How to Learn English By Yourself: Try Out These 10 Useful Tips

"Can I learn English by myself?"

"Can I improve my language skills on my own?"

"How can I learn English easily?"

Any of these questions ring a bell? If you’ve come across this article, you must be interested to know how to learn English by yourself. Still, you probably feel afraid a bit because there are so many new things to learn.

We’ll be honest: learning English on your own can be challenging but not impossible.

There are many ways you can improve your English language skills. You have to be determined and disciplined enough to study grammar, build your vocabulary, improve reading, writing, and listening skills.

That’s why we will help you out by sharing 10 useful tips to learn English on your own.

10 Useful Tips to Help You Teach Yourself English

Set Your Goals

If you’ve decided to learn English, take it slowly at first. For a start, set your goals. Make your daily schedule to study English. Thirty minutes a day is acceptable, and everything beyond that is even better.

When you’ve organized your daily schedule, stick to it but be realistic. You can’t expect to study 30 minutes a day and become fluent in a week. That’s not how things work.

If you want to learn English quickly, you have to spend much more time studying it.

Practice Your Listening Skills

The good thing about English is that it's quite commonly used. That gives you a chance to stay connected with the language.

Just like babies and kids learn their mother tongues, the same way you should approach learning English. They don’t learn to read or write first, but they listen to their parents and people around them. That's how they are developing their listening skills.

So, to improve your English listening skills, listen closely. Listen to the radio or different English podcasts. Even watching English tv shows can help you with your listening skills.

Mix It Up With Movies

Everyone loves watching movies. It is also a great way to learn the language and have fun. But, before you rush to make popcorn and sit on a sofa, find a movie that isn’t so hard to understand, especially if you are a fresh English learner.

Watch movies that you’re already familiar with at the beginning. It can help you with some unfamiliar words, and you can easily follow the story because you’ve already watched the movie.

You can also turn on the subtitles so, besides boosting your vocabulary and practicing listening skills, you can practice your reading skills as well and concentrate on pronunciation.

Prepare a notebook to write down some unknown words and phrases. Later, try using them in different contexts.

Read Everything You Can Get Your Hands-On

Reading can be useful for many reasons. Besides improving your reading skills, you can be exposed to the words and phrases you already know. With reading, you are up-to-date with the latest news and events. Therefore you have many different topics to discuss with other people in English, of course.

Furthermore, building up your knowledge about the latest news and talking to others about it is the perfect way to practice and improve your conversational skills.

So, newspapers, books, social media feeds, blogs, paperbacks, emails: read everything you can get your hands-on.

Learn English With YouTube

On YouTube, you can find literally anything you want! To make learning more fun, search for English channels, subscribe to receive notifications whenever a new video is released, and enjoy.

Do you like humor or cooking? Or you prefer fashion and make-up? Vlogging perhaps? It’s no problem at all. Search for that topic on YouTube, choose the ideal video and listen/watch closely.

People tend to be more familiar with the topics they are interested in, so understanding foreign videos might be easier than you expect.

Join Forum Discussions

Everything you’ve learned - writing, reading, new words and phrases, and communicating in English - you can practice on online forums.

Most of the internet forums are in English, so whichever topic you are interested in, search for it, and you’ll get results. Today, there are online forums for practically anything.

Forums like Reddit, cover a variety of topics. If you want to discuss how to enhance your pronunciation, what are the best series to watch at the moment, or how positive thinking impacts your life, then go for it! 

It is one of the best ways to improve your written English.  For this method to be productive, you have to post comments or give your insight about familiar topics.

However, don’t expect to improve your English with forums overnight. It takes a lot of time and effort to become fluent. But, eventually, you'll see positive results.

Use Flashcards

Even though it seems childish a bit, learning English with flashcards is actually quite useful. They are a fun way to practice words and phrases you’ve learned.

Make your own flashcards. Write words and phrases on one side of the card and the translation on the other. Or even better, instead of a translation, write down the definition or explanation of the phrase.

Steal at least 5 minutes from your daily schedule and run through the flashcards. This way, you test yourself and your memory. Use the same flashcards until you learn the last letter from them.

Listen to Music

As much as you try, there will be days when you simply can’t focus enough to study. Don’t be disappointed. In the learning process, it is one of the typical phases. We all are human beings, not machines, and sometimes, as much as we want to, we can’t concentrate on one single thing.

But, we have a solution for that, too.

Listen to music!

Most of the songs nowadays are in English. So, whether you prefer heavy metal, reggae, or pop, find several songs and press play.

After listening to them a couple of times, you can also find lyrics and follow along.

Rhymes and lyrics are usually easy to understand because songs mostly talk about everyday life, so you may hear how people speak in real life.

Take Notes All the Time

Taking notes is a must. In any learning process, it is essential. 

When learning the language, writing down a word or a phrase you’ve heard for the first time is a life-saver. You might think that you will remember it, and there is no way you can forget it, but our brain doesn’t work like that. Our brain likes repeating. Therefore, if you write down anything you find helpful, you save yourself a lot of time. 

Write down a word or an expression, its definition or explanation, the context it is used in, or a sentence as an example of how and when to use it.

Remember How it Was When You Were a Kid

Do you remember how it was when you were a kid? Playing with friends, watching cartoons, reading books about princesses and beautiful adventures. 

Would you like to get back to that period? Yes, you would. And now you can.

As an English student, you are a toddler or a kid. As silly as it may sound, playing games and watching cartoons can be useful methods to learn English. 

Cartoons and kids' movies are easy to follow; sentences the characters use are simple. Therefore, you’ll understand everything better. When you come into some unfamiliar phrase, you don’t need to rush to look in the dictionary, but you can figure it out on your own from the context.

Besides, reading books and watching cartoons is the most entertaining way to learn English quickly.

Final Thoughts

Learning English at home, and on your own has never been easier. But it takes a lot of time, effort, and dedication.

Combine the tips from above to get the best out of your learning.

If you feel you’re not progressing or simply need a real person to practice with, English tutors are always available.

Book a lesson with a native speaker here