#359 What is the Best Way to Learn English?

Astuttoiseen maailmaan storitelinkansa, rakkaustarinoita, trillereitä ja lastensuosikkeja. Teetot talvi 1 miljonalla tarinalla. Kokeless storitelia nyt kolme kuukautta puoleen hintaan. Life is better with the story. - So you want to improve your English. You want to start getting serious about your English learning. But how does one do that? Where do you start? What do you do? There are so many resources available on the internet. And who knows which is best for you. It can be quite a nightmare. And of course, English is the most learnt language in the world. Most useful, perhaps, as well. So there are so many resources more than any of a language on the internet, in libraries, on your phone. And where do you start? Well, my job in today's episode is to hopefully simplify the process and make this easy for you to get started with English. So this episode will go over what you need to do. If, first of all, you want to start learning English. Maybe you're not really learning at the moment and you want to. And second of all, if you're already learning, but you don't really know where to go from here. You know, maybe you want to start taking it more seriously or maybe you want to start seeing faster progress in your learning than if any of those apply to you. This will be the perfect episode to listen to. So let's get into it and I hope you find it useful. This is the Level Up English podcast. The best place to come to level up and improve your English one day at a time. My name is Michael, your host and your teacher for the day. Let's get started. One of the main reasons I'm making this episode today is because believe it or not, this is the most common question I get. On a daily basis, I get at least one email every day about how can I learn English? Where do I start? What's the best thing I can do? It's kind of similar questions like this. And in fact, I'm going to play a couple of them now. If people take the time to leave a voice message for me, I will do my best to play them. It's a nice way to say thank you as well. So here we have one from Monzea. Hello, Michelle, how are you? Good evening. I'm Monzea from Sudan. I would like to learn how to talk English. My English is a little medium. Want to be fluent. Thank you. Thank you very much, Monzea, for that question. Great question. And another similar one here from Omar. Hello, Mr. Michael. My name is Omar. I just want to study English. Very good. I want a good accent to produce myself to live a good life with English accent. You know what I mean? So please, you can help me. And thank you. So thank you, Omar. Thank you to both of you. Those were great questions. And they're kind of looking at similar things, right? Where they're asking about how to learn English, how to see improvements in English. And these are just two of the many, many questions that I get every day. By the way, if you want to leave me an audio message for a future episode, just go to the website and click on the podcast button. There is a little widget on that page to leave an audio message. I'd love to hear your voice and maybe play it on the podcast one day. And I did also get another message from Abdullah. But unfortunately, it wasn't so clear. So sorry, Abdullah, that's one point I could talk about. If you do leave a message, make sure you listen before you send. Just to make sure that it is listenable. You know, the audio is clear. But yeah, thank you to those people who submitted. And in this episode, I'm going to break it down into a few areas. First of all, I'm going to go over some questions to ask yourself. It's really important to ask yourself questions. And this is because we are all different. You know, no one person or I could say no two people are alike, which means we're all different. So these questions will help decide what is best for you. And then I've got a few steps on what you can do. I've tried to really simplify the structure of this episode. And the final section, I think, maybe will be more useful for many of you is questions to ask yourself if you're already trying to learn English, but you're not seeing success fast enough. And in many of you will be in that category. So stick around until the end to hear that part. But okay, let's go to the first part. Questions to ask yourself. This is the very first thing you should be doing when deciding on starting a routine or what to do next. So the first one is what are your goals? Or in other words, how will you use English? So what I mean by this is think about, yeah, the reason why you need English. I mean, for many of you, it might just be a hobby. You may enjoy it, which is fantastic. But we all have a reason even if it's not obvious at first. If you think hard enough, you do have a reason. Don't worry about making it a perfect reason. But the reason that we ask this question to ourselves is because there's no point spending many, many hours on your handwriting, writing very neatly on a piece of paper if you never expect to need handwriting. Okay, you can argue it might be useful to learn grammar through handwriting, but I think a lot of people might spend too much time in areas that don't directly benefit them. I know this because I've done this for