101 Ways to Improve Your English

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• Read graded readers. These books are especially written for your level. Read a whole novel. You can do it! You’ll feel great afterwards.

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• Children’s books have easier words and are a good alternative to graded readers.

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• Newspapers are a good place to find passive constructs. Read through an article and see if you can find the passive sentences.

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• Read for the general meaning first. Don’t worry about understanding every word, then go back and look up new words.

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• For a word you don’t understand in a sentence, look at the other words around it. They will give you a hint. Try to guess the meaning from the context.

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• Learn root words. They’ll help you guess the meaning of words. For example:scrib = write, min = small

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• When you learn a new word, think of all its other forms: Beautiful (adjective),beauty (noun), beautifully (adverb).

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• Learn prefixes (dis-, un-, re-) and suffixes (-ly, -ment, -ful), these will help you to figure out the meaning of words and build your vocabulary.

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• English, unlike Japanese or French, uses word stress. For new words, count the syllables and find where the stress is. Only one stress per word and always on a vowel. Two syllable verbs have a stress on the second syllable (beGIN). 2 syllable nouns (TEAcher) and adjectives (HAPpy) stress the first.

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• Use English whenever you can. It’s as simple as that!

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• Don’t translate into English from your own ********. Think in English to improve your fluency. Talk to yourself…but not on the bus otherwise people will think you have gone crazy!

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• You can’t learn English from a book. Like driving a car, you can only learn through doing it.

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• The most natural way to learn grammar is through talking.

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• Keep an English diary or journal. Start by writing a few sentences a day and then get into the habit of writing more.

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• Why not start an online blog and share your writings with the world?