By Robby
If you are new here please read this first.
I guess I wouldn’t be wrong in saying that you’ve had moments when you’ve lost motivation to keep improving your English and working on your fluency.
Vocabulary and phraseology acquisition.
Spoken English practice sessions.
Reading and listening comprehension.
All is nice and well up until the moment when you just get bored for the simple reason that you don’t see relevance of all those activities in your personal life!
Let’s say for argument’s sake, you’re a fitness fanatic and you live and breathe all things fitness. You go to the local gym every day, and you’re very conscious when it comes to your nutrition and lifestyle.
Now, if that’s the case, then you spend pretty much your entire free time being engaged in fitness related activities, and while you may have a dream of achieving English fluency for professional reasons, you kind of find it hard to dedicate enough time to English improvement related activities.
But guess what?
The biggest problem is the following:
You’ve separated your fitness life and English fluency improvement and you perceive them as two different aspects of your life!
No wonder you find it hard to motivate yourself to engage in a lot of English practice if you’d rather hit the gym one more time instead of learning another couple of English phrases and doing some spoken English practice…
Solution?
Combine the two: YOUR HOBBY and YOUR ENGLISH IMPROVEMENT ROUTINE!
And here are the three main reasons why combining your hobbies and interests with learning and improving the English language is SUPER-BENEFICIAL to your fluency!
Reason #1: You Won’t Even Need to Motivate Yourself!
Think about this – when you learn something new in English or revise old content such as phrases and specific vocab, you need to make some effort in order to make it happen, isn’t that right?
Even now, while reading this article, you’d rather be somewhere else enjoying what you TRULY LOVE doing, am I not right in saying that?
Well, it could very well be that you’re a real English language buff – just like me! – in which case there’s no better way to spend your time than reading up on something that’s going to improve your English and teach you something new in terms of English fluency.
The average Joe out there, however, is largely guided by their interests and things that bring true pleasure to them, and I guess that on 9 occasions out of 10 you’d rather watch TV, read a book or a magazine, or do some yoga to relieve your physical and mental pressure instead of learning English phrases.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying you wouldn’t do it at all; all I’m saying is that you’d RATHER do what you LOVE doing and in order to improve your English you nearly always have to use some willpower to make it happen!
Guess what?
If you enjoy your HOBBY THROUGH ENGLISH, you don’t have to do it!
You’ll be longing to engage in the activity you LOVE and if you use the English language as the MAIN language to:
- Look up information related to your hobby;
- Communicate with other people you share the same hobby with;
- Narrate your actions while engaged in the hobby
… then you’re going to USE the English language instead of trying to improve your English just for the sake of it!
Reason #2: You’ll Acquire Relevant Vocab & Phraseology!
You are what you do, simple as that.
Personally I take a keen interest in:
- Improving my English
- Building and running websites
- Reading English fiction
- Fitness
The above mentioned activities fill pretty much my entire free time, and that’s WHO I AM.
Now, you don’t have to be a genius to figure out that the most useful English vocabulary for me personally would have to do with the activities I’m doing on a regular basis!
I would have very little or no use at all of a large finance-related vocabulary for the simple reason that it’s not something I do on a regular basis; I can always get by using simple, plain language in situations when I have to talk about finance-related subjects in a bank, for example. Anyway, as you can imagine, it doesn’t happen that often, so my stance in relation to English vocabulary acquisition is the following:
You have to FOCUS on vocabulary that’s relevant for YOU – not some general vocab you won’t probably use that often!
So what’s a better way to learn RELEVANT vocab than by engaging in your hobbies and interests via English?
The equation is simple enough:
YOU ENGAGE IN YOUR HOBBY -> YOU STRUGGLE TO SAY THIS OR THAT PARTICULAR THING -> YOU LEARN IT -> IT BECOMES PART OF YOUR ACTIVE VOCAB!
Reason #3: You’ll Avail of More Opportunities Down the Line!
Once you make the English language a permanent part of your life, it’s almost guaranteed to avail you of more opportunities at some point down the line – it’s really a no-brainer!
If you’re a fitness person and you use English to read all nutrition related info and you also create your workout plans in English only, your English proficiency in the fitness field is going to develop to a fairly high standard over a number of years.
What you can do with it?
- You can try and get a job as a fitness instructor in an English speaking environment;
- You can enroll is some English language based fitness classes with a prospect of becoming employed in the sector;
- You can find the best industry related info out there because let’s face it – most of such and similar info in our native languages is translated from English anyway!
- You can contact other English speaking fitness enthusiasts, participate in online forums etc.
Basically you have a much greater overall chance to become even more successful at your hobby if you enjoy it through the English language, so it’s a win-win situation no matter how you look at it!
You get to experience your hobby to a greater degree, and at the same time your English improves as well!
Now, my dear friend from YearOfEnglish.com, can you see why enjoying your hobbies through English is of the utmost importance if you’re really serious about your fluency improvement?
Thanks for tuning in,
Robby
P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!
P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!
P.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out the English Harmony System HERE!