hey guys welcome to lingual Marina today we're going to talk about a 30-day plan to learn English and what I want you to do right now is uh first of all to take out your exercise book or maybe your note in your phone in order to write things down because we're gonna go through the plan day by day I'm gonna tell you what you're gonna do and I guarantee you that if you follow this plan by the end of day 30 you would be amazed how English has become your habit and how diverse the world of English is that means that every day you can find something new and something exciting to do in English and uh this is the whole goal of this video so please make sure that you listen carefully please make sure you watch it up to the very end and that you write things down day zero here you start with taking a test I found a perfect free test for you from Lancaster University it tests your ability to listen to write and to read in English please take this test assess where you are and write a very specific goal like what is your goal with learning English I want to take TOEFL tests and score 100 I want to get accepted to this University or I want to reach Upper Intermediate by and certain date so you need to come up with a very specific goal and for the next 30 days you're going to work on achieving this goal and you're going to work on improving your English now ideally I would love you to download something that we've prepared for you down in comments below there is a small calendar that you can download that would follow my schedule and also some sheets that you can print out and just track your progress throughout the day just write something down so on Day Zero I want you to write down your test result and I want you to write your goal it is very important to note your test result because you're going to compare your results at the end of this 30-day Marathon day number one listening here I want you to go to ed.ted.com they have a lot of videos most of them are like two three minute long I want you to select a topic that you're interested in and I want want you to not just watch the video and by the way you can watch it with subtitles or without subtitles I would recommend to start watching without subtitles and see whether it makes sense for you but it's also very important that you choose the video that corresponds with your interest like if you're interested in Psychology take that video if you're interested in geography take a geography video then if you don't understand what's going on switch on subtitles and the next thing I want you to do is to click on the think tab because some of the videos on that website have a comprehension test that means you're going to test how much you understood and some of the videos also have additional information under the Dig Deeper tab please explore that one and share your opinion about what you saw in the discuss Tab and when you share your opinion please let others know that you came here from lingo Marina Channel because this way you would be able to see people who actually came from this video and are doing the same thing with you and of course if you encounter new words write them down in day one section of the PDF file or exercise book that you're using day number two speaking on day number two you need to watch my video about 8 ways to practice English and ideally sign up for a linguist speaking Club Pro at lingua trip in this speaking Club you can converse with like-minded individuals about topics that interest you you can role play real life situations attend a book club or participate in debates this is a perfect way to practice your speaking skills many of our previous students keep in touch with each other and I think it's a great opportunity to not only practice your English but to also build you a worldwide Network you can join our speaking Club at any moment the link is in the description day number three reading on this day I want you to explore a free website with news for English language Learners so they basically take news from all over the world but they are adapted for English language Learners the website is called breakingnewsenglish.com the news there is divided into seven levels from zero to six so you can choose the one that suits you each news has several reading comprehension tasks in audio therefore if you want you can go practice listening on that website as well day number four writing on this day I want you to write an essay again using the PDF that we gave you or an exercise book I want you to write an essay about your ideal day in five years oh my God guys this task will not only help your English but it would also help you work on your goals because if your ideal day looks like oh I wake up and I cut breakfast with three of my kids and you're not even married then you know you're gonna do the next five years or your ideal day looks like waking up in a different country then you know what you're gonna do so please write a small essay about your ideal day I would say two to three hundred words that's enough to practice your writing day number five grammar on this day I want you to select one particular topic grammar topic that you're struggling with is it present perfect or present simple or conditionals and then you go to I give you two options two different websites the first website is learn English dot britishcouncil.org or if you're a teenager there is second option you can use learn englishteens.british council.org and you tap into the search bar the topic that you struggle with the most and you read the materials on that topic day number six have you been writing down the words that I told you to write down during your listening exercises on Ted doing other stuff that you were doing now this is the day where you select 10 words that you think are the most useful maybe you heard them several times during your practice maybe you just realize they're super useful for your future and today I want you to highlight those words write them down once again and also create a sentence with each word and then spend around 10 minutes just looking through those maybe Googling them and looking at images that are associated with those words and try to memorize them day number seven is day off but this is a day of in English so do whatever you want to do but in English watch my videos on Silicon Valley Girl or watch a TV show on Netflix or listen to music in English but take five minutes to go back to the words that you highlighted yesterday or on day six and read them once again because this would really help you memorize them day number eight listening today you're gonna listen to a song that you really like and you need to try and write down the words that you hear and then of course once you've written them down you try to sing together with a singer and only then after you've done this you go and Google the actual lyrics and see how close you were if you don't like music you can listen to the podcast from BBC six minute learning before listening read this week's question and vocabulary after listening go back to the question and answer it the BBC also has a wonderful podcast the English will speak there you can find two three minutes podcasts where the meaning of the word is explained and examples of its use in speech are given do not forget to highlight words that you've encountered for the first time and spend at least five minutes memorizing them day number nine speaking again one of the most important parts of learning the English language you can continue practicing speaking in our lingua speaking Club I also have the whole series of videos where I teach you how to speak like a native speaker mostly