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I've taught thousands of students from different countries and noticed some very common mistakes that makes students learn so much more slowly. See if you are making any of these mistakes and try to fix them. 1. Spending more time on reading and writing than on listening and speaking. So many students spend most of their study time alone reading from a book. I've seen students trying to memorize new words and they get frustrated with their terrible spoken English. Reading is good and so is learning new words, but make sure that you spend at least 50% of your study time either listening or speaking. I've seen many English majors who speak terrible English even after they graduate. This is the mistake many of those students make. 2. Thinking that total amount of study time is more important than quality of study. I've heard students ask each other, "how much time do you study every day?" or say something like, "I want my English to get better so I'm going to study for 3 hours per day." It's the amount of useful learning that matters, not the time studying. Doing 40 minutes a day of focused reading and listening is enough as long as you are listening to the right stuff. Podcasts are the best if you can find one at your level. Native speakers teach slang and real life topics. It's way better than what is in most textbooks. 3. Not writing down what you learn. I often ask people to tell me one thing they learned after studying and sometimes people can't tell me anything. They say they forget after reading it. If you learn something that you think is useful, write it down in a notebook and make some example sentences with it that you can actually use in your daily life. This will make it much easier to remember new words and phrases. I do this when I study Chinese and it really helps. It sounds like an annoying habit if you are like me and hate keeping a notebook, but it will really help you if you are serious about learning quickly and efficiently. I have a lot of free podcasts I make with my younger brother. We're Canadians living in Shanghai and you can have fun while you learn. Check out our ESL podcast
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