15 mistakes that make self-studying English online ineffective

15 mistakes that make self-studying English online ineffective

Self-studying English online is a mandatory process for people who want to be good at this language. But have you ever wondered why you still don't make progress?

1. Not interested enough in the language, no specific goals

Many people wonder if they should learn English online? Is self-study English effective? So first, EnglishTop will show you the mistakes when studying English online at home.

Not only in learning a foreign language but with any decisions and actions you make, you need to define specific goals for yourself. What is the purpose when you decided to learn English by yourself? Why do you want to master English? Is your goal big enough to motivate you to continue and persevere, or are you just choosing this language as a social trend and being "forced" by school and parents?

Defining clear goals will make you more motivated to study, and you can plan to conquer English more clearly and effectively. Instead of haphazardly following the school curriculum or going to an English training center that your parents "force" you to study, you need to find your own goal and actually start working on that goal.

15 mistakes that make self-studying English online ineffective

You need to set specific goals before starting to self-study English online

2. Passive learning process, no time spent practicing

The second mistake is very easy to make for those who have already made the first mistake. When you do not determine your own goals, it will lead to passive learning, "depending" on teachers and the curriculum. If you can't spend 30 minutes to an hour self-studying, your English will never improve.

Active learning will require you to spend time to improve every day, from reading books, magazines, foreign blogs, to practicing listening and speaking and writing.

3. Inappropriate learning methods

For foreign language learners, especially new ones, the most common mistake is choosing a learning method that is not suitable for them. There is no wrong learning method or right learning method, it's just a matter of choosing the path that can lead you to your destination faster.

Many people are struggling to find and apply hot learning methods online such as "listening to copy dictation", "reading - translating English and Vietnamese" to become good at English quickly" but do not find out if they are suitable for them. whether this method is suitable or not. If you are at the intermediate listening level, listening and copying dictation will no longer be suitable for you, but instead you need to practice listening and grasping key words and main ideas by taking notes.

Choosing the wrong method can slow down your learning process and easily make you feel discouraged because you feel like you are not making progress. One piece of advice is that you can take some tests of your English ability before choosing a study method.

4. Only pay attention to grammar

It is a fact that many of you are interested in learning grammar and spend more time on grammar than other factors. Agree with the idea that grammar is an important foundation in learning a language, but when you focus too much on grammar, your focus on other factors will not be enough.

While communicating, if you focus too much on using new structures and the accuracy of prepositions, verb conjugations, word forms, etc., your speaking reflexes will slow down, affecting your performance. pronunciation and cannot think of vocabulary. This will make your speech sound mechanical and awkward.

Many of you spend a long time just practicing your grammar through the book "Grammar in use" without spending time on other criteria. This both wastes your time and is ineffective. The solution for you is to take a grammar test, and only review the areas that you are not sure about or don't know!

15 mistakes that make self-studying English online ineffective

Don't just focus on learning grammar - How to learn English online effectively

5. Neglecting the importance of pronunciation practice

Pronunciation is one of the four main criteria of speaking skills in English: "Pronunciation", "Grammar", "Vocabulary", "Fluency", but many people do not pay attention to practicing pronunciation when starting to learn English online while this is the foundation of learning a foreign language. To be able to listen well, you first need to pronounce correctly and of course, to make the other person understand what you say, you also need to speak accurately.

In pronunciation, you need to focus on practicing each of the 44 IPA sounds, learning the rules about stress of each word, each sentence, connecting sounds, and gliding sounds.

Some suggestions for practicing pronunciation are listening to short sentences and imitating them, or listening to long passages, recording them and comparing your recording with the original. You can also use Google assistant or Siri on your phone to chat in English to see if the screen displays the correct sentence you want to say.

6. Choosing inappropriate materials

Similar to the mistake of choosing the wrong learning method, choosing inappropriate materials also costs you time, effort, and even money, and your English level still cannot improve. You cannot review for the TOEIC test effectively when you read and study IELTS test preparation books, or you cannot write well when you buy books that teach essay writing methods while your goal is to write a Blog.

You also cannot practice pronunciation with non-standard sources, leading to your pronunciation being incorrect. Therefore, you need to carefully choose official English self-study sources, especially if you are a beginner and cannot yet determine for yourself which documents are correct and which are incorrect.

7. Cramming vocabulary is not effective

Most of us misunderstand vocabulary learning as learning as many new words as possible, without knowing that using them flexibly and in the right context is important. Instead of memorizing hundreds of vocabulary words along with their shallow meanings, you can spend that time practicing 5 to 10 vocabulary words a day but in a deeper way by practicing making sentences, understanding semantics and how to use them. of a word, belonging to another word form of that vocabulary (family word) to be able to use the word more actively and flexibly.

