The problem with English study and practice, and what to do instead to improve your English

Around the world, more people than ever are learning English.

There are now well over one billion English learners worldwide.

They want to learn English to further their education, get better jobs, and communicate with the world.

Unfortunately, many of them are learning English in ways that are not very effective.

At worst, they may be harming their progress.

What I find is that many people who want to improve their English focus on study and practice.

For example, they buy books and programs to study English grammar and vocabulary.

They go to language schools to practice speaking English with native speakers.

Now, these activities can be useful at times.

The problem is that many English learners focus too much on this kind of language study and practice.

They are missing what they really need to use English fluently and effectively.

The missing foundation

Imagine that you want to build a very large and luxurious house—a mansion.

You want to build it very high, and you want it to last a very long time.

To build this dream home, you must give it a proper foundation.

Without a good foundation, you won’t be able to build the mansion very high.

You may experience difficulties as you build.

Worse, the building might be unstable and even begin to fall apart.

This mansion is a complex structure, and it must be built the right way.

The ability to use English fluently is like a complex structure—one that is built in our brains.

As with building a mansion successfully, to learn English successfully, you need the right foundation.

Unfortunately, the way that schools typically teach English does not give learners this foundation.

What is the foundation to speaking English fluently and effectively?

To find out, let’s compare how people learn languages in schools with how young children learn languages.

The child’s secret to learning languages

It often seems like children learn new languages more easily and successfully than adults do.

Indeed, research finds that on average, the older someone begins to learn a new language, the less successful they are.

Therefore, many people think that children are simply better at learning languages.

However, when adults begin to learn new languages, they typically do things very differently from children.

People overlook the big differences between how adults typically learn languages, and how children learn them.

Let’s look at what babies and young children do and experience when they learn languages:

• Babies first hear the language for a long time and become familiar with its sounds
• Young children learn to understand the language well before they speak it much
• They do things they enjoy in the language and get encouragement without pressure to speak

Now, let’s look at how many older children and adults begin to learn languages in schools:

• They have to read or speak the language without first hearing how it sounds
• They don’t get to listen to the language a lot in ways they can understand
• There is stress and pressure to practice speaking the language and study its grammar

As you can see, when babies and young children learn languages, they get what many older learners do not.

They get to hear how the language sounds, they get to understand a lot of what they hear, and they get to have many positive experiences in the language.

Only later they go to school, where they may formally study and practice the language.

When older children and adults begin learning languages in school, they are often expected to study and practice the language right away!

They don’t get the foundation of listening, understanding, and encouragement that babies and young children naturally get.

This suggests that they are less successful not because of when they learned, but how they learned.

Study and practice: like building without a foundation

Sadly, many people who want to improve their English are just doing more of what they did in school.

They do things like study grammar more and try to practice speaking more.

This is like trying to build a mansion higher and add things to it when it doesn’t have the foundation it needs.

To learn English well, you need the same kind of foundation that babies and young children naturally get.

Those who learn English best even though they began studying it in school do things that help them get the right foundation:

• They become very familiar with spoken English and its sounds
• They listen to lots of English and become very good at understanding it
• They do many things they enjoy in English

With the right foundation, it becomes easy to use English grammar naturally.

With the right foundation, it becomes easy to speak English fluently and effectively.

With the right foundation, the study and practice that many English learners find difficult becomes much easier, and even unnecessary!

The foundation of fluent English speaking

We can think of the foundation to speaking English fluently as having three main pillars:

1. Pronunciation: Being able to hear and produce the sounds of English clearly.
2. Comprehension: Being able to understand English well, and listening to a lot of English you can understand.
3. Mindset: Being confident with using English, and having habits and an environment that allow you to keep improving.

People naturally get these pillars when they start learning English as babies or young children.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these pillars.

Pronunciation

Before they learn almost anything else about English, babies become very familiar with its sounds.

Similarly, you need to develop a very good grasp of the sounds of English.

This doesn’t mean you have to sound just like a native speaker of English.

What’s important is to make enough of the same distinctions that native speakers make to tell apart different words and meanings.

Some of these distinctions are:

• The consonant sounds that distinguish “light” from “right”
• The vowel sounds that distinguish “ship” form “sheep”
• The ending sounds that distinguish “I watch” from “I watched”

Making these distinctions helps you not only speak English more clearly, but also understand spoken English better.

Comprehension

Young children learn to understand a lot of a language before they speak it much.

On the other hand, many schools expect students to speak and study new languages right away without this comprehension.

This goes against what the research tells us about how we acquire languages.

“Comprehension of meaningful language is the foundation of language acquisition,” write Dr. Patsy Lightbown and Dr. Nina Spada in How Languages are Learned.

To become really fluent in English, you need to hear a lot of English that you can understand.

The linguist Dr. Stephen Krashen has said: “We acquire language in only one way…when we understand messages.”

This means that the ability to speak English fluently is not the result of studying or practicing English.

It’s actually the result of hearing a lot of English and understanding it.

Krashen calls this language that we can understand comprehensible input.

To really improve your English, you need to get as much English comprehensible input as you can.

The good news is you can spend much of this time doing things you enjoy in English and learning other things in English.

The more English you listen to, the more you will understand.

The more English you understand, the more you will learn.

By hearing and understanding a lot of English, you will be able to produce it more and more fluently and accurately.

Mindset

When people learn English as babies, they develop many positive associations with English:

• They hear and understand English spoken by people who love them
• They get lots of encouragement without pressure to speak or fear of making mistakes
• They have many experiences they enjoy in English

Sadly, many who learn English starting in school end up with negative associations with English:

• They don’t get positive relationships and connections in English
• They face a lot of stress and pressure to speak English and be correct
• The English activities and content were boring

If this is anything like your experience, you need to change your mindset.

You need to create more positive associations with English.

You need to create habits of using English in meaningful ways.

You need to create an environment full of English that you understand and enjoy.

Working together to improve your English

These three pillars of pronunciation, comprehension, and mindset work together.

Making one pillar stronger makes the other pillars stronger.

For example, by working on producing English sounds (pronunciation), you can also understand spoken English more clearly (comprehension), and become more confident with using English (mindset).

Working on all three pillars will build a very strong foundation so that you can keep improving your English for life.

I work with professionals to build this foundation so they can use the English they already know more effectively, speak English more fluently, and continue to get better on their own.

Send me a message so we can work together to achieve your goals!