If you are a basic English learner then you need to first learn basic Vocabulary. Without the knowledge of words you wouldn’t be able to speak English sentences and would not be able to convey thought or ideas in English.

If you are already an English speaker then also learning new words is very important. Let’s say that there is a carpenter and he only has limited tools then his work will reflect that. It would take him a lot of time to create a piece of furniture and the quality will also not be good. But if a carpenter has all the tools then he can create quickly and will high standard of quality. Similarly, when you communicate in English, the more words you have the better world you can create around you.

Yes, that’s right, the world that we create around us is mostly a result of how we communicate. Words are very important in that aspect. The more precise and accurate your words are, the better and effectively you can communicate. Now that we have discussed about the importance of vocabulary let’s have a look at what we can do to improve our vocabulary.

Go small and you have a better chance to succeed

Vocabulary is not the only thing in our lives. We are either a student or working people. May be we are looking for a job or we already have a lot of things to manage or do. So, learning vocabulary can’t be a too much time consuming thing for long for us. We need to make sure that we improve our vocabulary slowly and gradually. We should take no more than one word a day and work towards not only learning the word but also using it in our thoughts, writing and conversations.

Pick up one word on the first day. Another on the second day. Another on the third day… and so on. If you are able to do this on a daily basis then you will have learnt about 180 new words in just 6 months. Which is a lot because most of the adults learn less than that in their entire adult life. Even 50 good words are enough to make you stand out of the crowd.

Choose the right word

There are many applications and websites that can

provide you with the word of the day. But please don’t fall for that. Learn the words that you are most likely to use in your daily conversations. If you don’t use the newly learnt word then it is unlikely that you will remember that word for long. So, choose the word and it will not only be easy to remember it but also to use it.

The best way to remember a word!

When we do something for which we get appreciated then we tend to do those things more. When you start using your newly learnt words then you will be appreciated by others for your vocabulary. It will give you enough motivation for going on. People who don’t know you will start referring to you like “the boy/girl/man/woman with good vocabulary. They will start complimenting you saying that your English has improved. When you start this process it takes only about 15 or 30 days for that to happen. Till then you have to motivate yourself. Use the words as much as possible throughout the day and you will see that you remember the words better.

Think in words to learn the words

The first frontier is your mind. Thoughts become words. Make sure that you don’t just learn the word and it's meaning. But you use the words in sentences. When you just look at and understand the word and its meaning, then quickly make a sentence from that word in your mind.

If you make more and more sentences from the word of the day, you will notice that it becomes easier for you to use that word while talking to people. One trick that I use is that everytime I go to the washroom, I think about the word of the day and I make a sentence using it. We use the lavatory at least 8 to 10 times a day. So, automatically I make 8 to 10 sentences throughout the day. Other methods that you can try are - Every time to drink water, every time you take a break, before going to bed, right after you wake up etc. Associate the new habits with an existing habit.

Write down sentences with the word of the day

Small Habits to learn English

At Impact we keep on working relentlessly on how to make it easier for you t

o learn English. We believe that everything can be done better. So, we don’t always follow the conventional rules of training just for the sake of it. We want to learn English effectively, easily and quickly. 

Learning English is not like taking 5 to 10 hours classes in a week and you are done with it. It’s about using the language in your day to day communication. Only then the classes will help you to reach your goals.

Imagine if you could use English in at least 80 percent of your communication. How difficult would it be for you to improve your English then? Easier said than done! Yes, it will be very easy and very quickly you will be able to improve. But how to do it? Here comes the part of creating Habits around using English.

So, the first step is to understand that you should not try to start using English for 80 percent of your communication right away. Because your brain is used to some other language for basic communication and this change is going to be too much for your brain - it will stop you from achieving your goal.

Your brain will start working against you. You will feel boredom or you will start thinking about some other more entertaining things to do… etc. So, we need to go slow. We are going to make very tiny changes gradually to build up to 80 percent over a period of a few months.

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Understanding how habits work

Trigger - Action - Reward

Trigger: There should be something that triggers your action. The best thing to do here is to find a habit that you already practice and make it your trigger for the new habit that you are trying to create.

Action: Action here means that you practice your new habit.

Reward: The best and easiest thing to do is celebrate. Make yourself feel happy.

                          

If you follow this Trigger - Action - Reward sequence you will notice that creating new habits become so easy.

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What are the habits that I can create to learn or improve my English:

That entirely depends on who you are.Every person has a different lifestyle and different training requirements. So, you have to work that out yourself. No one else can do it better for you. As a mentor my job is to train you to do it yourself.

