Workout with English every day!

Every month, my students ask me for the best way to effectively improve their listening skills. They have used English language textbooks, they have bought every TOEIC test preparation book there is, and still they struggle to see improvement in their ability to hear English and understand it.

What I tell them, is that building your Listening skills is like going to the gym. To really get strong, build your endurance, and tone your body, you need to go to the gym every day.

But is that enough? What about all those people who go to the gym day in and day out and their body remains the same? They still have a big stomach or flabby arms. Why?

First, if you go to the gym and work out for three hours, then go home and enjoy a big chocolate cake and beer, your three hours at the gym are wasted. In addition, your stomach will not be happy with you (chocolate cake AND beer? Yuck!).

The same is true with learning a new language. If you study English for three hours, then go out with your friends and speak your native language, that’s just like eating a cake after the gym. Much of the English you worked on will not stick in your brain. Every time you use your native language, you are pulling yourself away from English, preventing your brain from struggling to use English and build your English skills.

Thus, to avoid a big tummy and flabby arms, you need to keep using English throughout the day as much as you can. The more you can ‘surround’ yourself with English—speaking it, listening to it, reading it—them better you will remember stuff you studied earlier that day. Get your friends to help you by trying to only speak English when you are hanging out. Listen to English podcasts while on the bus or train going to work or school.

Okay, let’s say you go to the gym every day and eat healthy (i.e., don’t use your native language much), but you find that you are still not getting the body you want. You have really big arms but your legs and thin and weak; every time you stretch your arms out, you fall over because they have way too much muscle!

You can avoid this by working on a variety of different parts of your body each day. Work on your arms a little, then your legs, and then your torso and back. This way you build your body’s overall strength, and everything is in proportion.

Thus, do a variety of reading, listening, grammar, and pronunciation practice each day. Don’t focus on any one activity for more than one hour. This will help you slowly and consistently work on all the different parts of English to help you Master English and Master the TOEIC.

And finally, a good way to finish a workout at the gym is go for a short run, just to get your muscles to move around a bit so that they don’t tense up too much after you finish your workout.

So, after you finish your formal studying of English, go out into the real world and try to use some of the English you studied that day. Go to a store and ask the sales clerk to help you pick out a good book or CD or bottle of wine. Listen to or read a good novel, or watch a favorite TV show. Find a news article that uses some of the vocabulary words you focused on earlier that day. This will help your brain ‘unwind’ a little and relax, and can also help reinforce the English you studied.

Now put on your running shoes and hit the gym!