How to improve your english

How to Perfect Your English

This article was co-authored by Alicia Oglesby. Alicia Oglesby is a Professional School Counselor and the Director of School and College Counseling at Bishop McNamara High School outside of Washington DC. With over ten years of experience in counseling, Alicia specializes in academic advising, social-emotional skills, and career counseling. Alicia holds a BS in Psychology from Howard University and a Master’s in Clinical Counseling and Applied Psychology from Chestnut Hill College. She also studied Race and Mental Health at Virginia Tech. Alicia holds Professional School Counseling Certifications in both Washington DC and Pennsylvania. She has created a college counseling program in its entirety and developed five programs focused on application workshops, parent information workshops, essay writing collaborative, peer-reviewed application activities, and financial aid literacy events.

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English is a difficult language to learn and even more so to speak with native fluency. By immersing yourself in the language, using media to practice, and enhancing your appearance as a native speaker, you can perfect your ability to speak English in no time.

How to Improve Your English with 7 Fun Activities

Learning a language completely on my own taught me a very important secret.

And I’m sharing it with you.

A language is so much more than just its grammatical rules and basic vocabulary.

Knowing a language well means understanding a whole new culture and learning to see things from a very different perspective.

A textbook alone won’t be able to teach you how natives speak. Certain expressions—be it slang words or gestures—have meanings that you may be unaware of unless you’ve been heavily exposed to the language.

With English, it’s no different.

So if you’re keen (eagerly wanting) to improve your English, there are some very simple things you can do to help you sound like a native in no time.

In this post, I’ll talk about seven simple steps you can take to step up your learning game.

Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced learner, you’re sure to find these tips helpful and use them to develop healthy learning habits.

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What You Should Already Be Doing to Learn English

Most of the activities listed in these seven steps to improve your English are meant to supplement a learning program. They’ll help you more if you already have some grasp of the basics of the language.

Below are some things you should already be doing.

Already doing the above things? Then, it’s time for seven steps to improve your English!

How to Improve Your English in 7 Simple Steps

Learning a language has several aspects (parts) to it.

The most important ones are speaking, listening, reading and writing.

Some of us are weak in certain areas and stronger in others. Therefore, participating in activities that cover all of these aspects is crucial to becoming fluent in English.

And now, if you do some or all of the seven following activities diligently (constantly and with effort), you will surely become a fast and confident learner!

1. Find English Speakers and Practice Your Communication Skills

Reading language textbooks and checking out pronunciation guides are important, but they won’t always help you speak English.

Finding a teacher, a study buddy or, even better, a native speaker to practice your English with is vital.

For Beginners: Use Websites That Provide English Tutors

There are several websites and platforms that provide on-demand language tutors to those who need it. You’ll have a personal mentor who will conduct regular classes over Skype or video call and teach you how to speak English.

This is particularly useful for beginners who don’t have access to the right offline resources or local classes in their neighborhood.

A good site for an online English tutor is Verbling, where you can look for teachers based on your schedule and budget.

Verbling is a virtual platform that connects learners with professional teachers. With teachers all over the world, you can always find someone to tutor you at any hour. Browse through teachers’ profiles to see how much they charge, their previous ratings, how long their lessons last and more.

This allows you to pick a teacher that’s totally right for you and your learning style.

For Intermediate Learners: Use Social Apps Like HelloTalk and Tandem

There are specific apps designed to help people learn or teach a language. Some of the more popular ones are HelloTalk and Tandem, among others.

Both of these are free. You just need to create an account and you’ll be connected to English speakers in no time.

Moreover, you can also volunteer to teach your own native language to other people, making it a fair exchange.

For Advanced Learners: Find Relevant Servers on Discord

If you already have a reasonable command over the language, it will be even better for you to find people with whom you can talk about topics you’re passionate about, such as video games, movies and politics.

Discord is the perfect platform where you can join “servers,” or groups, and talk to multiple people over text, voice or video about interesting topics.

You can browse websites like Tumblr and Reddit for links to relevant servers, join them and meet new people!

2. Challenge Yourself to Learn Difficult Words

The more words and idioms you know, the better you’ll be able to express yourself. No matter what level you’re at, improving your vocabulary is a must.

For Beginners: Play “Scrabble” with Friends and Study Partners

Word games are much more fun than simply memorizing vocabulary lists. When you’re starting out, playing simple games like “Scrabble” will not only help you learn new words but also make friends.

If you have an offline study group, grab Scrabble and spend a few hours playing the game.

