How can you improve your language skills

How to Improve Foreign Language Skills: 20 Secrets to Find Balance and Build Fluency

If I asked you how many languages you speak fluently, what would your answer be?

Now, if I asked how many of those languages you write fluently, would your answer still be the same?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Just because someone can speak a language, it doesn’t always mean their reading and writing abilities are on par with their verbal communication skills.

Language proficiency is measured in several different ways.

In order for you to reach native-level fluency, you need to balance your time between all the foreign language skills.

Find out how to do that in this post!

Contents

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

What Are the 4 Foreign Language Skills?

The four language skills are speaking, listening, reading and writing, all of which are interconnected in some way, shape or form.

Here are the ways that these skills relate to each other:

Looking at all these different language skills, you might be wondering if it’s necessary to devote equal amounts of time to develop each one.

Because the whole point of learning a new language is to communicate, many linguists argue that speaking is the most critical language skill. This is often why active skills are highly emphasized in the beginning, with the development of passive skills following later in the language journey.

But does that mean you should only focus on speaking and listening? The answer is no.

Besides, language proficiency tests measure your ability in all four areas, so you’re really shooting yourself in the foot if don’t put any effort into developing your reading and writing skills.

Isn’t it difficult working on all four skills at the same time?

Remember that none of these skills are ever isolated—when you put in the work for one skill, you’re automatically improving another.

It also helps to diversify your learning activities for foreign language practice to minimize the boredom and frustration with repetitive exercises. The variety also takes away the monotony of studying.

As you move onto the intermediate and advanced levels of foreign language acquisition, you might start focusing on certain skills over others, depending on your endgame. It’s the difference between an aspiring interpreter and a striving translator, where the former would need to be a fluent speaker and listener, while the latter would need to be advanced in reading and writing.

Whatever your motivation may be, we’ve outlined all the best tips to develop all four foreign language skills.

How to Improve Speaking Skills in a Foreign Language

Speaking in a new language can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be! To boost your speed, confidence and overall fluency in speaking, keep the following tips in mind.

Improve Your Pronunciation and Accent

One of the biggest reasons why people feel uncomfortable when speaking in a new language is because they sound drastically different from natives. That discomfort goes away once you perfect your foreign language pronunciation.

It’s completely normal to sound awkward when you’re a beginner or an intermediate learner. To be honest, there are even advanced learners out there who still haven’t quite nailed their accents yet. Rather than obsessing over that awkwardness, put the work in to improve your accent. By taking the time and effort in refining your pronunciation, communication between you and native speakers will eventually improve, ultimately boosting your confidence in the language.

Therefore, don’t overlook those seemingly tiny pronunciation issues. Whether you need to learn how to roll your Rs or how to pronounce Chinese pinyin, acknowledge those issues and make a conscious effort to mimic the proper mouth and tongue movements for better pronunciation.

Find a Language Exchange Partner

If you aren’t ready to casually converse with native speakers or are too anxious to attend language meetups, find a language exchange partner instead. This language exchange partner could be a friend who happens to be a native or fluent speaker of your target language. It could also be a fellow learner interested in studying a language you’re proficient in.

Aside from meetups, you can search for a language partner online through language exchange websites and apps, perhaps participate in some language exchange on Skype. You can also go on WhatsApp for language exchange to connect with like-minded language learners.

The great thing about online interactions is that they take away the social anxiety of being face-to-face, allowing you to discuss a variety of language exchange topics without the stress of small talk.

If this type of social interaction is just not your thing, you can always find a language tutor to help you with speaking, in addition to the rest of the language skills.

Always Read Out Loud

Why only work on one language skill when you can kill two birds with one stone?

Reading is obviously a very important language skill. Though if you ask me, silently reading in your head is a missed opportunity for improving your verbal communication skills.

Whenever you find yourself reading any kind of text in your target language, say the words out loud! It doesn’t matter if you have a book in front of you or if you randomly spot a vocabulary sticker on your fridge—if you see words in your target language, vocalize them.

Volume isn’t totally necessary for this exercise. If you’d rather whisper because you’re reading in a public space, that’s totally fine. What’s important is that you practice the mouth movements to help you feel more comfortable when speaking in a foreign language.

Speak Often—and Make Mistakes!

If you want to know how to speak a language fluently, be vocal as often as possible. Any opportunity you have to speak in a foreign language, do so! Talk to fluent speakers, make those mistakes and learn from them.

And when you fumble on a word or translation, try your best to describe it in conversation rather than resorting back to English. By doing this, you stop translating in your head and start having a natural conversation instead of spitting out textbook responses. It’s achievements like these that push you closer towards language proficiency.

I should add that you don’t have to be with other people to practice speaking. In fact, when you’re on you’re own listening to or watching foreign media, you’re more than welcome to do language shadowing exercises to learn how to speak as naturally as the natives.

How to Improve Listening Skills in a Foreign Language

Your speaking ability depends on your listening, so let’s discover how to improve listening skills in a foreign language for better verbal communication.

Listen According to Your Interests

Listening may be a passive skill, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be an active listener.

Active listening requires you to be engaged with the audio. To make sure you pay attention during your listening activities, choose resources that you’re actually interested in. You’ll be more devoted to the content when you listen to language audiobooks that aren’t only appropriate to your level but also fall under genres that you genuinely enjoy.

The same goes for foreign language audio and video clips. When you listen to and watch foreign language videos that align with your interests, hobbies and whatnot, you tend to pick up new words and concepts quicker because you’re invested in the topic.

Whether you enjoy pop culture or like to keep up with the news, FluentU has an extensive library of authentic audio and video clips. On this platform, you get to learn languages through your interests, making your language learning journey entertaining yet educational.

Every video is equipped with both foreign language subtitles and English subtitles, so you have all the information you need for comprehension. In case you need more info, you can also click on individual words in the captions to read extended definitions and sentence examples.

