Despite being a subject matter expert and a fabulous storyteller in your regional language, have you ever felt embarrassed when explaining a well known concept in the English language?

Have you ever missed a great opportunity due to a lack of conveying power in English? I am sure you would.

Before revealing to you my Top 5 Fundamental Steps and Tips for Learning English, let’s analyze why one must learn English communication in the first place.

To understand the situation, let’s take an analogy of the agricultural sector. We know how hard it is for a farmer to cultivate the crops. We are also experiencing the increasing rate of vegetables day by day.

Despite being such an essential and demanding sector, neither farmer yields the maximum profits nor do we, the consumer, get the vegetables at a reasonable price. Then who is gaining the benefits? 

It is the Middleman.

The middleman buys the vegetables from the farmer at a cheaper rate. Seeing the demand in the market, he sells them to the consumer at a premium rate and makes his profit.

Likewise, if you are a master at your core skills and not good at English communication skills, you would require some mediator to communicate or sell your expertise to potential customers. 

You will be at the mercy of your mediator’s convincing and negotiation skills to make or break the deal.

After realizing the cost you are paying for not having the language skills, let’s get into another question.

Is learning English that difficult?

Absolutely NO!

Have you seen famous cricketers like Kapil Dev, Novjot Singh Siddhu, Harbhajan Singh, and Sehwag in the early stage of their careers? 

They were NOT as comfortable with English as you.

They have accepted and shared their early day’s incidents and experiences with English in many television shows.

They never underestimated it but realized and understood the importance of the English language and learned it.

Now you see the state that they reached by utilizing all the opportunities they got and never letting the language as their barrier.

They have also been commentators for various international cricket matches.

I am sure you agree with me now that English communication is a learnable skill.

Once you learn and gain command over English communication, you need not depend on others to mediate on your behalf. Further, take complete control and responsibility for handling your opportunities.

What are the top 5 fundamental steps and tips for learning English?

There are a total of 5 fundamental Steps involved in learning any skill or language.

Step 1: Believe In Yourself

Step 2: Consume The Language

Step 3: Practice What You Consumed

Step 4: Implement Your Learnings

Step 5: Analyze to Improve

Let’s now understand each step in detail and explore some tips that will potentially help you succeed.

Step1: Believe in yourself.

The very first tip for learning english, even before starting your learning journey, you must believe in yourself that you can do it. 

Remember the examples of the cricketers we discussed?

Here are the top tips for learning English that could help you believe in yourself.

Tip 1: Find Your Motivation

Ask yourself in the first place, why do you want to learn English? 

Capture the reason in any visual format like “quote” or “image” or “wallpaper” and view it daily. It will be the driving force for you to overcome any hurdles or challenges in your learning journey.

Tip 2: Set Realistic Goals

If you want to get to the peak of Mount Everest, you should never plan your journey in a single go. Instead, target for the first base camp.

Likewise, English is a vast subject where experts still keep learning. 

So set your objectives accordingly. Set your goals based on the place and usage. For example, I should greet and introduce myself to my office colleagues in one week.

Tip 3: Don’t think of grammar

As a kid, we never focused on learning grammar in the first place, even while learning the native language. We started by imitating what we saw our elders doing.

Likewise, do not worry about learning grammar in the first place. Give importance to studying language usage and try to imitate.

Tip 4: Take responsibility for completing your goals

Remember, it is you who need to overcome the language barrier. So, you must run behind the task of completing your goals.

Once you believe in yourself and set your goals, you must start consuming the language.

Step 2: Consume the language

The step where you will start learning the language. 

Here are the top tips for learning English that help you consume the language effectively.

Tip 1: Identify your interest

Being a food lover in general doesn’t mean one can consume anything or everything offered to eat. He can only eat what he likes.

Likewise, you must identify your interest first and try to pursue your interest using the English language.

Tip 2: Read everything you get your hands on

Learning always starts from reading. Pick up any reading material you could find the topics of your interest.

Reading helps you explore the words and sentence structure at your own pace and helps your brain absorb the new content.

Tip 3: Listen as much as you can

Alongside your reading, you also tune your brain with pronunciation by listening to any video or audio program related to your interest.

Listening helps you in understanding various emotions that help you express your feelings while speaking.

Tip 4: Actively Take the notes of the vocabulary

During reading or listening, identify the words that you do not understand and write them down.

