12 effective tips to learn English fast and easy

1. Start speaking as soon as possible

If you are serious about learning to speak English quickly, the evidence is clear: having regular conversations with a fluent speaker is pretty much the only way. 

The faster you can break the mental barrier of testing out your language skills out loud, the faster you will be able to speak confidently. 

A 2016 study published by the University of Michigan demonstrated that students learning a language by having conversations over webcam tend to see much faster results than those using traditional methods. Scientists followed two groups of students as they began learning a new language:

• Group A was studying using grammar and vocabulary exercises 
• Group B was learning by speaking, using video technology

After twelve weeks, it was found that Group A had made no significant improvement, but Group B had developed their language skills significantly. They had gained more varied vocabularies, performed better in listening comprehension tests, were better able to use grammar, and were able to speak more confidently. 

Put simply, even if you study vocabulary exercises, grammar lessons and theory regularly for weeks, unless you learn English by speaking, you risk not learning how to draw these skills together. This is an easy mistake to make. How often have you heard someone say, “I can understand most of what I hear in English, but I am not very good at speaking it”? 

Luckily, it has never been easier to find someone to practice speaking with, even if you’re learning English from home! Preply has thousands of expert tutors ready to chat over webcam, and you can adjust our filters to only show those who charge what you can afford to pay. Alternatively, Preply Business offers corporate English training adapted for teams. 

Having a native speaker’s undivided attention for regular one hour sessions can feel intense, but that’s because it is highly effective. You will see real progress fast. We are so confident that all lessons come with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. 

2. Start reading

It has never been easier to find reading materials in English, or quicker to look things up on Google Translate if you get frustrated. If you aren’t quite ready to tackle the complete works of Shakespeare, try: 

• Browsing celebrity gossip on easy-reading websites like Buzzfeed, Mashable or Upworthy
• Reading a book you love in your native language in the English translation
• Switching your search browser to show English language results by default
• Following more American/British/Australian public figures on Twitter and Facebook 

If you find yourself stopping and starting a lot, try studying this list of “Fry words”. They are thought to be the first 1000 words necessary for reading in English, and make up around 50% of all written text. 

3. Make yourself accountable

If you want to learn English fast, regular practice has to become a habit. But it’s no good just promising you’ll spend extra time working on your language skills. You have to find some way of guaranteeing you’ll practice even when life gets in the way. 

If you have great willpower, making yourself accountable could be as simple as setting an alarm on your phone to remind you to do some learning at a certain time every day, such as when you come home from work. But for most of us, staying motivated to do anything new is far easier when someone else is depending on us. 

In one study, The American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) found that you have a 65% chance of completing a goal if you commit to someone. Even more encouragingly: if you have a specific appointment with this person to discuss your progress, the chance of completing your goal rises to 95%.

You could search for a partner who is also learning English to regularly compare progress with, or simply find a tutor who you like and respect. 

If you decide to try one of Preply’s tutors, watch videos from a few different people before taking a lesson. Search for someone you think you might connect with, perhaps a person with similar interests or life experiences to you. It is easy to stick to your language learning goals when one of our awesome tutors is rooting for you! 

Alternatively, try finding a study buddy. Check out our rundown of the 10 best language exchange apps for more on this.

4. Set more useful targets than “I will become fluent”

In the language learning community, there is so much emphasis on “becoming fluent,” but when you are taking the first steps on your journey to learning English, is this a helpful goal? Probably not. 

Fixating on fluency suggests that there is an endpoint to learning English, a point that is always out of reach. The truth is that everyone who speaks any language at all is still learning. Research has shown that most people continue to learn an extra word in their native language every day until middle age. 

You will learn faster if you set targets relevant to your individual context. Better targets are ones that allow you to track your progress in relation to your own life. They are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound, or “SMART.” These are some great examples:

• Within six months, I want to be able to speak with my business partners and email them in English quickly without using a dictionary.
• Within three months, I want to be able to make small talk on common topics (weather, tourism, sports, etc.) with native English speakers.
• After nine months of learning English online, I want to score 100 points in the TOEFL exam, so I can apply and get accepted to Columbia University. 
  
  
  

5. Keep your personal goal in mind  

There is no easy way around it: learning English fast will take serious energy. In order to stick with it, you have to have a motivation that sets your heart on fire. 