You can start learning through your interests in ten different languages by signing up for a free trial.

Diversify Your Listening Resources

Podcasts and audiobooks are great and all, but they aren’t the only listening resources at your disposal. Don’t forget that while you’re watching foreign news and movies, you’re also listening to the language. Although some might consider those examples as unconventional ways to learn, you’d be surprised with how much you can pick up from unlikely sources, such as international films and foreign language cartoons.

Diversity keeps you on your toes, so don’t hesitate to branch out from podcasts to mix up your listening activities.

Don’t Forget about Passive Listening

Active listening is crucial for learning a new language. Arguably, so is passive listening.

Passive listening language learning is language immersion for the subconscious mind where you’re mentally disengaged with the audio. An example of this would be listening to foreign language audio for entertainment purposes or falling asleep to foreign language songs.

Although passive language listening is hotly debated as a method of learning, you can’t deny that it’s an effortless way to immerse yourself in the target language. By immersing your subconscious, you’re basically covering all the bases in order for your brain to retain the language.

Multitask!

Continuing the idea of mindless learning, our final tip on how to improve language listening skills is by putting on foreign music or language podcasts while carrying out other tasks, such as household chores, silent hobbies and workouts.

This isn’t a typical immersion language training technique per se, but if it allows you to learn outside of your designated study hours, why not give it a go? And on days where you’re too busy to squeeze in a quick study sesh, you can at least listen to a podcast while you’re driving, on a coffee break or even on the treadmill.

How to Improve Reading Skills in a Foreign Language

While language audiobooks are a godsend for learners on the go, they aren’t a substitute for the written literature. Reading, both foreign language e-books and books on paperback, broadens your understanding of the target language as you discover the subtleties between the written and spoken forms.

Take Advantage of Parallel Texts

Reading in a foreign language can sometimes be discouraging for language learners, especially for beginners. But you can’t really blame them, considering how much time it takes when you have to continually pause your reading to look up unknown words in a dictionary.

Thankfully, bilingual e-books exist for you to transport yourself into the world of foreign literature without having to toggle between the story and a dictionary. Additionally, parallel texts allow you to see how words interact with each other in a descriptive setting.

Parallel texts are perfect for both intensive and extensive reading purposes. For an intensive reading activity, treat each chapter as a lesson where you take notes on new vocabulary, grammar or syntax. Once you’ve got a good grasp on vocab and grammar, you can move onto extensive reading, which simply means reading for pleasure.

Read Like a Child

Need another less intimidating way to practice reading in a foreign language? Go for easy language books. You know, the ones that use simple language and are filled with tons of pictures.

That’s right. I’m talking about children’s books.

Dual language children’s books let you embrace your inner child, learning language basics in the most adorable, imaginative and uncomplicated context. In all honesty, learning a new language as an adult can be complex and boring at times. Thus, reading children’s stories helps you dial back on the seriousness of language acquisition. It also lets you have some fun with it.

Children’s literature is an escape and an easy way to track your progress. Just as teachers do in school, you can use graded readers to level up your reading and thinking skills in your target language.

Venture into Comic Books

Believe it or not, you don’t have to love superheroes or be a graphic novel collector to benefit from foreign language comics. In fact, comics are ideal for visual learners, as the graphics offer picture translations of the comic captions.

Comics are a quick read, yet they also can function as extensive reading activities for teaching language. Instead of immediately blitzing through the comics, read through them in two stages.

First, skip the pictures, skim through the captions for unknown vocabulary, do basic translations and make a prediction about the plot. Next, read through the story, compare it to your prediction was and then reflect on the story overall.

Read Literature You’ve Read Before

Bilingual parallel texts are blessings for language learners. But once you reach a certain stage of fluency, you need to progress from bilingual books and move on to foreign language reading material.

To ease the transition, don’t dive into the deep end with new literature. Instead, opt for stories and books that you’ve read before. That way, you don’t get lost in all the foreign words since you already know the plot of the text.

What if you want to read the news in your target language?

For news articles, one of the foreign language reading strategies you can implement is reading related articles in English beforehand. Doing so will provide you with contextual information needed to understand the foreign language headlines.

How to Improve Writing Skills in a Foreign Language

Lastly, let’s discuss the ways to enhance your writing skills.

Write by Hand Whenever You Can

Writing in a foreign language can be quite challenging, especially character-based languages such as Japanese or Mandarin Chinese. But whether your target language uses symbols or the Latin alphabet, the fastest way to improve your writing skills is simply writing by hand. There’s really no other way around it.

Because many of us are learning through our gadgets these days, it’s more important than ever to put a pen to paper as much as we can. Take all the chances you can to write things down. If you don’t have a pen and paper, just handwrite it on your phone’s notetaking app.

Now, improving your writing skills doesn’t mean you have to write an essay by hand every day. Daily writing exercises can be as small as jotting down a list of groceries or as extensive as writing a book review. It’s less about the word count of each writing exercise and more about the frequency of writing to build that muscle memory.

Keep a Journal

A language learning diary is an effective way to monitor your writing skills and generally very convenient for daily writing practice.

If you have no idea how to keep a language journal because you can’t even write full sentences in your target language just yet, that’s okay! The truth is that you don’t have to be fluent to keep a language journal. The earliest entries in a journal always begin as a tracker for new words you’ve learned in your lessons. Once you’ve obtained enough knowledge to formulate sentences, you can start using foreign language writing prompts to guide your entries.

When you’re comfortable enough with your writing skills, you can treat the language journal like a regular journal, sharing your daily thoughts, feelings, accomplishments and happenings in your target language instead of English!

Install Foreign Language Keyboards

This seems counterintuitive considering the emphasis on the physical act of writing in the first two tips. Let me explain.