Let me give you some examples so that you understand this better. For example for someone a great habit to develop could be

listening to English songs everyday or reading a book in English everyday

So, what do we do - how do we put the Trigger - Action - Reward sequence in action?

Let’s say that everyday you wake up at 6:00 AM - Let’s say that you drink a glass of water right after you wake up and you stretch yourself for a minute. Now, these are two good habits that you already have. So, how about you make stretching your trigger. Right after you wake up you have a glass of water - stretch yourself - play an English song and try to sing along. It could be an inspirational song that inspires you for the day ahead or a soothing song that calms you down or a loud song that wakes you up and fills you up with energy or any other song that you like. Once you are done with that then how about celebrating, how about a little dance for a few seconds that will make your body and mind feel good.

So, in this case the sequence goes like this:

Trigger - Stretching

Action - Listening to the song, singing along if that’s your goal.

Reward - Happiness released in your brain and body by doing a little dance also the sense of accomplishment

So, let’s say that you have a habit of smoking, its a bad habit and you should quit but I am using this just as an example:

Trigger - Smoking

Action - Making a sentence with the word of the day for improving your vocabulary.

Reward - Punching your fist in the air with excitement and saying out “I am awesome”

I hope that you get the idea. You can follow this process and start developing some habits that will make you use English more and more everyday.

You know the best things about habits is that once you create them, it takes no effort to follow them they become automatic.

Sounds are very important as they help you to stand out.

If your pronunciation is not good then people are not only going to have trouble understanding you but they might make fun of you. You need to make sure that you not only speak correct and fluent English but also with the right sounds.

In voice and accent training there are many aspects:

Pronunciation of the right sounds in the right way: This includes the right mouth positions. You may be able to pronounce the correct sound without the right mouth position but if your mouth position is correct then there is a different level of clarity that you achieve.

Syllable Stress: You get the right pronunciation of words by stressing on the right syllable. So, when we make mistakes in pronouncing the words, it’s often because of the wrong syllable stress.

Word stress: We also have to be careful of the right word that we stress in a sentence. There are rules for this. Word stress will make your speech easily understandable and very effective.

Intonation: The music of the language. Many people don’t pay any attention to our tone. The better your intonation the more interested your listener’s will be in what you have to say. Without using intonation you might come across as boring and you might put your listeners to sleep.

In today's day and age, we are all very busy. Especially those who are working. It's hard for them to take time out for joining physical classes. When you join offline classes you need to travel to and from the center which takes time. So, even though it might not take that much time but still we have to get up and go. It takes effort, that is why some people keep procrastinating about joining the classes.

When you join online classes this is no longer the case. It takes no time to travel and no effort to go anywhere.

I've heard that improving spoken English all about group discussions and interacting with people. It isn't possible online!

In most of the English speaking institutes, it's all about group discussions and grammar. It's easier that way for some institutes. These institutes don't have the right passion for creating new and better modules for you. In fact you will find that most of these institutes buy modules or franchise from other institutes and they just copy what others are doing without giving it any creative thought. Group discussion is a great way to improve your language but fortunately it is not the only way. While learning a language there is a learning curve - group discussions could be helpful for you at some point in time during that learning curve but it can't be the entire process in itself. There are many other aspects which are often ignored by these institutes. Every institute wants to have bigger batches - more the no. of students they have the more they earn and that's why they would have you believe that big batches are good for you because you need to interact with people and you need to do group discussions and activity. You will often find that because there are more number of people in the batch you hardly get any time to speak during the group discussion. 

So, the first point is that improving your English speaking skills is not all about group discussions and interacting with other people. 

Secondly, you can do group discussions online also. You can interact with people online as well. For eg. in our online classes we do group discussions, conversations, presentations etc. and because we have limited seats in any given batch everyone gets enough time to practice and learn.

But online classes are not effective!

Online classes are as effective as offline classes. As discussed before - it's easier for you to enroll for online classes. Less procrastination - more action! It's easier for you to take the classes everyday as it takes no time to travel anywhere and you can do it from the comfort of your home. We offer live online video classes to people. So, you are able to see the trainer, talk to the trainer and other participants too. It's just like you are sitting in a regular classroom. 

The best part about online classes is that you can take classes from anywhere in the world. For example, Impact is located in New Delhi but there are students from all across the world. If not for the online classes it would not be possible for them to take advantage of the kind of training that we provide. When a person wants to join English speaking classes. He is only limited to his locality. So, if you don't have any good English institute in your  locality then there is nothing you can do. But online classes make it possible for someone who lives anywhere in the world to enhance their English fluency.

