Master English with these 5 questions!

1. Why do you want to learn English?

What is your purpose? Is it for a vacation overseas? Is it for business, for your job? Or you want to stay and study in the U.K or the U.S?
Each different purpose will tell you what kind of English that you should learn. There are two kinds of English, passive and active. Once you have answered this question, move on to the next one to learn more about these two types of English.

2. How will you use English?

Passive means that you do not produce anything. You just take information in. Passive English covers your reading and listening abilities.  It has a lot to do with comprehension, or your ability to understand English.
Active is the opposite. When your English is active, you need to write and talk i.e. to make others understand you.
So if you just study English for a vacation, you will mainly use passive English and a little of active English to ask questions. Students need to have good passive and active English while business people mainly needs active English.
Knowing your type of English will also help to determine the types of material – books, videos, exercises, etc. – that you’ll use.

3. What are your strengths in your native language – your mother tongue?

If you are French, are you good at speaking French? Or do you prefer to read, to write or to listen?
This is very important because it can help you to learn faster. If you are good at speaking, you may want to start learning English by speaking a lot. It’s natural for you so you will find it less challenging than doing something you don’t like even in your own language, for example writing.
But what happens when your strengths are not the same as your purpose e.g. you are good at speaking but you really need to master English reading skill. The answer is, of course, that, eventually, you still need to do a lot of reading. Practice speaking first is just to make it easier for you so start learning English and to understand the basics of the language.

4. What are your strengths and weaknesses in English?

Here are some of the things that people are good or bad at in English: grammar, vocabulary, conversation, listening, writing creatively, speaking colloquially, etc.
Look at the list above and see for yourself what you are good and bad at. Of course you should focus on improving on your weaknesses but do not forget to work on your strength as well because at the end of the day, all of these are linked together.
I personally get significantly better at English just buy studying a lot of vocabulary. It allows me to read and understand more, which, in turn, makes my writing better and so on. So if you are good with slangs, head over here to learn some more. If your strength lies in vocabulary, try out this technique to remember new words.

5. How much time do you really have

What time is it? Is there still time for you to study English today?
To answer this, you need to be really honest with yourself. If you say you have 10 minutes every day to study English, you must spend 10 minutes every day studying English. It doesn’t matter how much time you think you have but how much time you can commit to consistently.
Even if you only have 5 minutes a day, you can still use our schedule for more effective learning. In the long term, you will want to improve even more so it may be a good idea to use the Kaizen method to slowly add more time of the day to your English lessons.