In order to write in a foreign language, not only do you need to learn how to write by hand, but you also need to learn how to type in that language. Typing Cyrillic on your phone or computer is a completely different experience from typing in English.

Foreign language keyboards aren’t just about the symbols. Even if your target language does use the Latin alphabet, having that foreign language keyboard installed on your devices is still extremely helpful since it instantly detects the right spelling in that language.

Have a Native Speaker Provide Feedback

You could be writing every day. However, that daily foreign language writing practice wouldn’t be as productive without feedback.

Traditionally, feedback comes from language teachers and tutors. So what happens if you’re studying independently, with no authority figure to grade your assignments?

Text exchanges with a language partner would take care of that. If you want to go old-school, another option would be to have a foreign language penpal and communicate via snail mail. Whatever method you choose for feedback, be sure to pay attention to the colloquialisms in the correspondences and request for your language partner to mention any glaring mistakes in your writing.

How to Improve Grammar and Vocabulary in a Foreign Language

You don’t have to be a walking, talking thesaurus to communicate with native speakers of your target language. However, that doesn’t change the fact that your ability to communicate with them depends on your grammar and vocabulary knowledge.

Let’s face it. Without a strong grasp on vocab terms and sentence structures, your foreign language skills will never move beyond the beginner stage.

Vocabulary and grammar are the building blocks of language skills. Proficiency in those areas automatically improves reading and writing. Moreover, it increases your confidence in speaking and helps you recognize words and structures in conversations. Enhancing your grammar and vocabulary is critical for boosting foreign language skills, and there’s a myriad of language learning systems you can experiment with to help build that foundation.

Regardless of what language system you set up for yourself, make sure you keep these tips in mind.

Immerse Yourself in the Language

Language acquisition isn’t about adding another skill to your CV. To learn a new language means to open yourself up to an entirely new, unfamiliar world, as language intertwines with its country’s history, culture and social customs.

It’s essentially a lifestyle change because you can’t immerse yourself in the language without immersing yourself in the environment.

Think about how children learn a language. They learn it in school with teachers and friends, and they learn it at home with their parents. Children absorb new words and phrases quickly because they’re completely surrounded by the language. Immerse yourself likewise and you’ll be acquiring a language like them in no time.

Language immersion requires effort on your part. Luckily, this lifestyle change becomes more accessible when you have the right tools and resources to push you forward in your journey.

Apps like FluentU, which is stocked with real-world interactive videos, reveal the world your target language exists in, allowing you to learn the language in a natural context rather than through typical scripted phrases.

Try FluentU for FREE!

Turn Language Learning into a Game

Tests and quizzes totally take the fun out of learning a new language. Yes, assessments are necessary to see if you actually know your stuff, though why go with the common vocabulary quiz when you can challenge yourself with a game?

Foreign language games are board or card games that can be played with native speakers or fellow language learners. They’re also great as a family bonding activity if you’re learning a language together.

Games can also be a solo activity. There’s a whole collection of language learning video games and apps you can find online to fit your needs.

Watch Foreign Language Media

Don’t let a textbook or language course limit which words and grammar points you learn.

If you want to know which phrases are used in real life, you have to see how they’re used in a realistic setting. And what’s more realistic than foreign news, music, television shows and movies?

The truth of the matter is that foreign language media is one of the most underutilized secrets of grammar language learning.

If you’re wondering how to learn a language by watching movies, there are tons of ways to do so. You can watch dubbed versions of movies you’ve already seen, memorize songs from the soundtrack or change the captions on the streaming service to your target language.

Pressed for time or don’t have the patience for an entire movie? Another strategy is dividing the film into half-hour chunks, writing down new words and structures as you watch each segment. This also works well with television shows since episodes are much shorter. Ergo, they’re more digestible as vocabulary or grammar lessons.

Give Yourself a “Word of the Day”

To stay on top of vocab practice, make it a habit to learn one word a day.

By giving yourself this little language learning challenge, you’re turning passive vocabulary into active vocabulary. Rather than memorizing words on flashcards, you find ways to apply the new terms in your day-to-day. You can do this by incorporating your “word of the day” in conversations or in an entry in your language journal.

You don’t even need to read or write the word down, although it’s good practice to do so. Just thinking about the word is enough, given that you’re recalling the definitions and formulating sentences with the word in your head.

Wow, that was a lot to go through but so worth it! By separating the language skills, you have a better understanding of how to develop each on its own, as well as a skill in conjunction with another.

Now that you have all the tips and tricks to advance your foreign language skills, fluency is just around the corner! Just keep at it!

The Secret Power of the 4 English Language Skills: Speak, Write, Listen and Read Better with 19 Tips

Do you want to hear a secret?

Ready? Here are the four secrets to language learning:

Speaking, writing, listening and reading.

If you want to become fluent in English, you’ll need to work on all four skills:

Yes, you’ll need to improve all of these skills!

Because that’s the real secret here. If you know how to speak well but your listening skills are low, you won’t be able to have good conversations. Being a poor writer or reader shuts you out of most online communications and opportunities.

All four English language skills are incredibly important!

There’s good news, too: You’re probably already pretty good at one or two of the four skills.

Perhaps you’re a good listener. Or you’re confident when you speak about yourself. Maybe you’re creative and full of stories. Or perhaps, you simply enjoy reading them.

Either way, you’ll be better at some of the skills than others. And knowing what you’re good at and where you need to improve is very important: The quickest way to learn a language is to focus on your weaknesses and build on your strengths.

That’s where this post comes in.

In this post, I’ll discuss some tips, tricks and shortcuts that should help you read, write, speak and listen better in English in no time.

Read on and improve!

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

Improve Your English Language Skills: Getting Started

Learning a language takes a lot of courage and commitment, and the very fact that you’re reading this is proof that you have it in you. So, congratulations!