American English so please watch one of the videos and start practicing your new accent day number 10 reading again and I'm gonna give you a couple new ideas where you can practice your reading you can go to a website wrongchan.com reading this site is for those of you who are just starting learning English it contains text about various topics each text has an audio and some of them have tests for checking your understanding and another website is called dreamreader.net it is a website where you can not only train your reading skills but also learn interesting and sometimes unusual facts about the world each article has audio and a test that you can take if you want to this website is for pre-intermediate slash intermediate levels day 11 writing this is another mental English language task what would you do today if your English level was Advanced like if your goal is accomplished today what is your action plan because sometimes again our goals are not too specific sometimes you're like oh I want to be advanced in English and then you're Advanced and what's next so it's really important to think about those next steps and make them more specific like okay if I'm Advanced today I am applying for Harvard University and go to Harvard University's website explore the programs write down the criteria that they're looking for maybe you also need TOEFL maybe also well you need TOEFL maybe you need GMAT maybe you need something else like explore that section this is super important because this way you know oh once I'm Advanced I'm flying to Harvard and I already know the website I'm going to like be very specific in this task and again write it down on either exercise book or the PDF that we've provided you with day number 12 grammar and here I would suggest downloading a workbook that I've created together with my team language grammar is all you need it covers the most important aspects of grammar and it has an exercise book so you can practice so today your task is to just download it and start working on one of the first topics that you select there and again start with something that looks the most difficult for you always when you have a choice start with something that's more difficult because you're more enthusiastic at the beginning of the process rather than at the end of it day 13 13 is my favorite number words now today it's time to cross out words that you highlighted before that you already know by now so you just cross them out and you say goodbye to them because they're in your brain but it's time for you to come up with new words so you highlight 10 more words and repeat the same practice you write the sentences with them and you also spend at least five minutes just reading them and thinking how you would be able to use them day 14 is again our day off you do whatever you want I recommend watching a Netflix show called the one this is a great show I like their plot and I also like that it's British English for a change because I'm trying to speak American and they're in the one they speak British English they have a lot of London in that TV show so watch that one write down new words and spend at least five minutes repeating words from yesterday now you see that we're kind of repeating the topics already it's just because it's all about consistency it's all about being consistent with one particular topic every single week so week three and week four you just repeat whatever we've done before day 29 is when you tell yourself I'm a hero and you go back in your notes and you like scroll through your exercise book or PDF whatever you were doing and ask yourself what was the most difficult part what was the most difficult thing and you do it once again because if it was difficult there is a big big chance you haven't understood it completely or maybe you still need time to look at it once again so this is the day where you look again at the most difficult topic and day 30 is when you take your test again you note your results and most importantly you share them down in comments here and you tell me about your progress you tell me whether it worked or not come back to this video at the end of day 30 and please please please share what you've done please share how it went this is super super exciting and if you're taking this 30-day Marathon I'm just asking you to come back to this video not only at the end of it I'm also asking you to come back every week to just tell others that guys I'm on day 13 where you are because I want to create a community around this around this 30 day challenge and I think it will be really really useful for all of you guys to come back to this video to connect with others and to show off your progress and to see like-minded people who are doing the same thing with you whenever people ask me Marina what is the best way to learn English I tell them practice every day and by practicing for only 20 minutes you can reach her goals in English pretty fast so in this video I'm gonna present you my 20 minute daily learning routine that you can use for learning English I'm going to give you resources where you can go and practice they're completely free we're going to talk about different things that you can do during the day to improve your language before we start I wanted to tell you about something that inspired me to create this daily routine daily practice my younger daughter Emily she's three years old she just started like a mini school for kids where they practice every day for just 10 minutes they're doing basic stuff connecting dots learning words but the key thing there and it's called Kumon Japanese system the key thing there is daily repetition just for 10 minutes and 10 minutes for your brain it's like nothing you're like oh I'm gonna sit down for just 10 minutes I'm fine and I always give her a candy after she practices because she sometimes needs this extra motivation to continue so I want you to get inspired by a three-year-old and buy this amazing system that they've created in Kumon where you practice daily but for a very short period of time because sometimes if it's a two-hour class we're like ah maybe I should do tomorrow maybe I should do it next week but when it's a 20 minute daily routine if you tell me Marina I don't have 20 minutes I tell you you're not interested in learning a language when you're super passionate about something when you understand that you really need it you're gonna find those 20 minutes now let's talk about the daily routine the first thing that we're going to talk about is listening listening is very important in English just because of all the accents I've been learning English for almost 10 years when I first came to the UK and I realized like it was useless because I didn't understand where people were saying and it took me some time to actually get used to their accent the problem with today's world is that there are so many accents there is Indian accent which is super popular around the world there is Chinese accent Russian accent American British Scottish Australian New Zealand like there are so many people who speak English and your task is to make sure you understand all of them because who knows who's going to be in your group when you go to a university or if you're taking an online course you're going to be matched with to practice your English so start your 20 minute practice with a five minute listening task that could be anything YouTube audiobook whatever one of the websites that I wanted to recommend is called ello.org they have a lot of lessons including audio and video lessons on different topics and those conversations are actually divided into levels because I know