Improve your English skills!

Audio: 4 min. 43 sec.

When it comes to improving your English, there are a variety of different skills to focus on and it can be difficult to decide on what skills you want to work on or how to even go about practicing in the first place.

This blog will highlight the main skills and give some tips on how to work on each core skill!

INPUT AND OUTPUT

We can generally summarise language skills as information you receive, which we will call INPUT, and information you produce, which we will call OUTPUT.

Your INPUT skills are READING AND LISTENING, while your OUTPUT skills are WRITING and SPEAKING.

These skills are also connected to each other, meaning that improving your INPUT will influence your OUTPUT, as well as the other way around.

Most people usually want to just focus on their SPEAKING and LISTENING, and while these are important, it’s important that you do not neglect your READING and WRITING.

INPUT: SURROUND YOURSELF WITH ENGLISH

When trying to improve one of your key skills, the most important thing is that you are constantly exposed to language old and new.

A big part of this is going beyond your general expectations and modifying your routine to have new levels of English in it.

Listening to music and watching Netflix with subtitles is nice but it’s not going to make you fluent.

If you are fortunate enough to live in a country where English is spoken, this part is a little bit easier.

Make sure you try and listen to local conversation and pick up daily texts like newspapers or magazines for a constant source of new reading material. 

If your country doesn’t use English, you can still find ways to surround yourself with the language.

Finding websites in English that update frequently can become something you read daily or weekly.

Your smartphone’s podcast app (See [LINK HERE] for other helpful apps!) is a portable resource that constantly gives you something new to listen to as long as you’re willing to look for it.

Another fabulous resource you can use for higher level language on a variety of topics are TED Talks, available for free online.

OUTPUT: STEP OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE

When it comes to your speaking and writing, the obvious problem is that it feels like you need a teacher, tutor or high-level English speaker to help judge your output.

It is still possible, however, to work on these skills by yourself.

With writing especially, it might sound obvious but putting something to paper, ANYTHING, can make your language real and visible to you, which allows you to develop your confidence as well as train your ability to spot your own mistakes.

I strongly recommend making a habit out of writing at least once a week, in which you can write anything from a diary entry to a movie review or your opinion on recent politics.

On top of this, because they are both output skills, improving your writing can have a direct improvement on your speaking. 

With regards to speaking, you will generally need at least one other person to converse with, so this then becomes a matter of finding the right outlet.

Most cities often have conversation clubs or language exchanges that can be found by taking a look at community noticeboards in built-up areas.

If you are religious, your local church, temple or mosque most likely has conversation sessions that you can tag along to for some further practice.

Finally, you can always practice speaking by yourself with the help of a recording tool.

Using your phone, you can try speaking for an extended period on a topic and then listening to yourself to review how often you pause and what words you struggle with.

A big part of improvement is making all this routine, so no matter what you end up doing, make sure you do it often each week!

If you keep it up, you’ll notice that your skills all start to grow, and you can then tackle harder topics!