Before we move on to how to develop certain skills, you need to do some basic “homework.” You need to introspect—that is, think deeply about yourself, your skills and abilities, as well as what you hope to achieve by learning English.

So let’s get started.

The Secret Power of the 4 English Language Skills: Speak, Write, Listen and Read Better with 19 Tips

If you’re reading this, I hope you’ve already done the little homework that I suggested in the previous section. If not, take five to 10 minutes to do it, especially the first two points that I mentioned.

By this time, you should know exactly what your strengths and weaknesses are and your English proficiency level. And it doesn’t matter if you’re an amateur (a beginner) or an intermediate learner, because knowing where you already are is the best way to figure out where to go from here.

The tips below are sorted into four categories based on the four major English language skills: speaking, writing, reading and listening. Feel free to skip to the sections that apply most to you or read the entire post and make note of whatever advice you find useful.

Improve Every English Language Skill at Once!

Watch Authentic Videos on FluentU

The best way to learn a new language is to take an “immersive approach”—expose yourself as much as possible to the language and gradually figure things out on your own. FluentU is a learning app that’s exclusively designed around this idea.

FluentU takes authentic videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.

You can try FluentU for free for 2 weeks. Click here to check out the website or download the iOS app or Android app.

Try FluentU for FREE!

No matter what level you are, FluentU lets you improve your English language skills:

Give FluentU a try by downloading the app or checking it out in your browser. Try the free trial and enhance all four of the major English language skills!

Speak Better English Right from Home

Speaking fluently is one of the most useful skills, and if you’re a beginner or just shy, it may seem like an impossible task. But it’s not impossible! And with some practice, anyone can become a good speaker.

Having a personal tutor is a great idea if you’re really struggling (having trouble) but there are many other ways to improve your English speaking skills. Check out the tips below to get started!

Practice Asking and Answering Questions

Even native speakers can stumble when they’re not prepared to speak. This isn’t because we don’t know what to say, but rather because we’re unsure of how to say it.

Which is why understanding how sentences are formed is important, and you can start with the very basics: the order of words in a sentence.

And one easy way to practice basic sentence structure is by asking and answering questions.

As you may already know, questions in English usually begin with one of the 5 Ws: when, where, what, why, which (and sometimes, how). Questions also usually have part of the answer already in them.

For example, let’s say that you see this question:

“Who walks the dogs?”

To answer, you can just fill in the “who”:

“Leila walks the dog.”

Once you know how to form and answer questions, you can ask yourself questions and try answering them. Here are some ideas:

You’ll notice that the questions and answers get more complex as you go down our list. Asking and answering questions can get you used to the correct order of words that sounds natural.

For example, if you practice it enough times, you’ll start noticing that “In five years, I want to be a rockstar” (focus on “what”) has a slightly different meaning from “I want to be a rockstar in five years” (focus on “when”), and “I want to be in five years a rockstar” sounds just plain wrong and unnatural.

By memorizing the format of asking and answering questions, you’ll improve your grammar skills and help get more confident with your English speaking.

Once you become good at asking and answering questions, you’ll realize that interacting with people is often just a series of questions and answers. You can even try this with your family members and friends.

Which brings us to my next point:

Find a Study Partner to Speak With

Finding an online study partner shouldn’t be difficult if you know where to look. There are apps like HelloTalk or Tandem, where you can find native and other English speakers and practice speaking with them. Many of the users are up for a language exchange so you can teach them your mother tongue in exchange for learning English.

You can also do a quick search on Facebook for groups about English language learning and study partners. Just remember to be polite and give timely replies and you’ll soon find a lot of eager learners like you who might be willing to get on a Skype call and practice speaking in a safe, judgement-free environment.

Here are two links to get you started:

Learn the Most Common Phrases and Expressions Used in English Conversations

I know I spoke against memorizing earlier, but memorizing some things (like math formulas!) will help you a lot when you’re just getting started. Knowing how to greet friends and strangers, ask for help or any information—these are some things that you can learn in one sitting just by watching a video.

And memorizing these basic expressions by watching a video, will help you when you move on to more complicated stuff.

Just watching isn’t enough, though! Make sure you repeat the words out loud. Speak in front of a mirror. Record yourself. Practice with your new language partner.

The more you practice, the easier it’ll get to speak English without worry!

Get Perfect Pronunciation with a Voice-recognition App Like ELSA Speak

If you’re a non-native speaker, learning how to pronounce correctly using British or American English may not come naturally to you.

This is where an app like ELSA can be your best friend. ELSA uses the very best voice recognition technology to give instant feedback on your pronunciation. With over 1,200 lessons and an interactive dictionary, you can spend just 10 minutes a day on this app and see the results quickly.

Improve Your English Writing Skills with These Hacks

From my own experience, I can confirm that writing is a skill that improves only with practice. The more you write, the better you’ll get. But if writing as an activity doesn’t interest you much, maybe you can try one of the following approaches.

Keep a Diary

The surest way to build a writing habit is to keep a diary and write in it every day. Since a diary is personal, no one else will read it or judge you for your mistakes, so you can be completely free and write whatever you feel like.

You can write about what you did during the day, your favorite memories or something you’re looking forward to. And on days when you feel too tired to write, you can skip the paragraphs and make a list or two, instead.

If you’re still searching for ideas, check Daring to Live Fully’s journal prompts.

Use Grammarly

No one has perfect grammar (not even native speakers) and it’s perfectly normal to make grammatical mistakes. But there are ways to minimize the grammar mistakes you make while you write, and one of the best is Grammarly. You can install Grammarly on your web browser or your laptop and get instant checks of your grammar and punctuation and even feedback about why you’re wrong.

In short, you’ll get two major benefits:

Use the Hemingway App

Good writing is more than just the absence of grammar mistakes. You need to make sure that your writing is lucid, or easy to read and understand.

