Five Habits Of Effective English Language Learners

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Oct 30, 2025, 12:33 PM

five habits of effective english language learners

Vox Efx, licensed under CC-BY-2.0 and adapted from the original. What habits should English language learners adopt to help them meet their goals? Martin Sketchley, latest winner of the British Council's Teaching English blog award, gives us his top five. Learning English, or any language, can be a challenging but rewarding experience. To make progress, you need to put in a lot of dedication and effort, but you also need to develop the right habits. Here are five habits that have helped my students achieve their aims.

1. Plan your learning and set realistic goals The decision to study English, or return to the English language classroom after a long break, can be quite overwhelming. Try to plan your studies with a weekly timetable and dedicate one day for self-study, including time to review your lessons. Planning your learning day by day or week by week can be rewarding, and will make it easier to measure your progress. This is especially true if you set realistic goals.

For example, you might aim to learn five new linking expressions next week (realistic) rather than master academic writing (extremely unrealistic). Gopal was clicking on the calendar feature on his computer when the thought struck him. He had not logged in to his English learning app in more than three weeks. Immediately the guilt hit him. He had paid for the course, downloaded the app and had promised himself that he would try to spend at least 1 hour every day. But just like most resolutions that we make in the heat of the moment, other things had kept Gopal occupied and the app remained on the phone, unused.

Do you also find yourself in a similar situation to Gopal’s? Would you like to break the habit of stopping your learning halfway through and complete it successfully? Read on to find out the 5 habits of successful English learners. Successful learners make learning a regular habit. What does this mean? It means, they allocate a set amount of time every day, or week to study and to practise.

This can be watching webisodes to understand a grammar concept, or completing a practice activity that will help you build your vocabulary. You can start by committing to watch one webisode from your online course and completing the practice questions that come after it. Also remember to practise consistently! This might mean speaking in English to friends, reading newspaper or online articles, listening to a podcast in English, or writing your journal in English. This kind of consistency will help you retain the information you learned and make steady progress towards your goal. Learning a new language is incredibly rewarding.

A new language will open doors when you travel, it will help you better understand a different culture, it can connect you with your roots or your friends and neighbors, it can set you... But it’s not necessarily easy; learning anything presents challenges, and learning a new language brings its own set of challenges. Every language learner follows a unique path, but there are certain habits that every successful language learner adopts, and then adapts. Let’s take a look at five habits of successful language learners. If you’ve ever gone to the gym or started an exercise regimen, you know what this is. You can’t set aside two or three or four hours one day a week and cram all of your good behavior into that one slot.

Instead, you need to spread it out into shorter periods and and stick to that routine. Language learning is the same. You want contact hours with your language, and you want those contact hours to be spread out. Sit down with your calendar and figure out when you can carve away some time for your new language. If that’s an hour, great, but if it’s only fifteen minutes, that’s great, too. Set a calendar reminder, and use that time to review vocabulary, watch some videos, do some homework exercises, read an article, or – if you can – practice speaking.

If you’re taking live online lessons with the Language Garage, you’ve automatically got that time once or twice a week, but for best results you’ll need to get some regular contact hours outside of... In language learning, we talk about four skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Two of these skills are passive – listening and reading. These are important, of course, but they’re only half of the picture. The active skills of speaking and writing are where the heavier lifting comes in. Language learners who make a habit of engaging actively in speaking and writing see much better results, because the active skills reinforce what you’ve learned in a powerful way.

So, the next time you do something passive, for example watch a video or read a short article, add the active components of summarizing what you’ve seen or read by speaking about it (even... Again, when you’re speaking with your instructor, you’re actively engaging. But if you only do that during your lessons, you’re missing out. No one likes making mistakes, but mistakes are definitely one of the five habits of successful language learners! When you’re used to being able to express yourself effortlessly when you speak or write in your native language, a new language can be very daunting because you’re in such an unfamiliar place. But this is an important part of the journey!

