All things that give the results we desire function by following a system.

A car engine, the weather and of course, learning.

Each thing in the system process directly influences the next.

One thing happens, it gives a result, and it starts a chain reaction of events.

What system do you follow in your learning English process?

“System? What system? I just learn a bit when I feel like it”

Ah, then your learning will follow the classic curve of ups and downs, but you’ll never really make any continuous progress.

Put a system in place, follow it, and then you’ll make continuous progress.

Here are three basic principles of English learning:

1. You should practise English every day
2. You should practise multiple skills in English every day
3. You should take notes and practise the things you learn

If you follow these basic principles, over time you will make progress.

Guaranteed.

The only problem with this is the adverb I used in the previous sentence: over time.

Why is that a problem?

Because your brain doesn’t like things that come over time. Your brain likes things that come now.

I’ve always said it and I’ll say it again: learning English is easy. What’s difficult about the learning process is not the language, but rather starting and keeping a habit that will give you great results over time.

If that’s the difficult thing, then most of your efforts should go into keeping a habit and keeping your brain happy with the habit.

Because results in English learning can only come over time.

So let’s take a look at each basic principle and see how we can expand on each.

1. You should practise English every day

You know it’s true. I know it’s true. But we often find excuses not to practise when the time comes.

The main reason English learners fail to do daily English practice is because they depend on their good intentions to help them practice.

What does that mean?

It means that because you want to improve in your English, you think those good intentions will help you when the time comes to practise.

Good intentions are very unreliable.

The reality is that every time you need to practise, you have an internal battle of, “I need to practise…but I don’t want to…but I have to! OK, tomorrow…but I need to do it today!”

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The battle is between good intentions and lazy intentions.

Sometimes the good part of you wins this battle, but often the lazy part of you wins.

Lazy intentions is a very good fighter.

But fighting is stupid.

Fighting is even more stupid when the person you are fighting is actually yourself.

The first and most important part of the system is to remove the need to have this battle.

How can you do that?

By automating the process.

By creating a system.

An automatic system.

System automation removes an external thing that controls the process. Right now there are two people controlling the system: good intentions and lazy intentions, and they have a conflict of interests.

You need to remove them from the decision-making process.

In English learning, a system removes the need to make the decision to practise every time you need to practise.

Here’s how to start the system automation process.

Write down (with a pen and paper) your typical daily schedule, including all of your obligations.

On a separate piece of paper write down times you have in between your obligations when you are doing nothing.

Choose three slots of ten minutes per day during which you’ll practise English. For example, ten minutes when I wake up, the first ten minutes of my lunch break, and the first ten minutes when I get home.

Start with ten minutes only. The amount of time is not important in the beginning. The only important thing is starting and continuing the habit.

Write the exact times that you will practise English in your schedule.

Congratulations!

You’ve just conquered the main reason people fail to learn English.

2. You should practise multiple skills in English every day

OK great! So you have a skeleton routine structure. A schedule with time slots just for practising English.

Now you just need to fill these slots with practice exercises.

The main purpose of automation is to remove the need to make decisions. This means you should decide beforehand what you will do during each slot to practise English.

What are you going to do exactly?

As a rule of thumb, you should practise the main skills every day. You need to hit your brain from multiple angles to make great progress. It’s the same as when you go to the gym. If you always do the same exercise, you stop making progress.

You should do some listening practice.

You should do some fluency practice.

You should do some vocabulary building practice.

You should find things that you don’t know how to use but you want to. This can be grammar, vocabulary, expressions, phrasal verbs…

You should find grammar that you don’t know how to use well or comfortably, and practise it.

You should do some reading.

You should do some memory work.

You should…

You should…

There are a million different things you can do to practise English. Read my posts that I’ve highlighted above to get some ideas for each.

Search on Google for more ideas. Visit your favourite blogs, resource websites and online lessons for even more.

Sit down once a week for ten minutes and fill your schedule for the following week with the practice work you find.

That way you won’t need to make another decision all week related to English and you won’t have the internal battle of whether to practise or not.

You just do it.

3. You should take notes and practise the things you learn

Keeping a record of the things you learn is key to keeping that knowledge in your head.

Take notes.

Read those notes.

Practise those notes.

Read and practise those notes again.

You get the idea…

Every night, the brain throws away information that it thinks it won’t use again. Most of the things you see, hear, smell and talk about today your brain will throw away while you sleep tonight.

That includes the things you learn.

Unless you do something about it.

Taking notes and practising them is the best way not to forget the things you learn.

Conclusion

This is by far the most important thing you can do to improve your English. It’s not what you practise, it’s how you practise.

If you follow a structured system, it will give you a huge advantage.

Everything will seem easier.

Effortless.

Experiment at the start with a variety of exercises.

Over time, change, modify and adapt those exercises to fit your needs, strengths and weaknesses better.

As a general rule (in life too), do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

When you automate the learning process, learning becomes so much easier.

Thinking is hard work.

Your brain gets really tired when it needs to think.

When you have learning ritual or routine in place, you don’t have to think about what you need to do.

You don’t have to have that internal battle.

You just do it.