The Hemingway App helps you to do just that by telling you how “readable” something is. The app highlights all the words and sentences you need to change or modify in order to clarify your writing.

For instance, a purple highlight means that you should try to use a shorter word (the app even suggests synonyms!). Green and blue highlights mean you’re using passive voice and the too many adverbs, respectively. And a red highlight is a sign that your sentence is too dense and you should edit it for clarity.

It’s a fun and educational experience, so give it a try.

Try Writing Your Own Stories

Stories aren’t just entertainment—they help us make sense of the world. All of us have stories to tell, but we often don’t know how to express them. The easiest way to fix that is to read children’s books of fables and fairy tales and try writing your own.

You can use the same characters but change them in some way, or put them in a completely different situation. For example, what if Cinderella was a boy? Or what if another animal joined the race of the hare and tortoise?

Again, the goal is to improve your imagination and get you writing, so you don’t have to worry about how “correct” it all is. Besides, you won’t even be publishing them.

Eventually, you’ll be able to write your own stories and express your thoughts and views more clearly.

Fake It ‘Til You Make It

If you’ve joined a workplace, you may have to do a fair bit of professional writing, such as writing emails, memos, reports and the like. And it’s okay to be nervous if you don’t have experience.

You can get some help by looking up a template online for whatever you’re trying to write, and following the pattern to write your own. For example, here’s a template for an email! With enough practice, you’ll soon be able to start writing on your own without the templates.

Tune Your Ears for Listening to English

Being a good listener is a valuable skill because, unless we learn to listen well, we’ll never be able to understand the person we’re conversing with. The simplest method to test your listening skills is to listen to something, from a motivational talk to a catchy song, and then test how well you understood it.

There are a number of ways to do this. Here are some tips for learning to listen in English:

Solve Listening Comprehension Exercises

A reading comprehension exercise is one in which you read a passage and then answer questions that test your knowledge and understanding of what you’ve just read. In a listening comprehension exercise, as you might expect, you listen to the passage instead of reading it, which means you need to listen closely and remember the important details.

You can try the listening comprehension exercises at the British Council to get you started.

Or, any kind of English audio can help you improve your listening comprehension! How? Check out the next tip!

Listen to Podcasts and Watch Shows

The more English content you listen to or watch, the better. You’ll improve your language skills and learn about the finer points of English culture that you won’t ever find in a grammar textbook. It’s both entertaining and informative.

However, here’s a twist to make that activity even more interesting: Listen or watch something for 15-20 minutes, and then spend about five minutes summarizing it, either out loud or in writing.

If you’re not sure where to start, here are lists of some podcasts, audiobooks and TV shows that you can look into.

Be Aware of Pauses and Silences in Conversations

While you’re listening, don’t just listen to the words—pay attention to the pauses and silences in a conversation, too.

Often, silence can have a lot of meaning. Also, body language and facial expressions are just as important in showing meaning, almost as much as the words themselves.

In short, try to be more observant, attentive and patient whenever you’re listening.

Play Memory Games

There’s a lot to remember when you’re learning a new language. Memory games can help you remember important things by making the learning process fun!

For example, if you’re learning a list of words related to food, you can have a friend read out that list while you pay careful attention. Then, see how many items from the list you can remember—and gain a point for each correct item.

Alternatively, you (or you and a friend) can select a topic and come up with a word chain of related terms. For instance, if the topic is “clothes” and you begin with “dress,” you can follow it with “dress, jacket,” then “dress, jacket, gown” and so on.

Try Your Hand at Transcribing

Transcribing is where you listen to something and write it down, exactly as you heard it.

You can take any audio/video material and transcribe it. Or, you can even try taking notes while you’re listening to it—making you focus on both your writing and listening skills at the same time.

These exercises will also help you recognize the “keywords” or the main ideas, and that’ll help you understand the material better.

The Secret to Reading Faster and Understanding More

Getting into a regular habit of reading will help you for your entire life. You won’t only have a great vocabulary for any context, but you’ll also be a more knowledgeable and understanding human being.

If you still don’t know what to read, start by visiting FluentU’s English YouTube channel.

The channel takes English clips and transforms them into engaging language lessons. Additionally, it offers grammar and vocabulary videos, and also videos with tips on what to watch or read.

A perfect example is the following one, which includes the 21 best novels for learning English:

Subscribe to FluentU’s English YouTube channel and you’ll always have something to read (and watch!).

And now let’s have a look at some ways to make reading a habit.

Read the Newspaper Every Day

No, you don’t have to read the whole paper (although it’s amazing if you can do so), but do skim the headlines and try to read at least one or two full articles.

As you read the articles, underline unknown words and look up their meanings online or in a dictionary.

By reading the newspaper, you’ll be learning some new words but you’ll also be learning about current events (things that are happening right now in the world), culture and the issues that English-speaking readers find important.

Read Short Stories or Stories for Children

Reading an entire novel in English might seem scary, but you can always start with something small, like a story.

Children’s stories or short stories in general are usually fun, teach a lesson or two and are written using simple vocabulary, so even beginners can find a story that they can understand.

In fact, one of the best children’s stories for learning English is the worldwide bestselling book series “Harry Potter.”

As shown by the above video from FluentU’s YouTube channel, “Harry Potter” can be used to learn many different languages. “Harry Potter” was originally written in English, so you can use it to help you master the language.

This is because “Harry Potter” is available in many formats. For reading practice, simply pick up a copy of “Harry Potter” in English from your local bookstore or online. If you want listening practice, “Harry Potter” also has audiobooks. What about watching “Harry Potter?” Well, you can watch all eight movies with English subtitles or subtitles in your native language!

Check out the video for more “Harry Potter” learning hacks, and don’t forget to subscribe to the FluentU YouTube channel for more insightful language learning videos.