how complicated it is when you go to YouTube or you start watching a TV show on Netflix and then you realize it's just not your level is too complicated well if you are a beginner or intermediate I would highly recommend that website because everything is based on the level of English that you have what I also like about them is that they actually have a script of every single conversation which I do not recommend you to read right away but if you listen to a conversation and you're like I still don't get what's going on here then you read a script and another thing that they've done for you they've actually created a vocabulary so you can learn all the words that you've encountered during your listening practice I also like that their conversations are not superficial because sometimes listening tasks sound like this and no one really talks like this in real life people have accents people speak fast so on that website you will get exposed to many different accents and you will get exposed to real English language speech the next five minutes of your 20 minute practice will be speaking speaking is incredibly incredibly important problem is you might be able to listen to a lot of things but when it comes to seeing them words are not in your active vocabulary they're in your passive vocabulary which means you understand them but when you need to actually say them they flip from your mind you're like oh where did this work how do I actually pronounce it the thing is even reading out loud can be considered speaking practice because when you read out loud you're like oh how do I actually read this word because when you're reading a book you don't really think about pronouncing something but when you start reading out loud you're asking yourself questions oh my God how to pronounce this word I've never said it in my whole life and by saying it for the first time you actually start practicing it so first of all reading out loud second website that I wanted to recommend is actually called speak and improve.com it is a research project by University of Cambridge it's basically a robot let me let me show you something so they they will start asking you questions and you will answer them what's your name my name is Marina you're going to listen to your answer how do you spell your family name how do you spell your family name okay m-o-g-i-l-k-o where are you from so this cute little robot is going to ask you questions about you and then it's going to dig into different topics I think this is very useful for people who just don't want to talk to themselves because it is so weird sometimes when Marina tells you on YouTube that you have to talk to yourself and I honestly I love talking to myself out loud but not everybody likes it so the robot is a great way to practice your spoken English again the website is called speakandrove.com another way to practice is to actually use another website that I mentioned today hello.org what they have there is they have videos of people answering questions so for example the question would be do you like taking selfies so your task is to pause right there answer but don't say yes or no elaborate yes I love taking selfies because I can create the best lighting for myself because I know the best angles and I just love documenting my face every day whatever try to elaborate then you press the play button and you start listening to other people answering the question I think it's a great way to practice your answer first and then get inspired by people answering the same question because you can borrow some vocabulary and some phrases that they've used another great website actually allows you to talk to your phone the website is called speechnotes.com it wasn't actually created for language learning purposes the whole idea behind this website is for you to say things and it's going to transcribe them which means the robot robot on the website or whatever the the algorithm on the website will create a transcribed version of whatever you said two things why it's a good way to practice English first if you mispronounce something if you mispronounce the word the algorithm wouldn't understand it and you will need to check your pronunciation Google that word say it again until the algorithm actually understands and the second thing the robot would actually add all the symbols like semicolon exclamation point question mark so you will learn how to use them in English and again when it comes to speaking I would say just talk to yourself talk to yourself about your day talk to yourself about your goals I love talking to myself in general I love talking as as you might have guessed okay we have 10 minutes left for your practice and seven minutes go to vocabulary once you've done your listening for it once you've done your speaking part you've probably encountered at least three to five new words and this is your time to practice them I wouldn't recommend learning more than five words a day so write them down and again create sentences with them and say them out loud just try it I know you're like Okay Okay Marina whatever I will say them out loud but do it actually you will see how your because it happens to me all the time I start reading something out loud or I start talking to someone a native speaker about a book that I just read in English and I want to pronounce the word or like some name that I saw in that book and I realize I can't because I never pronounced it and I'm like oh my God so it's either an audiobook or you read out loud all the names that you do not understand how to pronounce so it's really important and I want you to wrap up your practice with a three minute reflection of your goals or where you heading I love telling people to create a dream board it's crazy how it works for you because you're creating a destination for your brain a destination for all of your goals I am learning English because I have this dream board where I have Gary vaynerchuk because I want to be in the same conference with him I want to be a speaker at a business conference in the us together with Gary he's a very inspiring immigrant I have a house that I want to buy I even have bed sheets that I really really like and they're on my dream board and every time that I sit at my desk I stare at this dream board and I'm like I am getting closer and today I was invited to an event hopefully it's going to happen they're going to send me official confirmation next week but that event a red carpet event was on my dream board so it's just crazy how it works and I highly highly encourage you to create at least 100 wishes that are connected with your English language level and be as specific as you can like I want this apartment in Los Angeles this is how much it costs this is how I get there I want this degree from this University this is how much it costs this is you know how much I need to score my TOEFL I want to have this one like even think of physical things I want a new iPhone I want the new laptop I want this book that book like put everything on your dream board and understand that English is your instrument that's gonna get you there as you know when you try to master something you have to be consistent but being consistent doesn't mean doing boring things being consistent means just doing something every single day for at least 15 minutes today we're going to explore a 15 minute daily English language routine that can help you with your language and also make your life more exciting because language equals life it's not as boring as a textbook it is your life so if you're interested in making learning English more fun and making your life more fun watch