English Learning Skills & English Materials Recommendation

For the past six months, I’ve been studying English in my spare time and have made significant progress. Though I’m not a fluent English speaker yet, I still want to share my thoughts in English and as for me, it’s a good chance to practice my writing skills. So, in this article, I’ll share my English learning experiences in the hopes that it would be useful to you.

In the first part, I’ll talk about top 5 practical skills, and In the second part, I’ll introduce my favorite English materials.

English Learning Skills

1. stimulate your interest in English.
2. get used to the native English environment.
3. build up English mind.
4. try to create, not just accept.
5. be patient with yourself.

1.stimulate your interest in English.

The most important thing is to ignite your interest in the English language. If you read or listen to some English materials every day in your leisure time, you will spend far more time on English materials than you will in class, and you will make enormous progress without painstaking effort!

Textbooks are so boring! Why not try some tv series or viedo games? For instance, I guess many people like watching tv series on Netflix or playing games on Steam. All you need to do is to keep your habit and switch the language to English. You may find it difficult to adjust at first, but after you do, you’ll be so engrossed in the show that you’ll forget you’re watching it in English! That’s the second thing I’d like to mention!

2.get used to the native English environment.

The English you learned in school is not the same as the English you will encounter in the real world. When communicating, people employ idioms or acronyms and don’t care much about grammar. As a result, non-native speakers may find it more difficult to comprehend.

I recommend this video on YouTube: Understand Native English Speakers with this Advanced Listening Lesson.

It clarifies why native speakers are so difficult to understand. The most common blunder is focusing on words and attempting to translate them. For example, when we put two words together, the sounds often change. As a result, we should spend more time watching, listening, and acclimating to the original English environment.

3.build up English mind.

Build up English mind means thinking in English, instead of translating every words! So How can I think in English? Refer to this viedo: 5 Smart Ways to Improve your Speaking Skills, there are two main steps:

Step 1: only use words you already know

describe an image or just surroundings around you in English. First of all, you can describe it as simple words, then some phrases, eventually a sentence. And you should do this as a daily habit.

Tips: If you don’t know the correct word, you just need to do:

• find a word round it
• let the idea go

Step 2: practice with others.

Only in this way, you can know whether your English have been improved after the task of step 1.

4.try to create, not just accept.

When we say someone “speaks” a language fluently, we usually mean they are proficient in all four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. IELTS (International English Language Testing System) assesses these four abilities.

But the most of time we accept the knowledge, and rarely express what we’ve learned. most of us perform poorly in speaking and writing. I propose that whenever we have the opportunity, such as in a presentation or an essay, we should endeavor to express ourselves in English.

5.be patient with yourself.

Language learning is a long-term process. Nobody can gain English proficiency in a couple of months. Just be patient with yourself!

Great English Materials

Woo~! I eagerly want to share my favorite English materials with you guys! These make me love learning English!

Video Games

Language options, including subtitles and audio, would be available in most games. I strongly advise you to play games based on rich plots. I constantly pay attention to what the characters are saying in order to assist them in making the best decisions possible. When I played Life Is Strange, I was intrigued by the attractive plot and overwhelmed for the whole day! I’ve never read English material for such a long time. The LIS series is fantastic. LIS is my favorite. Life Is Stranger:Before The Storm and LIS2 are also excellent.

Life Is Strange: It follows the exploits of 18-year old Max Caulfield, a high school senior who learns she has the power to rewind time when she saves her childhood friend, Chloe Price, from being killed.

Life Is Strange2: After a tragic incident, brothers Sean and Daniel Diaz run away from home. Fearing the police, and dealing with Daniel’s new telekinetic power, the boys head to Mexico. Each stop on their journey brings new friends and new challenges.

Detriot: Become Human depicts a fictional near-future story about a world where humans are served by lifelike androids. It has three storylines: Kara (Valorie Curry), who escapes her owner to explore her newfound sentience and protect a young girl; Connor (Bryan Dechart), whose job is to hunt down sentient androids; and Markus (Jesse Williams), who devotes himself to releasing other androids from servitude.

It has much more branches and endings than LIS. However, because there are many technical jargons, the terms are more challenging. Sometimes we must choose choices quickly within 30 seconds. It requires you a higher level of English comprehension.

A Plague Tale: Innocence: it features two young orphans on the run from the Inquisitio.

It’s a little bit scary with the dim atmosphere. I die a lot since I have no hand-eye coordination!

TV Series

I used to think that classic sitcoms were the greatest option. While I was watching Friends, I just couldn’t follow their speaking speed! A sitcom is a genre of comedy focused on character dialogue. Many expressions may contain other implications, making them more difficult to comprehend.

All in all, I recommend you these TV Show Genres:

• Documentaries, Historical Fictions
• Coming-of-age story, Romantic Fictions
• Thriller, Horror

They have a common ground: the plots are drived by vision, not speeches.

Stranger Things: In 1980s Indiana, a group of young friends witness supernatural forces and secret government exploits. As they search for answers, the children unravel a series of extraordinary mysteries.

Recently, Stranger Things 4 is coming! I like this TV series a lot. I think it suits everybody!

All Of Us Are Dead: It depicts how trapped students escape their high school which has become ground zero for a zombie virus outbreak.

It’s a Korean horror TV show, and you can choose the English audio and subtitle. I have an amazing discovery that it would be easier to understand if the main characters are teenagers or children!

Books

I believe the key to reading is your interests. So if you aren’t obsessed with classical books, just read some popular novels. Personally, I adore reading fan-fiction stories on AO3. I also enjoy male/male romantic stories which are kind of guilty pleasure for me. (haha

I highly recommend this reading App. It helps me a lot. You can download it here: App Store: tingyue for english learners. TYReader is an app for improving your English skills via reading novels. It can highlight the difficult words in the left section and show their meaning in the right section.

Podcasts

My ability to listen in English is inadequate. I’m trying to improve it by listening to slower-paced podcasts. The following is the list that I prefer:

1. Spotlight English
2. BBC: 6-minute English
3. BBC: Learning English