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Three Tips for Learners

When not teaching English, I try to teach myself a little Polish or Spanish. It's the former I struggle with more. Polish is a highly inflected language and even simple utterances can invoke several grammar rules. Translate the sentence 'I drink green tea', for example, where there is a subject followed by a verb, an adjective and finally a noun. In Polish, you not only conjugate the verb, but also make the adjective agree with the gender of the noun AND change the endings of both of those words as they constitute the object of the verb. Do you see what people mean when they say that Polish is a hard language to learn? I know I'll never speak the language perfectly, but no one is asking me to. Therein lies a problem when it comes to language learners' expectations: Some people want perfection; they want to be fluent and flawless. Very often, though, you can't be both. You might speak English fluently, but make a lot of mistakes. On the other hand, you might speak English perfectly, but your anxious avoidance of mistakes impedes fluency.

Learning a language is not confined to a classroom with a book and a teacher – that's only a part of the journey. So, I've compiled here some tips to help you along the path to becoming a competent user of English.

#1 Expose yourself to the language as much as possible.
This is not so easy when you're surrounded by people who don't speak English, but thanks to the internet there are a seemingly infinite number of resources. Find interesting articles to read or videos to watch. You'll hear lots of different accents and ways of saying things, more than what you get in a coursebook. It's good to put some time aside each day for this, even if it's only ten minutes.

#2 Record new vocabulary.
By reading and watching films in English, you're bound to encounter new words and phrases. Write them down in a notebook or make a note on your smartphone – I have a long list of words in Polish which I sometimes glance at while waiting in a queue somewhere. The more often you see a word or phrase, the more likely it will stay in your memory. You can use Google or a good dictionary to find examples of the word in use. I also recommend youglish.com, which allows you to search for spoken examples using YouTube.

#3 Find a speaking partner.
Unfortunately, your English teacher is not available 24/7. We have other things to do, believe me! This means that you'll need to find someone else to practise speaking with. You might have opportunities to do this at work. If you don't, then you can easily find someone through Facebook or a special app for language learners like Tandem. I've used the latter recently, and there are so many people out there wanting to practise their English, which is good news.

These are just some ideas; I'm sure there are lots of others floating around out there. I also recommend keeping a diary in English. Just writing a few sentences each day helps to keep the language a part of your life, because persistence and dedication will always bring results in the end.

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