This week one of my students who has been a little bit too relaxed about his TOEFL study has become extremely motivated and started undertaking listening practice of his own accord and systematically logging the vocabulary he is learning, emailing me to tell me his progress. What caused this? Me telling him I’d check up … [Read more…]
Students tend to spend a lot of money on equipment for studying English. In this post I have listed some of the best kits available for you. The Cheap Kit This consists of: a pencil or pen, a piece of paper, something to read or listen to, which could be a free magazine, newspaper or … [Read more…]
Should you pay to study? Some students do very well with free study material while others like to have a lot of textbooks. It can be quite expensive to buy a lot of textbooks but there are also advantages. I am going to talk about the pros and cons of studying using free material and … [Read more…]
“I want to use English,” my students say, “but I don’t have anyone to talk to apart from you.” “What about writing a diary?” I suggest. “I never keep to it. I always abandon it after a week or so.” In which case, here are some other suggestions. The first one is from my student … [Read more…]
You are not ‘bad at English’. What does ‘bad at English’ mean? Maybe your listening or reading comprehension skills are not as good as you want them to be. Practise with easy material and hard material. The easy material is a warm up and the hard material is work. I didn’t say you have to … [Read more…]
I’m writing this in reply to a Twitter conversation. When you listen to a video or a CD and don’t understand, how many times should you repeat it or replay it? As many times as it takes. However, are you taking notes? Can you check words in a dictionary. Can you repeat what the speaker … [Read more…]
Comfort Zone: a place or situation where everything is comfortable and familiar. You can already read English well enough to understand this blog. This blog is not reading practice; it is part of your reading practice. I know that ‘real’ English (as opposed to ESL textbook English) is difficult but life is difficult, too. If … [Read more…]