How to Learn English: A Quick & Easy Guide

Want to know how to improve your English effectively?

In this article, I’m going to tell you how.

(Step-by-step)

Let’s get started:

Step #1: Choose English Skills to Improve
Step #2: Pick Learning Activities to Do
Step #3: Add the Activities to Your Daily Routine
Step #4: Ensure Your Success with Personal Development

Step #1: Choose English Skills to Improve

There are four communication skills in English (or any other language):

Listening
Speaking
Reading
Writing

English Communication Skills: Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing

To get started learning English, pick at least one of the four skills above to focus on.

Choose skills that are most important to you right now (or skills that are your biggest weaknesses).

Typically, people struggle with listening and speaking the most. So, if you don’t know which skills to develop, I suggest you start with these two skills. (But if you want to improve your reading or writing, that’s fine as well.)

How Many Skills Should You Learn at the Same Time?

I suggest picking 2 or 3 skills to work on at any given time.

You should not target just one skill because these skills complement each other. Learning one skill can help improve the other skills. If you learn more than one skill, you’ll improve faster (and become a more well-rounded English learner).

That said, learning all four skills simultaneously, while possible, may be a little overwhelming for most people. So, aim for 2 or 3 skills.

Step #2: Pick Learning Activities To Do

After you’ve determined what English skills to improve, the next step is to find learning activities to do to improve those skills.

For example, if your goal is to improve 1) your listening and 2) your speaking, then you need to find two activities to do. One activity for listening. Another activity for speaking.

To help you get some ideas, let me share a few activities that I do.

How I Improve My English Listening

The way I improve my listening is simple: I try to listen to English conversations as much as possible!

However, doing so requires an insane amount of time, so I have come up with a great strategy to save time.

Here’s the strategy:

Listen to English during “mindless activities.”

Mindless activities are simple tasks that you can do without thought or attention. For example, commuting, waiting, cooking, cleaning, walking, etc.

During these activities, most people check social media or listen to music. But not me! Instead of wasting time like that, I listen to something in English.

Listen to English during mindless activities

For more information on how to improve English listening skills, you can read my detailed guide here. (It covers topics like English material to listen to, what to do if you don’t understand the material, how to improve fast, etc.)

Another effective way to improve your listening is to watch the same movie (or TV show) twice. The first time you watch it with subtitles. The second time you watch it without subtitles.

Although I don’t practice it myself (I cannot watch the same thing twice), I know it’s effective. So, if you don’t mind watching something twice, you can give it a try.

How I Learn Spoken English

When I was just getting started (and my spoken English was poor), I practiced with interactive lessons.

Watch this video to see how it works:

Interactive lessons are great for beginners. They can help you form sentences properly when speaking English. They can also help you sound more like native speakers.

Interested in these lessons? Click here to learn more and try sample lessons.

Another speaking practice I do is called the Imitation technique. As the name suggests, you learn to speak English by “imitating” native speakers.

Here’s how it works: you listen to an English conversation and try to imitate what you hear.

The conversation could be from anything: a random video on YouTube, a podcast episode, or even a movie.

The key is to imitate conversations that you understand (otherwise the practice won’t work).

If you want to know how to do it step-by-step, read this article.

How I Improve My English Reading

There’s nothing special about how I improve my reading.

I just read English books. (A lot of them.)

I always bring a book with me everywhere I go. When I’m on the train or waiting for something, I pull out my book and start reading.

Reading is probably the simplest, most reliable way to learn English vocabulary and grammar.

If you can’t afford books (or if it’s hard to find English books where you live), you can read English blogs on the subjects that interest you).

For a list of recommended books (or blogs) to read, visit this link.

How I Learn to Write Better English

Similar to how I improve my spoken English, I improve my writing by imitating the writing of native speakers.

This practice is used by many writers to improve their writing skills.

Watch the video below to see how to practice:

I hope that you now have a few ideas on how to learn English.

If you’re not sure what activities to do, I suggest you start with two activities: listening and reading in English (regularly).

Listening and reading, combined together, improves your English grammar, vocabulary, and comprehension at the same time, so it’s a good place to start.

Or if you want more ideas, you can do your own research.

Just do a search on Google (or YouTube) for something like “How to improve _____ skills in English?” (In the blank, type in the skill you want to improve: listening, speaking, reading, writing.) You’ll get plenty of ideas.

Step #3: Add the Activities
to Your Daily Routine

If you want to succeed at learning English, you must add the activities you’ve chosen to your daily routine.

This means you have to do the activities every day without fail, just like eating or brushing your teeth.

So, now is the time to plan “when” you’re going to do the activities each day.

To help you get an idea, let me share my routine.

My English Learning Routine

At the time of this writing, my goal is to improve my speaking, listening, and reading (3 skills).

So, here’s what I do each day:

After waking up, I meditate for at least 5 minutes. (Meditation helps me be more focused and disciplined.)

After that, I turn on my computer, open an English video, and practice speaking by imitating the native speaker(s) in the video. (The videos I use are usually random videos I found on YouTube.)

Practice speaking English using the Imitation technique.

