FINDING YOUR ENGLISH LEARNING PATH

1. Clarify WHY You Want to Learn: Ask yourself this important question. Do a good
job clarifying this and use your answer as your inspiration and guide for the entire
process. Do you really want to learn? Does the motivation come from you or from
what others expect? Until your WHY comes from within you, in a way that you can
access and forms part of your attitude, your path to fluency will probably be
difficult, unimaginative, and inefficient.
However, if your why is strong and sincere, it will inspire you and energize your
entire process. The best language learners know why they are learning, and it isnt
because they have to. This is effective learning.
To learn more about clarifying your goals, check out the article, The #1 Reason Why
You Arent Learning As Much English As You Want
2. Organize Your Life, Plan Your Process, and Set Goals: Research different methods,
schools, and programs for learning. Be aware that high quality alternative options
and opportunities for learning are increasing every day. Do you want to study
online, with a school, or with a private teacher? Do you have a clear idea of what
this will demand from your life?
Talk to friends who have already studied and those who have been successful, as
well as a variety of schools. Sit in on classes to see which one you connect best
with. And finally, set goals not only with your English (the final result), but also with
your attitude and approach to the whole process.
To learn more about setting goals, check out the article, Simple But Powerful:
Creating Goals for English Learning Success
3. Build A Support Network: Ask for the support of your family and friends. Search
for mentors, people who have already been successful, teachers and friends in the
real world, as well as virtual language learning communities (such as the RealLife
Global Community).
The more successful language learners you surround yourself with, the more their
attitudes, strategies, support, and confidence will rub off on you. Furthermore, in
times of confusion, these people can and will help you.
4. Effective Methods / Effective Learning Styles: There are universally effective
learning methods and there are personal learning styles. The Communicative
approach, for example, is a very effective method for learning languages for any
type of learner. In fact, this is how we learn naturally.
The Communicative Approach treats meaningful communication as the vehicle for
learning a language, focusing primarily on function rather than structure (which isn
t ignored, but rather something that plays a complementary role in the process.)

Understanding your learning style would be to recognize how you as an individual

learn. Are you more visual, auditory or kinesthetic? As a general rule, things you
usually like doing are probably more in tune with your learning style. If you learn
better visually, maybe TV shows and movies are your best bet, while if youre an
auditory learner, podcasts and music could be helpful.
If you dont know how you learn, pay attention as you go along and experiment with
different strategies because its going to teach you a lot about yourself. This is a big
reason why people who learn a second language as an adult have a much easier
time learning a third. They are more aware of how they learn.
5. Take Responsibility For Your Learning: Just do it. Dive in head first. Learn to enjoy
it. If you arent engaged, dont quit, but rather take responsibility and find out what
is going wrong. If you arent learning, ask yourself why not. Maybe there are
circumstances and other people who play a role in your learning process, but
nobody can learn the language for you.
You cant blame it on a lack circumstances, time, money or opportunities. You have
to want it bad enough to overcome the external obstacles. Worthwhile
accomplishments arent easy, but if you enjoy the process, its well worth the
payoff. But also, sometimes taking responsibility means having the courage to
change things around.
ON THE PATH TO ENGLISH FLUENCY
6. Have the Right Attitude (Enjoy the Journey AND the Destination): Constantly
evaluate your attitude towards learning English. Learning a language is not like
learning math or science. If this is how you learned English in high school, its time
to change your perspective.
Effective learning is engaging, interesting, and a something that brings the topic to
life. Effective learning is to enjoy the process AND strive for the result. Think back to
an experience where you enjoyed learning, where time flew by and you always
looked forward to it.
Accessing this type of learning is not easy, but if you follow the above tips/ steps
and have an idea of what it should feel like, you can start gathering the attitudes,
support networks and resources to facilitate it. This will bring you an enjoyable
process as well as the achievement of your goals.
7. Dedicate Yourself Every Day/ Create Routines: Be consistent, dedicated, and
diligent with your efforts. Excellence is a daily habit, not a twice a week class. You
should insert English in your life every single day, or at least 5 or 6 days a week,
because nobody reaches excellence in anything without daily application. You
probably dont need to study every day, but find convenient moments in your life

