is two people help each other.  For example, you are a native Korean speaker wanting to learn English better so you find a native English speaker who wants to learn Korean better. You may post an ad on a website like gumtree or put up a poster at universities or TAFE asking to exchange Korean for English. Before you know it you a 30 minute to 1 hour lesson for the price of a coffee!

A warning though. It is important to meet in a safe and public place such as a café. Don’t go to strangers houses! This may also be a great way to make friends or make contacts with native speakers.

Well, we hope this has given you some ideas to help you improve your skills in English. As English isn’t such an easy language to learn it really does pay to do a little to improve a lot.

Suggested bookshops

Abbey's Bookshop

131 York Street

Sydney NSW 2000

Dymocks Sydney

424 George Street,

Sydney NSW 2000

Suggested libraries

State Library of New South Wales

Macquarie Street, Sydney NSW 2000

Sydney City Library

 456 Kent St, Sydney NSW 2000

Suggested Second Hand Shops