Motivation for English Learners Archives - Learn English the Smart Way

Jak se naučit anglicky v roce 2019?

Well, with my help, at least you have the opportunity to keep your eye on the ball when it comes to improving your English. This is the time of year I get the most emails from people asking me for help, so let’s jump on that enthusiasm for self improvement and get down to it.

This Year Will Be Different

What usually happens, and I’m sure you are no exception, is that January 1st rolls around and you think “Right!, this is the year I finally crack English.” You start out with some loose plan to study for half an hour a day but by the end of the first week you are exhausted, unmotivated, have already fallen off the wagon and missed the last three days. So, what’s the answer Richard? What is the solution? Read on …

Priorities, Time and Accountability

Your effort seems noble enough and it’s only half an hour so why couldn’t you stick to it? You have to be honest with yourself and decide where English sits in your priority list? Is it the most important thing on your list or does it rank below regular exercise, nights out with friends or some other thing? Then you have to decide realistically how much time you can devote to your learning. Don’t think it all has to be sitting down, seriously studying books though. You are far more likely to maintain enthusiasm and commitment to English if you mix up your learning. For a list of ways to learn English get this free PDF sheet here. While half an hour a day might not seem much to some people, to others it’s a huge amount of time. So, how should you split up your time and how much can you guarantee for English?

Frequency

Remember that frequency is the key. Better 5 minutes per day than 35 minutes once a week. There is science behind how your English mobile phone applications work. New words and phrases are repeated at specific intervals to decrease how quickly you forget new information. eg. Day 1 – learn 10 new words, Day 2 – learn 10 more, Day 3 – Try to recall from memory your day 1 words. This is a simplified example but the process of trying to remember will help your brain to commit these words to your long term memory. Yes, it’s more difficult than simply re-reading your notes and repeating them aloud but it’s the way to make that new vocabulary stick. Then, as long as you continue to refresh those words by recalling them at increasingly longer intervals (and best of all using them in your writing and speech) they should become part of your embedded ‘go to’ vernacular. This method is called spaced repetition and it’s the idea on which I based my Better Your English Now video course. More about spaced repetion here.

Right, off you go, and remember, be honest about how much time you can spend and the frequency. I have made you a free cheat sheet to help you determine your strategy. Click here to get this week’s freebie Your English Habit Blueprint.

Today’s idioms and their meanings:

start over – to start something again.

make a fresh start – to start something again

turn over a new leaf – start to act or behave in a better or more responsible way.

keep on the ball – To keep oneself very focused on something.

fall off the wagon – to return to any discontinued behavior, usually one that is detrimental in some way.

get round to it – to do something that you have intended to do for a long time

roll around – Occur / happen

If you have just arrived here read this first – Almost Everything You Need to Learn English. It will give you the best overview to answer the question: ‘How to speak better English’. To find out more about how you can find your motivation, read on…

How to Speak Better English? – Motivation

From my point of view, motivation is so closely linked with number two on our list, goals. (If you haven’t seen my list of Almost Everything You Need to Learn English, click here.) However, to me, goals are concrete, specific, measurable things whereas motivation is a more general concept. For example, your motivation might be; to be able to speak English well enough to use it on holiday, but, a goal would be; to hold a conversation with an English speaker for 10 minutes, talking about particular topics of interest, by a certain date. So to answer our question ‘How to speak better English’ we need to know…

What is motivation? What motivates you to do anything?

In scientific terms, it is said that motivation has two parts; directional and activated. Directional motivation is that which moves you either towards a positive outcome or away from a negative one. If you want to be a fluent English speaker or at least speak better English, that is positive, going to English classes at work only because your boss will fire you if you don’t is negative motivation.

Activated motivation is the seeking (looking for) and consequent liking of the process and is dependent on the amount of dopamine in your system. Anyway, I’m not a chemical scientist so I’ll stick to what I know best and concentrate on how motivation relates to learning how to speak better English.

What motivates you to learn English?

I don’t know! However, I can tell you what motivates me to learn Czech. Firstly, I live in the Czech Republic so being able to understand what is happening around me is immensely important. To be able to really understand your culture, I have to better understand your language. I love playing football and talking to people who are interested in football and this is a huge motivation for me to get better at Czech. I want to have deeper conversations about the culture of football as well as discussing the game itself. (The photo is of me with my friends from Berlin watching 1.F.C. Union Berlin.)

I also love films and would really like to be able to watch more Czech films without English subtitles. I am a big fan of Svěrak and Smoljak and, as well as watching their films, I would like to understand the Cimrman plays. I have been to the Žižkov theatre but to the English performances, which are excellent, however, to fully understand a Czech performance and be part of a Czech audience would be magic! I’d like to help you find your motivation to speak better English but…

How can you find your motivation?

Think about reasons why bettering your English is a good idea, think about your interests in life, the things that really turn you on, and then try to connect the two together. If you really, really can’t think of something, maybe you have no reason or motivation, maybe you just don’t need to learn English after all. Make sure to read the action point at the end of this article so you can begin to learn how to speak better English. But before that, I thought this might be interesting for some of you…

Etymology of the word motivation.

Click here to go to the Etymonline site to read the etymology of the word ‘motivation’.

A dictionary definition of motivation

“that which inwardly moves a person to behave a certain way”

Czech translation

motivace;

Synonyms

Reason

Stimulus, motivator = stimul/podnět (stimulus in English)

What motivation does.

Motivation drives us forward, makes us get up in the morning, keeps us going when the going gets tough, prods us to take action, inspires us to be creative, and gives us a positive, happy feeling (when it’s that positive motivation – striving towards something better). Learning a language is really a lifelong lesson, even in your native language, so having positive motivation is the base on which to build all the other aspects of striving to speak better English.

Action to take to speak better English.

Right now, take out a pen and paper and start to ‘brain dump’ your ideas. Anything you can think of that might be a reason to learn English, write down all your interests and look for connections between the interests and the reasons. Think about and write down how your life could be improved by improving your English and how you could positively affect the world, or at least your small part of it, by being a better English communicator. I’d love to know how you get on, so let me know in the comments below.

OK, so that’s today’s article all wrapped up. I hope you have found some inspiration in it and will ‘get yourself motivated’. As we say in English, ‘there’s no time like the present’. Unless of course, you are Homer Simpson then you’d say ‘Why do today what can be put off ’til tomorrow?’

Look out for next week’s installment on goal setting to speak better English.

Category: Motivation for English Learners

Make English One of Your New Year’s Resolutions