How to Improve My English Speaking

By Jessica Mahoney, eHow Contributor You will improve your English speaking quickly if you practice speaking every day. English is a difficult language to learn as a second language because there are many grammar rules to memorize and the spellings of words aren't always a good indication of pronunciation. According to Palomar College, there are approximately 341 million native English speakers, and there are a substantial number of English speakers in 104 countries throughout the world. Although English speaking may seem natural to those from English-speaking countries, people who speak English as a second language may need additional help to improve their Englishspeaking skills.

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How to improve my english speaking and writing skills?

Actually, broadening/improving one's language skills is a very broad concept, it can be done in more than one ways at the same time which is highly recommended. One can NOT become better ONLY in one area e.g. writing, one MUST improve skills in ALL dimensions of the language! Learning language well requires being as active as possible and making the learning as FUN for oneself as possible. Taking lessons is always important, but equally important are these: 1) Listen/watch: Listen to internet radio stations like BBC, watch TV shows in English (use only subtitles, NOT voice dubbing!), etc. 2) Write/communicate: Try to find discussion forums from the web about things that you find interesting (music/various artists, hobbies, etc.) and start communicating there with other people using English. Start using instant messaging systems in case you find some new friends or start emailing them. 3) Buy yourself a proper dictionary, and each time when you see a strange word that you do not understand, look it up. Putting words into their context is one of the best ways to broaden one's vocabulary, the more you read and write the better. Memorising is NOT the best way to go with learning vocabulary or any other language areas!

The main point in ANY language learning is to make it as fun as possible for yourself. Try to find topics that INTEREST you, read online newspapers (Times, Guardian, Independent...), listen to BBC/NBC and other radio stations online, if you find a discussion forum for e.g. your favourite hobby or your idols in music do participate there, etc. The key word here is CONTEXT, which means that it is easier to learn new words and their usage as well as grammar when you use/see them in their real CONTEXT. I'm sorry there is no easy way out with this, one really must develop language skills in ALL these language "levels" or dimensions in order to reach better language skills!! Last but not least: NEVER EVER use ANY online translators, they are nothing but utter rubbish!! English is practically EVERYWHERE in the online world these days, you just have to use your imagination to find it! Learning pace is always personal, it takes the time it takes so there is no reason to hurry it up too much. If you do, you will not learn so well.

How to Improve Your English Writing

By Mark Keller, eHow Contributor Writing and then correcting errors is an important part of improving your English skills. Whether you're learning English as a second language or are a native speaker who's never had the knack for writing, improving your English composition skills is very important. Knowing your shortcomings and practicing will allow you to write prose that is at first simply grammatically correct, and eventually sparkling with style. To do this you'll need to read more, ask friends for help, and continually write. Practice does indeed make perfect.

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How to improve your writing skills

25 Saturday Aug 2012 Having good writing skills can be very useful at times. For aspiring writers, it will be an essential quality. Some people naturally have good writing skills, while others may lack it. If you ever feel that you can never gain good writing skills, you are totally wrong. Everyone can attain quality writing skills, if they try. Some helpful tips are given here, which helps you to improve your writing skills. 1. Write: Write something daily as it helps you to improve your writing skills. If you dont practice, you would not gain anything. Writing is an art, and you have to keep on writing to brush-up your skills. But, if you are wondering on what to write about, not to worry as I can give you some ideas. You can write on an incident that happen to you earlier, or about anything interesting that caught your eye when you were walking on the street. But, if there is nothing interesting that happens to you while you were strolling, get creative, and think of anything to write. It does not matter what you write as long as you attempt to write something. 2. Criticism: Write on a topic of your choice and allow it to be read by a critic. If you always write, but never shows it to someone to read, and edit the article, you might not be able to spot the mistakes in that piece of writing. Once you write an article, proofread it, and check it for errors. Then got a critic (it would be great if the person is an experienced critic) to comment on your work. This would allow the person to give you feedback on your work, and at the same time, you can learn how good your standard of writing is. Even, if your first article gets a lot of criticism, do not lose heart. Take the experience as a learner, and remember not to make the similar mistakes again. 3. Read: Reading is another way to improve your writing skills. You could go to the library to search for books on writing. You can read the books of your favourite writer or subject to know about various kind of writing styles. These books contain essential steps of writing and help you to improve your writing skills. Apart from non-fiction books, you can also read fiction books of a wide range of categories. This will allow you to observe the styles of various authors. Write something everyday, after sometime writing will become your habit. This way, you will be able to write almost every topic.

