Don’t Study English Hard in the New Year – Practice the Easy Way Instead!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Hi guys! Hello boys and girls. Hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog. And welcome to the year 2016. And I’m pretty sure that a lot of you guys are making new year’s resolutions just like we all do. And also some of you would be making the resolution to study English really hard next year and become fluent in English, right?

But here’s the thing – if you make the resolution to study English hard, it’s actually a double whammy which means that you’re going to fail on two accounts. First of all, if you decide to study English, studying as such is a method of preparing yourself for exams, tests and the like. That’s the typical academic approach basically where the education is centered around assessment, typically a test or an exam. Studying is the crucial part of it. You study for a test or an exam, then you pass it and then you move on to the next one.

But in reality when it comes to spoken English performance, studying for it is not going to make any difference. It’s all about practicing instead. So basically you have to shift your focus away from studying entirely and focus predominantly on practicing your English. And it’s not just about spoken English, right? As a matter of fact, any English-related activity requires loads of practice for you to become good at it. Whether it’s reading or writing or listening or speaking you can only become good at it by doing it!

And you may want to check out this blog post that I published earlier last year which is all about you being what you do. And spoken English, written English, English comprehension, reading are no exceptions to the rule. You can only become good at practicing those areas.

When you study that rather implies you sitting down and reading a book. That’s the typical picture that conjures itself up in my mind when you mention the word “study” and I’m pretty sure a lot of you guys would be the same when you say “study” – 9 out of 10 people would be thinking about sitting down at the desk and pouring over textbooks and studying really hard.

That’s the second part of it. It sets you up for failure again because if you have the concept of doing something really hard, the very word “hard” implies that it’s not going to be enjoyable. It’s not going to be an enjoyable experience at all. It’s going to be studying which by its very nature is perceived to be something boring and tedious and hard makes it twice as hard, twice as boring, twice as tedious.

So when you have this concept in your head “I have to study English hard.” As a matter of fact, you don’t even want to do it deep down inside and you will find every excuse along the way just to put it off for another day, for a week, for a month. And then the whole next year is going to just fly by in a jiffy and you’ll realize that you haven’t done anything!

So what I suggest is instead of studying, make your goal to practice English. Instead of doing it hard, do it the easy way. It doesn’t have to be hard. What I’m doing now isn’t hard at all. I’m just turning the camcorder on and I’m just speaking away, right?  And by the way you can read an article here about the advantages of recording your speech in a camcorder and how it can improve your spoken English, right?

So it doesn’t have to be hard. It can be easy and it has to be easy. It has to be enjoyable because everything that’s hard is not really enjoyable. Well, there’s a lot to be said about, say, working out, exercising hard which is enjoyable. But then again, it’s somewhat a bit different, you know. I would rather call it challenging, not necessarily hard. If something becomes too hard on the verge of you not being able to do it. It’s like spinning your wheels on a bike and getting nowhere. Stuck in the mud for instance. It’s not an enjoyable experience at all!

So I want you to shift your focus away from these seemingly good new year’s resolutions such as studying hard, I have to study hard. And then I’m going to become a good English speaker or I’ll just develop English fluency in general, right? I have to study hard. For some reason or another you have this concept in your mind and that seems like the only way to go to succeed. But it’s not the case. Get rid of that, get rid of the study, get rid of the hard part and just practice English regularly and do it in an easy way, in an easy manner. Enjoy the process, right?

Whatever it is you’re doing, whether you’re consuming audiovisual content or you’re reading or you’re writing something or you’re speaking with yourself, doing lot of English practice, it has to be done in an easy way. You just have to do it in a way you can manage it. There’s no reason for you to set the bar very, very high and aim for it knowing that you’re going to fail, that it’s going to be too hard. And there’s another article that I want you to read and there’s a video as well called “This English stuff is too easy, give something more difficult! Give me something more difficult, right?”

And what made me to create that video was an e-mail I got off one of my customers who said the English Harmony system’s content is too easy and that he wanted something more difficult. And that’s another wrong concept that some of you guys may have that if you do something easy it’s not going to develop your English. You have to be doing something really hard, push yourself really in order to develop. Well, there’s a certain degree of doing it obviously. If you constantly stay within the comfort zone, you’re not going to be developing your fluency, say a great deal.

But then again, it’s all about practicing. You could be talking about the same things, using the same words all over and over again but you will still develop within your comfort zone. You will become even more fluent. You don’t even necessarily have to acquire a large base of vocabulary, words or whatever. All that matters is that you can use the words that you know fluently, right?

And I hope you get the drift my friends basically. Don’t aim for something that is hard, difficult. Don’t fall for the trap of thinking that only that way you will experience some development. And when it comes to study, studying, just get rid of that concept altogether. Obviously, if you want to pass certain exams and tests and what not, then some study is required. Do it. But I strongly believe that you will experience an even greater development and you will actually prepare for those exams. If you practice loads, you will quite naturally know what is the right way of saying or writing this or that particular thing, probably without actually putting in as much study as someone who only studies to pass the exam, if you know what I mean.

Okay? So if you have this resolution to study hard, get rid of it and practice the easy way. All right? And obviously if you have any questions or comments of any nature, publish them in the comment section below my friends. Thanks for watching this video and chat to you soon. Bye bye!

Robby

P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!