this video up to the very end I have prepared a plan for you that is going to help you improve your vocabulary reading skills writing skills listening skills and grammar let's dive in this is a weekly plan so you will do something different every day but we're starting with day Zero and this is when you set a goal for yourself now the problem is a lot of our goals are always connected with external factors I want my teacher to be happy with me I want to score 100 on TOEFL these motivations are external because they depend on what other people or test makers think about your English I want you to focus on something internal I want to be happy with the way I sound with my new accent I want to be able to understand my favorite movie in English I want to be able to start blogging in English I want to be able to create a resume on LinkedIn in English and start reaching out to potential clients make this motivation internal because it's going to help you tremendously through the process the problem is if you seek external motivation and it doesn't happen you become demotivated and you stop my goal here is to make you super excited about the English language so you don't stop my types my ideas of how to make learning English even more exciting is connecting it with the things that you love so one of the things that I do I started singing in English because I know this is the language of the most popular songs in the world except Korean so internal motivation internal excitement is really important when setting a goal in English and of course it doesn't mean that you have to give up all of the goals connected with taking the test Etc they have to be there but they don't have to Define your whole journey when you decided what the goal is you need to learn how to be consistent one thing that really helps me stay consistent is a habit tracker and habit tracker is basically a Tracker that looks like this where you create a set of activities for yourself that I'm going to mention in this video and then every day or every week you mark whether you've done them or not this tracker would visually represent how much time you're spending on what and I would recommend starting with something that is less exciting for you like if you're struggling with grammar but you're really passionate about learning American accent still start with your grammar because when you start you have the most energy and it makes sense to start with things that are harder I don't want to sound arrogant but I think I've created beautiful trackers that I use that other people and thousands of students use they are weekly monthly and yearly and I was amazed how they help you form the habits so you don't have to force yourself to learn English but you just do it automatically now you're all set with your goals you have your habit track hackers it's time to create your study plan and please remember that every study plan is individual and unique I'm suggesting a framework here and please feel free to adjust it Monday is our vocabulary day and please remember that it's a 15 minute daily English language routine so nothing that makes you depressed we're doing light exciting exercises and after those 15 minutes if you feel like you want to continue then go ahead Nothing is Stopping You and sometimes you will end up spending a couple hours learning English that's perfect but 15 minutes a day is something you have to do and when you just start your week with vocabulary because this way you would be able to practice the words that you've learned in other days of the week doing different exercises and different aspects of English I would recommend not more than five words a day and I would recommend focusing on phrasal verbs just because it is easier to learn than phrasal verb is when you have a verb and then you add different prepositions and the meaning changes completely we've actually created graphs that make these more Visual and they are in my workbook and this workbook comes with a couple of classes where I explain how to use it and it has everything that you need for this 15 minute daily practice so feel free to check out the link down in the description box below now Tuesday is our listening day and here you can do two different things first of all you can totally watch your favorite TV show I am watching Better Call Saul right now oh my God not only am I learning new vocabulary I'm also learning negotiation skills and all things connected with the legal system in the US so highly highly recommend it but this TV show is more advanced if you are intermediate Upper Intermediate I would choose something that is easier to understand for example Gossip Girl oh my God I love it fashion New York high-end society and I personally selected 60 phrases that I've learned watching TV shows like Gossip Girl stranger things Emily in Paris those are all suitable for intermediate slash Upper Intermediate another thing that you can do for your listening and this is actually like if you ask me Marina what is your favorite exercises in English of all I would say this and I uh I did this exercise for first time when I traveled to the UK to learn English it was in malburg college they printed out lyrics of some songs but some words were missing and then they switched on the song and we had to fill in the gaps oh my God I loved this exercise so much just because you're listening to an amazing song and you're also learning new vocabulary and you're also listening to a new accent and because that was Great Britain they switched on a song with with the British accent I really liked it so we decided to recreate something like this an experience for you again in my workbook you're gonna find lyrics to My Animania songs we're both saying Vinnie is much more professional I just started singing but I think it's such a cool thing to hear us sing and also go through the lyrics and fill in the missing words but of course you can do this with any other song Wednesday is for reading and here my tip that I give to everyone who starts reading in English read something that feels natural for your level of English English because if you start with more advanced literature you have to stop for every fifth word that you see oh my God are you gonna be bored you're gonna you're gonna start hating the language you're gonna start hating reading read Instagram captions that's fine that's totally fine if you want to read shorter texts on Instagram it is totally fine to want to subscribe to one of your favorite creators sub Stacks or email list and read their emails some of the emails that I can recommend I read Collins and Samir the publish press they are creators for creators so they explore topics like becoming Creator on YouTube become a Creator on Instagram I like subscribing to professionals here in Silicon Valley like Lenny rashitzki is a product manager and I follow him on sub stack as well you know read whatever you want whatever excites you it doesn't have to be a textbook it doesn't have to be American classic literature it's great if it is but it doesn't matter if it's not now Thursday is worth speaking and writing the thing is speaking and writing are kind of similar for our brain because we are learning to express our thoughts in English so choose whatever you want I would do both um speaking to a camera has taught me a lot so if you want to do something like a recap of what happened to you during this week what you've read what you've learned how are you progressing towards your goal maybe you had something that happened to you this week and you want to share it and it could be a video it could be a voice message to your friend it can be a