10 Steps to Improve Your English and Communication Skills

In totay’s times, the fluency in English and pronunciation matters a lot to make a lasting impression. Therefore, good communication skills become a necessary factor to increase your employablity factor and to boost your over-all confidence.

1) Train your ears by listening to good English

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to improve your English, specially when you want to speak better is to listen to more and more fluent English in form of podcasts, TV shows, talk shows etc. This is a very effective method as studies have shown that listening a language is a very fast way to learn the same. As brain becomes used to hearing the words in a sequence, it starts picking them up and before you even realise, you will be speaking them in your day-to-day situations.

2) Form a habit of reading

The benefits of reading are endless. While listening to good english will help your pronunciation and fluency get better, reading will help you develop good vocabulary and good grammatical skills. Reading also helps in forming ideas and views about particular issues. This is very helpful during interviews and group discussions. Reading habits can be developed by starting from simpler reading materials like interesting novels and eventually lead to reading newspaper editotorials and other similar informative readings.

3) Discussions in English

Even with people who are well versed in English, often the biggest problem holding them back from speaking confidently is the fear of speaking in public. This can only be removed by starting to speak in English in your peer groups and with your close friends, specially those who are more fluent than you as they can correct you. If you are in college/school make sure you participate in events that give you an opportunity to speak in public.

4) Maintain Vocabulary list

As a diary or a note in your phone, form a habit of writing down the new words that you learn, preferabaly with usage example rather than meaning as that will help you remember the words better. Make sure you keep reviewing this list from time to time. Over time, these words will get added to your long term memory and you will be able to use them while speaking or writing.

5) Read aloud everyday

Take out 15-20 minutes every day to read aloud to yourself in English. While you do this, notice your words and clarity. Notice if you are getting better everyday. Ensure that your speech is neither too fast nor too slow and that every word that you speak can be distinguished from another.

6) Take help from common English books

There are a lot of good self-help books like Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis and other books in the series by same author which help in improving English tremendously. Others are Spoken English by RK Bansal, Essential English Grammar like Murphy.

7) Maintain a Journal

Forming a habit of writing to yourself everyday will help you improve everyday and you will be able to see how you have grown and progressed through the days. Writing is very important to monitor your grammatical english improvisation as there are many errors that may go unnoticed when you speak but when you start writing, each of these errors come in notice and you are able to understand better.

8) Train yourself to think in English

If you have thoughts coming to your head in native language and you deliberately convert them to English before speaking, it will be hard to speak spontaneously and confidently. This shift to a point where you need not think before speaking will happen gradually and will take effort and time. All the above mentioned steps will help in the process.

9) Use the best apps to get even better

There are a wide range of free apps that are available using which will defintely enhance your English skills. Some of them are English Grammar Book for Andriod phones, Grammar Up for Andriod and iOS, Practice English Grammar for Android and iOS. From emails to reports, a well written language is essentially important. These apps are the easiest and coolest way to learn that.

10) Speak in English with someone

There are websites that help you exchange conversations in English with people so that you can get better. These are iTalki and MyLanguageExchange portals. There are options available to sign up for English conversational classes and groups online.