How to Improve English Listening Skills

By Carrieanne Larmore, eHow Contributor Listen to music in English and then read the lyrics to help strengthen your listening skills.

The key to successfully learning a new language is to practice as much as possible. Even if you live in an area where English speakers are scarce, opportunities still exist for you to be able to improve your English listening skills. Practice by spending at least 30 minutes per day doing certain activities to see an improvement in your listening skills. 1. Utilize free online resources, such as the BBC Learning English site and the English Club, which both feature free lessons and activities to strengthen your listening skills. These sites offer exercises for diction, plus activities with radio programs, news programs, poetry and more. 2. Participate in tandem language exchanges by scheduling sessions in which half the time is spent with you assisting an English person in learning your language and the other half is spent with that person letting you practice your English. This method is a fun way to meet new people and practice with others that understand what it is like to learn a new language, and may thus tend to be more patient. You can find people interested in tandem language exchanges by reading the bulletin board at a local language school or community college or through online classifieds. 3. Listen to music in English, and then read the lyrics that go along with the song to see if you understood what you heard. Listen to the song again with the lyrics and read or sing along. It is important to first listen to the music without the lyrics to see how much you can understand without help. 4. Watch English movies without subtitles and try to follow along. Even if you do not understand each word, study the actors' body movements and verbal cues to figure out what is going on. Repeat the movie with the subtitles to see if you were correct in your comprehension. Remember, the subtitles generally do not match word-for-word, as they are designed to be read quickly, so use them as a way to understand what is happening within the scene and not as a perfect translation of what is being said. 5. Volunteer to speak with English-speaking tourists or find a position at a local tour company. This will allow you to practice your English listening skills on a regular basis with English speakers. The experience may be frustrating at first, but you will be immersed in an environment where you can quickly improve your English listening skills.

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How to Improve Reading for ESL Students

By Sophie Southern, eHow Contributor

Teaching English as a second or foreign language can be fun and rewarding, but it can also be challenging -- especially when you are teaching students with a very low English level. Reading skills and comprehension are essential aspects of learning the English language, and trying to inspire your students while educating them at the same time can sometimes be a daunting task. If you want to improve your students' overall reading skills, it helps to use creative texts at the appropriate level. 1. Choose interesting texts based on you students' preferences. If you are teaching teenagers, bring in articles about the internet, movies or TV shows, music or other topics you know they are interested in. If you are teaching business English to adults, bring articles from reputable newspapers or financial journals. If you find the language is too difficult for your students' level, create a beginner version of your own based on the text. 2. Start short. Asking your students to read a novel will probably be overwhelming. Start with short snippets of text, such as blog posts or news briefs, that your students can read easily in a short period of time. Shorter texts are generally more concise and use simple language, which makes them ideal for ESL students. 3. Let your students listen to you before asking them to read. Read slowly and clearly, paying attention to pronunciation and emphasis. Listening to you while reading the text will help your students retain vocabulary words and understand general meaning. 4. Have your students write down vocabulary words and use them in their own sentences. They should keep an active vocabulary list or notebook where they include definitions, parts of speech and usage. Read the text in full before highlighting vocabulary words, as this gives your students a chance to understand from context. Once you have defined any new words, ask your students to use them in oral sentences. 5. Use repetition. After you read the text, have your students read it once, slowly. Discuss the text and go over any exercises you have prepared. Then have your students read the text again. If you have a large class, have students take turns reading paragraphs or groups of sentences. Repeating the text will help your students catch any information they missed the first time, while reinforcing correct pronunciation.

6. Ask students to explain what they have read. Having your students explain the text after reading is essential for verifying reading comprehension. After you have read, gone over vocabulary and practiced repetition, ask your students to tell you about what they read using their own words.

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Facts About Reading: 1 out of every 3 Americans, over 90 million people, struggles with Readin
1. 98% of reading is an auditory/listening task. Only 2% of reading is visual. Listening to a story and reading that same story will activate the exact same pathways in the brain. It's not where the sensory information comes from but, where it ends up in the brain. Our eyes act more like ears when we read.