Try Speed Reading

This tip is especially for advanced learners who already have a good grasp on the English language but are keen to improve further. Once you’re comfortable with reading at your regular speed, you can challenge yourself to read faster.

Sometimes you need to read a lot in a short span of time. Speed-reading allows you to do that, but you need lots of practice to perfect it. By reading and understanding faster, you save yourself a lot of time and increase your focus. It also helps you pick out the most important information from whatever you’re reading, instead of focusing on small details or stopping to look up every word you don’t know.

There are many techniques for this. The simplest is to set a timer and skim over the text. You can also use your finger or a pointer (like a pen) to drag over the text as you read. Or, you can focus on the headings, the beginning and the ending of a body of text, since those areas cover the main points.

Here’s a quick hint: Try to silence the voice in your head that reads along with you and you’ll find yourself reading a lot faster!

To get an introduction to the topic as well as some links to the techniques I’ve mentioned, Life Hacker’s post about speed reading is a good place to start.

Solve Comprehension Exercises

Finally, to check if your reading and understanding skills have improved, try solving a few comprehension exercises online. Just choose the difficulty level and get going.

Solving a short comprehension exercise or two each week is a great way to watch your skills improve.

The secret is out! You now know the four major English language skills you should be targeting in your studies, and plenty of tips to help you do so.

We’re not saying it’s going to be easy. Learning a language takes a lot of patience, dedication and passion, but if you stick to it, the rewards are magnificent. Mastering English not only improves your job prospects, but it also opens up a whole new way of thinking, as well as connects you to over two billion people who also speak the same language.

And isn’t that a wonderful feeling?

Archita Mittra is a freelance writer, journalist, editor and educator. Feel free to check out her blog or contact her for freelancing/educational inquiries.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

My English Language

English Language Resources for EFL Students and Teachers

Improving Your English

How to improve your English

How can you improve your English language skills? This is the question most students ask at some point in their studies and there are many answers that are practical for English students of all abilities.

There are many ways to improve your knowledge of the English language, whether it is your English speaking skills you would like to work on, or need to further your reading, writing or listening skills.

Here are some useful ideas, methods, tips for improving your English:

Practice, practice and more practice!

It is true that the more you try to speak English the more you will naturally improve. Just by using the English language as much as possible, your fluency will rapidly develop.

Speak on the phone, write e-mails and letters, make lists, read as much as possible. Surround yourself with English!

Try learning just a handful of words a day and aim to use a new word every day in conversation with someone.

In this slow and steady way, fluency with the new word develops naturally and you are able to produce the word more and more quickly and accurately without much thought.

In order to chat with as many English people as possible, you need to try not to be self-conscious of your language usage. If you make mistakes – so what? Speak up, loud and proud!

People will be pleased to help you and flattered that you are making the effort to speak their language. Normally, you will be able to get your meaning across without perfect grammar and those you are speaking to will understand the gist of what you are trying to say.

Make contact with native English people

If you have friends who are English then speak with them about as many different topics as possible. The more diverse your subject matter, the wider the vocabulary you will develop.

Try mixing with different kinds of English people, those in different jobs and with diverse interests in order to expose yourself to wider varieties of vocabulary, accents and language usage.

Speak English whenever you can: in shops, at the pub, in a queue – seize your opportunity to communicate!

Watch English television

Many films are in English and this is a great place to start to listen to faster spoken sentences, colloquial expressions and accent varieties.

If the voices sound too fast, try using subtitles in English to help you follow the speech. Be aware of which English you are listening to though, as in many mainstream films you will be listening to American accents which are very different from British accents.

Television soaps are an excellent way to pick up idiomatic expressions and casual language usage, though these expressions often may not be ‘proper’ English!

Find a Good Dictionary

A good quality dictionary is vital for every language learner. To start with you will find a dual language dictionary more useful but as you improve your skills, a mono-lingual dictionary will be much better for your development.

This is because it will help you learn synonyms in addition to finding the meaning of your chosen word.

There are many excellent dictionaries available, including light and portable electronic dictionaries, such as those produced by language experts, Etaco. This company also makes translators for instant translation at the touch of a button. The current offers from Ectaco can be reached by clicking the image below:

Listen all you can to English language radio programmes, such as the discussions and stories on BBC radio 4. Song lyrics are also an excellent way of learning English idioms, slang and colloquial expressions (just don’t necessarily use these expressions in a formal situation or in an essay!)

Audio books put English into context in an interesting way and can be especially effective when used while reading the book yourself, letting you hear how the words are supposed to be pronounced.

Read newspapers

Read all the English text you can find. Newspapers are a good way of reading lots of smaller articles if you do not feel ready to tackle a book. The tabloid newspapers use more basic English vocabulary and sentence structures and will be easier to read than broadsheet newspapers.

Cartoons are a excellent way of involving humour in your English reading and offer visual clues to the text. Broadsheet newspaper cartoons often contain puns so are good ways of improving vocabulary and comprehension.

One on one practice with an experienced teacher of English language is one of the best ways that you can improve your English language skills.

Even though this can be quite expensive, the personal attention you will get means that you should improve more quickly than with a larger language class and any problem areas can be more quickly identified and tackled.

A teacher will teach you the proper way to use the language and personal lessons are especially useful when combined with these other improvement methods as any colloquial expressions you have learned can be discussed with your teacher.

You could also take online lessons using a company such as Preply, who can put you in touch with English tutors for online lessons wherever you are. All you need is an internet connection.

English writing skills can be improved by writing to an English person regularly. Perhaps you can find an English person who wants to learn your native language? You could both write half a letter in English and the other half in your native language and correct each other’s messages.

Exchanging letters, e-mails or chatting on instant messengers on the internet are great ways of making friends. You could also write Christmas cards and birthday cards and send postcards whenever you travel to somewhere new.

