The best way to learn how to swim is to jump into the water.
This is an equally good strategy for many other situations, including learning English.
There’s a name for this method: The immersion method.
How do you turn your home into an immersion environment?
1. Start with your devices.
What language is your Facebook set to? What about your phone?
It’s time to change your phone, browser and social media account languages to English. Doing so will keep the language always in front of you, and it’s a good way to learn some new words: you already know all the words in your language, and now you’ll see them in English.
2. Use an English-to-English dictionary.
If you’ve been using an English dictionary with translations in your native language, switch to an English-to-English dictionary instead. These are the dictionaries that English speakers use to look up new words. Your goal is to use English all the time, and translating back and forth to a different language will hold you back.
3. Designate an “English only” space or time.
Are you planning to turn your entire house into an English immersion experience? Or can you only change a section of it?
The more space you have filled with English things, the more effective this learning method is. If your whole house can be filled with English books, movies, music and other materials, that’s the best possible situation.
4. Fill your house with English reading materials.
What do you read in your spare time?
You might be in the middle of a good book. During quiet moments you might pick up a magazine you have lying around.
5. Find friends to learn with you.
Learning alone is fine, but learning with someone else is even better.
Get a friend or two to work with you on your new English immersion project, and you’ll all benefit. You’ll help each other follow the rules (like pointing out when you cheated and used your native language for a word you don’t remember!) and make the learning process more fun.
We hope these tips will help you turn your house into an English environment.
Engo English
www.engo.co.jp