This week Academic Manager, Joseph, has some key tips about becoming a better English learner. This is very important if you are studying towards your IELTS exam or just learning a new language.
Tip number four is about practicing and reflecting. The same as learning any skill in life, you can only learn it well by continuous practice. The more you practice okay that’s going to help you, but only if you reflect on what you have practiced and how well you learned.
So you should be working on the basics. As we said before you need to have good grammar so you need to be practicing that grammar until it’s automatic and you can do it without thinking. The same for spelling you need to be practicing, and practicing until you can do it without thinking. This will save you time in the exam and also reduce the amount of errors that you have in the exam.
And you need to know the common errors that you personally make.
Do you have problems remembering whether or not is singular or plural?
Do you often forget to put the ‘s’ on the third person?
Or do you get your pronouns mixed up?
Pronunciation – are there any words that you find difficult that you maybe you need to practice beforehand?
Practicing these things in speaking and writing and getting feedback is really important. If you have a teacher they can give you feedback where they help you to improve your grammar mistakes and to help you realise what common errors you often make so you can learn from those mistakes. Mistakes are fine when you’re practicing in order to learn but you must think about those mistakes why did you make them and how can you avoid making them next time.
