7 Ways to Practice English Daily

Your progress in language studies in many ways depends on regular practice. Ideally, you should practice the language daily. You can do it with intensive online-course on Linguatrip.com. But if it is difficult to fit daily classes or study sessions into your busy schedule, try these seven simple ways to make English practice a part of your daily routine.
📔 Diary and calendars
The first and simplest way to practice English daily is to make all the notes in English. No matter whether you use a physical diary or an app, keep all your logs in English. For the busiest of you, the optimal way to keep practicing English is to write down all your meetings and plans in English.
If you can spare 5–10 minutes a day, it would be highly beneficial for you to try and make old-school style diary entries. Write down your thoughts and feelings, describe things you’ve done and seen recently. You do not have to share something very personal, just write down your opinion about a new movie, a book or a song you’ve recently discovered.
Running a diary and a calendar in English will quickly become a habit and let you practice English daily without even noticing it. This is the advice I give to my students at LinguaTrip.com’s online course “From Intermediate to Advanced”, and it works for all of them.
📃 Lists
Try to write shopping lists and to-do lists in English. It will help you learn new words and special terms for particular kinds of foods, clothing, accessories, furniture, etc.
While it may seem too elementary for people with Upper-Intermediate or Advanced English levels, there are so many words to explore. For example, what is ground beef? What do you call milk with 0% fat? What are the names of different kinds of pastries and bread? There is always space to grow. Start with these basics and you will easily learn new words while on your daily groceries shopping.
🖊️ Blogs
Start your own blog in English. It will require a bit more time than previous steps, but it will also be more efficient. If you decide to start a YouTube blog, you will record yourself speaking in English. Then, you can re-watch these videos and notice all the mistakes you make, all the words you pronounce wrongly. These will give you the opportunity to focus on your problem zones and make progress in English studies.
If you do not have time for video-production, try to make Instagram captions or tweet in English. The latter may be more difficult than you believe: having a character limit means you need to learn to formulate your thoughts in English precisely.
Don’t worry about being seen and judged. If you feel uneasy about your friends or relatives finding your English blog, just use a pseudonym. The strangers who may see your posts, may provide you with valuable feedback and help you improve your English. In the best case scenario, your blog will become popular and you will be able to earn with it. That’s what happened with my channel Linguamarina which now has over 1.5 million followers and over 63 million views.
🗣️ Talking to yourself
You can comment on your actions in English while doing something, e.g. cleaning the house or preparing a meal. Or you can summarize your day just before going to bed and list everything you’ve done during the day in English.
Don’t be shy, you do not even need to say it out aloud — just make this list in your mind. E.g. “Today, I woke up, called my mom, cooked eggs and porridge for breakfast, went to the supermarket for groceries…”. Even if you have standard office work and your days seem to be all the same, you can always find different things to include in your daily summaries. Speak about your meals, about your clothes, shopping and future plans. This practice will help you to switch from thinking in your own language and translating each thought into English to actually thinking in English.
🎤 Song lyrics
If you believe that with an Advanced English level you should understand every single word in a song, you’d be wrong. Sometimes, even native speakers may have trouble with understanding them. This is especially the case if we are speaking about rap or R’n’B songs.
Just google your favorite songs, read their lyrics once or twice, check meanings of the words you don’t know and pay special attention to the lyrics next time you are listening to these songs. It will boost your vocabulary, improve your pronunciation, and let you better understand your favorite songs and artists.
🎞️ Videos
Watch a video in English every day. It can be a short video on YouTube, an Instagram story, an episode of your favorite TV-show, or a lecture from an online-course. However, I would advise you to stick to blogs or lectures. There, you can listen to real-life language. It may differ from the language in movies and series significantly. Try to memorize the expressions and idioms the bloggers or lecturers use, note new words and learn them later. It will boost your vocabulary significantly.
The best part is that even if you are at the Beginner’s level, you can always watch videos with subtitles and at a lower speed, say 0.75 of normal speed. It will help you to understand what exactly is being said, how the words are pronounced and what grammar constructions are used. Start with short videos, 1–2 minutes long, and dedicate some time to understanding them properly. Soon, you will be able to understand the bloggers better and to watch longer videos on more complex subjects.
👂 Audiobooks and podcasts
These are a great way to learn English on the go. The audiobooks are convenient to listen to when driving, cleaning, walking or working out in a gym. Like with videos, you can regulate the speed of the audiobook to ensure that you understand everything.
Podcasts, as well as video blogs, are your bridge to real-life English. The guests in the interview-style podcasts often speak leisurely and use a lot of colloquial and slang expressions. Choose a podcast on the topic of your interest and soon you will master the professional vocabulary in this area.
Summary
Making English practice a part of your daily routine is easy. Just switch to English when writing your lists and plans, diary entries and notes. Watch blogs, listen to podcasts and audiobooks in English. Try speaking to yourself and when you feel confident enough, go out and blog in English. And remember, similar ways will work for learning any other foreign language you choose. Just dedicate a bit of time to your practice every day, and soon you will notice a great difference in your listening, speaking and writing in the foreign language.
