The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
Mark Twain
Once you start studying English, you make a great step. The further success can depend on a great deal of different factors. One of the first and the most crucial one is your positive experience in a process of studying. This is the reason you had better avoid the most common mistakes and make your start easy and inspiring.
Big expectations
We all are victims of ever-present advertising, which promises rapid results in a short term. Nowadays attractive posters declare that you are able to become a perfect English speaker within months or even weeks. This is no more than a sweet lie. You’d better be ready to study more, be diligent and persistent enough.
False goals
If you decide to study English just because it is in trend and everyone around studies it, you will hardly achieve much. The real and forceful motivation is a well-paid and interesting job, career development, entering prestigious university, travelling at least. So, set the right goals to get desirable results.
Too much focus on grammar
It is undoubtedly important, there’s no arguing with it. Nevertheless, too much concentration on the grammar rules can interfere your tries to speak. Moreover, grammar is usually difficult for logical understanding, but real communication is pretty fast, so you have no time to remember complex grammar constructions. Communicating with native speakers and listening to correct speech will help you to master grammar intuitively.
You study individual words
Instead of swotting separate words, try to remember whole phrase. Just look at the example with kids. They don’t study anything like “be-was/were-been”, but memorize combination of words. This is an appropriate advice for adults as well.
You don’t want to read
Some people are reluctant to read even books in their native language. When it comes to English, this process gets more complicated. There is an obvious reason – learners think that they have to understand every single word. And this is total misconception. You are able to understand the main idea from the context and there’s no need to translate everything. Just make it a habit to read one page a day and you will surprised with the result. Margaret Fuller said: “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.”
Lack of self-organization
There are no excuses for not doing homework and just few of them for missing the lessons. Make yourself to be conscientious and responsible enough, because the only one person who needs this progress is you.
Making mistakes is a natural part of the language learning process. The key is to learn from these mistakes. Don’t be afraid to try out new things in English but always remember to reflect on them and decide what was successful and what you need to keep working on.