WhatsApp group or another thing that you can do is um journaling something that can really help with your mental health and you can do different types of journaling you can do the Gratitude journaling so every Thursday you sit down and you write down 20 things that you're grateful for this week this is an amazing practice to help you stay sane and help you stay grateful for everything that you have another thing that you can do is write down top 10 things that you would by yourself once your goal of learning English is complete imagine you move to the states or whatever you're dreaming of you move to the States you start a company you're making ten thousand dollars a month what would you get yourself uh this mental exercise also helps you visualize your real goals some physical things that could make you happy so adopt any practice that you want now Friday is for grammar and I know grammar can be one of the most challenging things in English for a lot of people and this is why I specifically chose Friday for grammar the thing is on Friday our brain is like oh this is the last day of the week uh Saturdays tomorrow so we tend to I tend to do this I tend to work more on Friday versus Monday because I am expecting the weekend and I am happier I am more relaxed so Friday is when I do harder things I don't know if this works for you feel free to change this routine but may I suggest some topics that you should focus on upcoming Fridays topic number one that almost everyone I know struggles with um is articles a and the another topic marker words for tenses I know we tend to learn tenses step by step like this is how it's formed Etc I'm pretty sure you all learned them this way try to do another way try to do Marker words when you see a word yet what tense is it read a sentence get the context Define the tense conditionals reported speech modal verbs prepositions oh my God I can think of so many topics here okay I'm gonna give you one final encouragement I challenge you to spend the next 30 days following this routine and learning English for 15 minutes a day excluding weekends I haven't mentioned weekends because I know maybe you have a family and it's family time and you need time to rest let's do weekdays Monday to Friday but 30 days 30 days might seem like a lot when you first hear about it but believe me they're gonna go by fast but you will be able to form a habit you will find this challenge in my workbook English is a lifestyle how to stop learning English and start living it this is my philosophy behind learning any language it's for your life it's for you it's for your goals not for some test makers this is the workbook that I've been referring to throughout this video it has everything that you need to complete this challenge it teaches you a different grammar aspects we've created a lot of exercises so you can practice we have created a lot of exercises for you listening reading vocabulary and it also comes with 1 1000 cards with most used words in English yes exactly you're gonna get a list of 1 000 most used words in English and if you learn how to use them you will be able to communicate in English and you will be able to put them on cards that come together with this workbook you will print them out and you will start repeating them every day again you can purchase this workbook right from the description here this workbook has been purchased by tens of thousands of students and they absolutely love it hope you can enjoy in the crowd I hope this workbook will help you get inspired by English and then it would help you complete the 30-day English language learning challenge today we're going to talk about building a system to learn any foreign language now I'm going to use English as an example but this system is universal I wish I had something like this years ago when I started learning a language I'm gonna give you a free template I'm gonna walk you through it let's do it get ready we're gonna use a platform called notion I'm an absolute fan none of them I've been using them to run my business run my YouTube channels make my own notes and today I'm going to show you a system that you can use absolutely free to structure everything that's going on with your language because in my case like I get so many recommendations of what to watch uh what to see which YouTubers to follow to learn a language and now when I watch those YouTubers I learn a lot of different things but if I write them down in just one note I quickly forget the context and they stop making sense so let me show you everything now let's start with goals remember how I told you that it's very important to have a specific goal when you learn a language so think about something that makes you excited for example get Masters degree in the USA or it could be start making money on upwork and upwork is this freelance platform where you can work with International companies and it's very important to have a specific date let's do 2024 or start making money on upwork for example you want to take the first order in like August 2022 I don't know to make this section very specific and every time you would open your planner you would be like oh my God this is what I'm learning a language but then it's great to have big goals because they give you Direction but in order to keep studying you need to give your brain this extra dopamine by setting smaller goals reaching them every week or every month and celebrating them celebrating means even like saying Marina you did well okay goals for this week for example watch two episodes of whatever show you're watching in English and then learn fast perfect or learn 10 idioms like for something like this and goes for the month they can be bigger read a book and like watch 10 movies in English learn 100 new words which might be too much but if you're in this learning mode then you know why not now once you have all of your goals right in front of you you update them every week when it comes to weekly goals uh you update them every month when it when it comes to monthly goals the next step is to actually get into details like how are you learning a language now next in here we have your activity tracker I'm gonna get back to it a bit later this is like your board where you have Columns of whatever you're doing but um let me start with vocabulary first so your vocabulary actually consists of three sections words that you're learning phrases that you're learning and idioms because those are different structures within a language and I want you to group them before you actually learn them so here you click new and we have different fields that you would need to fill in for example let's say reference meaning mention or refer to provide information example sentence I requested a reference from oops reference from my bank and Status here you can choose from new learning or I already know uh basically here let's say you're learning it because later you would be able to sort them by whatever the status is and if you know this word already you would just hit I know and then you would be able to hide them so that you don't have to repeat them all the time and then the topic you would be able to add more topics here right now we have food weather business school let's do business and the type here is words and so basically if you made a mistake and you put it in phrases it automatically goes to the second to the second category here so everything is automated for you and if you need more customization this is why I love notion you would be able to just customize everything uh based on your needs you would be able maybe to add like verbs or maybe you want to add American