10 Ways to Improve your English

How to improve my English?

This is a question that often haunts me while in school. I mean, who doesn’t? It’s so stressful to want to speak in English with someone but you ended up stuttering a lot for thinking what to say.

Sometimes, someone texts us in English, but our brain suddenly starts to lag and probably is on fire for thinking what to reply the other person!

So do not worry, I know exactly how you feel.

It was no easy journey that I am good at English at my level. I am far from being verrrrry good but I know that I am good. How? ”Study and practice, years or it!” - Doctor Strange

Here are some guides you can start doing to improve your English not only for your school’s report card, but for your life.

1. Watch plenty of English movies and shows

Be it a cooking show by Jamie Oliver or a cartoon like Adventure Time, Fast Furious the movie or Pewdiepie’s videos, make sure to listen to them in English. If you need a subtitle, go ahead. (Preferably English subtitles.) Just practice listening to the words.

To bring up the game, close your eyes and see whether you can understand them verbally or nah. There will be some new and foreign words for you, but IT’S OKAY. One step at a time. One day you’ll understand every words being said. Just NEVER GIVE UP.

2. Write something in English EVERYDAY

Yes, you saw what I typed. EVERYDAY. It’s a pain to our hands, but it’ll worth it, trust me. I used to do it everyday too.

I sometimes wrote about some random things happened during the day or, i wrote about what I like about my friend or even pretended that I was writing a letter to them(but I never send it to them of course).

Here’s a link to some of the best writing prompts that I personally tried.

After writing them, try finding any grammatical errors on your own, or with the help of your friends who are better in English.

To motivate yourself to write, aim to write a quarter of page daily(A4 paper size). That’s not much compared to a 360 words essay for the exam papers. Just a quarter of the page! (roughly 100-150 words) 

JUST DO ITTTTTTTTTTTTTT

3. Read out loud

Sometimes when we read our own writing in our head, we will miss some grammatical errors or some words in a sentence. So try reading it out loud like you are reading it to a friend.

Not only this can allow you to detect any grammatical errors, it can also make you realise how interesting is your writing. If you are bored reading and listening to your own essay, think about your teacher and other readers!

4. Listen to English songs

I am lucky growing up listening to Hitz.fm or Mix.fm from our Astro cable because my sisters wanted to listen to music while doing house chores. (yeah and I couldn’t watch my cartoons when they did that T_T) lol

I tend to sing along to the songs played and sometimes, I memorised the repeating advertisements and imitated them as their speak!

So back to the point, make sure you hear English everyday like English songs so you get used to listening to English language. 

5. Surround yourself with people who speaks in English

This is the most important part in improving English.

I am not saying that you should stop befriend your friends who doesn’t use English a lot, but try to find those who does! 

Like the saying goes, birds of the same feather flocks together.

Automatically, you guys will start speaking and texting in English and thus, improve your speaking and writing confidence.

6. Memorise a text and say it out loud again and again

This method usually automatically applied to those who join Story Telling Competitions, Debate Competitions, Drama Competitions, etc. 

The point is, make your tongue get used to English words through memorising.

The moment you hear yourself speaking in correct English pronunciation again and again by memorising, your confidence in English Language will subconsciously improve. 

Thus, you will be more encouraged to learn English!

7. Make the dictionary your best friend.

I used to open my dictionary and find words that peaked my interest and write the meaning on my notebook. 

Later, I tried to apply the words by mentally making sentence structures withthe new words.

The next day, I looked back at the new words I learned by covering the meaning, and play a predicting games with by myself. Of course, it will be much interesting if you play it with a friend!

The point is, force yourself learning new words every now and then with the aid of a dictionary.

8. Keep on reading

Sometimes when we encounter an article that has too much unknown words, our first instinct is to stop reading. 

Well, don’t! Just keeeeeeep reading until the end.

No matter how hard it is. Just keep on pushing. Who knows, you may actually understand the context of the text without understanding some words. That’s how it sometimes works!

Later when the unknown word is repeating again in another essay, the word will look familiar for you. By then, get the dictionary and memorise the meaning. The next time you see the word again, you will know the meaning of the word for sure!

9. Attend a tuition class/ find an English tutor (like me!)

Of course there is no guarantee that these tutors can instantly make you be good at English. 

Yet these people can push you to your limit when you are already losing hope. 

It is an expensive alternative, but if you can afford it, just go.

10. Like and love English

If you never like English language, then until the day you die, you will never be good at it. 

Maybe you do not like English because you hated the teacher who taught English because she was mean to you when you were in primary school. 

Maybe you hate English because you failed once for an exam. 

Well, stop being a kid and grow over it!

Let bygone be bygone and fake it till you make it.

I liked English since I was a child, but do you think I liked History?! meh!

Yet I applied the concept of “fake it till you LIKE it” to my studies. I told myself i loved history. I love history. I LOVE HISTORY!!!!

After awhile, my brain can finally see the fun part of learning History. 

For example, the joy of passing the exam paper, the joy of telling what I learned as a story to my friend and we both find it interesting, the joy of being able to debate with a friend for a fact that you read and you were right because you studied and your friend didn’t(HAHA) and last but not least, the joy of GETTING AN A- FOR HISTORY DURING SPM and A FOR PMR. *not trying to brag, but if I could do it, so can you!!!!!!!!!*

So back to the point, you must like what you do in order to be better at it. No books nor teachers can make you do that, except YOU.

This last tip/guide can be applied to any other subjects at school that you want to improve. So study smart, not hard.

OKAY! That’s all I can share with you on How to Improve Your English.

Don’t study for exams, but study English for yourself!

Imagine all the possibilities of learning new things by traveling, reading, watching videos and lectures in English.

Most importantly, you have higher chance of working abroad with your English speaking and writing skills!

Think of it as an investment of the future instead of a monotonous boring task for the exams.

I hope this will help you in your learning journey.

All of us were not born with skills(you think Einstein kena beranak trus pndai maths and physics juga kaa?! haha) and this is not about luck, but tons hard works(thus I am not going end this with Good Luck) So, BREAK A LEG!!!!!!

-MR