How Do I Get Good At English?

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A question I am often asked and the following are the same answers I tell my students. These are activities are for when you are not talking with a decent English speaker.



1. The Cambridge Dictionary Online. 

There are many online dictionaries like Longman, Miriam Webster and Dictionary.com BUT Cambridge not only has the meaning but the UK and American pronunciation of the same word.

2. YouTube

In the YouTube Search window, please type  (word you want to know how to pronounce) + "pronunciation" . You should get several choices how to pronounce the word,

3 . NPR ( National Public Radio)

It is just a 5 minute news show  that is updated every hour. If you are not sure  about what you heard the article is usually available in the website itself to help you fill in the blanks.   


4. Aesop's Fables 

Timeless stories with practical lessons often told through animals.  Almost every story is also available on Youtube  to help you check your understanding of the text. Often includes older English words that have faded out of the lexicon for more modern counterparts.

5. Read

Pick a topic you like/ love and read whatever they have in English about it. It does not matter if it is baseball, auto mechanics, hair dressing, politics or business. There are several reasons for this. Your interest in the topic not only motivates you to read the topic but it actually helps in learning new vocabulary and makes your brain more fertile to learning . While you read and read more about a topic you are interested in, you are absorbing the form or syntax of properly written English. This helps develop your "ear" for English. You will find yourself saying something then correcting it right after because your inner voice tells you that your initial sentence was grammatically wrong. That inner voice is developed through exposure to good English.




6. Watch and Listen

You are probably doing this already but I suggest you watch movies and TV shows where the dialogue is very important to appreciating the story. A trio of movies from the 1990s that I watch and listen to over and over again are: A Few Good Men, The Usual Suspects and The Hunt For Red October. A TV show I would recommend is the original Star Trek which is over 50 years old.



Of course the best tip is to always speak English preferably with somebody who can give you constructive feedback on what you are saying,