English phrases so whatever you want you would be able to add here and then we also have source is it source is very important for the context because when we talk about all of those memory training hacks a lot of methods are actually based on associations so whenever you mention a resource your brain is like oh it starts remembering circumstances it starts remembering what actually happened when you watch my video and you'll be like oh Marina had this example now I remember what she meant so 20 useful idioms marina maybe you were reading a book so you will create different tags for yourself now let me show you something for example this reference you're like oh I know this word already and I don't want to see words that I've learned so we choose filter add a filter here status does not contain I know see it disappeared it's no longer here but then it's actually in your database and if you want to calculate the amount of words that you've learned in a month it's all stored there but it doesn't distract you because if you know the word you don't have to see it all the time every entry can be opened as a page if you want to just dedicate more of attention to a particular phrase so this is the way you can see it uh White Elephant no longer needed but it costs a lot of money this is the meaning then we have the example sentence this office is a white elephant everyone is working from home but we keep paying rent then the status is new 20 useful idioms uh topic we could do I don't know white elephant it doesn't really matter can can be used anywhere so let's just leave it out and the type here is idiom and then we have white collar office worker and this is basically business let's pretend that tomorrow you have a test for business English and you're like let me remember all the idioms I've learned in business and you have like thousands of entries here basically what you do you just type business here and notion sorts everything for you you have your business idioms listed again if you had more you would have more but this is again super convenient because maybe you're writing an email a business email and you want to sound cool I don't know there could be many reasons but you would be able to sort them uh just by uh typing something that you need in the search bar so this is your vocabulary 2022. I remember when I started learning a language I just had a regular notebook where I had two columns word translation word translation whenever I was putting an entry into my notebook I'd be like I wouldn't even be able to use it because there is no system there is no structure I am so grateful that notion has this oh my God and one last thing in the vocabulary before we go into the next section um this database has two views we added them already it could be all words or just learning so basically when you do the learning you would only be able to see what you're learning so for example here idioms you're only learning white light but then you can easily go back to all idioms this is all made ready for you again go ahead download this template completely free don't forget to copy it to your own notion to be able to edit it so basically what you would need to do when you open this template you click duplicate and it takes you to your own notion now this is your brand new system to learn a vocabulary let me show you something even more exciting something that you can use even if you're even not for languages this can be for any subject we're going back to a learning English page and uh we're going to resources now this is one of my favorite sections just because it can be applied to anything that you're learning even if you're studying crypto or you're studying photography or you're studying geography you're like I'm getting so many resources I'm watching YouTubers I'm watching tick tockers and like there is so much information I want to remember where it is all coming from now here you basically add resources that you're using to learn a language for example you're reading this book will probably doesn't work and uh you add type of content you add a link to it and you check mark whether it's completed or not for example I am watching this TV show called um inventing Anna on Netflix or like Emily in Paris that we have here it's serious but we also have YouTube we also have article movie again you would be able to customize everything but it's another series I'll put a link here and I will check mark completed and actually when I check marked it it disappeared because we have two types of views here new resources and completed and if you want to see what's completed it's going to be here there's another video of mine how to study in the US for free and then you go back to New resources now a perfect use case for something like this is when you're talking to your friend and he or she says you know when I was learning English I watched this TV show whatever like you have to watch it or you're talking to a native speaker and you ask them what their favorite book is and they'll be like oh you should totally read William Shakespeare this book and you're like okay let me type this in um so this is where you collect all the resource and again I don't know if you've ever been in this situation but for me like this happens all the time everybody keeps recommending movies and books but then in the evening when I finally have free time to watch something or read something I sit down and I can't find any notes I don't remember what people recommended now you have a resource a notion can be used from your laptop and on your mobile phone so uh pretty easy to use it okay so you started collecting resources now let me show you the next step now for example you started reading a book willpower doesn't work one of my favorite books you you go to this book you click Three Dots and you click copy link then you go back to the learning English page and to activity tracker you insert this link select mention a page and drag it to not started column so now we have this book that you are starting to read now when you do that you open the tab and we have created templates for you here because it's a new book you select new book and see what happens you have chapter one you have chapter summary that you can fill in to remember the details you have key vocabulary and you see what happens here put in vocabulary like you knew you learn a new word from this book willpower meaning control to do something example sentence will power doesn't work status learning topic whatever type words and Source here you add another one willpower doesn't work see it's automatically added and then you can also add key takeaways and you can do this for every chapter now let's close it and the most exciting thing is when you now go to your vocabulary you see willpower is already here and this way you're able to collect words from the resources that you're learning and they all go to the same database and you're like oh I learned this word from this book this word from another book and it's a lot easier to memorize things like that for example if you started watching a video you embed it here and then you write down vocabulary and you write down key takeaways or maybe it's new serious podcast here we have episode 1 episode 2 again vocabulary summary key takeaways now one quick thing notion is amazing in a way that you can embed videos here which means you don't have to open YouTube step open notion Tab and switch between tabs all the time so you just paste a video that you've been watching and then here you click embed a video see what happens the video is right here in your notion so you watch it and you write down the new words