Boiled eggs, bananas, and nuts.

This is the packed lunch I have every working day.

I usually throw in a handful of raisins, maybe even a couple of apples if I’m feeling crazy. But always boiled eggs, bananas, and nuts.

I don’t have to time to go home to cook anything or go to a restaurant to have lunch, so I have this.

I love it.

It’s small but filling, nutritious, clean, and I can carry it and eat it anywhere I want.

When I say I don’t have time to have lunch, it doesn’t mean I don’t have lunch. That would be crazy. It just means that I have to adapt my lunch to my environment.

If I can’t change my environment to fit with my lunch, then I’ll change my lunch to fit with my environment.

One of the most common frustrations English learners have is that they say they don’t have time to practise English.[thrive_leads id=’1049′]

When they add up their responsibilities throughout the day, they find that their environment (daily life) simply doesn’t allow any time to dedicate a little bit of it to practising English.

First of all, that simply isn’t true. You can always find or make time, and it’s usually priorities that get in the way, not a lack of time.

But let’s imagine, for argument’s sake, that you really don’t have any time whatsoever.

I know for a fact that you can still practise every single day without finding or making extra time.

Yes. I’m sorry. There really is no excuse for not practising English.

How can you do this?

Well, just like my lunch, if you can’t change your environment to fit with an activity, change the activity to fit with your environment.

If you walk to work, take the car, the underground, or the bus, these are all perfect places to get some quality practice in.

If you don’t work, then you really do have no excuse, and you can be fluent in six months!

And just like my packed lunch that I can carry everywhere and anywhere, technology has given us the smartphone which, for good or for bad, we also carry everywhere we go.

You literally have the world of English at your fingertips.

Can you say you don’t have time to practise now?

Another common problem is that many English learners simply don’t know how to practise on their own. They’ve been so dependent on English classes for their learning needs that they can’t come up with practice exercises on their own.

So here are five ideas to get you started. One for listening, one for reading, one for speaking and pronunciation, one for vocabulary, and one for grammar.

Have a pen and paper or your mobile notes with you as you do the practice exercises. Write down anything you’re not sure of, as well as any other useful language you want to practise or check later.

Ready?

Five English practice exercises that you can do anywhere in under ten minutes

Listening

Find some audio online. This can be the news headlines from a news network, a youtube video, a TED talk, an episode of Peppa Pig…

Whatever.

Some audio in English about something that interests you.

Use one minute of that audio to do this exercise.

Listen once and write down every verb that you hear. Now do it again and write down every tense you hear. Listen again and write down every adjective you hear.

You get the idea…

You can repeat as many times as you like, listening for something different each time.

Use your imagination.

You can even listen for how many times they say a particular word, for example the definite article ‘the’.

The idea is to get you listening for detail. You spend most of your time listening for general understanding.

Listen for detail more.

Reading

Now find some text online. Something you normally like to read, but in English.

My blog, for example!

Now take a paragraph or two and read it purposefully.

Just like listening, we normally read for general understanding. With general understanding, you get the…well…general understanding, but you learn nothing.

Purposeful reading is reading with the idea of finding and learning something new.

What exactly?

New vocabulary, new expressions, verb tense use and if there’s a difference between the tense in English and the tense in your language, and so on, and so forth.

I always say that with one paragraph of text in English, you should be able to learn at least five or ten new things.

The reason this doesn’t normally happen is because you’re not looking. You’re only interested in getting the general understanding.

So, of course, that is all you get.

Your priority, as an English learner, should be to learn something new with every contact you have with English.

You’ll find it hard in the beginning, but the more you read purposefully, the less time you’ll need to find new things to learn.

For example, I wrote “…listen for…” in the previous exercise. Did you notice that? You probably learnt to use listen with the preposition to. Why did I use for, and what’s the difference?

So read the text, find five new things that you didn’t know, and look them up online.

Pronunciation and speaking

Ok, so maybe this is the only one you can’t do anywhere.

If you start speaking to yourself on public transport, you’ll probably get a few looks. Although a quick way around this is simply to hold your mobile phone against your ear, and everyone will think you’re speaking to someone.

I told you about this technique before. I’m telling you again to make sure you actually do it.

Take a text. It can be the same one as the previous exercise.

Now read it aloud.

Just like the listening, read it a few times, each time focussing on a different aspect of pronunciation: emphasising the consonants, sentence stress, word stress, vowel sounds.

You can even read a single sentence multiple times, and try to memorise and repeat the sentence without looking at the text.

Simple, quick, and effective.

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Vocabulary

People will say things like, “I need to practise vocabulary, but I don’t know how”, yet they are completely surrounded by vocabulary at all times.

Take a moment now to look around.

What can you see?

Can you say all of those things in English? Are there verbs, phrasal verbs, or adjectives and expressions associated with the objects you can see?

I’m looking at the trousers I’m wearing right now.

Nouns: trousers, leg, pocket, zip, waist, belt…

Adjectives: baggy, tight, fitted…

Verbs: wear, fit, suit, iron…

Phrasal verbs: zip them up, turn them inside-out, put them in the washing machine, take them out, hang them up to dry…

That’s just from one noun, and they are all common words.

Don’t know a word? Write it down, check it online, practise it.

Learn five words every day.

In one month: one hundred and fifty words.

Grammar

Write a simple sentence with subject, verb, and object. For example, I eat bananas.

Yes, it can be that simple. Just make sure you use an action verb, not a stative one.

Now make the sentence negative: I don’t eat bananas.

Now make it a question: Do I eat bananas? Do you eat bananas?

Now change the tense: I ate bananas.

Then negative, then interrogative, then change the tense again.

Affirmative, negative, interrogative.

When you’ve gone through all the tenses, change the subject to third person singular and repeat. Go through all the tenses again, then change the sentence and repeat.

This is the best exercise for making you lightning-quick at tense structures. You’ll never need to think about verb tense structures again while speaking, they will just flow out of your mouth.

So there you have it, guys. Five simple exercises to keep you practising, keep you learning, and keep you motivated.

It’s the small things you do everyday that determine your results. That goes for your English, and most other things in life too…[thrive_leads id=’1049′]