many years, where I've been focused on an area that I didn't really need. So really ask yourself, what are your goals? Many of you might say, okay, my main goal for English is I want to be able to speak English fluently when I travel, when I travel around the world, but also in English-speaking countries. And if that's your case, of course, you might want to focus mostly, not 100%, but mostly on speaking and listening. So once you know that, you kind of have a clearer idea of where you need to spend your time. And by the way, it might help to write these down. So you could also write down in a note file or even in the comments on my website, on this post, your answers to these questions. Number two is what are your weak areas? So what are your weak points when it comes to English? And the reason we ask this is because you should be spending time on these weak areas, not what you're good at. This is very difficult to do because it feels good to be good at something. Again, this is not something that I have read in some rule book and that I'm teaching to you. This is all from my own experience. I feel that I am better at Japanese. I think I am better at Japanese compared to Chinese, for example. Two languages that I'm learning, so I tend to spend more time on Japanese, naturally. And this is because I'm better at it, and it feels good to have a skill, right? So it's much more enjoyable for me to read a book in Japanese because I can understand almost everything in some books, right? But in Chinese, it's much more of a struggle, right? It's, you know, there are many comparisons to going to the gym. I always make that comparison. If you go to the gym, you're lifting weights, it's going to be much easier to just focus on those light weights because, you know, think about this. You can lift one kilogram and get 100 percent, you know, do all of your reps, all of your lifts successfully, great feeling, you finish, you succeeded. But you're not going to grow any muscle. If you lift 10 kilograms, it might be a bit heavier for you. And maybe you might not reach your goal. Maybe you want to do 30 reps of that exercise, but it's too heavy. So you have to stop at 25. And it doesn't feel quite as good, right? Because you didn't reach your goal. But this is how we learn. This is how we grow muscle, and this is how our brain grows as well. So yeah, basically, in short, focused on your weakest areas to build them up. So for me, I need to focus on my Chinese because it's weaker, and specifically my speaking, because that's my worst part of my Chinese, my worst skill of my worst language. So speaking Chinese is going to be a big goal of mine this year. Think about what that would be for you. The next question is also really important. And there's a caveat here as well, which is a kind of a side point to mention. How much time can you spare each day on English? So how much time can you spare? The key here is to think about the minimum, right? Don't think about the best day. Don't think about a really good day. So maybe you're thinking, well, every day's different. I mean, on a busy day, it may be 10 minutes, but I think most days I could spend 15, 20 minutes, okay, 20 minutes on most days. So it's important here not to say 20 minutes a day, because when you get to that busy day, it's going to be impossible, right? Again, these numbers are just examples. But it's important to think about your absolute minimum. What is the minimum amount of time you can spare for English every day? So think about your average bad day, your average busy day. For me, if I'm very busy, I'm quite lucky. I can probably spend 30 minutes on my studies on a busy day, right? For many of you, it might be less than 30 minutes. But yeah, usually I will do more than 30 minutes. But let's say on my busiest day of the year, I still think I could do 30 minutes. And yeah, again, even if it's just five minutes, that's fine. It's not about how much time you can squish into it, because really the main focus today is developing that habit, that daily routine, we can increase the time later. And the key phrase here is non-negotiable time. So this is why we're not saying 20 minutes a day, if this is only possible five days out of seven. So non-negotiable, to negotiate means to have a discussion and try to persuade someone to do what you want, to win an argument or to bargain something, to negotiate, to make a deal maybe. Non-negotiable means this is not able to change, it's not able to be changed. This is set in stone, that's another great expression there, idiom, which means cannot be changed. I usually about a calendar event or timetable event. So non-negotiable time is something that takes priority. I'm sure everyone here will have sleep as non-negotiable time. Now it doesn't matter how busy your work is, usually I don't think you will ever just skip a whole night of sleep because you're busy. So sleep, even just a couple hours, is non-negotiable time. Obvious example, brushing your teeth is hopefully non-negotiable time. Even if I'm very busy, I will always brush my teeth. I mean partly because it's what two minutes, it's not that long and it's just important for health. So yeah, how much non-negotiable time can you make for English? So if you do decide