15 mistakes that make self-studying English online ineffective

The mistake of cramming vocabulary leads to ineffective self-study of English

8. Try to be perfect

Trying to perfect all the skills and assessment criteria at once is nearly impossible. When you try to speak fluently, you may have to accept that your grammar will sometimes be flawed.

If you always want yourself to be perfect, then when you use English and make mistakes, you will have a very bad mood and think negatively that you are weak. This can lead to boredom and negatively affect your attitude and language learning process.

9. Only study what you "like"

This is quite common in practicing Listening skills. People often prioritize listening to easy-to-listen and "standard" reading voices such as English - British, English - American. This is only true in the early stages when Listening ability is still poor and you need to get used to English.

After improving your listening ability, you need to continue to get acquainted and find sources that speak English - Indian, English - Singaporean, or even from people who speak English as a foreign language. Because of the current reality, English is not only used in the UK or America, but is also used every day in many countries. Self-studying English by practicing listening to different accents will make it easier for you to communicate and use English with non-native speakers in the future.

Another mistake in choosing what you "like" is choosing topics you like to listen to and read. This causes the amount of vocabulary that you can access to be limited to the topic you love. In case you don't love sports, but when taking exams and meeting friends, it will be difficult for you to complete the task. test and communicate when the topic is football. The main advice is to choose a variety of topics that change daily to study.

10. Lack of patience

Please be patient! English is not a knowledge you can "master" in a short period of time but requires you to trade time and effort. If you persevere in self-study every day, you may not realize how much better you are today than yesterday, but you will be able to realize after three months, six months, one year how much you have improved. .

English or any foreign language has its own beauty and is the door for you to enter a new area of ​​knowledge and culture. The richness of the language can take you a long time and require patience.

11. Don't know how to connect sounds and accents

Written English will be completely different from communicative English. According to native English speakers, they often use shortened English reading by connecting sounds in sentences together.

15 mistakes that make self-studying English online ineffective

Don't know how to connect sounds and accents

The English intonation of native speakers is very important. Intonation shows the nuance of the content they want to convey to us, be it happy or angry... To learn how to connect sounds and expressions. tune. You need to listen to English in paragraphs and never learn English word by word.

To learn these things, make sure you have learned and grasped the basic sound connection rules in English. These rules will help you be more confident when listening to English, listen more and understand more, bringing your English listening and speaking ability to a new level.

12. Listen, translate into Vietnamese and vice versa

A mistake that almost everyone who is self-studying English online will encounter. That is when your English ability is not good, you always use listening and translating English into Vietnamese, then translating your Vietnamese thoughts into English. This mistake makes your learning to listen and speak English slow down a lot. Instead of responding immediately, you have to go through several stages to be able to respond to the other person.

Therefore, the advice is that if you have started learning English, even with the online form of learning English, you need to prepare yourself to concentrate and practice learning how to accept English as your mother language. to lay. Only by learning English in such a way can you keep up with a listening lesson from beginning to end.

13. Learn English silently

A language is considered “living” when it is used in communication. But you learn English in silence. Rarely listen to English and never speak it, you are only engrossed in English test secrets in books. If you are like that, you should stop. Let's change this silent way of learning. Because in reality, even if you have high scores in English, when you meet a Westerner, you will still be speechless like a 3-year-old child learning to speak, babbling and unprofessional.

14. Prefer foreign teachers

Vietnamese people's foreign-loving mentality comes not only from goods but also from English teachers. You think that if you only learn from domestic teachers, you won't be able to pronounce correctly or correct your mistakes.

Reality shows that in the process of learning English, you can combine both domestic and foreign teachers to be better. Vietnamese teachers will know how to explain things systematically so you understand the problem. Especially basic grammar knowledge. While your English level is not yet complete, how will the foreign teacher explain it to you?

15. Learn English for exams, not for use

Perhaps many of you have considered English a subject just to cope with exams. You only study when you have a test tomorrow or have a graduation exam scheduled. Or simply an IELTS test for you to study abroad? Therefore, this is also considered a serious mistake in learning English. Because it not only shows your attitude towards English, it also shows that you are lazy and have no determination.

Think of English like swimming. You cannot study well if you don't get into the water. Practice listening and speaking regularly to be able to use professional English instead of lifeless numbers on paper.