where you can create routines that allow you to play around with English, enjoy it,
and learn in a relaxed way.
Some recommendations are Lifestyle English (covered in #10), which would include
learning with music, TV shows, podcasts, in addition to online communities and
resources. You can learn something every day in the Real Life English International
Community for free.
8. Dont Accept Mediocrity: Dont accept mediocrity from yourself or from the
people you depend on for learning. To reiterate the above point about excellence,
mediocrity is treating English like a twice a week hobby. Accept that youre not
going to be 100% perfect on your path to fluency, but you can learn a lot at every
step, and you dont have to ever settle into an attitude of mediocrity.
Its easy to sleepwalk through life with mediocre attitude, a mediocre plan, a
mediocre goal, a mediocre purpose, a mediocre school or teacher, or mediocrity on
any of these 13 tips, but you get what you give, and fluency is not for the mediocre
attitude. When you start expecting the best from yourself and others, some really
awesome stuff starts to happen.
9. Relax, Have Fun, and Dont Be So Hard On Yourself: Try to make it as fun and
interesting as possible. Imagine your English as a baby learning to walk. You need to
give the baby a lot of space, cushioning, support and patience so that it can fall as it
needs to, enjoy itself, and learn how to do it without being judged.
One of the things that makes children such awesome learners is that they naturally
do these things. As Dan Millman illustrates in his book Body Mind Mastery, If babies
held the same tendency toward self-criticism as adults, they might never learn to
walk or talk. Can you imagine infants stomping, Aarggh! Screwed up again!
Fortunately, babies are free of self-criticism. They just keep practicing.
Your English is your baby and it needs your patience and love to develop.
10. Make English into a Lifestyle: Connect English to what you already do and like to
do. This is called English For Life. Even if you have a hard time understanding what
they are saying, just having contact with something you LIKE will help you little by
little start to make sense of it.
If you like listening to English language music, start trying to understand the lyrics.
If you like watching TV shows, make a routine out of watching them. Listen to online
radio, music and podcasts, and other native speaking sources when youre cooking
at home. Configure your Facebook, cell phone, e-mail and other programs and
devices into English. Use your imagination.
LIFELONG ENGLISH FLUENCY

11. Understand that Fluency is Not Perfection: People that dont speak English look
at English speakers and think they speak perfectly. The truth is that very very few
non-native speakers speak perfectly (and even native speakers make mistakes).
Even if they dont admit it to you or themselves, most fluent speakers make
mistakes, have a significant accent from their native tongue, and struggle with their
own problems.
The point is that fluency is not about perfection, which for non-native speakers is
pretty much impossible. Fluency is about meaningful communication, and all the
rich world of cultural and professional opportunity that comes with it.
12. Constantly Review and Renew Your Process: While patience is surely
advantageous to language learning, you cant be afraid of making changes and
renewing your process from time to time. What worked for you at an earlier stage of
the process may not be working for you now, and its important to keep every step
of your path fresh and spontaneous.
This could mean changing resources, trying different learning strategies, or even
switching schools or teachers. My recommendation: Assess your progress every 4
to 6 months. Ask yourself how things are going. This demands a high degree of selfawareness and sometimes courage, but its essential. You might ask yourself: Are
you enjoying it? Are you learning? Are you still inspired? If not, whats the problem?
Take charge of your process.
13. Be Proactive, Create Opportunities & Use Technology To Your Advantage: In line
with English For Life (covered in #10), to really get to a level where lifelong fluency
is a real possibility, you need to be extremely proactive. English needs to be a part
of your everyday life. You need to constantly be creating opportunities where you
can use English.
This may include a lifestyle that promotes travel to English speaking countries, but
it should definitely include an intimate understanding and use of certain strategies
that give you contact with the language anywhere in the world, such as podcasts,
online radio, TV & movies, and local communities that organize in person English
speaking gathering, such as Real Life English and Couchsurfing.
- See more at: http://reallifeglobal.com/13-tips-for-englishfluency/#sthash.cW2fHUly.dpuf

7 Tips to Drastically Improve Your Pronunciation in English - See more at:

http://reallifeglobal.com/7-tips-to-drastically-improve-your-pronunciation-inenglish/#sthash.IngZw6GK.dpuf
1. Open Your Ears to Youtube & Podcast Pronunciation