on 10 minutes, it could be 35 minutes, whatever it is for you. If you decide on 10 minutes, that is non-negotiable. It has to be every day 10 minutes. That's the minimum, right? This is just one method. I mean many of you are not quite the same as me. You may not like this strict routine, but I think for most people something like this will work and it can be flexible. So I'll get to this later, but sitting down for 10 minutes, it doesn't mean open a textbook, learn grammar. It could be anything you want. It could even be watching a YouTube video, a Netflix show. It doesn't have to be that typical school image of language learning, but we'll come to that later. And as well as that non-negotiable time, that's also not an upper limit. It's a lower limit. So to give an example, I mean, I don't have this at the moment because I've had a routine for so many years that I don't really need it anymore. That's my feeling. But let's just say my non-negotiable time is 10 minutes. I do 10 minutes every day. And then anything above that is bonus time. Some days I might do two minutes more. I might do seven minutes of total study. And then other days, I might do two hours, but that extra time beyond the base time is just bonus. It's like a bonus extra thing on top. And the final question to ask yourself is, can you make learning a priority? Is it going to be a priority for you? We can have multiple priorities in our busy, modern day lives, but not everything can be a priority. That's what priority means. It means one thing or one or two things are more important than everything else. For many of us, family, friends, children, these will be priorities, of course. And maybe a secondary priority might be language learning or it might be health, fitness, could be something like that. So it doesn't have to be written down. It might be useful that it's important to be honest with yourself and just say, be realistic. Can I make this a priority? 10 minutes a day that can still be somewhat of a priority. But the reason we ask this is because if language learning is not a priority for you, you will not see fast improvements. 10 minutes a day when you're free on the way home from work. Maybe it might be enough to keep your skill, keep the language fresh in your mind, but you're not going to see big improvements over the year after months and months doing that. So just think about that. Be honest with yourself. Is it a priority for you? Hopefully it is, but some of us we have other things going on. So just be honest. Okay, here are the steps now that you need to take to start learning English. And again, this is mostly kind of designed for people who are either just starting. That doesn't mean total beginners. Because if you're listening to me now, I guess you're not a complete beginner, but it could be people who have learnt English in school, but you're a little bit rusty, which means you kind of forgot a lot of stuff. Or you maybe used to study very hard, but you haven't done in a while and you want to get back on track with your English. Or maybe you're just thinking about changing things. You're not happy with where you're going, and you want to restart and set a good foundation, which is a good base to start your new study plan. So if that's one of those things applies to you, this will be useful here. So step one, design a routine. I'm not going to talk in too much detail about this. I know many of the long time listeners will be rolling their eyes right now, because this is something I have spent many, many hours, maybe days talking about on this podcast. If you want to hear more about routines, just go to the podcast page. There's actually a page. It's levelupenglish.school/allepisodes. All episodes. And then you can search for routine, and you'll see all of the routine related episodes I've done. But yeah, very briefly, I'll talk about it here. So focus on these four areas, right? Listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Those are kind of four big skills when it comes to language learning. You might argue that some are more important than others, depends on your needs as well. Flashcards are optional. And I personally love flashcards. I find it's super, super useful to keep the vocabulary fresh in my mind. And it also simplifies my learning process. I like to use Anki, ANKI, and yeah, basically if I learn a new word or grammar point, I add it as a flashcard, and it will keep repeating it until I remember. So it just means I don't have to worry about it, because it will remind me when I'm forgetting. So it's a nice way to automate your learning. But for many of you, it may not be suitable, depends on your personality, your learning style. If you find you're the kind of person who forgets things quickly, then I might suggest flashcards. Not to be the main part of your study, just a, we can say, supplementary part, which means addition, it adds to your studies. Relating to what I said before, also decide on a minimum to consider the day a success. I like this because it keeps you consistent, and the minimum can be quite low. Again, just think about your, your base like on your busiest day of the year, how much time can you give for English. And I'll be totally honest now. Last week I had food