How to Accelerate Learning English

[nelsonic]

Love it or hate it, the language of international creative technology is English. 🇬🇧
Design, UX and coding skills are great, but if creative skills are not paired with superior communication skills you will not reach your potential. The better you know how to communicate in English, the faster you will make progress toward your goals.

Reading

By far the most effective long term strategy for learning English is reading books on a topic that interest you. Published books (from respected publishers) have several advantages over online material.
The top 3 advantages of reading books are:

1. Authors have devoted significant time to researching, organising and writing the book so the knowledge is condensed and can be consumed in an efficient way. It will only take you a few hours to read a book that may have taken years of research.
2. Editors have fact-checked and made corrections to the content so readers don't have to.
3. Finite (in length/scope), can be read in a logical sequence and a predictable amount of time. Simply break down the number of pages by the time you want to read it in.

Reading books can take quite a lot of time. As a dyslexic + slow reader, it took me a very long time to get through my first few books; multiple weeks per book. But the only way to get better/faster at reading is to read more. Develop a habit of regular reading early each morning. Reading is the best investment.

Writing

The next best way to practice English, which is complimentary to reading, is writing.
Write whatever comes to mind, the more you think in English the better you will get at communicating your thoughts in English. If you are still thinking in a different language and translating your thoughts into English, you need to write!

Grammar, Phrasing and Spelling

Writing as much as you can will not automatically make you a better writer unless you actively seek feedback. Feedback can come from a human or it can can come from AI such as a grammar/spelling checker.

Todo

• Install a second (or third) version of Google Chrome
  (e.g: https://www.google.com/chrome/canary or https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved ⬇️)

• Add Grammarly to the alternative Chrome version https://www.grammarly.com
  

Note: we do not recommend installing chrome plugins in your main chrome browser because we do not trust plugins that have access to all our data. But in a secondary browser that you only use for writing, it's fine. Just don't use it for your Online Banking or other sensitive data!

• Write as much as you can in English in the Grammarly-enabled Chrome browser.