and phrases that you've learned for example you start watching a video Let's see what Marina says here what once in a blue moon when something happens once in a blue moon that means it happens really really so once in a blue moon very rare uh okay we have an example sentence for example status learning topic doesn't have to be here it is an IDI am a phrase Source 20 useful idioms legal Marina this is how you work with a video now you just write things down while watching the video in notion by the way for everyone who uses this notion template you're gonna get a special gift from me there is a section of free useful resources that you would be able to use they are from lingua trip free worksheets templates videos they will be all available in the special free resources section in the notion template the link is down below now this is all very customizable I'm Gonna Leave the link to notion below I'm Gonna Leave a link to this template below I am notion affiliate which means that if you ever decide to upgrade to a paid version I will get some commission but you can also keep using it completely for free I highly highly recommend using notion because it's just so flexible and you can build your own systems and I'm all about Building Systems I love building them because they make our lives so much more structured and easier and we actually become more flexible when we have a system today we're going to talk about improving vocabulary and I'm going to suggest a study plan that I use myself as a non-native speaker as a person who spend six years living in the US doing business in the US raising venture capital in the US speaking at conferences and seeing events I still learn new words every single day it's just it's an endless process but once you master it once you create a routine to learn new words it's going to become an enjoyable process so today I'll share some of my tips and tricks with you English is the language that I use every day I'm originally from Russia but I also learned German and Italian so I've been using these techniques for a while now and I want to start with a really cool example a word that I've learned yesterday I'm gonna remember it forever just because sometimes Americans come up with words on the go and this is the first time I've heard this word and I'm pretty sure you don't learn these words at school and you won't find them in a textbook and I'm pretty much sure that most of the teachers would not teach those words but the problem is native speakers don't care about the way English is taught they just invent words on the goats of yesterday I've heard a word friendier I'm gonna explain it to you so that you can learn this word and also another word that it's derived from so there is a term NDA non-disclosure agreement and I was at a meeting with a venture capital firm and I was meeting other startups so those startups were talking about their plans and they were like we're gonna start this new product but it's a secret have you all signed an NDA so basically nnda is an agreement that you signed before a meeting or before a presentation and basically you agree to not share information uh from this meeting the thing is we haven't signed any NDA agreements but the person who invited us told that startup that we were under a friend day basically they just asked us as friends to not share this information with our friends or Partners or colleagues friendier now this is how I learned this word for NDA and because I have a situation I have an association I am 100 sure I'm gonna remember this word in 10 years and I'm 100 sure I'm gonna use this word in my speech just because I've experienced this situation and this is the best way you can learn and because you heard this story from me if you're interested in business Silicon Valley startups entrepreneurship you will probably remember this story right and you probably remember this word but not only this word you would also remember the term NDA non-disclosure agreement isn't that all exciting and this is my rule number one when learning new words try to find a story that will sit together with this new word in my brain just like this story I told you sometimes you will be like but Marine it's so hard to find these stories right one thing I really love doing is reading about how people actually invented that word where did it come from and there is a really easy way to do it for example there is an idiom to take a rain check you can go to Google and ask where does the phrase take a rain check come from and then you will find a story the term originated in baseball in the 1800s Spectators who attended games that were postponed or canceled because of weather could receive a check to attend a future game at no extra charge and this way you would be able to connect history with the words meaning and I love it I love it if you ask me Marina what are the most fascinating aspects of learning a language I would say first of all accent oh my God I love them I love exploring accents and the way people pronounce different words and different countries number two I would say definitely history where did this or that phrase come from and number three probably culture you know how people react to different things how they want ghost you or uh on the opposite side call your friend right after your first meeting so this is all super exciting and this is my rule number two guys just be excited make it as exciting as possible for yourself to learn English set goals print out images of what your life is going to look like in two years if you speak English at an advanced level like where does that lead you it's just gonna help you with your motivation so so much and I truly believe that everyone is capable of learning English and making it their instrument it's just a matter of you know being excited about it now when it comes to defining your goals and dreams or whatever you call them this is actually what you start this is day number one if you're willing to create a study plan on day number one you manifest your goals you print out pictures you imagine your dream life that you will start living once your English becomes Upper Intermediate Advanced whatever on day number two or as the next step you answer the question where do I find useful vocabulary and here you need to make sure that you understand your goals right because if it's University admission and you know you need to take the GRE test oh my God good luck the GRE is this test that you take in order to apply for masters programs in the US and the thing is it uses really complicated vocabulary and there are textbooks with hundreds of words that you need for that test there are books with words that you need for the TOEFL test for your team like if you need to take a test make sure you know which test you're going to be taking if you just need a particular level you could Google I don't know 100 intermediate level words in English 100 advanced level words in English and this is how you come up with a list of words that you would need to learn my team and I is actually well my team at lingua trip is actually working on something super exciting to help you with this number two thing but it's a big project so it's going to take a while but I'm just getting you excited about it just stay tuned it's gonna go live and hopefully March 2023 February 2000 we'll see but stay tuned I'm excited a couple more resource that I would recommend for finding lists of words that you need to learn are websites like British Council or vocabulary now day number three you start learning those words and you see how I divided all of your actions I just don't want you to think that