poisoning on Friday. I felt really horrible. It was my own cooking, so I felt even more stupid because I poisoned myself. I think I learned my lesson to avoid that ingredient. But yeah, I felt very sick, and I was just so tired, so sick, so disorientated. I wasn't in a good frame of mind, but I didn't want to skip a day of studying. So you know what I did? I did two minutes of Japanese study. Two minutes. It's almost nothing right. And honestly, I probably didn't learn much in that two minutes, if I'm being totally honest. But at that point, I decided, okay, two minutes is what I need to consider today a success. If I can do two minutes of study, I think that's fair enough with my current state of mind, my feeling, my illness. And yeah, I did it, and I said it was a success. That was my opinion. And adding on from that, what might be useful for you is to track your studies as well. Many people like a study streak to keep them motivated. So I actually have one of my own, you're welcome to use it for free, totally for free, very, very useful, I think. And this is at levelupenglish.school/track. T-R-A-C-K. So if you go there, you can track your language learning, see how much time you're spending on it, and view all the data. A really, really nice way to track and keep you motivated, because it says how many days in a row you have been learning English. Super useful. So if you do that, if you reach your level of your minimum time to be a success, as we said, then you can go tick, and that is a success for the day. So again, that's optional, but for many of you that will be motivating and help you study more. Two more points here. Focus on what you find fun. This is always something that people overlook. Many people ask me what's the best way to learn English. And usually the answer is what you find fun. If it's boring, of course, no one likes to be bored, but also the brain doesn't work as efficiently when you feel bored. So yeah, if you're enjoying what you're doing, you will also learn faster. And who doesn't like to have fun. So don't make learning like it was at school. We often have this idea that learning should be at a desk, with a book, and a pen and paper. Some people like that, but for most people, maybe most people, it doesn't have to be that way. So make it fun. Focus on what you enjoy. It could even be video games. I've had some students before who have learned English mostly through video games, and they reached a very high level. So if you find it fun, you will be motivated to keep going. And one final point on mindset here with step one, motivation. Motivation will not always be there. So have that expectation. Motivation comes and goes. Motivation is not enough to learn a language. It's not enough to do anything. No one is motivated every day of the year. And that's totally fine. I think it's just important to understand that motivation will come and go and to rely on habits. That's why I have that habit tracker that I made you, again before, my website slash track. So if you develop the habit, even on days when you're not feeling super motivated or excited, you will still do some study. But maybe you might do a bit less. And that's fine. Go easy on yourself. It's a nice reminder as well. Okay, step two is what to study. So now we've spoken about designing a routine, the basics of a routine. But you're still maybe wondering practically, like Michael, what do I actually study? Because as I said at the beginning, there are so many resources. Where do you start? Well, first of all, I should say there's no one good method. I've said this already today, but this is because we're all different. Everyone is unique. And the best thing you can do is just do the method that you will actually stick with. So rather than trying to find the most efficient way to learn a language, find the most enjoyable way. So I wrote down here that a method that isn't totally perfect that you do every day is better than the perfect method that maybe you do for 30% of the year. So it's better to do something on a daily basis that is 60% effective rather than do something when you feel like it that's 100% effective. So consistency is more important than perfection. I guess that's a good summary there. So yeah, keep it simple. That's another really key point here. Keep your study routine simple. And that's going to be easier to follow as well. You might consider just one activity per skill, right? Again, this is really useful to write it down as well. So let's go over those four skills again now. Listening. Have one main source of listening like a podcast. This one could be good. Just a random recommendation for you. A YouTube channel, a Netflix series. You need just one main source that you enjoy. Repetition can be good as well. So if you want to listen to the same episode again or same TV series again, that can be also very useful. Speaking, few things you can do, of course, get a teacher, a friend, join one of the group classes at level up English and practice your speaking. Speak to yourself. I do this every morning now. Just five, five, ten minutes speaking in a language to myself. I record myself as well. Actually, very useful. Shadowing, which is where you listen to something and you speak the words