The messages from your English pen friend will expose you to new words and sentence structures which, as they are written down, you can then study at your leisure.

Your local library or citizens advice unit will have information on local groups who meet in an informal setting to practise their English language skills.

Many groups are for people from a specific country, perhaps your country has a language club in your current home town? If not, there will be similar communities online that you could join.

There are lots of other people wanting to practise English just like you – once you find them, you can help each other.

The goals and aims of the English language learner are crucial to the learning experience and its success. Why do you want to learn English?

If you keep this goal in mind when learning, you will find a strong motivation which will carry you through you studies to becoming a fluent English speaker. Read our tips to improve your language learning.

Find regular study time

Even if you are comfortable with using some aspects of English, it will always help to review old knowledge to consolidate phrases and grammar in your mind.

Finding regular times to study will encourage you to remember all the new things you have learned. Studying for twenty minutes three times a week is always better than two hours once a fortnight.

Combining new and old knowledge will help you to understand how words and grammar fits together and will help your fluency in the long run.

Regular study time also provides a backbone to your language development, putting it down on paper, structuring your knowledge, reviewing it and letting you see just how far you have come.

Making friends with native English speakers, whether British, American, Canadian, Australian or otherwise, will really help your English.

The chances are that you will be far better at speaking English than they will be at speaking your native language. This means you will be forced to use your English and, of course, this can only be good for developing your English language skills.

Even socialising online will improve your grammar and vocabulary and you could use a voice attachment or a verbal communication tool, such as Skype or Google Hangouts, for pronunciation practice.

If your language learning is not enjoyable then you will find it hard to be motivated. What do you find fun, amusing or fulfilling? Try to incorporate the English language into that.

If you like computer games, you could find an English language interactive adventure game where you have to understand and use instructions to play.

Alternatively, if you like cartoons, you could try reading them in English. Similarly, if you like comedy, watch English comedies or go to see a English comedian.

You can also play word-based board games, do crosswords, chat in internet chat rooms or read crime thrillers – whatever floats your boat, as long as it is in English!

It is important to regular, realistic targets. You might want to improve pronunciation one week, so work hard on that and by the following week you can be proud of your achievements.

You need to be clear of your goals and how you propose to achieve them. This will form a structure for your learning and therefore create a more confident and relaxed environment as you can see exactly where and how you are progressing.

It is always important to acknowledge the progress you are making. It is a big step to learn a new language and every further step you take is one bit closer to achieving your goals.

Think how much better you are at English now than a few months ago, or a year ago! Feel proud when you use that new piece of grammar correctly – your confidence will grow and you will feel even more motivated to improve.

Share your thoughts on improving your English skills

How do you like to use and improve your English?

Do you have any creative ideas for practising English in your daily life?

Which is the best way to improve your English skills?

Share your ideas in the comments box below!

How to improve your foreign-language skills

Investing your time into learning a language is never wasted effort. Being able to converse at business-level in a foreign language opens up a whole world of opportunities to you. Here’s how to improve your foreign-language skills:

Improve your grammar:

Read children’s books

Children’s books are designed to teach you the basics of the language, including vocabulary and grammar. They are a great way to learn how regular and irregular words function.

Expand what you read with different materials

Another way to improve your grammar skills is to pay attention to how writers use the language. Focusing on different styles of writing, such as classical, academic, biographies, storytelling, news articles and informal blogs will give you a different perspective on word order and tone of voice.

Spend time on homophones

It’s really important when you’ve mastered the basics of the language to delve deeper and learn the difference between some confusing words. In English, some of these include it’s vs its or there vs their. Swapping these words around is incorrect but the reader will still get the gist of what you’re saying, especially as many native speakers make these exact mistakes. Other confusing words hold different meanings and can change the message of your sentence.

Develop your vocabulary:

Make vocabulary part of your everyday world

Did you know that memory begins to fade after it’s formed and it could disappear completely if it isn’t part of your long-term memory? To ensure you retain all the vocabulary you’ve learnt, label things you see every day and say them out aloud. Connecting words to objects in real life will help you memorise those words.

Learn in context

The best way to improve your vocabulary is to learn individual words by putting them into sentences. Seeing words in context will give you more understanding about the word and its meaning.

Boost your reading comprehension:

Read on the go but also set aside specific time

If you’re lucky enough to study abroad surrounded by the language, then take the opportunity to read everything from the text on bus stops to the back of cereal boxes. If you aren’t exposed to the language 24/7 it’s important to set aside time to read. Find a cosy, quite spot where you can focus and get stuck in to your reading.

Read at your own pace

Read, re-read and re-read again. Sometimes you’re so busy reading the words and trying to understand them that you forget to concentrate on the story. Don’t stress trying to understand each word but rather focus on getting the gist per sentence, and don’t be afraid to re-read sentences, paragraphs and pages.

Improve your writing skills:

Write something every day

Take control and write your everyday tasks, reminders and shopping list in your new language. Working on it bit by bit each day means sentence structure will become second nature and help you build your confidence with writing.

Enhance your listening skills:

Watch movies in that language

Watching movies in another language is a great way to improve your listening skills. Start with subtitles in order to understand what they’re saying, and by hearing the same words over and over again you will eventually become familiar with what the different words mean.

Practise with natives and non-natives from different countries

Speaking to natives allows you to pick up nuances of the language and the correct pronunciation of words. Hearing the native accent and the speed at which they talk may prove difficult at first, but it will help your listening skills profoundly. On the other hand, talking to non-natives, preferably from a different country to you, who are learning the same language will pronounce words a bit differently, see it as an opportunity to improve your listening and speaking skills.

The importance of English is essential if you want to progress your career. Whether you are just starting out on your English language journey or wanting to go from proficient to fluent, why not invest in your future and study English. Learn with Kaplan International English and choose from over 35 English language schools across the world.

