7 Tips for Learning English as a Beginner: A Real-Life Success Story

Once upon a time, there was an Italian woman in her forties who wanted to learn English.. Giovanna She was a widow and had earned a little money when her husband died prematurely. She was keen to travel around the UK, but her grasp of grammar was poor, having only been learned at school. So she bought an English audiobook and began parroting everything the recordings said.

After a couple of months, booked a low-cost flightand to London. He landed at Gatwick Airport and managed to buy a one-way bus ticket to Victoria Station, with the help of a couple of Spanish retirees who were also heading to central London.

But once in London, he encountered a major source of frustration: I couldn’t understand or talk to the people I knew. He returned to Italy after a week, instead of two weeks as planned, and called my language academy for advice.

Welcome to the era of global English. Few people speak like the Queen, and no one is immune to grammatical errors.

If you are a beginner student or teach adults at a beginner level, here are seven tips to make starting to learn English easier that I shared with Giovanna.

1. Exercise

Learning a foreign language is like going to the gym. Your muscles only get stronger if you practice every day. It’s the same with language: practice makes perfect.

Advice: Dedicate 15 minutes of your time to English every day. You can listen to music or a podcast, read a book, watch short films online, play games on your smartphone or meet with native speakers for a language exchange.

2. Not just words

Beginner learners may feel more comfortable when they hear individual words and repeat them, much like children do when shown flashcards. But this is less helpful for adult learners, who will want to sound confident and fluent when speaking with native speakers. If you learn pieces of language or phrases, it will be easier create sentences and sound natural when speaking.

Advice: begins to learn the placements Immediately. “Having breakfast” is different from “making breakfast.” The first means you eat it, the second means you make it.

3. Let’s do it

Keep trying. Every time you start something new, there comes a moment when you think you might as well give up. But as the saying goes,If you don’t succeed at first: try, try, try again“To help you stay motivated, remember why you started learning English. For example, one of my students had a granddaughter whose mother was British. Both his granddaughter and daughter-in-law lived in the UK, so he wanted to learn English to communicate with them.”

AdviceKeep a journal of your common mistakes. Review them so you don’t repeat them. However, don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Mistakes aren’t a negative reflection of your intellectual abilities. They’re a necessary characteristic for acquiring a new skill.

4. Labels

Two viral TV ads on the web, one for a whiskey brand and the other for an auction website, feature two elderly people who begin learning English for different reasons. In both short films, there’s a technique I find crucial for remembering new words: labeling. The two elderly people They label all the objects in their homes.and this helps them to memorize elements belonging to everyday life.

AdviceLabel everything you need to know. Use colored sticky notes: each color could identify a category of things. For example, you could use green sticky notes for appliances.

5. Involve others

There’s nothing better than involving your family and friends in your learning process. You need moral support in this new challenge: the more, the better.. When you show people what you’ve learned, they’ll be impressed.

AdviceTake a selfie video introducing yourself, your family, and/or friends in English. Do this every week, and after a month you can watch the videos again to see how much your English has improved.

6. Set goals

You may identify with a specific linguistic area and want to focus on it.. Set goals Learning the language related to this area can be helpful. For example, if you want to go shopping for clothes in an English-speaking country, you’ll need to know phrases like “Where are the fitting rooms?” and “Can I pay by credit card?“

AdviceKeep a journal in which you write down what you would like to learn for seven days. At the end of the week, check if you have achieved your goals.

7. Have fun

Being a beginner student is not easy. It can be easy to feel inadequate and frustrated.. Most students who start learning English usually give up Because they feel discouraged. So you need to make the learning process fun. If positive emotions are linked to the learning process, it will definitely be easier.

AdviceIf you make mistakes, laugh at them. The important thing is to have fun and persevere.

Learning English is not a piece of cake. It’s tough and challenging. But, in my opinion, expressing yourself in another language is the most exciting and meaningful challenge. The feeling when someone understands you is simply fabulous.

So what happened to Giovanna? Well, after a couple of months attending my English course and following these tips, she became more confident.

Now, she can understand the main points when people speak to her in English about familiar matters such as family, work, and travel. She can describe past experiences and events, her routines, and future plans.

And more importantly, she has moved to London, where she has found love.

Well done!

Choose the EBC course that best meets your requirements