that you're hearing, trying to copy the pronunciation. So few speaking methods there. Reading. You could be reading articles, nonfiction books, graded readers, social media posts, whatever you like. One point though is maybe don't stop for every word. Again, it should be enjoyable. So try to read. And if you see a word, you don't know. Maybe you could highlight it, but just keep reading. And maybe the word will make sense later. Or maybe you'll see it again. And it will click. That's what that means. I understand that process of trying to learn as you're reading is much much better than looking it up in a dictionary. Because if you're always relying on a dictionary, it's taking that power away from your brain to do the work for you. So that's a reading tip there. Writing. Again, maybe you're thinking, I don't need to do writing, but writing can be really effective for practicing your grammar, the spelling, practicing vocabulary that you would learn. You know, I love to do some writing. If I learn a new word, I write it down and it helps me remember the word more easily. So this could just be, you know, five sentences talking about how your day was little journal, messages to friends, writing stories, whatever you want. Lots of different writing ideas. I would, I think it would be a shame if I didn't mention that. All of these things, you can practice on level up English members. We have writing courses, listening, reading, and also speaking courses. So if you want to practice all of these level up English members could be a good option. Hopefully I've simplified the process on the website. So everything you need is in one place. So that's something to consider. So that's step two. Just some ideas to get you thinking. I don't want to be too self-promoting here because that can be annoying, but I also have a routine's course on level up English. This episode is a little bit like an overview. If you want a more detailed way to develop your own routine, there's a course on level up English called the perfect routine course. And it walks you through step by step what you need to do to make the perfect study routine for you with examples and challenges. So that could be quite fun to do. If you need some more help that's another thing to consider. I often encourage new members to start with that course actually. Step three is to, maybe this is step three, review after one month. So generally when you're doing a new routine you don't really want to be messing around with it or changing things for a while. Keep it, I think 30 days is a good length of time. It's not too long, it's not too short. So one month, write it in the calendar. After one month, just ask yourself how did it go? What went well with my routine? Was I consistent? Did I study almost every day? If so, great. Maybe I can continue or ramp things up. To ramp things up is to increase the amount of hard work you're doing. Make things harder. If not, maybe there are some changes you need to make. Ask yourself what didn't you enjoy? Was there any part of your routine that was boring? Maybe that needs to be changed as well. The final question, are you able to increase your study time? Even a little bit. Now that the routine is in place, it's really good if you can do a little bit more to see some progress. Just like at the gym, you might start with five kilograms on your bicep curls. But then if you're still doing five kilograms one month later, you're not really going to get stronger. You need to increase the weight. So now you're increasing that weight to see faster progress in your English. And again, be realistic. You know, you're not going from 10 minutes to two hours probably, but you might go 10 minutes to 20 minutes. And that might be manageable for the second month. So review and reassess at this point. Step 4, which isn't really a step, it's just another point to make, is make learning part of your life. Integrate, which means combine, connect, join with other parts of your life. Learning doesn't end at your desk, right? It's not just something you do in a place. Think about all the ways that you could integrate learning into your daily life. With friends or shopping or fitness or cooking with recipes, podcasts on the go, entertainment is a big one too. Think about everything you can do, how much English can you integrate and add into your daily life? Maybe changing all at once might be too much, but you could do bit by bit. In fact, one thing I think I will do is a promise to you. Promise is quite scary, but I might promise it now. I think I might change my phone language into Chinese. That could be a good step to take. I see how it goes. I haven't done that in a long time, but I imagine it might be quite frustrating, but maybe after some practice and time, it might get useful. So yeah, phone language, English, do it now. Okay, the final thing here is, after this episode, this is one takeaway. After you listen to this, there's no need to redesign your whole life. Just choose one non-negotiable habit and start tomorrow. Just one habit that you're going to do every day and then just begin tomorrow. It doesn't have to be that big. But okay, this is the final part now. If you're trying to, you're working hard on your English, but you're