I consider speaking practice to be the most important learning activity, so I do it in the (early) morning.

Why morning? Because it ensures that I will practice every day. If I practice in the evening or at night, random events (like a friend inviting me to dinner) can interfere with my practice.

Then, throughout the day, I will listen to or read something in English whenever I have a chance.

For example, if I’m walking or working out, I might listen to English audio content. Or if I’m on public transportation or waiting for something, I might read a English book or blog.

Because I’m not addicted to social media, I’m able to take advantage of little blocks of time throughout the day to learn English.

That’s it! That’s all I do to improve my English.

I’m a big believer in simplicity.

So, instead of doing 10 different things to improve my English, I only do 3 things that I believe to be the most effective: listening, reading, and speaking practice.

What I love about this routine is that it’s easy to do (even for busy people). All I need is 10 – 30 minutes in the morning for speaking practice, and blocks of time here and there for listening and reading.

A big advantage of this routine is that it can be done at home. I don’t have to travel somewhere in order to learn English. And all the English materials I need can be found online for free!

Step #4: Ensure Your Success
with Personal Development

Meditation - A Popular Personal Development Practice

What is personal development?

Personal development is the process of improving yourself in various aspects:

Your self-discipline (the ability to take action consistently).
Your ability to learn new skills effectively.
Your ability to concentrate without getting distracted.
etc.

These qualities are important if you want to achieve anything worthwhile (like learning English).

Knowledge Alone is Not Enough

There’s a ton of information on the Internet on how to achieve anything, whether it be losing weight, quitting smoking, or learning English.

But despite this wealth of information, many people still struggle to get in shape, quit smoking, or become fluent in English.

Isn’t that strange? These people “know” exactly what to do to achieve their goals, but they still aren’t getting the results they want.

Why is that?

It’s because knowledge alone is not enough.

You might know what to do to get in shape (exercise regularly), but if you don’t have the discipline to exercise every day, you won’t get in shape.

You might know how to quit smoking, but if you don’t have enough willpower to resist temptation, you will always be addicted to cigarettes.

You might know 10 different ways to learn English, but if you constantly get distracted by movies, TV shows, or social media (short-term pleasure), your English will never improve.

Bottom line: the reason people fail is not because they don’t know what to do; it’s because they lack essential qualities like self-discipline.

How to Work On Your Personal Development

How do you make sure you have the self-discipline and other qualities required to succeed?

There are various ways to work on your personal development, but for people trying to learn English, I suggest reading English books in the field of personal development.

This includes books on topics like self-discipline, time management, skill improvement, overcoming procrastination, success, motivation, etc.

When you read educational content like this, you gain useful ideas that you can apply to learning English.

For example, if you read books on time management, the knowledge you gain may help you learn English more effectively, with less time.

Or if you read books on self-discipline, the ideas you gain can help you be more consistent with your English learning.

In fact, a lot of ideas I share on this website come from books. They aren’t my ideas.

For example:

I got the idea to listen to English during mindless activities from a book on time management.

I got the idea to practice speaking English first thing in the morning from a couple of books on self-discipline.

I got the idea to focus on only a few learning activities (instead of doing many things at once) from a book on productivity. (It taught me the 80/20 rule, which is the idea that 20% of your activities will account for 80% of your results.)

These are just a few examples of how consuming educational content has improved the way I learn English. Without the knowledge from those books, my English would not be as good it is now.

What If You Can’t Afford Books?

If you don’t have the money to buy books, don’t let that stop you from improving yourself.

You can also read blogs, listen to podcasts, or watch videos related to personal development.

Just search Google for “personal development blogs” (or podcasts, or YouTube channels). You’ll find a lot of free resources.

That said, if you can afford books, then I suggest you read books instead of listening to self-help podcasts or watching motivational videos on YouTube.

In my opinion, books are more valuable than other forms of media.

Writing a book involves a lot of planing, researching, and consideration. It usually takes someone “years” to write a book. So, the ideas in the book are highly developed.

Blog posts, videos, and podcast episodes, on the other hand, are created rather quickly, usually in a matter of hours or days.

Summary: How to Learn English

Knowledge is useless without action.

Here’s the summary of what you need to do (right now):

Choose English skills you want to improve: listening, speaking, reading, writing. (Ideally, pick 2 or 3 skills.)
Pick activities to do to improve those skills. (One activity for each skill.)
Make the activities part of your daily routine. (Make a plan for when you’re going to do them each day.)
Ensure your success by developing self-discipline and other positive qualities. (You can do that by reading or listening to content related to personal development.)

I believe all the steps listed above are equally important. If you remove any of the steps, your English will not improve.

For example, if you don’t decide what skills you want to develop, your actions will be aimless because you don’t have a clear goal in mind.

Or if you don’t choose activities to do, you will get confused, not knowing what to do each day to improve your English.

Or if you don’t make those activities part of your daily routine, you will get no results because you won’t be consistent with your learning.

Last but not least, if you don’t develop yourself to become more disciplined, you won’t be able to execute your learning plan successfully. Sooner or later, you will stop taking action…guaranteed.

So, I suggest you take every step seriously.