How to Improve Your English Daily
Well, well, well! Welcome back once again to another amazing monthly decision to: Improve Your English Daily!
It’s been quite the ride on my end, to not only continue to, in my wildest dreams, inspire people to make the decision to improve at least one area at a time and actually achieve it, but also commit my own self to not slack off and stay strong regarding my monthly articles.
Honestly, it’s not like I’ve got anything special, and trust me, I do know that. But what I do have and owe my own self the respect to highlight, is discipline.
As Jocko Willink says in one of his Extreme Ownership audios “Where does discipline come from? This is a simple answer. Discipline comes from within. Discipline is an internal force.”
Before diving into my never give up! — part of the article, let’s check out the today’s topics:
Index
1 — Yesterday doesn’t define me, today does.
2 — Group activity — Cooking exchange
3 — Solo activity — Step It UP
I do encourage you to jump straight to the point you find the most attractive rather than reading everything out of behavioral habit.
Yesterday doesn’t define me, today does.
While our mind may fall into dark places when overthinking every step we took until this very moment, it’s not of much help, but rather the rock that’s holding us back from greatness.
Think it this way: you aim to envision greatness, an amazing future, with abundance and happiness. How are you helping yourself when giving your time to regret and sorrow?
It’s not an easy road to start choosing to improve yourself every day, when the mind tends to come up with every single time we failed. Furthermore, we’re always told to work in order to become the amazing professional we should be, but maybe not the one that we do want, we might not even know who that professional is or what it does every day.
In my case, after reading a lot of books and realizing it wasn’t of much help for me to stay in the victim cycle — concept I truly gained by reading book “The Oz Principle” by Roger Connors, Tom Smith and Craig Hickman — whipping over all of the things that happened to me and how those were the reasons why I wasn’t succeeding in life, blah blah blah…
Not anymore. Now I choose greatness, I choose to acknowledge I am the sole owner of my present and future, leaving the past behind, not forgetting or hiding it, but choosing to stop giving regret so much of my precious time.
I value hard smart work. I swapped the overthinking time to visualizing who I want to become and what the person I want to be does in their daily life. The person I envision is strong, smart, enjoys spending their time with their loved ones and does not dread a single activity in their daily routine.
But wait! That’s like impossible, how would you love everything you do!? The problem here relies in the over accepted dread towards activities that must be done, rather than focusing on finding a workaround in order to be passionate about what we ought to do.
The problem here relies in the over accepted dread towards activities that “must” be done, rather than focusing on finding a workaround in order to be passionate about what we ought to do.
If in the career you chose to pursue while in university, you find that a certain subject is awful according to you, hard and boring, or maybe the professor is more likely to make you fall asleep rather than in love with said subject… STOP, stop taking the same rode!
For instance, if you know that at 5pm traffic’s nuts and you usually have to go through the worst jams ever, why wouldn’t you look for another rode? Or maybe leaving a little bit earlier or later? Why when faced with a situation as the one depicted here, we do tend to look for another way to do the same (arrive home as soon as possible) so naturally, but when it’s regarding our own path to our goals we miss looking for workarounds?
what we can do today for our future self, is starting!
So today we shall pursue what our future self should be comfortable with, that being having a better shape, or being an expert in a certain subject. Yesterday does not define us, today does. Yes, we could’ve started working out years ago, but can we change it? Not to this day at least, we cannot. But what we can do today for our future self, is starting!
Then in the months to come, your yesterday self already started, already gave you a foundation to keep improving on. Tho you’ll be faced with challenges your whole life, it’s your own decision to find ways around those challenges and aim for enjoying each step of the way. The future is all yours to envision, don’t ever forget that.
Group activity — Cooking exchange
Todays’ group activity endures more than improving our English skills, but also exchanging cooking knowledge (or nice food places) while having a few laughs among peers.
The goal of the activity is to try scheduling an hour with your team to have some snacks, exchange some tips and tricks regarding the cooking process, all while talking in English. Three for one!
You’ll need:
- to put some time aside the day before the cooking exchange
- Recommended: cook a snack (best is for it to be finger food proof)
|| Option B: buy something at special place that can be shared with your peers. - napkins (please don’t forget those!!)
- Pre-cut little papers — make them nice, you’ll deserve them
- A pen per person
Always think about the people doing the activity, at the end of the day it’s all about them.
The how
The group shall sit together round a table, or the place that suits the best for the activity, mind that doing this while in an open space might oppose too many distractions for the group or even allow for more stress regarding strangers listening to them talking in English. Always think about the people doing the activity, at the end of the day it’s all about them.
Once everything is in the table, nicely and as aesthetically as possible. Trust me on this one, people tend to be more into the activity when resources are nicely arranged for them to take advantage of. Would you prefer to practice your English while in a pretty arranged table with cute napkins, or everything just smashed in Tupperware?
Now that everything’s arranged and organized accordingly, give out to each person the corresponding piece of paper and pen. A volunteer shall be the moderator of the activity, mind this person should volunteer, doesn’t matter if this person usually doesn’t talk as much as others, remember: this is about the group, so always provide the opportunity for new people to take on interesting roles.
The moderators’ role:
The person who volunteers to be the moderator of the activity should tell people to make notes on their piece of paper (in English) regarding the cooking process they did the day before in order to create what they brought to the activity. Here’s an example:
This part should take between 10- and 15-minutes tops. Since we’re just taking notes for when it’s our turn to share our cooking process or the place we bought from, there’s no need to write a whole essay. Make it brief and as helpful as possible.
