How to Begin Learning English Alone – Tips from Experienced Tutor Psychological Aspects

The article is designed for people who decided to learn a foreign language alone. It comprises the very first steps after making a decision.

If you read this article, I suppose that you really ponder on taking up English. Let us not discuss pros and cons of autonomous learning and accept that you took the decision consciously according to your own inner motifs. And being a reasonable person you would like to avoid typical mistakes and achieve a result in the shortest way possible.

Let’s get started with the most essential thing. However, if you think the most essential thing is a list of useful sites or textbooks, you have a wrong guess.

The first and most important step you need to take is to formulate your goal and to make a schedule, to define a deadline and track this initial data. You really MUST do it.

Formulate your goal

The more definite, clear and concise your goal is, the faster you will accomplish it. It will bring feeling of success and result, which in turn will create desire of futher development.

Examples of goals

I go on holiday abroad. I want to check in hotels, do shopping, book accommodation e.g. in English.

I want to meet a man who is from another country and marry him and be able to conduct a conversation about common things.

I would like to use the Internet in English, read articles and watch video conferences in my speciality such as agronomy, medicine, construction.

Set a time period

In my opinion, the ideal span is between 6 months and a year. Why? If you feel a sort of weakness inside, inclination not to follow through, then you should say to yourself that the nearest six months you are engaged in learning English. It won’t terrify you and you will be able to cheat your own laziness. But if you trust yourself, set your mind to a year. Believe me at the end of this run you will notice visible results. Looking back a year after working with my clients I can always estimate the advance and I can analyse what we have been doing great and what we should improve and which direction to choose for further training. At the end of the scheduled time you won’t be a beginner anymore, you will gain a lot of experience. You will look back and make a new decision about next actions. If you are satisfied with the outcome, you could figure out in what ways to maintain it. If you get inspired to reach a new level, set up a new objection and go ahead and reach new heights.

On YouTube you can find a video by blogger Oksana Bliznets in which she tells her story of making savings. Her husband and she managed to collect money for the first payment of mortgage from their two ordinary salaries. For the sake of their own accommodation they even lived separately in their parents’ houses in order not to rent a flat. The story of such goal-oriented and determined couple really inspires. Oksana explains that one of the main secrets is willingness to be patient for a DEFINITE AND RELATIVELY SHORT PERIOD in the interest of their dream. She admits that if they decided on the term over two years they would scarcely get to the end. Why don’t we apply this experience to English and decide on psychologically acceptable interval for learning English alone?

Mr N asked me to help him learn English. After an accident doctors recommended him to eliminate physical activities for a year. He normally goes on holiday abroad twice a year as he is keen on cycling and alpine skiing. He decided to devote this year to English. We had classes three times a week on a regular basis. The amount of home work was also considerable. A month ago he took my advice and celebrated the year of his learning and his achievements. What is more, since he observed tourists speaking English fluently, his ambitions increased. We are looking forward to a new year of learning and a new aim.

Time for start

There are loads of options, namely you can start in September, March, on New Year’Day, at the new moon, on Monday, when two Sundays come together, after you finish reading this article.

Well, let’s get serious now. If you have started learning English a few times and quited, treat this aspect carefully and analyse your failures. September is associated with a school year and the end of vacation season for many adults and this can be benificial. I personally have had a successful experience of beginning good habits regarding lifestyle in September. Learning English systematically is another good habit.

The second wave for beginning a new life is March. Why is that? You stick to nature cycle. Days become longer and you feel an increase of energy. Apart from this, it facilitates you entering the most dangerous season which is summer. Even the most self-disciplined learners often get out of the groove in summer. So if you belong to a “quitter club”, do not begin in summer.

In terms of New Year resolutions, it’s a special moment when people usually get in the holiday spirit, don’t think in a practical way and, unfortunately, when holidays go back into routine, they do not follow their honorable motives.

Although everything mentioned above doesn’t relate to those who get in the right mindset and do not look for excuses. My piece of advice for you is to start today. But in fact you have already started.

Schedule

Having a schedule is another cornerstone of success. Similarly to doing exercise, studying on a regular basis plays a crucial role. Keep in mind a principle that a prolonged but irregular class is worse than short and frequent lessons, which are equal in time to the long one. One may study daily but you’d better plan a day off or days off in order to prevent burning-down effect. But if you get down to English only on Sundays, you will carry water in a sieve. It would be great if you could study at an intense pace at the beginning and then slow down a little bit and shift to a moderate pace. Intense learning makes you feel being able to follow through and gain a result, it solidifies motivation, you get inspired. You have that feeling “I want, I can, I will”. At least increasing a number of classes for you doesn’t cause any financial burden. Your classes are free.

Once a dad of my learners who were schoolchildren asked me to consult him once a week. He had an intention to learn English alone but under my control. I took this proposal unwillingly though I decided to try because we had known each other for a long time and had good relationship. Then his business trips also delayed classes and influenced the schedule, as a result an interval between the lessons could reach 12 days. Such experiment lasted for 4 months and as you can guess our classes came to an end. However, I gained valuable experience. Now I believe that English once a week without a clear purpose and a specified term is a risky project which I do not jump into any more and I do not recommend to anyone. There is a research which states that if you want to make a really great progress in English, you should study 10 hours per week no matter you have a tutor or you study alone. So you can do some simple calculations and distribute this number within a week and this can be your reference point.

Study curriculum

Even if you have a very concise goal and you are ready to spend a year on English, I highly recommend to follow through a course which corresponds to textbooks of an elementary level. Do not misinterpret the word “elementary”. “Elementary” does not mean easy as pie, for the weakest learners, it means a basic level, in other words, it is a foundation on which one can build his or her further development, wherever it will be headed. I would say, an elementary course will bring you remarkable results in case you have covered it thoroughly.Once I taught a real beginner an elementary course and we managed to build up quite fluent and accurate speaking avoiding numerous mistakes, while experienced learners who were fluent speakers and mastered wide vocabulary range, sometimes astonished with their gaps in the very basic things as mistakes in pronunciation of the most common words.

It leads us to the point that you would benefit more from the programme which is a balance of universal and individual components. I am convinced that sticking only to a textbook completing sentences persistently and being happy that your result manifests itself in a number of pages is not the most intelligent way of learning English. Nevertheless, rush into a film and work with subtitles from the very first days is also pointless.

Later on your way you will have to decide on a lot of important issues namely how to make general and individual components, how not to leave the race, how to get back in the groove in case you have quitted, how to prevent the burning-down effect if you have been on your way for a long time and so on. But these are topics for other articles.

You should stop weeping over your age, stop complaining that you were taught badly at school. To my mind, for only last 5-10 years we have been able to experience opportunities we have never dreamed before. And it doesn’t matter whether you studied English at school or not, you were good at it or not. What matters is that you can do it now and much more effectively. My most favourite motivator to learning English is an allegory which I heard in online seminar “How to learn English with films and TV shows?” by Nadezhda Schaslivaia. The allegory was told by a presenter Maksim Siniy. It is a story about people who wanted to climb a high mountain. Most of them were running around and looking for a lift in sense they were looking for super effective methods as English for a week, spy techniques, English while you’re dreaming, English once a week for 45 minutes, but a few people were climbing using a very simple principle inhale-a hand-a hand-exhale-a foot-a foot.

Keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Resume

If you have made a decision to learn English alone

a)      formulate and write down your goal;

b)      write down the term you are going to achieve your goal;

c)      set a schedule of classes, try to study on a regular basis up to 10 hours a week.

Ludmila Kunych (based on the facts from 2016)