EFL Hacks to learn English

We all need a little help from time to time, especially with shortcuts or good advice - a tip, an astuce or a hack...

At English Podcasts, we were thinking about the best tips to learn English - or perhaps any language - and we decided that the best people to give some ideas and hacks for learning English were the real English learners.

We asked people what their EFL Hacks to learn English were and this is what they replied.

If you want to participate by giving some of your hacks, perhaps things that may not have occurred to us, then send a comment below.

We are also working on episode 2 of EFL Hacks to learn English so if you would like to record your hacks and send them to us, please do.

Please keep your sound files in either .mp3 or .mp4 versions and we will edit and compile it and send you a mail when the podcast is published.

7 Tips to improve listening

Why are listening skills important, both for everyday life and for language learning?

Well, if you don't listen, then you will never learn, as simple as that.

Listeners, and especially good listeners are the best learners, as the Dalai Lama said, "When you speak you are repeating what you already know, but when you listen it gives us an opportunity to learn."

So here are the 7 Tips to improve listening that we discuss in the podcast :

Listen to silence, focus on yourself and what is around you. Interestingly the word, 'Silent' includes all of the letter in the word 'Listen.'

Listen to backgground sounds, those sounds that we usually try to ignore or block out.

Focus and get relaxed, open your ears (although this is not really something we can do) as you need to be able to hear before you can listen effectively and finally understand what you are listening to.

Listen form differing perspectives and change the perspective by taking different standpoints - agree, disagree, criticise, empathise etc.

Listen to emotion in the listening - happiness, excitedness, sadness, seriousness, anger etc.

For language learners, try to skip over and ignore what you don't understand and listen globally and not in detail.

Enjoy listening, don't see it as a chore, do it often and vary the way you listen.

Spelling place names in English

Spelling place names in English can be difficult, especially if the sounds of the letters are similar to the letters of the alphabet in your own language as this can lead to confusion.

Spelling place names in English is not difficult, but it takes a lot of practice for you to become proficient, especially if you are trying to understand spelling over the phone, for example.

Most people read words more accurately than they spell them. The younger the learners are, the truer this is.

Spelling, however, is a very different matter.

Once learners have learnt more than one way of spelling particular sounds, choosing the right letter or letters depends on their either having made a conscious effort to learn the words or having absorbed them less consciously through their reading.

The problem is generally that learners have not had enough time to learn or absorb the accurate spelling of all the words that they may want to write.

This illustrates the need to fully use the fours skills in language learning ; Listening, Speaking, Reading and writing - it is a little like making a cocktail, too much of one ingredient and not enough of another and the cocktail can taste either delicious or horrible.

In language learning, learners need to use all four skills in a balanced way - reading and writing will ultimately help spelling, but practice is needed to become fully familiar with the sounds of words and letters in order to become skillful in spelling words, which will improve with practice.

Have a go at spelling some of the longest words in the English language.

Email has become the top method of communication in the workforce. Reasons for emails vary from business correspondences to personal messages.

They can be as short as one word and as long as a novella, but that does not mean that these are all appropriate or even effective.

If you have access to this method of communication in the office, then it is necessary to learn how to effectively use email at work.

Worldwide email use continues to grow at a healthy pace. In 2015, the number of worldwide email users will be nearly 2.6 billion. By the end of 2019, the number of worldwide email users will increase to over 2.9 billion.

Over one-third of the worldwide population will be using email by year-end 2019 and this is forecasted to increase over the next five years.

In 2015, the number of emails sent and received per day total over 205 billion, reaching over 250 billion by the end of 2020.

Despite the growth and prominence of mobile messengers and chat apps, e-mail is an integral part of daily online life.

In 2018, the number of global e-mail users amounted to 3.8 billion and is set to grow to 4.4 billion users in 2023.

Around 281 billion emails were sent and received each day in 2018, the figure is expected to increase to over 347 billion daily mails in 2022.

So, if you are struggling to manage your emails today, then things are set to get even worse for you.

With this in mind, is it time for change?

With the average worker spending 13 hours a week dealing with emails, businesses are potentially losing up to 28% of work time to managing email.

Listen to this podcast where we give some effective tips to manage emails and to reduce the number of emails you receive on a daily basis.

Why do learners have difficulties listening in English?

Why do learners have difficulties listening in English ? This is a real problem for learners of English or any foreign language and there are no real shortcuts, but there are many tips, based on common sense that you can try out, which we will see in the next podcast.

The reality is that if the ear doesn't work, then everything becomes difficult in language learning, although there is a clear difference between listening (which is a somewhat active process) and hearing, which is a passive process.

However, if you cannot hear the range of sounds that make up a language, then it will be almost impossible to have a chance of developing listening skills. The mystery is, why is there so little focus on developing hearing skills, whilst a lot of effort is put into listening skills. 

Your brain is also acting like a filter when it hears English sounds, constructions, rythmns or certain syllables. It is filtering out those sounds as foreign which is causing it to completely ignore some of the more important English sounds. 

There are typically 120–150 words spoken per minute in normal audio or conversation and that is a lot of information for your brain to process in very short time. You might feel like you are only hearing a few words that you know really well and you are left guessing what the audio means based on a few words, or worse, you may block and filter them out completely. 

You may be reading this and thinking this process is really hard work and it might sound like it takes a lot of time. And, yes, you are absolutely right and you are definitely going to go deeper with your listening but you will see results in the end as a reward for your efforts.

Just remember that learning is not a spectator sport! Here are some Language Learning tips 

What English sounds like to speakers of other languages And some learning hacks

What difficulties do you have listening in English?

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In Tandem Language Learning both partners can meet in person (face-to-face Tandem) or learn by e-mail, chat, Skype, phone or other media (eTandem, also called Distance Tandem), placing emphasis on cultural integration as part of the language-learning process.

Learning is supported in different ways, for instance, via worksheets, textbooks or simply informal conversation.

This is something that we are considering integrating on this site to help learners learn independently from other learners.

The best tandem partnerships work when each tandem shares their native language 50/50 with another partner.

For example a French speaker (who wants to learn English) will speak for 15 minutes in French with an English speaker (who wants to learn French) then the English speaker will take turns to speak English for 15 minutes - a great and fun way to work together.

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