When you have identified your goal, you can make sure that all of your efforts take you another step towards it. For instance, someone learning English to take a degree at an English language university might focus on specialist words and phrases relevant to their course. If you’re learning English for work, you might like to focus on words and phrases relevant to the office. Many people also choose to learn for a partner, or someone they love, and spend the most time on informal language. 

This step will save you from a common frustration: following a textbook that encourages you to learn content which you will not need to use anytime soon. Don’t spend hours memorizing words for all the animals in the zoo, if it won’t be helpful for presenting at that board meeting!

This is another benefit of working with one of Preply’s tutors. You can discuss your personal reasons for learning English and work with them to create a scheme of learning tailored to you. That way, you can learn the vocabulary you need a lot faster. 

6. Try flashcards to boost your vocabulary 

A word of warning: flashcards can be a false friend when learning English, causing you to spend too much time learning words without their context.

When combined with plenty of speaking practice, however, they are an easy way to absorb a lot of new vocabulary relatively quickly, and from home. Luckily, there are plenty of great, free apps out there so you can start memorizing words wherever you go! Some of our favorites include:

• Tinycards 
• Memrise
• Word Power Lite
• Quizlet 

The good news? A professor at the University of Western Ontario has found that you only need about 800 of the most-frequently-used words to understand 75% of the language as it is spoken in normal life. That’s definitely an achievable number of flashcards! For more on this, check out our article on How to memorize English vocabulary. 

7. Learn whole sentences  

Fashcards are useful, but studies show that learning whole sentences might be even more useful. Language nerds call this technique ‘sentence mining’. Do a quick internet search for ‘sentence mining’, and you will find an enthusiastic online community who swear that this is the quickest route to learning English at home. 

Certainly, learning whole sentences off by heart can help you to learn words in context, and teach you how their meaning takes on subtle changes in different contexts. Check out this video for a fuller explanation.

8. Sing along

Music is the great universal language! It can also be a powerful tool for making a second language feel more natural. 

Listening to music with English lyrics can help you gain a better understanding of pronunciation, vocabulary and sentence structure, without feeling like study at all. An interesting study even showed that listening to music in a new language can help you pick up grammatical rules more easily, in a similar way that you do when first learning to speak as a child. 

There is no shortage of great, free English-language music on the web. YouTube has an almost unlimited supply of music with lyric videos so you can read along without missing a word. Aside from that: 

• Lyrics Training app allows you to practice your listening skills by creating “fill in the gaps” exercises from your favorite song lyrics. 
• Radio Garden is a great, free tool to listen to radio stations around the world.

• 9. Watch TV

  Watching TV series is one of the best ways to learn English, but which are the best shows? According to a 2012 study by Kaplan, the top 5 most popular shows that their students chose to help them learn English were: 

  • Friends (the top most-watched show, with a huge 26% of all their students tuning in!)
  • How I Met Your Mother
  • CSI
  • House
  • The Big Bang Theory 

  Of course, you will get more out of your learning if you are more engaged than by passively watching. Try the Language Learning with Netflix extension for Chrome, which allows you to watch Netflix with subtitles in English and your native language at the same time. This great free tool even allows you to save new words that you come across. 

• 10. Listen to native English speakers (try to!) speak your language 

  Whether your mother tongue is Czech, Spanish or Turkish, the chances are, you have spoken to a native English speaker who has learned to speak it and you’ve thought “hmm… that doesn’t sound quite right”. 

  One easy tip is to pay attention to the common mistakes English native speakers make in your home language, especially in sentence structure and grammar. These are probably clues as to how English grammar is different from that of the language you know best.

  
  
  

  11. Change your phone and social media settings to English

  So, maybe you can understand the basics of English. Want to progress to the next step? Now it’s time to get as much exposure to the language as possible. 

  Most of us spend hours everyday staring at our phones, scrolling aimlessly. Changing the settings on your phone to English is a very easy way to immerse yourself in the language. 

  Changing your phone settings will teach you some words which are very relevant to modern life that you won’t necessarily see on vocabulary learning websites, such as “newsfeed” and “sponsored content.” 

  12. Find a community of language learners 

  When you start digging into more advanced aspects of learning English, it can be very motivating to share your insights, breakthroughs and frustrations with other people. Here are some great ways to connect with fellow learners if you are studying from home. 

  • Try Reddit’s English language forum 
  • Get answers to difficult questions in Preply’s Q&A section 
  • Search for public Facebook groups for ESL learners 

  For more ideas on finding study buddies, check out our rundown of 7 Language communities to improve your language skills.

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