Getting to an advanced level in English will take you two lifetimes, if you follow the traditional advice on language learning. To learn a lot faster, you need to question the traditional advice and take a very different approach.
Before I started making really fast progress, I wasted hundred of hours trying to improve my English. For years, I made painfully slow progress, and often seemed to forget more than I was learning. I guess that sounds familiar to you.
It was so frustrating that the temptation to give up was always on the horizon. I kept wondering: does it really have to be this difficult? Isn’t there a faster way to learn?
And then one day I started reading about how the human brain works, how it learns, and why it forgets the things we want to remember.
The more I read about how our brains work the more I understood why I had made so little progress. So I started to experiment with new techniques. Some things worked for me, others didn’t, and a few proved to be magical.
Now I can learn languages a lot faster, and I enjoy it more than I’ve ever done.
In this episode I’m going to show you the three things that have made the biggest difference to my learning. The three things that I wish I’d known years ago.
Play Maria’s
free English pronunciation lesson
Number 1 – Focus on your lessons
Focusing on my lessons has made a huge difference to my learning. I used to waste so many hours because of my lack of focus.
For years, I took an unfocused approach to language learning. I would have music playing in the background, I would follow several courses at the same time, and I would welcome every imaginable distraction.
As you would expect, I made painfully slow progress.
And then, in one of my learning experiments, I changed to an entirely different setup: I got rid of all distractions, I put all my language courses away except for one, and I got a timer.
I set the timer to 25 minutes, and told myself that I was going to learn as much as I could in those 25 minutes.
I said to myself: “It’s only 25 minutes. Surely you can focus for 25 minutes. Don’t check any messages, don’t answer the phone, don’t search the Internet, and forget about social media.”
25 minutes later, when the alarm went off, I had an unbelievable sense of achievement. I had learned more in those 25 minutes than I usually did in several hours.
I’ve never gone back to the unfocused approach to language learning.
I challenge you to try it for a week, and see the results you get. Drop me a line to let me know.
To make the most of your 25-minute sessions it’s essential that you switch off the TV, all social media, music, radio, and anything else that might distract you. Forget the world around you and, for 25 minutes, concentrate on your English lessons. As if nothing else existed.
Also, to save yourself precious time, make sure you’re studying with a good English course, instead of wasting your time searching the Internet for free lessons.
At first you might find it difficult to focus sharply on your lessons for 25 minutes, so you might want to start with ten minutes. Or even five. Every few days, increase the time by a couple of minutes until you reach 25.
Focusing on your English lessons will help you free up time for other activities, it will reduce your stress levels, and it will motivate you to continue learning fast. Because the biggest motivation to continue learning English comes from making fast progress.
To show you how powerful focusing is, let’s do a five-minute experiment.
For five minutes, I want you to focus on this English lesson that I’ve prepared for you. Make sure you’re focusing on this lesson, and that you are not doing anything else. For the next five minutes, the world around you does not exist. It’s just you and I. Here we go.
5-minute lesson
In this 5-minute lesson you’re going to learn three magic pronunciation rules:
Rule number 1 says:
When a one syllable word ends in a vowel + consonant, that vowel often has a short sound. For example: win
Win, WIN, ends in a vowel plus consonant, so the “i” is short: win
Rule number 2 says:
When a one syllable word ends in a vowel + consonant + E, that vowel often has a long sound and the E is silent. For example: wine
Wine, WINE, ends in a vowel + consonant + E, so the “i” is long, it’s a diphthong: wine
Rule number 3 says:
When a vowel is followed by a double consonant, that vowel often has a short sound. For example: winner
Winner, WINNER, has a double consonant after the vowel, so that vowel is short: winner
Let’s go back to rule number 1, the rule that says: when a one syllable word ends in a vowel + consonant, that vowel often has a short sound.
The example we saw was: win
Can you think of other one-syllable words that end in a vowel + consonant? Here are five:
- hat
- them
- sit
- not
- us
Let’s see what happens when we add an E to those five words.
- hat becomes hate
- them becomes theme
- sit becomes site
- not becomes note
- us becomes use
As you see, when we add an E to those words, ‘hat’ for example, the short vowel becomes long: hat – hate
Which is what rule number 2 says. Remember that it says: when a one syllable word ends in a vowel + consonant + E, that vowel often has a long sound and the E is silent. For example: wine
These five words all end in a vowel + consonant + E, so their vowel is long.
- hate
- theme
- site
- note
- use
Notice how the vowels are pronounced in those five words:
- hate – /eɪ/
- theme – /i:/
- site – /aɪ/
- note – /əʊ/
- use – /juː/
- /eɪ/
- /i:/
- /aɪ/
- /əʊ/
- /juː/
The vowels in those five words are pronounced exactly like the five vowels in the alphabet:
- A – /eɪ/ – hate
- E – /i:/ – theme
- I – /aɪ/ – site
- O – /əʊ/ – note
- U – /juː/ – use
Now let’s go back to rule number 3, the one that says: when a vowel is followed by a double consonant, that vowel often has a short sound.
