Tools to Integrate English Into Everyday Life

Have you noticed your English learning hitting a plateau, which, after a while of convincing yourself it would pass, is beginning to raise some twitchy eyebrows 😏?

What about, despite all your full efforts, transitioning to the next level still seems out of reach regardless of your persistence? Or, English classes go well, and you leave feeling bright and uplifted; however, a few days pass, and remembering what you learned feels like a distant dream. You’re left scratching your head, wondering what you did during that time? 🤷

How about this: You’re doing everything you possibly can to retain information from the class, and no matter how many hours of revisions you put in, cups of coffee to stay awake, ☕🍪and countless brain-wrenching frowns, information still somehow manages to find a way to sneakily slide out of the memory bank undetected?

At this point, you might very well be shouting, “Heavens above, WHY OH WHY doesn’t anything work!?”

Don’t panic! That’s what this article is here for: to provide some useful insights to integrate English into your everyday life.

Integration is Key

Firstly, let's look at what I mean by integrate.

Imagine The Brooklyn Bridge 🌉, and in order to get to the other side one needs to cross it. Picture that person as you, coming to the English class ready to digest new content. 

Then when the class is all finished up, it’s time to cross back and return to where you started from. Only this time you return abundant in gifts. Now imagine these gifts are what you learned from the class.

However, it gets windy on the bridge and if one doesn’t hold onto the newly purchased items with conviction they can swiftly blow away 🌬️.

It’s the same with new content. If it’s not planted and nurtured like a freshly laid seed, there won’t be any foundation to build on and before you know it, all your hard work will result in weak roots cracking underneath the weight of the soil.

You might be thinking, "Great, what hope is there if you’re telling me all my hard work is for nothing?" Stay with me!

There are some useful tools to preserve everything that was learned and more. Even better, there's the possibility to take your English to the next level. By the time your following class swings by, not only is your memory bank fully equipped, but you’re also ready to leap up the ladder steps. 🪜

Over the last three years, I’ve taught online English as a Foreign Language and given well into the thousands of English lessons to children, students, adults, and working professionals. 

To support my observations, I also conducted a questionnaire to find out what obstacles students faced learning English.

Their feedback, combined with my observations, proved helpful in aiding me to further understand the benefits of the different factors one can consider when teaching a class.

Here are my observations combined with students' feedback:

• Passion
• Connection
• Questions

These three points might not sound like much, but behind their letters carries a tremendous weight of change 🌀that can radically transform one's relationship to learning.

Waving goodbye to the plateau you once stood on is a true and very happy farewell. Embrace the launchpad that propels you above and beyond your imaginative learning capabilities.

I will now expand on each point in order to explain the benefits they each have and when unified, the expansion that follows provides a mind-altering service for the learner, opening up a newfound connection to spring from. 🚀

Passion

Can you remember the last time you were passionate about something? Maybe it was that new painting you were eager to start, or cooking a spruced-up meal from a fancy recipe you read online, or beginning a new project that’s been on your mind for weeks?

Did you notice what each had in common? At one point, they were all placed on a shelf 🗄️, gathering dust before the time came to bring them into aware thinking. 

This is a key factor to consider because unless something is frequently used, your valiant studying efforts will remain in vain, as new information remains tucked away in the corner of your consciousness, drilling deeper into your invisible thinking, making it that much harder to find when you need it 🕵️. 

Coming back to passion, which is a key component, much like embarking on a new project, waves of excitement can pulsate through the body, lighting up each individual cell, and before long, a thought that was barely in your visible thinking quickly becomes the only one bouncing wildly around the mind, with waves of inspiration entering. 

Can you notice how an invisible thought quickly became the main focal point? This helps bridge the gap of separation from a subject rarely thought of to one that frequently enters your visible thinking. 

As passion develops, naturally, a newfound connection starts to grow alongside.

This leads me to the next point. ⤵️

Connection

Continuing from passion, thoughts that often grow in the mind strengthen one’s connection to it. Whether it’s positive or negative, a connection is developed. In this instance, I will refer to a positive relationship. 

Imagine you’re excited after learning something new, and from that place, you notice healthy thoughts enter your mind forming sprouts of inspiration, and before long, a positive bond is formed. 

In this next exercise, imagine a chef building on his new recipe 🧑‍🍳; exotic flavors are tested and tried before the right combination is eventually found. 

Now imagine that with your class subject. Creative thoughts shoot through to form new ideas. New ideas open up previously closed doorways (through a lack of imagination or motivation ⚫), and before long, new words emerge for you to dive into and explore, all from developing a connection to the subject you are interested in! 🪢 

Have you noticed what follows when you’re deeply interested in something? You want to find out more by firing up well-thought-out questions. ⤵️

Questions

Continuing with the chef analogy, imagine he’s in full-swing experimentation mode, exploring a concoction of herbs and spices while asking questions about what other flavors would complement the dish further. 

If you’re into cooking, you’ll know exactly what this is like. These questions are what will open the hidden doors of knowledge 🗝️🚪. 

Remember the Brooklyn Bridge? And if the newly purchased items aren’t held, they’ll blow away? 

In order to hold onto the freshly learned content, it’s to bring it into everyday life. Like a chef questioning how he can improve his recipe, asking how you can use recently learned content is not only holding onto your gifts but putting them on and proudly walking around in them.

Questions using the five W’s (Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How — equally as important) help develop a stronger association in addition to increasing the possibility of developing a mighty link. And when passion is combined with a connection that runs in parallel to questions, there’s no stopping how far it will take you જ⁀➴

What do you think? Are you ready to give this a go and explore for yourself how learning English can be a transformative journey? Be prepared to:

• 🎯 Take learning to a new level as your communication amplifies. 
• 🎯 Dive deeper down the rabbit hole of self-exploration.
• 🎯 Taste exciting insights gained along the way. 
• 🎯 Enhance relationships.
• 🎯 Learn beyond what you thought possible. 
• 🎯 And much, much more.

Did I mention you can do this with everything, not just learning a new topic/subject?

Well, you can! By bringing attention to visible and invisible thoughts, you get to control what you want to think about 🧠, grabbing the reins by your hands rather than being led the way.

What do I mean by visible and invisible thoughts? Stay tuned for more to come. Until then, I wish you a joyous journey in your learning adventure.