There are a lot of very helpful, well-done youtube channels that focus on
pronunciation. Beyond our very own RealLife TV, which teaches pronunciation in
dynamic ways, Rachels English is a series of free pronunciation videos that teach
phonetics and English pronunciation. Other recommended youtube pronunciation
channels are listed below.
Heres a program that enables you to download and convert youtube videos into
MP3 audio format so you can listen in your car or on the bus. Its recommended to
listen to the same sounds every day until you feel like
Five Youtube Channels That Teach Pronunciation
RealLife TV
Rachels English
Dave Sconda (English Meeting)
English with Jennifer
Amy Walker
2.Lifestyle English: Listen to Podcasts Every Day
Podcasts Teaching Pronunciation: There are some phenomenal podcasts dealing
with pronunciation. Podcasts are free, downloadable audio programs that you can
put on your mp3 player. If youre new to podcasts, you can learn more about
podcasts here, or check out our very own podcast, RealLife Radio. They are an
excellent option because you can listen in your car or on the bus while youre stuck
in traffic, or whenever is most convenient for you. Here are few
recommended podcasts for pronunciation and in general:
RealLife Radio
American English Pronunciation (Seattle Learning Academy) has over 150 free
downloadable podcast episodes teaching American English pronunciation.
All Ears English Podcast
English Pronunciation Podcast
Native Speaking Podcasts: Whether its ESL podcasts (English as a Second
Language) or podcasts that are made for Native English speakers, exposing yourself
regularly to native speaking speakers will naturally condition your brain to
understand and produce the sounds of the language in a more clear and smooth
way. Here are 3 very extensive podcast directories that can help you find good
native speaking podcasts in English. To learn more about podcasts, read What is a
Podcast, and Why You Should Care

NPR Podcast Directory (National Public Radio: American)

BBC Podcast Directory (British Broadcasting Channel: British)
The Best Free Podcasts
Check out the RealLife Radio Pronunciation Power Lessons
3. Intonation: Focus on the Music Behind the Words
Whether you pay attention to it or not, the musical element of a language is
essential to good pronunciation. You dont need to become a musician or listen to
more music in English (although both of these could help), but you should pay
attention to the intonation of native speakers. It is the melodic pattern of the
language that is so fundamental to communication and human connection.
If you had to hum the language, what would it sound like? Making this awareness a
part of your learning process is important. Check out this youtube video of an
American couple speaking English (the funny part is that it totally sounds like
English but they are speaking unintelligible gibberish). If you werent paying
attention, you wouldnt notice the difference.
The application is more of an attitude rather than a strategy, as it involves constant
awareness rather than routine, but its definitely something to keep in mind.
We also Recommend How Music Can Make You Fluent, Intonation: The Secret
Ingredient to Great Pronunciation (with Audio), and Is Bad Pronunciation Killing Your
Fluency?
4. Practice: Read Out Loud Every Day
I would reserve this one more specifically for people who have already learned some
degree of correct pronunciation, because reading without correct pronunciation, or a
teacher helping you, youre just reinforcing poor pronunciation. Before you start,
you should at least have some idea of what it feels like to pronounce things
correctly.
If your pronunciation level has not been stabilized, I dont recommend reading for
more than 10 or 15 minutes, because people tend to lose their concentration, and
go back to their vices (which is to reinforce them). Remember, pronunciation can be
improved quite quickly with small, concentrated doses even only a few times per
week. Heres a helpful article on reading out loud.
One way around this, however, is to listen to the audio book while you read the text
and imitate the speaker. For greater effectiveness, record yourself speaking and
compare it to the audio book.
5. Self-Awareness: Record Yourself Speaking

Record yourself reading out loud on a tape recorder or a computer. At first, it will be
really difficult to listen to your own voice. Relax, as you will get used it to pretty
quickly.
Most people hate their voice, even in their own native language, so the combination
of your voice and hearing yourself speak a foreign language for the first time will be
painful, but its a necessary step in developing the self-awareness to improve. You
could even record yourself reading the same reading passage every day or every
week as you implement these techniques.
As mentioned above, recording of a native speaker reading the same passage (such
as an audiobook, podcast, or a native speaker friend) could facilitate your process.
Here are a few recommended web sites that focus on pronunciation. Ship or Sheep
is a good place to experiment with recording yourself.
6. Imitation, Shadowing, and Role Models
Im going to break this one up into two categories: (a) language learning role
models, and (b) role models to imitate. Both of them can help you become a better
speaker, but in different ways.
LANGUAGE LEARNING ROLE MODELS are people in your life who speak well and
have worked hard to get there. Maybe its a teacher or a friend, but they are
someone who has learned through hard work and can explain the process to you.
Even if they dont have perfect pronunciation, they can help you understand the
process and what it takes to improve your pronunciation. Naturally gifted people
rarely fall into this category unless they are very aware of the processes that help
them speak well, so they would usually be accent role models to imitate.
Check out Idahosa Ness, Founder of The Mimic Method, as he performs some
language learning heroics!
ROLE MODELS TO IMMITATE are people with accents that you want to imitate.
Native speakers and people who are naturally talented usually dont understand the
processes that guide their pronunciation (although a few do), but they are good role
models to imitate.
As you watch TV and movies, choose somebody who has your type of voice,
communication style, and who you would like to emulate. If you dont know, ask
your friends to recommend somebody. You could even memorize parts of movies
you like, imitating the actors.
The act of imitating somebody speak is called SHADOWING. Check out this helpful
video below on the topic.
7. Experimentation: Reverse Accent Mimicry

