I’m going to talk about a few of those little things that you could do in a day to significantly improve yourself in your command over English. I have a huge list of items that I want to talk about with you. It’s all here.

I’ve kept it right in front of me, and trust me, whatever I’m going to share with you today is not going to be something that is going to push you beyond your limits of comfort.

It’s going to be simple and it’s something that you could learn. Easily there’s a difference between trying to learn a language and trying to be fluent in it.

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First step

The first point that I would want to highlight over here is that you are trying to be fluent in English. That means you will have to actually change the way of your life.

You cannot be living the same way you’ve been living till now and still be fluent at it. See, we understand one thing.

If you are not fluent in English, a very good reason behind it would be that people around you do not speak in English because had they been speaking in English, you would have picked up by now.

Because you’re a human being, you’re bound to learn all those habits. Imagine a human child being brought up in a jungle among all those animals. I mean, will that human child be learning a language, proper language?

No. He’ll be making just sounds, those sounds which animals make, because that is the environment he has been brought up in, right?

Similarly, we understand when you say that nobody around me speaks in English, so I’m not being able to perfect my English. What do I do?

And I just want to say I already understand that. Of course, that is the case. Otherwise, why would you not be able to speak in English? Why have you not been able to speak proper fluent English?

Environment matters

It’s because of the environment that you have been exposed to. It’s not really your fault, right? We understand that there are mainly 2 places that you are in when you are living.

When you are going through your day, either you are with your office people or you are with your family, those are the only two types of people you are going to be around right now.

If you are someone who goes to office or who has office communication going on, start only and only speaking in English. Do not use any other language.

Trust me, it requires a change in your way of life. Otherwise, nothing is going to change on its own. You will have to change from within for the change to be reflected from outside of you.

You will have to change internally to bring that change out externally. I hope I am making sense to you. I’m sure I am. All you need to do is just listen to me for a few more minutes and we’ll be sorted.

Keep working

Let’s move on to the next point that I want to highlight here. What else can you be doing? So this was about office people. Let’s talk about the people who are home mainly.

After working for the entire day at office, everybody goes home, right? What can you do at home to improve your fluency? There are a few things.

First of all, you should start devoting some sincere time to reading. Very important. If you want to really learn and be fluent in English, it’s important that you start reading.

And by reading, I would mean read without vocalizing and then read while vocalizing. Both of them have to be given time. I do not recommend vocalizing all the time.

But yes, 10 out of the 100. Things that you’re reading 10 out of those 100 times you should be vocalizing a little bit so that you are also getting habitual of speaking in English rather than just reading it.

Then another thing that I would do had I been in your place, would be solving some exercises online. They are really fun. You should search some Internet websites where they have.

Use English exercises

Just solve a few of them daily. Solve a few exercises. Bring about a little bit of variety here and there. Do not just stick to one pattern, because otherwise it’s going to get monotonous and you’re going to get bored.

Bring about a little bit of change. But definitely, definitely solve a few exercises on the Internet regarding grammar sentence building.

Learn two or three new words every single day and try and construct some sentences right in the early stages of our lives. We were taught all these methods of learning English, and that is what I’m telling you.

Our teachers used to give us these five or 10 words and we used to construct sentences using those words. So, if I would give you a word like cat, you would construct a sentence saying I have a beautiful cat at my home, something like this.

My cat’s name is Billy. Something like that. Let’s move on to the next thing that I have to propose to you. Observation is like the key, most important part, most, most important part of this entire blog. 

Anyone whose style you like. If you like my style of writing in English, or if you don’t like even, then you should observe what you don’t like so that you don’t repeat it.

But in case you like my style of writing, observe what kind of words I use, what kind of attraction?

About my writing style that you really like, try and imbibe that. Try and learn that.

Try and use it in your normal usage. And that is how initially it’s going to be consciously done and later on it will happen automatically, subconsciously getting it.

Observe a lot

Observe because that is something I used to do a lot. I used to observe all these people, my teachers, my friends who used to appeal to me.

If I would find somebody’s style nice, I would just try and learn it and try and. Replicated. There’s no harm in copying anyone. If you’re learning something, it’s OK to copy somebody.