You can also look for online multi-player options, such as “Words With Friends,” and play with English-speaking strangers online.

For Intermediate Learners: Try Innovative Word Games Like “Catena”

If you’re bored with traditional word games like Scrabble, it’s time to play something new like “Catena.”

In this game, you have to form words using the last few letters of the previous word, while following certain rules. For instance, if the word is “permanent,” your next word could be “entertaining,” and so on.

The game has different difficulty levels and options to even play with online folks!

For Advanced Learners: Use Vocabulary Lists Containing Difficult Words

For those who are seriously interested in improving their vocabulary, a quick way to do so is to memorize lists.

Take a few words at a time, understand their meanings and try to use them as often as you can.

Here’s an advanced vocabulary list to get you started.

3. Listen to English Audiobooks and Podcasts

Learning to read in a new language doesn’t take up too much time, but listening to native speakers and understanding what they’re saying might get tricky.

This is especially true when you face trouble with accents, pronunciation and voice modulation (pitch, volume and intonation).

However, there’s an easy remedy for that!

For Beginners: Listen to English Short Stories

The more you expose yourself to English, the better off you’ll be.

As a beginner, it’s an excellent idea to start out by listening to short stories in English, such as fairy tales and children’s stories. You’ll not only get a sense of how people talk, but also learn about sentence construction and presentation.

And, these will come in handy when you’re introducing yourself, sharing an anecdote (story) or narrating an incident to your friends and co-workers.

Storynory and Agendaweb have some great resources to start out with!

For Intermediate Learners: Try Popular Podcasts While You’re Traveling

Once you’ve familiarized yourself with English, you might want to make listening to it a daily habit. You can easily do this by listening to podcasts.

There are thousands of podcasts out there, and you can subscribe to them based on your interests. Plus, you can try out podcasts that are only 15-20 minutes long and spend the time when you’re traveling to work listening to them.

You can check out “Lore”—a personal favorite of mine—where the narrator discusses the historical details behind a particular folktale or superstition. It’s pretty grisly (scary/gruesome), entertaining and informative, and it’s the perfect tool to make language learning fun.

For Advanced Learners: Try Novels in the Form of Audiobooks

Once you’re confident that your listening skills are pretty good and you’ve amassed quite a large vocabulary, you can try listening to entire English novels.

This will train you to pay attention to long narratives, understand how different characters and storylines interact and teach you a lot about how English works and how people use it.

A single novel can sometimes teach you much more than a semester’s worth of class!

If you’re looking to download audiobooks for free, Open Culture, an educational media site, has over 1,000 titles listed!

4. Watch a Long-Running Show, Preferably Without Subtitles

Watching television isn’t a waste of time.

Not only does it provide entertainment, but you also get to watch people speak English and pick up on things like body language, facial cues, flirting and so on.

For Beginners: Watch “Doctor Who,” “Good Omens” or “Sherlock”

There’s plenty of good stuff in British dramatic television.

You can start off with something short like “Good Omens,” which only has six episodes, or “Sherlock,” which is only a few seasons long. Try to watch them without subtitles, but do turn the subtitles on if it gets difficult.

And, to make it a regular habit, try watching a long-running television show like “Doctor Who.”

By watching just one episode a day, you’ll have something fun to look forward to that also doubles as an English lesson.

For Intermediate Learners: Watch YouTube Channels or Web Series

If television isn’t your cup of tea (if you don’t like it), you can also check out educational YouTube channels, like Crash Course, where you can learn a lot in a particular subject, such as astronomy, psychology or gaming.

Or, try The Nerdwriter, which provides insightful analyses (studies) about pop culture and forces you to develop your critical thinking skills.

You can even check out a web series like “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries,“ a modern-day adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel, “Pride and Prejudice.”

For Advanced Learners: Watch “Game of Thrones” or “House of Cards”

Finally, you can also check out long-running television shows with several characters and multiple complex storylines, which will build on your English comprehension skills.

If you enjoy medieval/high fantasy, then check out “Game of Thrones.” Or, if you’re up for contemporary politics, watch “House of Cards.”

As an added challenge, watch them without subtitles!

5. Read News Websites and Journals

If you already develop a habit of reading, then learning English becomes much easier.

However, as a language learner, you may not always have enough time to finish long storybooks, so here are some useful alternatives.

For Beginners: Follow the BBC for News

Staying up to date on world affairs is pretty important, and a good site to follow is the BBC.