This is another idea that deserves its own post, but Im going to post the article and
summarize it here. Ive met several seemingly gifted language learners who swear
this is how they learn languages. Heres a basic summary from the study/ article by
Laurence M. Hilton.
Humans possess an innate biological capacity to hear, differentiate and mimic
fundamental prosodic and phonological characteristics of any language. My purpose
is to describe a mimicry based foreign accent reduction method developed from my
own personal experience. I first will present myself as a case study, detailing how
using a reverse accent mimicry method rapidly and substantially minimized my own
L2 accent. I then will share suggestions for implementing the technique in the
classroom or clinic. I have employed it with good success with people from diverse
language backgrounds over several decades of clinical experience. Read the whole
article
The idea, in a nutshell, is to imitate a native speaker of the language that you are
learning, speaking your language, and apply it back to the target language. Let me
give you two valid examples.
If you are Brazilian learning English, you would imitate a native English speaker who
is speaking Portuguese, and apply the sounds structure back to English. It sounds
like a joke, but if you can effectively imitate a native English speaker speaking
Portuguese in the most exaggerated way, it will activate these sounds in your
mouth and enable you to use them in English. Heres a video with native English
speakers speaking in Portuguese
In my case, I am American, so I need to find an example of a Brazilian speaking
English with a really exaggerated accent, learn to imitate it, and apply it back to
Portuguese.
Does this work? My intuition tells me that it does. It really fits into what Ive learned
from the master language learners.
IN CONCLUSION, while the title includes English Pronunciation, most of these tips
and strategies can be applied to any language. Interestingly, as a native English
speaker, I would like to point out that my own best insights and teaching do not
come from a superior understanding of the English language, but from my own
personal learning processes of Spanish and Portuguese.
Finally, I would like to clarify that my own pronunciation in Portuguese is far from
perfect, but in all the years of teaching and learning languages, and observing the
best language learners, the answers have been put in front of me.
- See more at: http://reallifeglobal.com/7-tips-to-drastically-improve-yourpronunciation-in-english/#sthash.IngZw6GK.dpuf

Listen to English Speaking Podcasts

These are free, downloadable audio programs you can put on your ipod, mobile
phone or anything that has an MP3 player. You can listen to the daily news,
programs for learning English (ESL), or anything else youre interested in. The
podshere is vast and there are no limits to the quantity and quality of material. To
maximize your time management and make a daily habit out of it, I recommend
listening in your car (or on the bus, walking). Real Life Radio is an excellent weekly
podcast created by us here at RealLife English to help you learn.
What is a podcast?
ESL PODCASTS are podcasts designed for people learning English. To find them, you
need to search ESL podcasts because searching for English Podcasts will give
you many podcasts that are in English, not necessarily to learn English. I highly
recommend the Real Life English podcast!
Podcasts Made for Native English Speakers: The world of native English speaking
podcasts is vast and fascinating, and you can listen to the news, cool cultural
programs, interviews with your favorite musicians, or just about any topic you can
imagine for self-help, professional development, or ANYTHING.
Discover NPRs American News Portal: NPR has the biggest and best selection of
American podcasts Ive ever seen. This site is a world in itself. Their music section
has an artist directory with a HUGE supply of interviews and content on just about
any world-renowned artist you can think of. Bob Dylan has 68 podcasts here (and a
lot of them have written transcripts).
ITUNES IS A FREE downloadable program and the best podcast directory out
there. You can download it for free here. HINT* To get a more complete offering of
the podcasts in English, go down to the bottom of the page in the itunes store and
change the country to the U.S. or another English speaking country. On the front
page of the podcast section of the itunes store, you will see a list of the most
popular podcasts in the U.S. Learn how to find podcasts on itunes here. If you have
android, you can download Stitcher.
A few of my favorite English speaking podcasts: Radiolab, World Cafe (Music), All
Songs Considered (Music), 50 Great Voices (Music), Insights at the Edge
(Spirituality)
Listen to the ReaLife Radio Podcast
Listen to Online Radio
Did you know that with an internet connection you can listen to live radio direct
from nearly anyplace in the world? Just the other day I was listening live to 107.7,