The example we saw was the word: winner
Can you think of other words with a double consonant? Here are four:
- written
- latter
- hidden
- dinner
Let’s see the difference between double and single consonants:
- written – write
- latter – later
- hidden – hide
- dinner – dine
Notice how the vowel before a double consonant is short, for example: written.Whereas the vowel before a single consonant is long: write
To recap, the three pronunciation rules we’ve seen say:
Rule number 1: when a one syllable word ends in a vowel + consonant, that vowel often has a short sound. For example: win
Rule number 2: when a one syllable word ends in a vowel + consonant + E, that vowel often has a long sound and the E is silent. For example: wine
And rule number 3: when a vowel is followed by a double consonant, that vowel often has a short sound. For example: winner
Like almost all English pronunciation rules, these have exceptions. We’ll see those exceptions in future episodes.
Time’s up. How did you get on? I hope I’ve been able to show you the power of focusing on your lessons. Try it on your own for a week, and drop me a line to let me know how you’re doing.
Play Maria’s
free English pronunciation lesson
In this episode I’m giving you the three things that have made the biggest difference to my learning.
Number 1 was: focus on your lessons. Let’s now see the second one.
Number 2 – Find patterns
The human brain craves for patterns and looks for them everywhere.
Patterns allow your brain to make connections between the things you already know and the things you’re learning. Finding patterns speeds up the learning process substantially.
The more patterns you give your brain when you’re studying English, the faster you’ll learn. Here’s an example.
Let’s go back to the three rules we saw in the 5-minute lesson.
Rule number 1 says that: when a one syllable word ends in a vowel + consonant, that vowel often has a short sound. For example: win
Rule number 2: when a one syllable word ends in a vowel + consonant + E, that vowel often has a long sound and the E is silent. For example: wine
And rule number 3: when a vowel is followed by a double consonant, that vowel often has a short sound. For example: winner
Those three rules are three patterns that, from now on, your brain is going to use to figure out the pronunciation of words that you’re not familiar with.
Let’s see how it works.
Here’s a word that you probably don’t know. It’s spelt: BATE
How would you pronounce it? According to rule number 2, because BATE ends in a vowel + consonant + E, in this case, ATE, that A has a long sound and the E is silent.
So, BATE is pronounced: /beɪt/. The word “bate” means: to restrain.
And what about the word: BAT
How would you pronounce it? In this case, we need to apply rule number 1, the one that says: when a one syllable word ends in a vowel + consonant, that vowel often has a short sound.
That rule tells us that BAT is likely to be pronounced /bæt/.
A “bat” is a piece of wood used for hitting the ball in some games. For example. a baseball bat.
Let’s now test rule number 3. Here’s another word that you probably don’t know: BATTEN
How would you pronounce it? Rule number 3 says that when a vowel is followed by a double consonant, that vowel often has a short sound.
In this case, that means that the A in BATTEN is likely to be a short vowel, so BATTEN is pronounced: /ˈbætᵊn/
A “batten” is a long piece of wood.
The three rules that you learned in the 5-minute lesson are now a pattern in your brain, and you can apply them to dozens, even hundreds of new words from now on.
Finding patterns that connect spelling with pronunciation is one of the fastest ways to improve your English accent. In my English pronunciation course I give you dozens of patterns like this. To find out more about my course, go here.
So far in this episode we’ve seen two of the three things that have made the biggest difference to my language learning. Those two things are: focusing and finding patterns.
Here is the third one:
Number 3 – Revise your lessons
To understand why revising is crucial to fast language learning, you need to know how the human brain remembers things.
The human brain rarely remembers information that it encounters only once or infrequently.
For you to be able to remember any piece of information, that information needs to move from your working memory (also known as short-term memory) to your long-term memory. And the way that information gets stored in your long-term memory is by exposing your brain to it enough times with a certain frequency.
To show you the magic of revising, let’s do a quick exercise. With this exercise we’re going to revise the three pronunciation rules that we saw before.
I’m going to spell out three words and you’re going to figure out which of the rules they follow. Let’s start.
Word number 1 is: TIN
How would you pronounce TIN? I’ll tell you the answer after you tell me.
TIN is pronounced: /tɪn/
TIN, /tɪn/, follows rule number 1, the rule that says: when a one syllable word ends in a vowel + consonant, that vowel often has a short sound.
TIN has a short vowel sound: /tɪn/
Word number 2 is: TINE
How would you pronounce TINE?
TINE is pronounced: /taɪn/
TINE, /taɪn/, follows our rule number 2, the one that says: when a one syllable word ends in a vowel + consonant + E, that vowel often has a long sound and the E is silent.
TINE has a long vowel sound and a silent E: /taɪn/
Word number 3 is: TINNED
How would you pronounce TINNED?
TINNED is pronounced: /tɪnd/
TINNED, /tɪnd/, follows our rule number 3, the one that says: when a vowel is followed by a double consonant, that vowel often has a short sound.
TINNED has a short vowel sound: /tɪnd/
Notice how, by revising the three rules, you’re now more familiar with them.
Next time you see words like: bat, bate, batten, you’ll be more likely to say them right.
Play Maria’s
free English pronunciation lesson
To recap
Powerful English learning combines the three elements we’ve seen: focusing on your lessons, finding patterns, and revising your lessons.
The more you focus, the more patterns you find, and the more you revise, the faster you’ll learn.
If you want to improve your accent fast, have a look at my English pronunciation course. It’s a step by step course where I give you dozens of patterns like the ones you’ve seen in this episode. To find out more about my English pronunciation course, go here.