The BBC covers news of all kinds, including international, travel, sports and cultural news.

Reading short news reports every day will also help develop your writing skills and teach you how to present relevant information in a brief manner.

For Intermediate Learners: Read Magazines Like The New Yorker

Magazines like The New Yorker are famous for their editorials and cultural criticism.

Their essays, articles and cartoons will encourage you to think about important issues in a new way and inform you about things of which you may have been unaware.

At the same time, you’ll be improving your English comprehension and writing skills.

For Advanced Learners: Read Magazines Like The Paris Review

For those who’ve always enjoyed reading or writing stories and poems, following a literary magazine, such as The Paris Review, is vital to develop your skills further.

You’ll get a taste of the very best of contemporary fiction and poetry, read in-depth interviews with authors you admire and discover new writers to read and learn from.

Moreover, you’ll learn to appreciate the English language in a drastically (extremely) new way and become a more creative person.

6. Look for MOOCs in Specialized Areas to Fine-tune Your Skills

Massive Open Online Courses—or MOOCs, as they are commonly called—are a great way to get access to educational resources provided, mostly for free, by some of the world’s best universities.

The best part is that you can choose courses in areas that you’re weak in and improve upon them.

For Beginners: Improve Your English Communication Skills with a Specialization on Coursera

Developing decent communication skills is very important when you’re learning a language, and if you’re a beginner, then this course on Coursera is a one-stop answer to all your needs.

It will teach you how to speak professionally, whether over the phone or in person, build a portfolio and even write official emails in English.

Taught by faculty from the Georgia Institute of Technology, this course will take approximately five months to finish.

Coursera is an educational platform that offers courses and specializations from top universities all around the world. You can either take courses for free or pay to receive a certificate at the end of your training.

Courses are taught by highly-qualified professionals and are 100% online so you can take them from anywhere.

For Intermediate Learners: Try Upper-intermediate English on edX

If you’re learning English to get a job or communicate effectively in the workplace, this course on edX, an education platform, is a must. It will provide a lot of practical tips on how to navigate an increasingly globalized world.

From preparing for an interview to writing formal letters, this is a good course that promises to improve your language skills.

Additionally, the course includes materials and suggestions for those looking to pass the Cambridge University First Certificate in English Examination (FCE).

For Advanced Learners: Try an Advanced Grammar and Punctuation Specialization on Coursera

English Grammar can get pretty confusing, and there are so many advanced rules that students are unaware of and only gradually learn.

Fortunately, there’s an amazing course on Coursera for non-native speakers that focuses on advanced topics, such as conditionals and noun clauses.

You’ll learn how to form complex and grammatically-correct sentences without any fear and gain more confidence in your English abilities.

And, if you devote just five hours a week, you’ll complete the advanced grammar and punctuation course in only five months.

7. Keep a Diary

From my own experience, I can tell you how keeping a diary and regularly writing in it has helped me be a better writer and a more self-aware person.

And, if you’re keen on improving your English writing skills, why not keep a journal?

For Beginners: Use Writing Prompts

Most people are frightened at the very prospect (idea) of filling up a blank page. They think they don’t know how to write when actually the problem is they have no idea what to write about.

The best remedy in such a case is to pick a topic and simply begin writing.

So, if you’re looking for ideas, here’s a prompt list to get you started writing about your personal life in English.

Write a paragraph or two a day before taking on something more challenging.

For Intermediate Learners: Check for Errors Using Grammarly Premium

Grammarly is one of the best free spell-checking programs out there, but they also have a Premium version with super helpful features.

If you’ve already made writing a regular habit and you’re keen to write in a lucid (understandable) and concise way that’s also free of grammatical errors, then you should check out Grammarly’s Premium plans.

A Premium account comes with a plagiarism detector, genre-specific writing checks and even vocabulary enhancement suggestions. If your professional life involves a lot of English writing, this is a must-have tool.

Whether you use Grammarly’s free option or pay for the Premium plan, this program will make sure your writing is free of spelling mistakes and typos and that it sounds great.

For Advanced Learners: Use the Hemingway Editor

Famous American writer Ernest Hemingway was well-known for his lucid, brief and immensely thought-provoking short stories. One of his most popular sayings to writers was, “Write drunk. Edit sober.”

If you’re serious about writing in English, then you must realize that editing forms a very big part of it. And, since professional editors are pretty expensive to hire, you can use this brilliant app called the Hemingway Editor.