The End, my favorite station from Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., the station that
started the whole grunge-rock movement from the early 90s. And last week I
showed a friend of mine the tune-in radio app for his iphone and he was AMAZED by
some of the blues stations he found. He hasnt stopped listening to it, and if you find
some cool stations, you will impress people at parties. Here are some tips.
TUNEIN RADIO is my favorite: Check out Tunein Radio here. You can put it on your
iphone/ ipad or any mobile device that has android. It also works with windows.
HERES AN ONLINE RADIO STATIONS FOR ESL STUDENTS
DONT WORRY If You Dont Understand. You dont need to concentrate or feel like
youre studying. Just relax and listen passively. This will gradually condition your
brain to the sounds and frequencies of the language. Its like little, daily pieces of
mini-immersion that will bring you HUGE improvements over the months if you do it
every day. Soon youll notice new words coming out of your mouth, listening
becomes easier, and you wont need to concentrate so hard to understand what
another person is saying.
WHEN & WHERE TO LISTEN: Listen in your car, at home while you cook, while you
get dressed in the morning. Any relaxed space of time. Creating convenient and
painless spaces of time for daily habits is key!
Watch Your Favorite TV Series Every Day
Youve probably heard this a million times, but this is an awesome way to learn. If
you can change the language and put subtitles in English on your TV, that could
work. But in my opinion, its a lot better, easier and more motivating to have the
DVDs available.
Get the Whole Season and Watch them in Sequence: The best thing to do is to buy
the whole season of DVDs and watch one episode per night with English audio and
subtitles (if you understand more than 70%-80% and are ready for the challenge,
try it without subtitles. You will adapt). Heres a list popular TV shows to learn from.
Check out Ethans article: 10 TV Shows Youll Love Learning English With
Friends = Fluency: The program Friends is a great option. Honestly, there seems
to be a correlation between people who LOVE friends and high levels of fluency. Why
is this the case? Friends represents a whole generation, the characters all likeable,
its hilarious funny, a great gauge for American Culture, and there are 10 seasons
(250+ episodes)! I have a hypothesis that a basic level English student could
become fluent in 1 year by watching 1 episode per day for the whole year
(complementing a study routine). Learn English with Friends
Other Good Programs I recommend are How I Met Your Mother, Lost, Two and a
Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, or Greys Anatomy. Honestly, the most
important thing is that YOU ENJOY IT. More Suggestions.

Movies are Good, But. Movies are a good option too, but my problem with movies
is that they are so long and its really difficult to form daily habits watching movies.
Learn English With Music and Lyrics
This is a part of English speaking culture that everybody participates in and few
people take advantage of. Its everywhere in Brazil. In my case, learning Portuguese,
I remember learning to sing along to the Legio Urbana song Pais e Filhos before I
even spoke Portuguese.
Now I see that song as the origin of several expressions that I use every day quite
naturally. My argument: If you already like the song, why not print out the lyrics so
you understand what they are saying. You like the song already, it will probably be
difficult to forget, and you will learn perfect pronunciation and collocation. Here are
a few tips:
Its Okay Not to Understand:Im a native English speaker and I dont understand half
the lyrics out there. Its natural. Just print the lyrics out. One extremely fluent Real
Life English community member posted the follow (see photo to the left) describing
his difficulty.
If You Have an iPod or iPhone, add the lyrics to the song. You can read as you listen
to the song. Its easy to do and its really quite useful on long trips: Heres a video
tutorial on how to do this.
NPR Music Programs are an excellent option for music fans. Its a perfect balance of
dialogue, music and culture. Connect your passion to learn English with your
passion for music.
NPR Has a Huge Directory of Artist Interviews
If You Are a Musician, this is a whole different set of skills that can help you learn the
language (a keen ability to listen and distinguish sounds, imitate vocal frequencies
and intonations, and Im pretty sure music does some crazy stuff to the brain.
Heres an article on How Music Can Make You Fluent.