I concede that there could be many online classes that are not much effective for many people. You might have even joined one before and had a bad experience. But that is possible with offline classes also. So, you should be more careful about joining online training next time.

It's too technical for me. 

This could be a valid point for someone who doesn't know how to operate a computer or a mobile phone. Earlier we used to provide online English classes only on a pc or a laptop but now we provide online classes on smartphones also. Almost everyone in the world uses a smartphone. So, even if you use an android or an iphone, you can join these classes.

How our brain learns a language

Our Brain - English Speaking Delhi

We humans are the only species on the planet who can articulate languages and communicate more effectively. We have got the right organs to learn and use a language. Today, I would like to talk about the brain to get the best results with minimum efforts.

You see, our brain is magical. You must have heard about different types of minds we have. To learn a language our conscious and subconscious minds are of great relevance. So, let’s see what they are -

Conscious Mind: It’s most active when we are awake. We experience the world with our conscious mind. When we see, hear, smell, touch, or taste anything. That first gets registered in our conscious mind. However, our conscious mind is limited. It has to experience new things too. It has to pay attention to new stuff. So, to do that it has to empty itself first. So the conscious mind transfers information into the subconscious mind. It has to do this all day to keep working properly.

Subconscious Mind: It’s most active when we sleep. We experience dreams using the subconscious mind. We create habits using subconscious mind. We get skilled at anything using the subconscious mind. Anything that we learn - we learn using the subconscious mind. The problem is that most people don’t pay too much attention to it. They try to learn stuff using the conscious mind. If we knew how important the role of subconscious mind is then we can become super learners.

The natural way of learning English using our subconscious mind @ English Speaking Delhi

Please look at the following steps:

1. Input: Listening, speaking, reading, writing, etc. When it comes to a speaking English language the ears play the most important role. So, listening is the most effective way of registering English or any other spoken language in our subconscious mind. Even better is listening to your own voice in English because your mind trusts your voice more than anyone else’s. So, speaking English and listening English are the best ways for input.

2. Repetition: When we repeat an English sentence over and over again. It gets programmed in our mind. The best part is that it’s not just that particular English sentence but also the sentence structure and the vocabulary. Once it’s programmed in our mind then it becomes highly likely that you would never make a mistake in that sentence in English. If you want to make English automatic for you just like your mother tongue then you need to repeat the sentences over and over again. But you also have to make sure that the sentences you repeat are correct otherwise your brain will also learn to speak the mistakes.

3. Thought Process and output: Now that we have programmed our mind to speak correct and fluent English. We can start working on the thought process and first start thinking in English (don’t translate word for word). You can practice thinking in English on your own. There are various ways of doing it. The more time you have spent in Input and repetetion the more effortless the thought process and output becomes. If you have not worked on the input and repetition process then you would struggle speaking also. You would not remember the words when you need them, you would make grammatical mistakes. You would face a lot of problems.

How to Learn Speaking English Quickly

Learning to speak English can be a long process. If you want to shorten it then spend more and more time in INPUT and REPETITION. People generally are impatient they just want to start speaking from the word GO. They want to directly work on the thought process and output. However till the time you don’t work on the first two steps you are going to have a bad experience. If you want better results in less time then focus on the ear training.

I hope that you will take this advice and work towards improving English Quickly.

Can I learn English speaking by reading

Learning English speaking by reading is arguably the most effective way , especially for beginners. But most people don’t do it right.  Just take care of the following points and within a month your English will Improve a lot.

1. Read aloud: You wont learn English speaking  with your eyes. You have

 to listen a lot of correct English if you want to improve fast.

2. Be clear and slow: For deep learning you need to make sure that your brain understand what you are reading. Don’t go fast. Be very slow.

3. Learn correct English: Don’t make mistakes while reading. It may be difficult. If you are focused, you will notice that you are making many small mistakes while

 reading. Remember, if you will listen wrong, then you will learn incorrect English. You may become fluent overtime however you will still be making a lot of mistakes. So, be careful!

Is translation good for beginners?

Is translation good or bad for an English Learner?

Delhi is open to all cultures and people. In Delhi, Hindi is the most prevalent language  Translation is when you think in your native language and then translate it into English and then speak. Most people think that "In the beginning I have to translate and try to get better at it and the faster I translate the more fluent I will become". Also, this is what many teachers teach their students. Have you ever met a fluent English speaker who translates?