The app will make your writing more readable by color-coding it, with different colors offering different suggestions regarding the use of adverbs, passive voice, alternative words and so on.

These seven steps are just a starting point—feel free to branch out and try new things!

The important lesson to keep in mind is to create variety in your learning routine. It will keep things engaging and challenging.

And, the more interested you are the more effort you’ll put in to learn. So, be dedicated in your studies and have fun while you’re at it. You’ll be fluent in English in no time!

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)

15 best tips for improving english quickly and easily [FULL GUIDE]

We will help you with tips on how to improve English quickly and easily. These days we are so busy with work, children, shopping, running errands, making time for friends, visiting family, etc., and we all want to know the easiest, quickest, and most effective way to improve English. But when do we have time to sit down and improve a language? Check out some tips on how to improve English quickly and easily.

Set aside time each day

First and foremost, realistically, you have to spend time every week studying English, even if it is only a few minutes a day. My advice for improving vocabulary is very easy. See point 2.

What is your English level?
Take our short English test to find out.

Improve 4 English words every morning

Every morning think of four words in your language that you don’t know in English and write them down in a notebook. Even before you grab your cup of coffee, use a dictionary or the Internet to look up the meaning of the English words. These will be your vocabulary for the day. You have to repeat the words throughout the day. Carry the notebook with you, in your car, in your bag, on your desk, always have it at hand! Easy – and it only takes a few minutes a day. Learning four new English words a day means a total of 28 new words a week. And don’t worry if you’re not entirely sure you’re using the words correctly, it’s about at least exposing yourself to new vocabulary.

Are you a morning or evening person?

Do you work better at night or in the morning? Decide when you are best placed to improve English easily and choose the time that works best for you.

Find your best way of improving

Normally a child improves surrounded by his or her mother tongue, experiences linguistic immersion and gradually, over the years, improves different aspects of his or her language. They learn to read, write, listen and speak. Some things will be easier than others, but all of them are very important. So to improve English quickly and easily, think about how much it helped you to improve your own language – reading, writing and speaking – and try to remember which method was easiest for you. For example, if you found it easy to improve by reading at school, try to find easy English books to read and build your confidence, vocabulary and comprehension. Or if you enjoyed grammar, do online grammar activities with EF English Live.

Find guidelines to follow and improve English

For example in the pronunciation of English such as ‘what, where, ‘when’, ‘the cat, sat on the mat’, or in the conjugation of verbs such as ‘go, going, gone’. Go from easy to difficult, although sometimes it is good to challenge yourself as trying to express something more complicated will motivate you to improve even more. When you are improving your English vocabulary, associate the word with a picture in your head. For example, for the ‘flower’ picture a beautiful plant growing, while you might think of someone using ‘flour’ to make bread.

Study before every English class easily

My next tip is to research the topic of your next online English lesson. Impress your teacher by knowing the related vocabulary or you may have found questions you want to ask. Try logging on to your computer 10 minutes before class and prepare your head for English. Reading about the topic in advance can help you prepare for class and allow you to express yourself better. Of course, our EF English Live teachers are there to help you understand and practise with you, but spending a little time beforehand to prepare won’t do you any harm.

Change teachers in EF English Live classes.

Speaking of accents, can you imagine speaking only with teachers from America or Australia? I know that some students feel comfortable with certain teachers or accents, but this can mean limiting your oral competence in the future. It’s a good idea to change teachers so that you hear what English sounds like all over the world.

Listen to what others in the class say.

During group lessons, some students turn down the volume of their classmates until it’s their turn to speak. Not a good idea! Listen to what others say. First, they may make mistakes that you make too and you can both improve when the teacher corrects them. Second, English is universal. You have to get used to hearing it from people all over the world. A French person speaking English may sound different from a Chinese person. English is the language of the world, so it’s important to understand the variations.

Review the lesson and notes after each class.

At the end of the lesson, don’t forget to review the slides and vocabulary or re-read the notes for corrections. If there are words you don’t know, write them down and review them later. The next day you should try to revise by writing down what you have improved or talking to someone about the lesson in English.

Watch movies or series and listen to music in English

Find as many opportunities as possible to listen to the language you are improving. If you live in a country where English-language channels are on TV, tune in! If you have homework to do at home, leave the TV on in the background. Even if you don’t realise it, your brain is absorbing the language. On the other hand, it’s easy to watch a film online as many times as you want with subtitles to check the meaning with Netflix. Or choose action movies where the story is easier to understand. Then read a synopsis to see if you understood what happened. You can even try writing a review of the film. Listening to music in English, audiobooks or podcasts is also a great option. You can do this in your spare time while cleaning at home or on your way to work. Even if you don’t understand everything, you will be exposed to English and your listening skills will gradually develop.