Related Posts

5 Essentials for your CV

When thinking of writing a CV for the first time, or even to update your old one, it can seem…

Your four day Easter weekend in London

Hallelujah! The four day Easter weekend is nearly upon us! If you haven’t made plans to escape the city and…

Inspiring lunchbox ideas

By Hannah Roberts Lunch, one of the three most important meals of the day and a dangerously easy way of…

How to Improve Your Language Skills While Studying Abroad

Learning a language is always challenging, but these tips and tricks will help with your language immersion while studying abroad.

No one dreams of being mediocre. No one grows up thinking, «One day, I’m going to be the 7th best.» No sir, Go Overseas’er! When you set out to learn a language, you want to LEARN it, gosh darn it. And while studying abroad, you want to make the absolute most of that precious precious language immersion.

These tips will really help you make that final feisty forge ahead to fluency and reach the next level of language acquisition!

You don’t want to stop at knowing how to order a coffee and saying hello to your neighbor. You want to soar past that language plateau and reach the next level of your language learning abroad. You want to get another ten steps closer to fluent.

Fortunately for you, these tips, compiled by yours truly and some Go Overseas friends, will really help you make that final feisty forge ahead to fluency and reach the next level of language acquisition! So let’s dig in, family:

1. Find yourself a «spot»

My favorite thing to do while studying abroad in Paris was to make myself a fly on the wall (or as Jenny Marshall puts it in her article about language learning hacks. «eavesdrop» *ahem ahem*).

2. Don’t give up and don’t translate

Cheaters never prosper and quitters never win. God, I sound like my mother. But maybe she was onto something?

But, and we get it, these ah-ha moments are taxing. It takes work to work through them. But resist cheating (i.e. translating or looking up a word in a dictionary rather than trying to figure out another way to say what you want) or quitting (i.e. defaulting back to English). Work through these challenging moments!

Because look here: If you constantly give up when these moments happen, if you reach for your dictionary or you give up and say «¿INGLES?», you rob your brain of these chances! You steal from yourself another opportunity to let a new neurological root take hold. And I for one will not tolerate thieves!

If you’re trying out something new, it’s more likely to stick in your brain for future reference if you had to figure it out yourself. Furthermore, those challenging moments, or embarrassing mistakes are memorable. And you’re more likely to remember language learned in a memorable moment. So even if it’s scary, don’t give up! Be the weird foreigner who says «you go supermarket, no?» and be OK with it!

And trust me, I know this is easier said than done. Along with a lot of other hurdles, I had a problem with pride when I first started studying French. I didn’t want to be laughed at for struggling, I wanted to be suave and fluent and fit in. I wanted that, but it did not happen at first.

I struggled, and you know what? Nobody laughed. Nobody made fun. People were helpful (if maybe a little confused sometimes), I was able to work out ways to make myself understood.

So please, when you see that look in the listener’s eye that tells you you’re losing them, don’t give up! Try it another way! Heck, try saying it backward, maybe that’s the problem! But do not give up. Do not default to English (or whatever your native language may be). You’re working out your language brain, and it’s these reps that count.

3. Use new vocabulary whenever possible

Friend of the site Marc Richardson, who studied Arabic in Amman, Jordan with CIEE, says his best tip to take your language learning to the next level is to try to use the vocabulary you learn as soon as you can.

«If I learned five new words in class, I tried to find occasion to use them as soon as I could, even if it meant wording things strangely sometimes.» Marc says. He also advises that you should always keep checking in on your old tried-and-true vocabulary, but «the sooner you can file it away in your permanent memory, the sooner you can ‘set it and forget it’ and recall it on demand.«

By employing new vocabulary immediately, and learning when it was to be used and when it was not, I found my language acquisition ramping up a notch.

My experience was the same. In addition to storing it in your memory sooner, having a healthy arsenal of synonyms is what separates a comfortable speaker from an uncomfortable one. So if you learn a new word, don’t dismiss it as «just another way to say a word I already know.» One day you’re going to forget that one word you know, or you’re going to want to make a double-entendre pun, and you’ll be all out of luck.

Especially in languages vastly unlike your own, this can be very helpful. I struggled with Mandarin because to my Western ear, a lot of the vocabulary sounded similar. By employing it immediately, and learning when it was to be used and when it was not, I found my language acquisition ramping up a notch.

4. Learn «language chunks»

By learning language in chunks you:

5. Make language learning entertaining!

We all get bored, but we don’t have to get bored while learning a language. After all, you’re immersed in the language, not just sitting in a classroom all day. More importantly, you’re constantly exposed to your new language through entertainment and by consuming entertainment in your host language, you maintain that important immersion that we’re always harping about here.

Taking the Metro to class in the morning? Why not fill your iPod with local music! I found myself rapping French hip-hop to myself on my way to the Sorbonne, and by the time I got off the train, my brain was already in le mode du français.

On the weekends, gather some of your new study abroad friends and go check out a movie. Many Hollywood films abroad will either be dubbed in the local language or subtitled in it, so you will have a valuable chance to match up dialogue and vocabulary you already know in your native language to your second language. How else would you learn how to say «Get to the chopper!» in Thai? (Also, you’re totally going to need to use that all. the. time.)

Live events help, too. Go to a soccer game (okay, okay, «futbol») and learn some Spanish chants. Go to a concert and hear how crowds around the world scream for more. Local theatre can also be an out-of-this-world, but in-this-culture way to immerse yourself in the local language and watch your own understanding grow.

So there you have it. If you’re serious about taking your language acquisition skills to the next level, and crossing that final bridge from proficiency to fluency, these tips can help you maintain immersion, help your brain make new connections, and help your talented tongue dance its way into a new world of language. So from all of us at Go Overseas, BONNE CHANCE!