Identify the meaning of the words online and make sentences out of them for better memory and understanding.

Now you know how to consume the language, it is time to practice. Let’s get into it.

Step 3: Practice What You Consume

Mere learning itself does not solve any purpose until you practice. Always remember that mastery comes with practice.

Here are the top tips for learning English that help you practice effectively.

Tip 1: Figure out your best time to learn

As an individual, we all are different. 

You may be a morning guy, like getting up early in the morning, active with your creative side, and you are at your best in the morning. 

If you are like me, the night owl, and showcase the best of you at night, then maybe that is the best time for learning.

Tip 2: Set Learning Routine

Have you noticed many of us read a newspaper while drinking our first cup of tea or coffee in the morning? 

Have you ever thought of the reason behind this behavior?

Your one habit triggers another habit or event subsequently, forming a routine.

For instance, as soon as you have your first cup of morning coffee, read a book for an hour, then listen to a podcast, or a show of your interest for half an hour, note down all new vocabularies, then identify the meanings and zot down in the form of sentences.

Create a learning routine linking to one of your daily habits to increase the learning probability.

Tip 3: Develop all four language skills simultaneously – Read, Listen, Write and Speak

It is good to practice all forms of learning simultaneously to learn the language effectively. Simultaneous learning makes your brain trained in various forms.

Tip 4: Find or Assign a study partner

Have you ever participated in combined studies?

I do accept that we wasted most of our learning time while studying with my friend. However, even the little time we spent learning together has given us tremendous results.

On having a learning partner, there will arise a competitive spirit. If one is stuck with a doubt, the other could help you overcome it.

Step4: Implement what you practice

Do you know why experience is given greater importance over knowledge?

One can gain knowledge by reading or viewing the topic they intend to learn. But experience comes from implementing the absorbed information, making mistakes, learning from his mistakes, and finally becoming an expert at that skill.

In short, expertise comes from experience.

Here are the top tips for learning English that help you implement what you practiced and gain experience.

Tip 1: Prepare to make mistakes

While recruiting interns, the companies accept that the interns are going to make mistakes.

Likewise, you have to be prepared to make mistakes and convince yourself that it is ok as there is no other way.

Tip 2: Surround yourself with English

Create a situation for yourself that forces you to use English. Join a community that speaks English. Go to English-speaking restaurants, make a sales inquiry in English, watch English movies and listen to English songs.

Tip 3: Make English friends

Make some friends in your neighborhood who speak English very often. You could also use social media to join English-speaking communities and make good friends who would like to exchange your language.

Tip 4: Use the language while learning

Never wait for perfection in your language to implement it. You will gain perfection only when you use it. 

So, use the language while learning itself.

Step 5: Analyze to improvise

The last but not the least tips for learning english, Analyse to improvise.

Have you ever heard the term “Technical Analysis“

It is a methodology used in Stock Investing. Based on the past performance of the market, the analysts identify a pattern and predict future performance.

Here are the top tips for learning English that help you analyze your experience to improve your performance.

Tip 1: Remember your mistakes

It is common to make mistakes during the initial phase of your learning journey. But the point to consider is what did you learn from that mistake?

Understand the reason behind your mistake and how you fixed it.

Tip 2: Write your experiences

Short-term thinkers try to bypass a difficult situation but long-term thinkers prepare themself to overcome that situation.

So whenever you learn something from your mistakes, zot it down in your journal as a reference. So that, even if you face the same situation again, you will be in a position to resolve it by yourself.

Tip 3: Analyse your weak areas

Refer to your learning journal and analyze your previous mistakes. Identify the pattern of when you are making mistakes. 

It will help you realize your weak areas.

Tip 4: Increase or adjust your goals accordingly.

Once you know your weak areas, tweak your goals to address them accordingly. If you are doing well with your present level of skill set, it is time to increase your bar and target the next level.

Conclusion

In this “Top 5 Fundamental Steps and Tips For Learning English” article, we have learned the fundamental steps involved in learning any language or skills. We have seen the tips for learning English that help us implement each step to make our learning journey effective.

PS: Are you working in a corporate organization? You will be glad to know that I have a separate section for corporate communication itself. If you wish to find out more about corporate communication, I would recommend reading this blog post to begin: “https://englishtalktutor.com/what-is-corporate-communication/“

I have also written an article on “how advantages of oral communication outperformed written” do check it out.