Use the EF English Live app

Mobile technology provides us with the opportunity to overcome this time deficit by turning “idle time” into “useful time”. In my case, my tablet gives me access to three or four more productive hours a week, without taking away from sleep, family, etc. With my tablet, I can now do something useful while waiting for the bus, travelling by train or finishing my after-lunch coffee. If I have to wait 30 minutes here or there between meetings, my tablet makes it easy for me to accomplish something interesting and valuable without stress. There are many gaps in life that we can fill with useful tasks if the necessary technology is portable and always accessible. That’s why we’ve made EF English Live portable. The number 1 goal of our virtual English language school has always been to find ways to make improving English online easier and more convenient. That’s why now, in addition to our new and improved content, easy level progression, and access to more group classes every day, EF English Live is now available for iPad® and Android tablets.

Meet fellow students at EF English Live

Organise a time every week in English. Meet up to chat and talk but you can only speak in English.

Arrange one hour a week of English with your family.

Or make an agreement with your family that Saturday breakfast will be your time in English so that everyone will improve English and benefit from your lessons!

Try to think in English

Possibly my favourite English improving tip is to think in English. Yes, you heard me right, try thinking in English. No matter how busy you are, before you do something you have to think, right? Why not think in English? Force yourself to do it. It’s going to be hard at first because your brain will naturally want to think in your language. If you don’t know how to say a word, write it down in the notebook you have with you and ask for it in class or look it up. I know it may sound crazy (I think that’s why I like it so much), but trust me, it will help. Do it out loud too, but better not in public, we don’t want anyone to think you’re going crazy.

Set weekly and monthly goals.

I like to sit down every Sunday evening and see what I have to finish the following week and complete at the end of the month. This is something you should do too. Sit down once a week and decide where you want to be the following week. Do you want to finish a lesson in the unit? Maybe when the month is over you would like to be able to write about yourself at a higher level. When you have set your

weekly and monthly goals, do everything you can to achieve them – make sure you reward yourself too!

I hope you have found some of these tips for improving English useful. Follow these tips, apply them every day and improve English quickly. Any exposure to English, whether it is in your head, in class or looking it up in a dictionary is beneficial and helps you to become fluent quickly. Finally, don’t forget to congratulate yourself on what you have achieved, and don’t just focus on what you haven’t achieved.

What is your English level?
Take our short English test to find out.

How to improve your English!

Hello everybody!
my name is Omar, I’m from Italy, and I’m very grateful to BBClearning English for giving me the opportunity to practice my English hosting me as a student blogger for this month.
That’s a picture of me, in my wedding day!

Coming back to the scope of this blog, I think that having a blog in English could really be a good way for an English student to improve his writing skills.
Actually, during the last years I tried a lot of different ways to enhance my knowledge of English without spending a lot of money, and I’m going to show you some of them, I hope they could be useful, and I also hope that you can share with me and other students other funny ways to learn the language:

1) A Song a day
Someone told me that it’s easier to learn and remember new words if you memorise them while learning a song. So I decided to learn one song a day. The experiment lasted about three months, and it worked quite well. Also now, I can sing a lot of songs of The beatles!

2) Call a customer service
This is a very useful method. I tried it in England, but I think that it could be easy o find a way to do it also abroad. it’s almost free, and it requires the greatest attention because it’s all about conversations over the phone.
Choose an English company which products you owe or simply know. Then dial the number of their customer care (most of times the call is for free) and complain about something, or just ask for information.
Few weeks ago I’ve been in London to attend an English course (and to have a taste of the Olympic games, of course!). One day I had to call BT to complain about my telephone that ran out of credit in few minutes. It took me more than thirty minutes to explain the problem to the very tolerant girl that answered me and to understand what went wrong, because I had to ask her to repeat each sentences several times. But it has been a very good exercise, so the next day I called again, asking information about the different fares, and different plans, and so on. I asked a lot of information. A big load of. And I got both, the information required, and a free English lesson!