If I’m trying to learn tennis, probably I would want to copy a few of those stars who are inspiring me to be nice at tennis.

Later on, I would build my own style, but initially I would use their style. Since I do not have one of my own, I would use their style. Later on, I will build something of my own and pick it up from there, right?

Next thing that I have here is group activity. It’s better to do it in a group.

Find a learning group

It would be better if you have something like a support group. It’s a proven psychological trick and it’s going to help you. Have a few people who are on the same journey.

Build an ecosystem where everyone is speaking in English and of course when you are exposed to it, you will automatically be picking it more.

Try thinking something in your mind all the time. How can something be on your mind all the time?

Trust me, it used to happen to me and here I am OK, so try that. This thing that you want to learn English, you want to be fluent in English, should be on your mind all the time.

That’s how you should do it and it has really helped me. That is why I’m asking you.

One more technique that can really help you is audio books. Listen to audio books, alright? Find your taste. Don’t do not listen to stuff that does not interest you.

Find your taste

Find your interest and accordingly listen to stuff. So, the point is that you’ve got to enjoy this journey. You do not have to punish yourself.

Don’t punish yourself. Enjoy this process. Enjoy the challenge that comes along with it and enjoy whatever you’re feeling whether it is sad, you’re happy.

Whether it is some small achievement or some mistake that you’ve just recently made, and somebody has mocked you, made fun of you. It can be just anything. Just enjoy the process.

Do not, do not feel miserable. Do not feel as if something really terrible is happening to you, because it isn’t. It’s a new skill you’re learning.

Be it guitar, be it English, be it ballet. Anything that you learn, it’s going to hurt you a little. So, it’s all right next thing that I want to say is observe your mistakes.

Observe your mistakes

Try and not repeat them. But even if you repeat them, it’s OK, it’s OK. Maybe you will repeat them for four or five times and after that it’s not going to happen to you.

But try and observe your mistakes as much as you can.

In case you’ve just made a mistake, try and vocalize the correct form of that sentence right there. 

I would vocalize and I would correct myself. Next is “be creative”. Design your challenges every single day. Have a challenge for yourself and be creative with them.

Today I’m going to solve crossword. Today I’m going to do some sentence building.

Tomorrow I’m going to do 20 minutes of reading day after I’m going to do this. Design two challenges for yourself, make it interesting.

Next thing that would really help you would be listening to speeches on Ted. I used to do that. I still do that. You can also do. There are some amazing speakers on this platform of Ted.

Mind it, they will never be using very fancy stuff because that is not something that you would appreciate.

But trust me, what you would really like, your mind would really like, your heart would really like, would be something that is simple, that has a little bit of style, because that is the kind of style that I love.

I love simple English. Just remember one thing. It’s not about what you speak. It’s going to be more about how you speak. So how do you speak? What is your style? How do you use your hands?

How do you use your voice modulations? What words do you use? Overall style is going to matter more than the words that you’re going to be using, so it’s better to keep it simple.

Next thing is maintaining the track. It’s OK. It would be better if you can maintain a little bit of progress report for yourself.

Maybe you can test yourself every now and then and keep a record of how many marks you’ve scored in every test and start assessing yourself a little bit because that’s going to really help you in the long run.

I guess I have majorly covered everything that I wanted to say.

Final thoughts

And I hope you understood what all I actually wanted to communicate to you. These were all the points that I would have done had I been in your place.

These things are straight from my heart because these are those things that I have done for myself. I used to do these and that is what I’m preaching to you.

I’m not preaching something that I haven’t done myself. These are things that I have done and now I want you to do because I want you to benefit.

I want you to develop a style of your own. I want you to be confident while you’re facing a meeting in your office, or you are going for an international seminar or you’re attending a seminar online where you will have to be speaking and addressing a lot of people.

I just want you to develop that confidence and it is not going to be a journey of a couple of years, no. It’s going to be a journey of over a decade.

So, the point is no point holding grudge against it or hurting yourself. Enjoy the process. And when you’re done with this journey and you start speaking, fine. You’re going to be so happy.

You’re going to be so satisfied that you could actually accomplish something that you had set your mind to. And that is what I want you to be achieving.