How to Improve Your English Effectively - Step By Step Guide.
If you would like step-by-step instructions on how to improve your English by yourself in 2026, join our challenge HERE.
NOTE: These blogs are to help you improve your English. As with most reading exercises in English, you do not need to understand every word, you only need to understand enough to know what is happening, and please use a translator like DeepL if you need to. If you stop to translate every word while you are reading, the task will be difficult and you will become bored.
According to studies, English is the most spoken language in the world right now. If you work with international clients, you need business English - you have to be able to speak English, understand English, and feel confident and fluent. We are an online community now, even more so because of the COVID pandemic.
So you know you need to learn English. But - it is so difficult. The way you learned English in school was not enjoyable, or even productive. You may have learned a list of irregular verbs, but you probably left school being unable to say a sentence without mistakes or pauses. Later, you could improve with academies or private teachers, but you could never pass a certain level. Or perhaps you reached a level of English where you were starting to feel comfortable, and confident - but you stopped practicing and now you have lost your fluency. I have carried out hundreds of level tests with students and so many of the people that I tested worked really hard in the past to obtain a B2, but because they didn´t keep practicing, their level decreased again to B1 level.
It is difficult to learn a new language, especially to a level where you can communicate effectively. I know this because I moved to Spain 10 years ago with no Spanish - 10 years, 2 children, and 3 cities later, I feel more confident with my Spanish. But the pandemic and losing the regular practice in Spanish has made me feel less confident when I speak, so I have returned to classes and increased my immersion in the language again, taking my own advice that I will now share with you. Because you cannot do one exam, or course, in English, and assume that that is it, job done. No way José. Learning a language is a lifelong learning process that takes a lot of work to acquire in the first place, then if you don´t practice it you lose it.
In our Ultimate Guide to Improving Your English HERE, we go through all the steps you need to improve your English as fast and effectively as possible - a step-by-step approach that, if you perform all the steps, dramatically improves your English. In this blog, I briefly outline the necessary steps you need to take.
- Have clear goals and objectives.
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Like any goals or objectives you have in life, you need to be clear on what they are in order to be able to achieve them. An example of a goal could be that you want to be able to speak without making mistakes. So you know that you need to work on your grammar and speaking practice especially, in order to achieve that goal.
2. Have a realistic deadline.
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In order to motivate yourself, you need to have a deadline, even if you don´t need one. You know that you are more efficient if you know you have a limited amount of time to do something - it is the same with improving your English. However, you have to ensure that your deadline is realistic. If you want to reach a B2 level in 6 months and your current level is A2, you will not achieve that goal unless you practice total immersion in English. However, if you have a B1 level and you want to reach a B2 level, it is possible to do so in 6 months - with the right activities and enough time spent on them.
3. Make a realistic plan.
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Write your plan out and put it somewhere prominent. Put reminders in your calendar or phone to remind you to do your activities. Review your plan regularly to check you are doing the activities.
4. Include active and passive activities.
An active activity is where you are paying full attention to the activity, therefore learning more. Examples include having a conversation, or studying a grammar point, and doing an exercise related to it. Passive activities are ones where you have English in your immediate environment but you may be doing something else too like listening to the radio while driving or cooking. The more active the activity the better but using passive activities to increase your exposure to English is also very effective.
5. Focus on the things you need to improve.
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If you need to improve your grammar, do one grammar exercise every day. This video shows you useful websites to improve your grammar:
If you need to improve your fluency, find a way to practice your speaking - through classes, language exchanges, or simply read aloud to practice. Also, increasing your listening will help you to know more vocabulary, grammar structures, and the correct pronunciation, which, in turn, improves your fluency.
6. Try to combine English with existing activities.
The best way to make the most of your time is to combine English with activities you are doing already. This is also a valuable tactic to bring English into your life in a natural and meaningful way, instead of English being a separate activity, it is part of your life. Ways to do this include:
Watch your TV series in English.
Change all your device and search Engine languages to English.
Listen to the radio or podcasts in English while you do another activity, such as exercising, driving, or tidying the house.
Read everything in English instead of your native language - blogs, Facebook, news, even books.
Basically, think of activities you are doing and how you could do them in English.
How to improve your English without classes.
7. Be consistent and persistent.
Follow steps 1 - 6 and your English will improve - if you are consistent and persistent. Consistent in that you do an activity to develop the skills you need in English every day, or at least the majority of days in the week. Persistent in that you don´t give up, you continue even when you don´t feel like it, keeping your objectives in your mind and thinking about the benefits of achieving your goal of being able to communicate in English.
8. If it is not working, change it.
It is a good idea to continually review the activities you are doing in English and see if you need to make changes - for instance, if you are watching an English series every day for 30 minutes but you are not seeing any improvement, you should look at what type of English you are watching - is it too colloquial or difficult for you right now? Find one where the actors speak clearly, such as Friends and Our Planet (both available on Netflix. Friends - well, everyone knows friends, an American comedy series about a group of friends in New York. And Our Planet, a beautiful nature documentary series which is narrated by the fantastic David Attenborough. You can also use subtitles in English if you don´t understand yet, and you can gradually stop doing that as you improve. As well as that, it is useful to watch things in English that you have already seen in your original language - this way you already know what is happening so you can follow it more easily. You will find that if you follow the above advice, and watch regularly and often (almost every day), little by little you will improve your understanding.
9. Be patient.
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You will NOT increase your level in one week, and if you do not have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the language 100% by living in an English speaking country or attending a dedicated English camp, you have to make a plan to achieve your goal of improving your English by yourself - and stick to it. If you do this, your English will improve!
I hope you find this advice useful.
If you would like step-by-step instructions on how to improve your English by yourself in 2026, join our free challenge HERE.
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