Surround yourself with English

The human brain is good at learning languages but it has to be put into real-life situations in order to use its ability. In other words, you have to activate your language learning ability by giving your brain a clear and persistent signal that the English language is an important component of your environment — something that you have to learn in order to survive, or at least in order to be successful.

When you surround yourself with English in your everyday life, you will make it appear to your brain that the English language is something real in your life and that it is vitally important to learn this language. You should then notice that you are unconsciously using learning faculties that have been awakened. Your English learning process should enter a new stage: rapid absorption of every piece of information about the ability to understand English messages, and this should not be especially tiring for you because you will be running on the natural ability to learn languages in real situations.

The failure of many learners to learn a foreign language may often be attributed to their lack of motivation at the deep physiological and psychological level. When learning English is interpreted by your mind as a burdensome duty imposed on you by schools, parents, or ill-understood socio-economic arguments, then you will not find ready resources in your mind to be wasted on something so dubious. But if, on the other hand, your mind sees that learning English is a part of the reality that you live in and that it is a component having influence on your success, then surely you will find that after all you are well-equiped by nature to be a language learner.

Here are a number of ideas for surrounding yourself with the English language:

English language version software
If you buy an English learning software it will help you improve your English only if you use it regularly. It is not certain that you will find the motivation to actually spend your time learning English with this software. However, if you buy an English language version of your operating system you will certainly find the time and motivation to use this "English-learning" software. So perhaps it is far better to spend money on English language versions of the computer programs that you use every day than to buy specialized English learning programs.

English movies in the original language version
If you are a person who regularly watches movies you can use this fact to realize that you have a lot of time for learning English. If you are watching an English movie in the original you are effectively spending time on learning English and having fun at the same time. Moreover, if you manage to understand what's going on in the movie you can feel great satisfaction and you gain a proof for yourself that you can use your English ability in practice.

Get daily news in English into your mailbox
Most people follow the daily news in one way or another. If you sign up for a free newsletter with daily news in English you will be both following the news and learning English at the same time. Again, this is a way of increasing your time spent on learning English without needing extra time.

Read the Bible in English
Those people who regularly spend their time reading the Bible have a lot of time for learning English because they can devote some of this time to reading an English language version of the Bible. Since the Bible is a translation from ancient languages, reading it in some other language than your native language can help you get a better perspective on its content. If you learn English you should also read the Bible in English.