English is one of the most learned languages in the world as a second language and it is considered to be the lingua franca of planet Earth. Many people learn English for self-improvement, for additional skills, for business and educational purposes, or just for the pleasure of learning English. Some learn English so that they will be equipped with the language whenever they decide to travel or migrate to an English-speaking country in the future.

If you are interested to learn English and you are a resident of a non-English speaking country, it will be a quite challenging task for you to learn the language. However, if you just put your heart into it and set your goals to learn the language, you will eventually achieve fluency.

The following are ten easy ways for you to follow as an English language learner in your own country:

1. Become familiar with the internet. The internet is a trove of resources which you can use as tools for learning English. Reading materials, translation sites, audio tools and so much more are available for you to use for free!

2. Stack up and explore reading materials in English. You can go to your local library or bookstore and pick out stuff written in the English language. If you are a total beginner, you can start off with books or magazines for young people since they are easier to understand.

3. Practice your listening skills with music, podcasts and recorded lessons. There are a lot of CDs and other media available either online or in local stores which sell music albums and language lessons in English. Listening and even singing along to English songs as well as repeating the words in audio language lessons can help you become more familiar with the language easily.

4. Watch movies in English. Your local video store may have English movies available so choose them and pay attention to the movie. Watch how the mouths of the characters open when they pronounce certain words and try to imitate them. You can pause and replay specific scenes as often as you can as long as it helps you improve your English skills. Also, using subtitles in your language or in English will help you read and understand what the characters are saying.

5. Record yourself speaking in English. This exercise will help you gauge yourself on how you sound like to other people. If you think you still need to improve, practice more and try recording yourself again.

6. Whenever you encounter an English word and you don’t know what it means, write it down and research on it. Know what the word means and explore what are its possible synonyms so you can learn more words along the way.

7. Keep a journal written in English. You can write anything you want even just about trivial stuff. The purpose of keeping the journal is to help you to improve your writing skills in English.

8. Practice speaking English with your friends. You may have friends who do not speak English yet they are interested to help you out and learn the language too! Conversing with someone can help you become confident with using the language. Speaking with people who are at your same level is convenient because you will probably know the same vocabulary. You have to combine this with speaking with people who are more advanced than you so that they can correct you in case you make any mistakes.

9. Enroll in an English language course. If there are English language courses available in your area, sign up for it so that you may be able to learn the basics of the language in a formal setting. However if there are none available in your vicinity, you can try signing up for online English classes.
There are so many ways for you to learn English at home. Make use of what is available and enjoy learning the language!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 9:42 am and is filed under Learning Methods. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.