See your mistakes not as errors but as opportunties to learn and improve. You will make mistakes – lots of them! – when you learn a new language. And no one will expect anything else. So embrace those mistakes, because they’re excellent teachers. If you learn to embrace mistakes, you’ll decrease your performance anxiety, and you’ll have a much better time.

Some parts of language learning are universal; they’re things that we all need to learn, like basic vocabulary and grammar. But we’re all individuals with different interests. Get outside of the basic, universal parts of language and look for things that speak to your interests. Watch your favorite genre of movie, look up videos on YouTube about your hobby, read whatever section of an online newspaper that appeals to you the most, listen to your favorite kind of music,... Use this amazing tool to personalize your language exposure to whatever it is that makes you tick as an individual. In Stephen Covey’s famous book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People he gives advice for people in many aspects of their lives: advice for managers, for business people and for people generally.

His advice can also be applied to language learners, and here’s how. If you wait for things to happen to you, they will, but you have no control over them. However, by being proactive and taking initiatives, and by pursuing your goals, it is more likely that good things are going to happen. Certainly I found in language learning as long as I was a passive learner in school, with a teacher teaching me, as long as I waited for the teacher or the textbook to teach... Once I took control of my learning, I did much better. This happened with my first foreign language, French, and again in my second one, Mandarin Chinese.

Once I went out to find things in the language that interested me: movies, newspapers, books tapes and, in those days before the Internet, this meant books with vocabulary lists behind each chapter, I... Taking the initiative in terms of what I wanted to learn about, what aspects of the language I needed to work on, was decisive in making me a successful language learner. This meant going beyond the program that the teacher offered in the classroom. Many teachers don’t like this. They don’t want the students to get ahead of them. This is misguided because the language isn’t just chapter one, chapter two, and chapter three.

Upper intermediate and advanced English learners who want to make English part of their daily lives can benefit from creating daily habits centered around English practice. In this lesson, the speaker shares five daily habits that take no more than one hour of each day and are designed to make English practice fun. The habits focus on reading, writing, listening, speaking, and comprehending, and learners are encouraged to choose activities that interest them or that they are curious about learning. For reading, learners are encouraged to choose their favorite type of reading and content to read for 10 minutes each day. Examples include reading online news, books, recipes, blogs, articles, or newsletters. Reading aloud is recommended to help with pronunciation and retention.

For writing, learners are encouraged to write for 10 minutes each day about something they enjoy, such as a gratitude list, worry pages, stream of consciousness, or a daily log. Writing aloud is recommended to help with clarity and structure. For listening, learners are encouraged to listen for 10 minutes each day to songs, podcasts, audiobooks, or the radio. Pausing and imitating pronunciation is recommended for fun and comprehension. For watching, learners are encouraged to watch 10 minutes of English content each day to improve listening comprehension and awareness of non-verbal communication. Examples include YouTube videos, TED talks, web courses, webinars, or streaming shows without subtitles.

Pausing and imitating non-verbals and doing self-administered comprehension checks are recommended. For speaking, learners are encouraged to speak for 10 minutes each day with strangers, colleagues, or online communities through virtual communication platforms. Using newly acquired expressions, phrases, idioms, and vocabulary, and testing out grammar and syntax are recommended. Asking for corrective feedback is also recommended. Do you ever wonder why some people appear to make progress without even trying? The truth is that behind every successful individual there is a plan with action points.

This enables them to use their time effectively and create consistency in their approach to learning. With our guide, you can do the same too. Ask yourself these questions and give honest answers: Asking yourself these questions will help you start taking responsibility for your learning journey by mapping out a plan for yourself. Learners who are proactive and take a keen interest in their learning are more likely to achieve their goals. When you book a course with us, this assessment and planning is part of your onboarding so your trainer will be able to make sure the course is tailored to your needs.

Five Habits Of Effective English Language Learners

People Also Search

Vox Efx, Licensed Under CC-BY-2.0 And Adapted From The Original.

1. Plan Your Learning And Set Realistic Goals The Decision

For Example, You Might Aim To Learn Five New Linking

Do You Also Find Yourself In A Similar Situation To

This Can Be Watching Webisodes To Understand A Grammar Concept,