3) Host people for dinner
This is my most serious attempt to obtain free English conversations in my town, Milan.
I decided to offer a free dinner to foreign tourist in town, to give my wife and me the opportunity of speaking english for free, and to give foreigner tourists the chance to have an italian dinner with locals, also for free.
It worked well for some months, we advertised the project on the internet and on the free press of my town, and we got some answers, people from England, Usa, India, Iran, Columbia, came to visit us and enjoy a simple homecooked Italian dinner.
Well, ok, not everyone was a native English speaker, but we had a lot of fun, we became less shy while speaking, and we also found some good friends.
Here is my favourite one, and Indian guy named Nitin, who became a good friend of us, we really started to miss him since he moved to china. you could see three people but we were four, my daughter borned few months later.

And you? Which other method would you know to improve your English for free, or with a small amount of money? (a part from doing the homework the teacher would give us, of course!)

How to maximize your English learning

It’s the time of year when many people begin to make plans and set goals. Often those goals include finding a new job, improving employment prospects and developing some new and positive habits.

One decision that can help with all of those is to learn English online or increase your English proficiency.

What is your English level?
Take our short English test to find out.

There are a number of compelling reasons and some interesting anecdotal information concerning countries that speak English.

Most people are familiar with the countries where English is the main language. Those include the US, Canada (with the exception of Quebec), the UK, Australia and New Zealand. What many find surprising is the list of English speaking countries where English is the official language for business and higher education. Those countries include Singapore, Kenya, South Africa, Swaziland, Liberia, Malta, Botswana, Uganda, and Sierra Leone, among others.

Recently EF completed its annual English proficiency study. Over the past year there has been a large increase in the number of people who speak English as a second language and the number of people looking to learn English.

As expected, those countries that are considered “emerging economies”, such as India and South Korea have shown considerable growth in the number of people who speak English. However, the biggest growth and concentration of English speaking countries is in Europe.

In Europe, the Scandinavian countries rank at the top of the list. Sweden tops the list and is closely followed by Norway, Denmark, and Finland. Poland, Germany, Austria, and Slovenia also rank highly in the top twenty countries in terms of the number of residents who speak English.

Somewhat surprisingly the countries in Latin America rank fairly low in the number of English-speaking residents. The percentage of English speakers in the Middle East is very low, although Afghanistan has experienced some growth over the past year in terms of those looking to take online English courses and increase their fluency.

Another interesting finding is the growth of English speakers and English proficiency in Africa. South Africa has shown a marked increase in the number of English speakers as is to be expected in a country where English is the official language of business and higher education. However, the growth of English speakers in other countries is a positive sign for the economic growth of those countries and shows the impact of a younger population looking to increase their standard of living and career prospects.

The Importance of English in Business

It is logical to ask why English can have such an impact on one’s career and income.

English is the de-facto language of the business world.

Our study has shown that worldwide, a higher proficiency in English has a number of significant benefits including higher gross domestic product, higher average gross income, and other key economic indicators.

The study also shows that high English proficiency is one of the steps in an economy moving from an agricultural economy to a manufacturing or service one.

Retail businesses remain a key economic component, but as e-commerce continues its rapid growth, this area is changing as well. One of the key aspects of successful e-commerce businesses is making the site accessible to English speakers.

As more businesses, especially SMEs (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises) do business internationally, the demand for English-speaking staff continues to grow. At one point the heaviest demand for English speaking employees was at the upper levels. Now the demand exists in most areas of the companies. To meet the demand many companies have begun to offer English language training to their employees.

English is also the main language for collaboration and idea sharing. More scientific journals are published in English than in any other language. This does not mean that ideas and concepts developed in Arabic, Chinese, or Polish are less valid and less feasible. The internet has made international collaboration the new norm. The ability to share ideas on a global scale is immensely positive.

English proficiency and a good internet connection also provide a wealth of educational and learning opportunities. The amount of information available with just a few keystrokes is staggering. A vast majority of this information is in English. Having English proficiency, rather than depending on translation apps, is a definite plus.

Other Findings from Our Study

One interesting note from the study concerns the apparent connection between English language proficiency and the society. The study shows that English speaking countries and those with a high degree of English proficiency are more open, less hierarchical and typically offer a better quality of life.

As is to be expected younger adults show the highest degree of English proficiency due in large part to an increased effort to teach English in primary schools.

Women tend to speak English better than men.

One somewhat surprising finding is that managers typically have higher English proficiency than executives. This may be in part a reflection of a younger workforce making its way up the corporate ladder.

Steps for the future

The New Year, new habits concept is a sound one and offers a number of benefits over the typical New Year’s resolution.

Here are some tips to help maximize your potential in the New Year.

What is your English level?
Take our short English test to find out.