not seeing success or improvements as quickly as you would like. Again, maybe even most of you are in this category. We all feel this way at some point. So this is my final part here. Just a list of questions. Number one, are you active in your studies? I imagine there will be many of you who will maybe naturally say, okay, yeah, maybe I'm not so active. Again, I know because I am guilty. I'm guilty of this. It's so easy to fall into the habit of ticking off your daily study, whatever that is, and not actually focusing as much as you should. So this is kind of embarrassing to admit. These days, I do my anky flashcards in the morning, and I am very focused. I don't have any distractions. It's going very well at the moment. It used to take one hour. Now it takes 30 minutes to do them all. The reason it used to take one hour is because I would be, okay, one flashcard, okay, open this YouTube video, flash, oh, Instagram message here. Like, I would get so distracted, and very often I would have YouTube open on one tab, and flashcards open on the other window. It's just not a good way to learn. Now you cannot study well if you're doing two things at once. Multitasking just doesn't really work. Humans are actually not that good at multitasking. So try to focus on one task at a time. Really actively study. If you're listening to the podcast, try to actively listen. Try to really focus on the words I'm saying, the pronunciation, the meaning. Don't just have it on in the background. If you want to improve quickly. Question two. Do you look forward to your study time? That's another good question to ask. Is it actually something that you are excited to get to every day? If not, maybe you need to make a change. Again, it should be fun. So when you think about studying, what's the first reaction? What's your first feeling? Is it, oh yeah, I can't wait to learn something new. Or is it, yeah, I guess I'll have to do that. If you're closer to the second one, I highly encourage you to make some changes because, you know, that's not a recipe for success. That's not going to lead you to success. So make sure you have some kind of routine that you're excited about. Next question. Do you ever review what you learned? Reviewing is often overlooked, which means ignored, but very important. If you learn something once and consider it done, you will forget. That's how the human brain works. So when you learn something new, find a way to review. That's a nice rhyme. Accidental rhyme. Learn something new, find a way to review. So yeah, maybe easier to remember as a rhyme there. So there are many ways you could do this. When I learn a new word, when I'm listening or reading, I like to write it on the notes app on my phone. And when I am talking with my teacher or writing a story, I will open this app, this notes app, this list. And I will use these words or talk about these words in my practice. So that's a good form of review. Sometimes I will add practice sentences to my flashcards, which is another way to review a few days after you learned it originally. So make sure you're reviewing. Learning it once is not enough. This one, I know many of you are going to feel a little bit guilty. Maybe that's me. Are you using too many apps or too many resources? Is your plan overcomplicated? How many of you are thinking? Yeah, okay. You got me. Michael, you got me. Again, this is partly because in the modern day, there are so many apps and resources to learn English. Some of them are super useful, but really that the ones you need are the other ones that you will actually use. Don't try and get the best ones. Just get the ones that you will use regularly. And if some people can study with no apps, just like they did in the in the olden days, just a book and some practice, you don't need all these different apps and resources. They can be useful, but consider simplifying. And there may be some that you're using that you would like. I'm not going to name any names, but there are certain apps that are very fun to use, but maybe don't actually help you learning that well. So also consider what they would be. Keep it simple. It's always a nice reminder. Keep it simple. Simple is usually more effective. Question something. I don't, I haven't counted, but next question. Are you focused on your strong areas? I said this already before, but if you're mostly focused on the things you're already good at, yes, it's fun, but you need to build up your weak areas as well. So don't forget your weak skills. When was the last time you actually spoke English? Yeah, this is another one, right? A tricky one here. I mean, I have a little bit of an excuse. I've been busy. I was, you know, New Year's holiday. I was away. When it comes to Chinese, I haven't spoken Chinese since like November. And now it's, you know, coming up as well into January. So that's a little bit embarrassing to admit. But yeah, I mean, I do have lessons booked for this week. So I'm getting back into the skill. And this is an important question for me to ask as well. When was the last time you spoke? If you're really practicing, you want to ask yourself this question, right? Again, another reminder, are you multitasking while studying? If you are watching YouTube or Instagram