2. Seven out of eight students with reading problems in first grade continue to struggle with reading in 9th grade. They get better but never catch up. Improving listening skills is often the easiest route to improving reading skills. 3. Think things are different for teens and adults? Think again. The teen brain doesn't radically shift when a student leaves elementary school. Almost all teens and adults with reading problems suffer from untreated auditory problems. Listening issues are at the root of fluency and comprehension difficulties. 4. Listening skills, including: phonemic awareness (hearing all the sounds in a spoken word), auditory attention, auditory sequencing, and listening vocabulary are the most important factors in natural reading. Teachers often notice that the child who has a hard time listening to a story also struggles to read. 5. The biggest barrier to comprehension is lack of fluency. Less than 15% of learning disabled students have comprehension problems if they read accurately and read faster than 80 words a minute. The National Reading Panel found that comprehension instruction should be only taught after reading accuracy and fluency are mastered. It is like teaching a child how to steer a bike before they learn how to pedal. 6. The National Reading Panel found that phonics instruction was of marginal benefit unless a student has well-developed phonemic awareness. This is why some first graders pick up phonics in months and struggling readers can take years. Oh! The pain. 7. English is the most difficult major language to listen to (comprehend) and to read. For struggling readers, listening to English can be like listening to a foreign language you haven't quite mastered. 8. The next advances in reading instruction will not come from what is taught but how reading is taught. Improving reading skills and reading instruction will advance when we are no longer forced to choose between the two dominant theories in reading education

today "reading will improve reading" vs. "drilled instruction". Advances in the cognitive sciences, such as reduced error learning and distributed instruction, will ensure that all students learn to read. 9. The main reason English is so difficult to speak, listen to and to read is because spoken English has an exceptional number of vowel sounds (phonemes). The ability to hear and identify individual sounds is what separates natural readers from struggling readers. Many weak readers struggle with spelling and most of their errors - not surprisingly -- are with vowels. 10. Students who read at a lower grade level are at serious academic risk. The kids who read Harry Potter in fourth grade aren't "average fourth grade " readers.

www.soundreading.com/facts-about-reading.html

Strategies for TOEFL iBT Listening Section

TOEFL iBT Listening section is delivered immediately after the Reading section. The Listening section of TOEFL iBT measures your ability to understand spoken English in academic settings. In TOEFL iBT the listening is done for 3 major purposes: 1. Listening for basic comprehension. 2. Listening for pragmatic understanding. 3. To connect and combine ideas presented in multiple information sources.

Each part of the Listening section (2 or 3 parts) consists of 1 long conversation and two lectures. The test takers hear each lecture or conversation only once. Lectures and conversations are 3-5 minutes long. During the listening the time is not running. The allotted time of 10 minutes for each part is only for answering the questions.

Preparation Strategies
Listen to spoken English from multiple sources as much as possible. Listen to English spoken movies and English spoken TV channels, listen to the radio and as many other listening sources as you may find. It would be better if your passages are academic or close to what is in TOEFL iBT. The more you practice listening, the better listener you will become. Listen for the main idea. It is usually found at the beginning of the listening passages, while the details are dispersed throughout the lecture. The main idea will give you understanding of what the conversation/lecture is about. Then you may listen for details. Learn to find how the ideas are presented in the listening passage. Some of the main relations between ideas include cause/effect, compare/contrast, and steps in a process. Learn to listen for signal words that indicate different part of the passage - introduction, major steps, examples, conclusions, etc. Build your vocabulary. While listening, try to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words from context. It is very important since there is a big chance to come across words you don't know at the real test. Then, you should guess their meaning. Write down every word you don't know and include it in your wordlist. Try to memorize it and use it in your speaking and writing. Flashcards could be a great way to improve your vocabulary. Listen to conversations or lectures with variety of accents. In TOEFL iBT Listening section there is a variety of accents and pronunciations. For this reason, you should practice listening to a people with different accents and pronunciation patterns. Practice note-taking. Note-taking is allowed during all sections of TOEFL iBT. Effective notetaking may highly improve your performance. It is almost impossible to memorize all clues and details provided in the Listening section. Moreover, you can hear the passages ONLY ONCE. Therefore, to answer the questions you have to rely on what you remember from the passage and your notes. See also our Effective Note-Taking Strategies. Summarize in writing what you have heard, using your notes. Thus, you will learn to find the purpose and main idea of the listening, and also the most important details. You will also learn to take and use notes. It also helps in improving your writing skills. Familiarize yourself with the type of questions in TOEFL iBT. Make sure that during the preparation you learn what answers are required by the different types of question. Some

questions may ask you to provide two answers, others to click in a chart box. If you are familiar with the question types, you may save important time.