Start practicing English consistently with these steps

Podcast intro:

Hey, welcome to the InFluency Podcast. I'm Hadar, and this is episode number 375. And today we are going to learn how to plan your English practice.

Hey everyone. Thank you so much for being here for another episode. If you have been listening to this podcast for a while, you already know that I love, love, love effective practice. And in particular, I love planning a good effective practice. In fact, I love planning everything. Before I do anything, I sit down with a blank piece of paper and a pen. Yes, I like to use the old fashioned way of writing things. And I write all the things that I want to make happen or the things that are needed for me to accomplish something. So it's like a to do list or a vision list or a goal list, whatever you want to call it. Every time it's a little different. But I think that planning is a big part of making things happen in life.

So, if you want to improve your English and you want to reach a certain goal, you have to practice and you have to plan your practice so that you will actually see results. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Okay? So let's go ahead and do that.

But I also want to tell you before that, that I am currently learning a new language, I'll tell you more about that soon. And I'm going to use this planning method because it's been a while since I applied all of this onto English. I just use it with my students and I see the results, so I know it works. But I haven't used it myself because I don't need to learn English right now.

But I do need to learn other languages, and I'm going to absolutely use this method. And I'm going to update you on how that's going for me so I can speak from real experience. So if you're not subscribed to my podcast just yet, now is the time to see if I walk the talk. Okay. I think we're ready to go ahead and listen to today's episode.

Video transcript:

How to plan your daily English practice. As you know, practicing consistently is really important to improve your fluency and confidence in English. But sometimes we don't know what we need to practice and we don't know when we should practice and how much time we need to spend. So of course, that changes based on who you are, how much time you have and what your goals are. But today I wanted to share with you the essential components that need to be in almost every English practice, especially if your goal is to practice daily and consistently.

So, first thing I want to talk about is planning. There are two elements to this. One - plan when you're going to practice. If it's going to be first thing in the morning, after lunch, or before you go to bed - it doesn't matter, it needs to be planned and in your calendar. The reason why we want to do it is because things always get in the way. Even if you say to yourself, "Okay, I'm going to practice my English tomorrow", then you wake up and then you get phone calls and emails and everyone wants something from you. And then you get to the end of the day and you're like, "Wait... I didn't practice my English."

Now, of course, that can happen with any new habit that you're trying to develop, but today we're going to talk about English. So that is usually the case. Plan it, put it in your calendar, and make it non negotiable. So you tell everyone between 11:30 and 11:50, "I'm not available". So that's one part of the planning.

Another part of the planning is to know what you're going to do every single day in the upcoming week. So ideally, at the end of the week or at the beginning of the week, you can sit down and write the topics or the elements of English that you would want to practice. Whether it's sounds or new words, or grammatical structures, or anything you struggle with, even if it's just speaking, you want to know what you're going to focus on and make sure that you plan it according to the day.

So let's say you want to practice five days a week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And you want to practice conditionals, and you want to practice a little bit of speaking, and you want to practice the R. So you can start organizing what you will be working on every single day at the end of the week. You want to batch it, in a way.

Why? Because that gives you clarity and then it won't leave you to figure out what to do as soon as you sit down to practice. Everything is going to be planned out. And if you want to overprepare, then you can also collect all the resources and have it ready to practice and to go as soon as you begin your practice, your daily practice.

Now the next thing I wanna talk about is three important elements that need to be in every daily practice. Now, you don't have to have it in every single daily practice, but if you incorporate it and you try to be consistent with it, your practice is going to be a lot more effective.

So here's how I see it. The first element is warmup. You have to understand that speaking requires you to use certain muscles and articulation organs, and sometimes you're gonna be using some muscles that you don't usually use in your first language. So, some type of warmup, whether it's a tongue twister or a pronunciation warmup.

I have a video that people use daily – I'm going to link to it in the description below – of the ideal morning pronunciation practice. So that daily warmup is going to help you feel ready, more prepared with your voice and with your articulation organs. If you are looking for different types of warmups, I'm going to share with you all my different videos.

And I also have a free product called the Sprint Rookie, with three Sprints. Sprints are 10 minute daily exercises designed to boost your pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. It's something that I developed. It's super effective, it's a lot of fun, and it functions as an excellent warmup. It's absolutely free. So I'm going to link to it below, so you can use it daily as your warmup. Okay?

After the warmup, then comes the actual learning and practice. Now, if you are planning on learning something or practicing something, there should be the learning part, the passive learning. Where you watch a video, listen to something, read a blog about English, where you try to understand an element in English that you are uncertain about or that confuses you. Okay? So, whether it's a certain tense, the Future Perfect tense, how do I use it? In the learning part of your daily practice, you will go and collect the information and actively learn something new, or revise something that is unclear.

After that, goes the practice part. And here it has to be about speaking. Okay? So here you want to put into practice what you learn. So for example, if you learn about the Future Perfect tense, then you want to practice speaking intentionally using the Future Perfect tense. Or maybe just reading out loud sentences with the Future Perfect tense. Let's say, if your learning part was about learning a new sound, like the R sound or the L sound, then the active part in your daily practice should be about practicing it, repeating it. So learning and practicing. It should never be just learning.

Now, while it could be just speaking or practicing, it's really important that you know what you're focusing on. Okay? Even if you haven't watched a video or learned something, you need to be very intentional about what you're trying to improve, whether it's a sound or your grammar, or using new words, or just speaking about things that you're not used to speaking about. So, the part where you actively speak and put into practice what you learn should be the longest part of your daily practice. And it has to be there.

So, if anything, you can skip the warmup, you can skip even the learning part, but speaking actively, practicing speaking, using intentionally new structures and sounds is really what's going to move the needle in your English, in your fluency, and in your confidence.

So to wrap it up, when you plan your daily practice, first of all, you have to plan when it is going to be during the day. You have to plan the content that you're going to be learning and practicing ahead of time. And when you sit down to practice and plan your actual daily practice, you want to include the three elements: the warmup, the learning part, that should be the smaller part, and the practice part where you practice what you learn and you use English and you actually speak it.

If you need more help about practicing effectively or structuring your practice or knowing what to focus on, I have a bunch of videos that are going to be super helpful. I'm going to link them in the description below. All right? I hope you make a commitment to practice consistently, because that is what's going to make a difference. And I want that for you, and I know you do too.

Have a beautiful day. If you enjoy this episode, please consider sharing, subscribing. Also check out my website hadarshemesh.com. You can also follow me on social media, where I share daily content that is going to help you speak English with clarity, confidence, and freedom. Have a beautiful day, and I'll see you next week in the next video. Bye.