English-Time-Management

LEARNING ENGLISH - An Issue of Time?

Learning language takes courage, determination and consistency. Of the 5 core problems for Why English Training Fails, Bad timing is a big reason why people fail to learn or stop their training.

On average, people spend 16 hours awake every day. That's 6720 minutes a week. Now let's think about some common activities that we all do. We spend 984 minutes watching TV and 1962 minutes online.

When we look at the comparison, the "Timing" issue seems a little silly. How we spend our time is the real issue.Scheduling is one of the most important things for successful progress in anything that you do. Essentially, proper scheduling is the good use of time management and organizational skills written down somewhere, whether it is a daily planner or your smart-phone. Set your priorities. How good of an English speaker do you want to be? How good you can be depends on how much time you can put into it and what you focus on. Once you know what you want to achieve, ask yourself if it is a reasonable goal. Will you have enough time to achieve your goal? If you're going to school, have two jobs and a child, you're going to have a hard time fitting in the necessary practice to become 100% fluent in English.

Raise or lower your expectations based on your situation. This may not sound motivating but, if your expectations are too high and you don't achieve them, you may be severely disappointed and quit all together. Be reasonable and do what you can. Push yourself, but don't schedule your practice plan so that you have no free time whatsoever.

Click here to read about selecting your goals

Develop a practice routine once you have defined how much free time you have daily or weekly. Be careful though. I hear a lot of students who say they want to increase their score from 60 to 110 on the TOEFL or be able to do presentations in English for their foreign bosses in a month, but then don't perform the actions that will get them there.

Click here to see a sample schedule [UNDER CONSTRUCTION]
Click here to download schedule template [UNDER CONSTRUCTION]

Learn to balance your other commitments and activities with your practice time. If you're serious about learning English, you're going to have to sacrifice more than if you just want to say 'hello' and 'good-bye'. This can be hard to do.

Ask yourself with every activity in which you engage, "Is this more important or more rewarding than becoming a good English speaker?" Sometimes it is, and many times it isn't.

HOMEWORK - Do you have enough time?

A typical class is 90 minutes/week. For the ATLAS Method, it's recommended that students memorize at least 7 phrases or vocabulary a week (requiring an additional 40 minutes).

Yet some students complain that they don't have time to do this beneficial activity. Afterall, they have jobs and families and other obligations.

Let's take a closer look at how much time is REALLY required to do this basic homework activity.

Most adult English students are writing at a grade 9-10 level. At this level, most sentences are approximately 16 words each. So writing 7 sentences requires writing approximately 112 words.

7 sentences x 16 words = 112 words

Does that number sound familiar? Since we're all awake about 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, we're actually awake 112 hours per week.

That's right! To do your homework only requires writing one word an hour!

1 Hour = 1 Word

When we think about it this way, the "Timing" issue seems a little silly. How we spend our time is the real issue.