learning English is all about sitting down for a few hours it's about making it part of your life so it's maybe 20 minutes a day 30 minutes a day as long as it's consistent as long as you can do it every single day just like my kid she goes to this Kumon Japanese mathematics school and they asked her to learn for 10 minutes a day including holidays and weekends and I think it's a great system every single day every night we sit down and complete exercises for just 10 minutes very low friction for your brain because you're like oh it's just 10 minutes I'm gonna be fine it's on the whole hour it's it's just the small period of time so it's easier 10 minutes 15 20 minutes just make it a routine I'm gonna share a couple of methods and one of the methods that really works for me um I've started this video with this method uh telling yourself a story educating yourself about the history another resource that I would recommend is a website called euglish.com you basically type your word or phrase in the search bar and listen to how native speakers use and pronounce it this is a great way to experience a word in different ways by reading it by putting it in your list by listening to native speakers pronounce it and uh by the way five words a day max don't do one thousand words a day I know I had a video on 1000 words a day but those words a very specific words like police you probably have a very similar word in your language but with all of the other words five words a day do not overload your brain please and something that also really works for me is creating an exercise book and writing down the five words that you learn every single day just to make sure you go back to them for at least a week or a couple weeks to check back on them to see whether you remember them or not to check whether you've started using them or incorporating them in your speech if you've ever taken a course with English with Lucy what we did there we teach you British and American vocabulary there and we have tests after every class at the end of each week and at the end of the course and we're testing the same words over and over again just to make sure we create the spaced repetition now the next day you're going to start your class with repeating the five words you've learned the previous day and what you're gonna do is come up with new examples of using those words and on that day also learn attention collocations a collocation is two or more words that often go together for example you've learned the word bond now a collocation with this word could be bond market and some dictionaries would actually provide collocations and Longman is one of those dictionaries so I would go to that dictionary and see how people actually use that word because sometimes you learn a phrase or a word and you're like hey sounds cool how do I use it so learning collocations is a great way to learn how to use this word with other words so for example if we look at the word bond in the Longman dictionary let's scroll down a bit and see a table with collocations for a bond it's a closed strong bond a common Bond a special bond to form Forge a bond to strengthen a bond to break destroy bond this process makes it easier for your brain to remember the word to remember how people use it and to just you know feel at ease with this word because sometimes you're like oh I know this word but we're not friends we're not friends I'm not gonna use you in my spirit just because I don't know how well this is what collocations are for the next day you're gonna revise the five words you're going to reread your collocations and you're going to come up with sentences using collocations you learned the previous day and here is a pro tip if you attend a language school or you have English classes at your University or at school bring your exercise book with a new vocabulary to the class to make sure that you actually start using those new words and impress other students and teachers and the next day you're going to start repeating the process you're going to make a list of five new words that you're going to learn the next day you're going to do collocations the next day you're going to do sentences with collocations how exciting is that and you go on and on and on and make it your routine so this study plan is more or less relaxed just because I'm asking you for five new words every three days because there's a process of remembering them it's actually okay to do five words each day but just make sure you repeat the steps for all of these words every day it would just make the process more intense really depends on your goals When I Was preparing for my GMAT test I learned a lot of words in a day just because I had to but the thing is they don't stay in your long-term memory they only stay in your brain for a short period of time they're somewhere in the back I know but because I've never used those words I only learned them for uh the purpose of taking the GMAT test I know this is not really what I want because I want to start using those words I want to make my speech more vibrant more advanced so these days I think I am learning maybe five new words each week and I do that by writing them down by trying to incorporate them in my speech doing caucations you know noticing when native speakers use them and it's a process it's a lifelong process we live in we learn this is one of the most exciting things about the language you're always learning and the language is changing and there is no like right or wrong it's just it's just an exciting process and uh yeah congratulations on choosing this path of making English part of your life and if you follow this study plan for at least 30 days you're gonna end up with at least 50 new words in your active vocabulary thank you guys so much for watching this video up to the very end please subscribe to this Channel please share this video with your friends who are also in the process of learning English bye bye [Music] hi guys it's Mida from Colombia and I just wanted to thank the Lego Marina channel for the support in knowledge that provides to all English Learners it's really cool to find a channel where you can get the tools to reach around the cell level and what I like the most is that you can get a philosophies language is truly used or spoken in the US and this helps me to prepare for the trip that I will have to the United States So speaking English it's not unattainable so keep going and I hope God bless you all Marina I'm Alice from Vietnam I'd like to thank you very much for being a great effort in my English career every time I watch your videos I have a sense of motivation and that's reason why my English has upgraded a lot so please keep making videos for English Learners like me to improve our English levels and one more time thank you very much hey Marina hope you're having a good day I'm with gun from Pakistan I'm a high school graduate and I started watching your video since last May and then it's got one 10 out of 116 wedding English test then I got into American universities yeah I actually started thinking in English and my parents they're also doing really well with their accents I really wanted to appreciate your videos in your Tuesday stop saying I don't like it use Advanced words it's not for me I'm not crazy about that this kind of videos they are my favorite and their collaboration with Lucy was just amazing so I wanted to say how many people are watching Marina's videos please don't forget the consistency continue watching videos on daily basis this is gonna improve your accents so you all are able to break the eyes thank you Marina love you bye foreign [Music]