Tips to improve your English at home
Do you want to study in the United States but think your English is not good enough? Don’t worry, here are a few tips to improve your English at home
Watch movies and series in English Start watching movies and series in their original version. If at first you find it hard to understand what they are saying or you get lost in conversations, put on subtitles. You can start with Spanish subtitles, to get your ear used to English. Once you feel more comfortable, try changing the subtitles to English to know exactly what they say, as well as to familiarize yourself with grammatical structures. From time to time you can try removing the subtitles to see if you start to understand things without a guide.
Read books in English The best way to learn any language is by reading. If you are not familiar with the language, you can read along with a dictionary and consult the dictionary every time you do not understand something. At first it can be a bit of a drag, but after a while, it will get easier and you will enjoy the books almost as much as if you were reading them in Spanish.
Set the mobile language to English It may seem silly, but nowadays, when we are hooked to our cell phones all day long, we can benefit from improving our English by changing the language of our cell phones. With this trick you will become so familiar with basic words that you won’t even realize that your mobile is in another language.
Mentally translates When you are on the subway or walking down the street or have nothing better to do, try to keep the phrases you hear and translate them mentally into English. For example, if you hear the phrase “I want to buy a dog”, mentally translate it to “I want to buy a dog”. And if you want more, you can also create structures from that sentence. For example, change the subject “He wants to buy a dog”, make it plural “They want to buy dogs”, move it to the past “I wanted to buy a dog”, and to the future “I will want to buy a dog”, etc. You can create as many structures as you want. And when you run out, change your phrase. This trick will help you work on grammar and oral agility.
When you meet a foreigner (preferably English-speaking), speak to them in English. Think of all the times you have met a foreigner and not spoken to him for fear that he would laugh at your English or simply spoken directly to him in Spanish so that he would be the one to work. From now on, every time you meet a foreigner, insist on being the one who speaks to him/her in English and if you can, have him/her correct you. It is very important to know and accept the mistakes you make, in order to learn from them and improve as much as possible.
Put these tips into practice and you will see how your English improves in a matter of weeks and in no time you will be ready to study on the other side of the pond. Good luck!
