Our study tips help you to learn English more effectively and with more fun.
Backlog Analysis
· Backlog Analysis: unlearn typical English mistakes
Isn’t it frustrating: it is always the same mistakes that prevent you from getting that better mark in your English tests. How can you unlearn those mistakes?
Don’t try too much at a time. Instead, concentrate on just one typical mistake. Go through the explanations and exercises in your grammar reference or textbook. When reading English texts, look out for that specific grammar aspect.
Our backlog analysis contains 26 typical problems. We show you where on SPEC English you'll find relevant explanations, exercises and tips. Take the print out of our analysis and your last English test and consult your English teacher. Look through the test together and pick out one problem. Write down the category … and start unlearning that problem.
If you’ve unlearned the mistake by the next test, you can tackle the next problem.
Vocabulary
· Study English every Day
How many English words can I learn per day?
10 English words or phrases per day aren’t too many, are they? Just give it a try. You will find that you can learn them in next to no time.
So why not take a little time each day (Monday to Friday) to learn 10 new words?
Use the weekend to revise what you have learned during the past week(s). This way you’ll enrich your English vocabulary by 50 new words per week. (That’s 200 new English words after a month!)
· Learn English through Reading
Read English texts as often as you can.
This could be the news, short stories or novels, texts from your textbook or spec-english.blogspot.com. Choose an interesting text or article that is not too difficult for you (otherwise it wouldn’t be fun).
Don’t look up every word which is new to you – even without a dictionary you will understand a lot. Just concentrate on what you do understand and try to find out the rest by intelligent guessing. That works rather well, especially if you are interested in the topic. If you are a football fanatic for example, you probably won’t have problems understanding an English text about football. On the other hand, someone who is better in English than you but not interested in football will have more problems understanding the same text.
Do also watch the news in your native language and try to find English news to some of the topics. Even if you don't understand every word in the English text, you will get the message as you already know what the text is about.
· Learn English through Movies
Thanks to DVD, watching films in English has become an easy thing to do.
Choose your favourite film – you’ve watched that film a dozen times and probably know all the dialogues off by heart in your native language. So following the story will be easy for you.
Have paper and pen ready as you may want to jot down useful words or phrases that you wish to learn. English subtitles might be useful for that (although they might differ from what is actually being said).
If you are not used to watching films in English, choose a only few episodes – at the beginning it isn’t easy to concentrate on listening to the foreign language for a long time.
· Learn English through Songs
Vocabulary needs to be revised again and again. Well, what could be better than studying vocabulary by listening to your favourite songs?
Read the lyrics first and try to understand them. You don’t have to translate the lyrics word by word, just try to find out what the song is all about. (Note: ‘Rap’ might not be practical as those songs usually contain slang words that not even ‘ordinary’ English native speakers know.)
Pick some words or phrases from the song that you would like to learn. If necessary, look up their exact meaning in a dictionary. A dictionary might also be useful to find other interesting phrases with the word.
Now, to learn the vocabulary, all you have to do is listening to the song again and again (that shouldn’t be a problem if it’s one of your favourite songs).
Learning Strategies
· Targets
Set small, achievable targets, e.g.:
learn 10 new English words or phrases every day, Mondays to Fridays (repeat on Saturdays, relax on Sundays)
unlearn one typical mistake before the next test (see our backlog analysis)
study 10 or 15 minutes every day
read the lyrics of an English song every week and try to understand its main content
read and try to understand one short English text every week
study English in SPEC or at home every day ;o)
…
Reaching your target step by step is much better than setting a huge target that you cannot achieve. Easy does it … and keeps your motivation up.
· Motivation is half the work
“Boring!” Well, that’s definitely not the way it works.
Try to find a positive aspect to studying. Why not watch your favourite film in English and write down some useful words or phrases that you want to remember. You could also read the lyrics of Top 10 songs and try to understand what they are about. Or check out celebrity sites and learn more about famous actors, bands and other stars. This sure is good for your vocabulary and on top of that – it’s lots of fun.
· Don’t over do it!
Studying 10 or 15 minutes per day is more effective than studying 2 hours once every week.
For a whole week, try studying 10 or 15 minutes each day. Not less. And definitively not more than that (even if you could).
You will see that the following day, studying is much more fun, simply because you didn't push it to the limit the day before.
· Treat yourself to something good
Everbody notices what you failed to do. But nobody appreciates what you succeeded to do. That's rather frustrating, isn't it?
Appreciation is always a good motivation. And if nobody else appreciates your efforts, you'll have to do it yourself. Set a target for the day, the week or the term and do also set a reward for yourself that you can look forward to, e.g.:
If I achieve the target, I will treat myself to ...
an adventurous monster killing game on my computer
a visit to the cinema at the weekend
a short trip to London
...
If it's a long-time target, write your reward down on a piece of paper and hang it up in a place where it catches your eye. This sure will be a good motivation.
· Study English with friends
Meet friends and study English together.
You can repeat your English vocabulary, do your homework together and help each other with English grammar. And why not try one of our games on SPEC (Simpel dan Cepat®). Studying with friends simply is much more fun.
It’s also a good opportunity to exchange ideas on studying in general. Maybe your friends have found out about a good way of studying more effectively. Or, who knows, maybe you can advise your friends on this?
English Grammar
· English Gap-filling exercises
Make your own gap-filling exercises from English texts.
Choose a short, interesting English text that is not too difficult (e.g. lyrics, text from your textbook, news, excerpt from a story/novel). Copy the text and delete some words in the copy, e.g.:
Try to fill the gaps correctly and then take the original text to check your answers.
This sure is more fun when doing it with friends. Everyone prepares a short text and gives a copy to the others, who will try to fill the gaps correctly.
To make things a bit easier, you can provide the words in a different order or as a translation.
· English Grammar in texts
How can you best study and remember certain aspects of English grammar (e.g. tenses)?
When reading English texts (lyrics, novels, news, textbooks) look out for the grammar aspect you want to remember. Mark it and reflect on why it is used there.
To see whether you're right about a rule, look up the topic in an English grammar reference, your English textbook or SPEC (Simpel dan Cepat®).
Yogyakarta Time