Once everyone’s got their notes down, continue to take turns to share your experiences, maybe someone burnt their cookies so had to resort to buying, or maybe cooking is what they love then this activity might be amazing for them.
When a person’s sharing their thoughts, try to not interrupt them. Remember: we’re doing an activity that might be hard on our self-esteem.
When a person’s sharing their thoughts, try to not interrupt them, I’d suggest that the moderator explains this beforehand. Since we’re doing an activity that might be hard on our self-esteem, and also hard to do because we’re practicing a language that’s other than our mother tongue, interruptions might lead to confusion and disrupt the groups attention.
Make it a safe place to talk and express yourselves.
Now, it’s also up to the group to decide who’s starting. Make it a safe place to talk and express yourselves. Start sharing!
Now tell me, did you still thought about having to talk in English? Or rather about how hard cooking turned out to be? Amazing, isn’t it?
Solo Activity — Step it UP
In my previous post, I aimed to make it as clear as possible that we should start with a truly small amount of time to be dedicated to the area we want to improve. In this case, our English skills.
While some days we feel like doing hours at a time, that’s just not realistic. When setting ourselves with outstanding goals, we may be settling ourselves for failure as well.
Don’t get me wrong, do aim to attain your wildest dreams, shift from them being “wildest” to yours. However, it’s needed from us, when setting goals, to bear in mind our daily commitments and routine as a whole.
For those of you who have already started with the attainable 15 minutes a day, let’s step it up! We shall commit to either:
1 — 15 minutes twice a day
2 — 30 minutes block a day
15 minutes twice a day
Tho it is known that humans carry a buffer of minutes until getting to peak concentration, here we’re aiming to further settle this new habit of Improving Our English Daily.
By committing to giving yourself those first 15 minutes, you already got 2 wins just out of the hat!
One assured recommendation of mine would be to wake up earlier and set aside those first 15 minutes of the day just for yourself. After washing your face and teeth of course, haha.
By committing to giving yourself those first 15 minutes, you already got 2 wins just out of the hat! 1. Choosing to give yourself time to improve in this skill, and 2. already winning by being better than the day before. Isn’t it just amazing?!
In these first 15 minutes of your day, you could focus on setting goals for the day, maybe a checklist of tasks that you need to accomplish by end of day, it’s truly up to you how you take the most out of this me-time.
Then, for the second round of 15 minutes aimed to improving English, I’d suggest focusing them on researching new vocabulary and integrating it by writing sentences with those new words. Always writing in your specific n’ special English notebook.
30 minutes block a day
Well! This is quite the step up, isn’t? Stepping up to 30 minutes instead of the 15 minutes we committed to in the past is quite the improvement itself.
Tho it may look like “just 30 minutes”, it’s quite a lot in this era in which we are always running from one place to the other and scrolling through 20 seconds reels while getting bored in less than 5!
Remember, adding a new habit must not push aside the habits you’ve already have been working on
I’d suggest putting those 30 minutes aside for yourself at least a day before starting, so in that way you can also time block all of your other commitments with this new added value. Remember, adding a new habit must not push aside the habits you’ve already have been working on, because in that sense you’ll end up with more stress than you first started with.
After you’ve analyzed how to incorporate this habit to your already planned out routine, let’s sub time block those 30 minutes. My suggestion is to first think why you’re doing this, are you looking to improve which area of your English skills? Is it speaking, better understanding others, maybe improving your writing?
If writing is what you’re looking to improve for instance, then start by just writing! First off, select a topic that you find interesting (so we can boost our dopamine release), you can start by doing some bullet points or short sentences, then when you are truly vibing, write non-stop.
take advantage of the era we’re living in! Grab your laptop or cellphone and start recording yourself, become a vlogger for the day!
On the other hand, if you’re looking to improve how you speak in English, take advantage of the era we’re living in! Grab your laptop or cellphone and start recording yourself, become a vlogger for the day. You can start by presenting yourself, maybe describing your day, or doing a tutorial of something that you like, even improvising something that’s pure nonsense.
when a random person comes and asks you something in English, you won’t have flash cards perfectly prepared for the exact situation.
Since your goal here is to speak better, there’s no need to prepare too much, remember that when a random person comes and asks you something in English you won’t have flash cards perfectly prepared for the exact situation.
Remember you’re the sole owner of how your time’s spent, if you’re not ready to step up from 15 minutes to twice a day 15 minutes or 30 minutes blocks, don’t worry at all.
We’re in constant improvement and switching and shifting how we spend our time, is a daily effort towards becoming better each day. A year from now (even like 3 months haha), you’ll look back and be just in awe of how you decided to become better, of how you chose to improve yourself and stop wasting time on stuff or people who do not add value at all to your life’s path.
And always... Remain unstoppable!
To bring this post to a close,
I want to take a moment of appreciation to each and every one of you, to also thank you for the incredible feedback I’ve been receiving these past few weeks.
Even though I started writing these monthly articles aiming to at least inspire one single person to improve their English, readers have been multiplying like crazy (at least in my personal opinion) and I’m just in a constant awe.
I do want to highlight that feedback’s truly appreciated, I am to improve articles each month and to shape them according to what readers are looking for. Furthermore, I’ve received a variety of suggestions for activities, I do list all of them and we’ll be releasing new activities as I’m able to adjust them the best as possible.
Hopefully, I’ll be posting once a month. Next post: end of November 2023.
Follow me on GitHub here. Also, here’s my LinkedIn just in case.