or TikTok while you're studying, stop it right now. Unless it's kind of actually part of your study, put that away, put your phone in a different room maybe. And yeah, don't worry about that. I think when it comes to multitasking, as I said, we think we have the illusion that it's possible. But really, you know, when we're trying to do two things at once, we are very quickly shifting our attention from this to this and this to this. We're not actually thinking about two things at the same time. So yeah, multitasking just doesn't really work. Almost done now. I promise. We're almost done. Are you avoiding the hard thing? So this is something that I always do. I'm guilty of this. There's a phone call that I need to make and it's been something I've needed to do for a few weeks and I've been putting it off, which means delaying, postponing. Because I hate making phone calls. I'm nervous, right? And we do this in English, too. When we're nervous about something or we're afraid of failing or embarrassment, we delay something or we make excuses. And many of you, there might be some of you actually who are thinking, you know, what I would really like to join Michael's group class. I've heard so much about how fun they are. Everyone seems to enjoy them. There are spaces open according to Michael. Oh yes, that's true. Yeah. And yeah, I want to join, but I'm just scared. You know, what if people judge me? What if I forget my English? But this is an example of avoiding the hard thing, right? You don't improve if you avoid what you need to do to improve. So take the jump, take that leap and do what you find difficult. There might be options where you can take baby steps in the example of my class. Many people will choose to come for the first time just to listen and not join in. That's a good baby step that you could take. But yeah, don't avoid the hard thing. The key thing here is once you've done it, you feel so so good. Now, even if you didn't really do that well in the class using this example, it's an amazing feeling to overcome your fear and do something for your own benefit that you were scared of doing before. So yeah, don't be afraid because you will feel great after having done it. Okay, are you relying only on motivation? I already spoke about this, so I won't go too long here, but yeah, motivation is not enough to learn a language. You need a strong foundation of a routine, a habit to keep you going. Motivation's great, but don't rely on it every day. It's not always going to be there. Are you slightly uncomfortable during your studies? This is a little bit different to what I've said already, but again, I guess it's similar to that group class example. If you're never uncomfortable, you will never grow. This is in anything in life. If you want to build muscle, you need to have some pain, some discomfort in your muscles. You tear the muscles in order for them to grow. If you want to become a better public speaker, you need to be uncomfortable and practice your speaking in front of other people. So we need to leave our comfort zone to study. If your studies are always comfortable and never a little bit scary, then it's like that you're not pushing yourself hard enough. I think there is a perfect level to this. If you're too uncomfortable, that could be counterproductive, which means not helpful, but you need to be a little bit uncomfortable. Here's maybe a simpler example. If you're reading a book in English and you understand everything, it's super easy, that's comfortable, but you're not learning too much. You need to have a slightly harder level just above your current level so you can actually learn some difficult things while you're reading. Final question now. I've made up a new term here called ego studying. Are you ego studying? Ego may also exist in your language. How can I explain ego? It's your sense of self doing something because you want to show off or you think you should be doing something. This is another gym related term called ego lifting. Many, especially men, there's big strong men, not like me, go to the gym and they lift very heavy weights, too heavy for them actually. The reason they're doing it is because it's called ego lifting. They want to lift strong weights because that means they are a strong person and it feels good, but it's maybe not best for their muscle growth. They do it because they want to look impressive. This is something that I have been guilty of as well. Ego studying, ego learning. In short, this is focused on where you should be, maybe making things too hard. I use my own example. I've been learning Japanese for 15 years almost, it's been a long, long time and at this point I should be very advanced. I should be very good. So I'm going to focus on really advanced grammar, really advanced native level materials and I'm really going to focus on where I think I should be. There's a lesson here about this simple grammar structure. No, no. I should be above that. This is below my level. But if I'm being honest and not talking from my ego, I might think, hmm, so this grammar lesson is actually for low intermediate learners. It's actually kind of easy, but I still don't really know. I'm not that confident on it. So maybe I should go back and study this. And same might apply to you, even if you're more advanced, there might be some fairly simple things that you are ignoring because you're thinking, I should be better than that. So yeah, don't ego study. Be honest with yourself and yeah, don't be afraid to look like a beginner or to look silly. You know, we all have decent bad days, but don't worry about this word should. Should is very dangerous. Cool. Okay. That was a lot of questions there, but I'm going to put all of these questions up on the show notes page. That will be levelupenglish.school/podcast359. Have a look on that page and you will see an overview of everything here. So if you forgot what I said, it will all be written there. Very useful to go back and see. But yeah, I will leave it here. As I said, bad food poisoning last week. In fact, I had a very unlucky week last week. Everything went bad. It wasn't my week. My laptop, which is my main work device, totally died. Old battery, old everything. I tried to make it last as long as I could. And yeah, it was a shame. I mean, luckily, everything is backed up online. This is the importance of backing things up. So I haven't really lost any important data, but yeah, I spent a few hours trying to get it fixed. No luck. Had to buy a new one. Still waiting for it to come. So it's kind of challenging now to work without my laptop. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. That was a big stress last week. It really ruined my week, honestly. And then I ate some food that I stored for too long. And I got really bad food poisoning. I was in bed for, I think, 36 hours. I didn't move for 36 hours. That was uncomfortable. Yeah, really horrible feeling. I'm like 99% better now, but still, yeah, that 1% I've got to kick. I've got to push through, I guess. So yeah, it was a hard week, but now it's a new week. And I'm feeling better. So optimistic for the week ahead. I can't wait until I get my new computer as well. But yeah, that's my update. Not so interesting. Let's go to a nice review, though. So I had a review on the last day of 2025 from Satoru. And he, maybe he said, the podcast is one of the best podcasts for English learners who want to improve listening skills and expand their vocabulary. Michael uses a wide range of vocabulary with ample explanations in the podcast, which will help the words naturally stick in your memory. I have listened to the podcast as part of my daily routine and it has helped me improve massively. I have listened to all 357 episodes as of the 31st of December in 2025 alone. And I will do the same again in 2026, although the number of episodes will be up to 410. I believe this intensive repetition of listening to the podcast naturally helps you remember what is mentioned in each episode. So I would recommend everyone doing the same. Well, Satoru, thank you so much. That's amazing to hear. I mean, great compliment. It's incredible that if you listen to so many, I haven't listened to the early ones for quite some time. So I'm a little bit nervous. I really hope that they're not too embarrassing. I don't remember why I said. But yeah, that's amazing though. I mean, it's still good practice for listening for sure. And yeah, repetition, if it's not boring for you, repetition is super, super useful because things stick in our brains much more easily if we can repeat them. And yeah, just thank you. By the way, I don't usually mention this, but at the end of this month, my birthday is coming up. I'm getting older, but if you want to give me a nice birthday present, maybe you can leave a review as well. There are many places where you can leave a review or comment, Spotify, other podcasting apps. I always read the reviews on Apple podcasts. You don't need to have an iPhone or account to do that. Apple podcast review is always appreciated. I'll read it on the show. Also on YouTube, if you're watching on YouTube, thumbs up, leave a comment, subscribe, all these things help me massively. And yeah, if you can do any of them, that will be a great birthday present for me this year. So thank you very much. And let's end now with a quote from very irrelevant James Clear, an author that many of you will be familiar with. Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to become. I think about this idea at least once a week. Maybe several times a week, it's so powerful. Both good and bad, right? So if you do something good today, if you go to the gym, that's one vote for you becoming the kind of person who goes to the gym. But if you skip your alarm, and you sleep longer, you sleep in bed and you stay longer than normal, that is a vote for you know, you to become the kind of person who sleeps and is lazy, right? So every little thing you do is a habit. It's a vote for the kind of person you want to become. Very powerful idea. Okay, lots of talking there long episode, but hopefully this was useful. Let me know what you think. Thank you very much and I'll see you in the next one. Goodbye. You have been listening to the Level Up English podcast. If you would like to leave a question to be answered on a future episode, then please go to levelupenglish.school/podcast. That's levelupenglish.school/podcast. And I'll answer your question on a future episode. Thanks for listening.