Even if you have already read about a piece of grammar a number of times, such as present perfect, if you struggle with it, there is no shame in returning to explanations in your first language. Many students, and teachers as well, perceive the first language as a crutch, rather than an asset. If the concept is very confusing, or is very difficult for that particular student, then they need all the help they can get. Often students think that because they have already learnt something before, then they must read about it only in English otherwise they won't feel like they are improving. It is possible to read every word in the explanation, and look up each unknown word, and not understand the underlying grammatical meaning. That's why it is important to be realistic and leave the ego at the door. It is better to go back to the explanation in your first language first and get the information quickly and clearly, and then look at the example sentences. If it takes 5 minutes to read it in your first language, and 30 minutes to read it in English, then it would be much more efficient to read it in your first language again.

Here are some of my top tips to get the most out of your Skype language partner experience. There are a lot of websites that can help you get in touch with people all over the world that want to exchange languages over the internet. The best thing to do is set up a Skype account, and get your language partners to add you on there. You can make a separate account just for your Skype, and have multiple accounts on the various websites.

Profile: Give as much information about your language learning style and goals, as well as basic information about yourself including a photo. If other people understand a lot about you then they will be able to judge if they want to talk to you. If they don't want to talk to someone like you, then its better that they never contact you. For example, if you are very focused on your pronunciation and want someone who can repeat words and sentences many times so that you can get the sentence stress, then not everyone will be a good partner. Some people just want to chat about random topics with no language focus.

Same Gender: If you want to get really excellent results then it is generally best to choose someone who is of the same gender. It ensures that there is no potential of romance which, while uncommon, is what some people may look for. Even though there is very little chance of meeting a partner like this, it is just a common reaction when two people are attracted to each other to focus more on the personality and less on the language.

Set ground rules: Be clear with your language partner about exactly what you want, and generally it is best to agree on how long you will spend focusing on each language, for example 15 minutes of English followed by 15 minutes of Chinese time. Generally the weaker language learner will get tired more quickly, so let them go first.

Be Generous: You will really appreciate it when people give you additional knowledge and tips, correct mistakes and offer explanations. If you want others to put effort into helping you with you English you have to put effort into genuinely helping them with theirs. You have to ask yourself, would you want to do language with yourself if you were one of your partners? If the answer isn't a big yes, then that's probably why people seem to be busy whenever you ask.

Be flexible with your time: There are usually time zone differences, and people usually have a lot of things happening in their life. Don't get upset if someone doesn't come online when you said you would. It's easier to set aside three hours in the evening where you have your Skype on, and see who is online, and just see if they happen to be available at that time. When you have more than 10 language partners you can be sure that someone will be available. It's generally good to have private and language learning accounts separate, every time you use that account you are ready for an exchange. You can turn on your Skype and message the people who are online as well. If no one is available tell them when you will be online until, and start looking at some vocabulary in preparation. If no-one comes online then get back on the websites to find more partners.

Local people will sometimes be very keen to meet people from other countries, especially if they come from a country or culture that is considered to be high status. An example would be French speakers coming to Australia. Almost all Australians study the French language at some stage during high school, and read books by French authors like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Paris, cafes and their attitude to life all contribute to making French international students 'cool'. But what about Chinese students studying in the United States, or Japanese students going to the Czech Republic? If you are Japanese, for example, find out if there are Japanese culture clubs or societies in the city that you are studying in. This could be things like Anime appreciation clubs, or Calligraphy groups. These people are locals, and the very fact that you are from Japan makes you an expert, valuable and interesting. You find these things by searching in the local language, 'Japanese culture club Melbourne' other examples would be: 'Spanish Language Exchange Group Israel', 'Russian Music Club Boston', 'Cricket club Prague'. The internet is a powerful tool. Make sure though that when you look for Cricket club Prague, that you actually search for it in Czech - so 'kriket klub v Praze'. If you search for Russian groups in Russian, the chances are they will all be from Russia, and you won't meet local students. Generally, if you always speak about learning English as your main interest, then native English speakers won’t be very interested because they already know how to speak English perfectly. If they wanted to tutor people in English they would probably want to charge money. The ultimate though is joining language exchange groups because for example in a not-for-profit organisation, for example, all of the local Australians are interested in meeting native speakers from Japan, China, Korea or Taiwan because they are either learning to speak Japanese, Korean or Chinese, or they want to go to one of those countries. And similarly all of the Korean students want to meet locals so that they can make friends with them and improve their English – but more about language exchanges later.

Its a reality of the modern world that a lot of people love to play games on their phone. For the most part this can be a waste of time, but not always. Some games are actually language focussed, when you search for "learn English" or "English vocabulary" in the app store you will find a lot of apps. But you probably won't use them when you mind is tired. In fact, you may never use them at all. The reason why is that they are probably boring.

So instead of downloading them, look for apps that include characters and a number of challenges within the game. If you really enjoyed watching a cartoon, or playing a game when you were in school then you could start by searching for them. One example is an app based on the American cartoon "The Simpsons". The app is called "Tapped Out" and in the initial part of the game there are a lot of conversations between the characters as you try to build up the town after Homer blew it up.

While the dialogue later on in the game is reduced, you can still learn a lot from playing games that you are interested in because of the characters. You will focus on completing the challenges, unlocking new characters and items, and you won't worry as much about memorising what you are reading. Often you need to learn the rules of how a game works and read jokes. The jokes are sometimes based on cultural references, but if you are interested you can search for the references, or ask native speakers such as your teachers or flatmates.

Sometimes the sentence doesn't really come out right. Last night I was heading out to a party and a friend in Japan texted me: "You came back soon, didn't you?" I couldn't tell if she was talking about me coming back from work early, or that I will come back from the party early. The first option was confusing because we were on a different topic. The second was hard to think of because of the two past simples. The sentence should have been: "You will come back soon, won't you?" Then I said "bad English", I can't understand. About an hour later my friend said "nevermind" and that was it until this morning. I was thinking about it and I felt very bad. I was thinking of it as a joke, but it probably wasn't very funny for them. Learning is difficult, and it is easy to lose confidence. If we are learning the language ourselves then don't take criticism too harshly, but also take the feedback on board. If you know other who are learning, then make sure you are gentle, it's easy to hurt and be hurt when people's language skills are low.

Because this is a relatively new test there are very limited resources to prepare students for the PTE English Test. In comparison, every library and book store has a wide variety of books dedicated to IELTS, but sadly very few for PTE Academic. If you are thinking about taking the test then the first step is to get the official guide. The major advantage of the official guide is that you will get the CD-ROM and Audio CD which contain practice speaking and listening sections as well as model responses. Opening Chapters: The opening two chapters cover the features and structure of the test as well as how to read the score report, creating a study plan and general test taking tips. Main Body: The main body of the covers the specific item types of the four sections of the test: Speaking, Writing, Reading and Listening. Each chapter first gives and overview of the skills and the task types' length and time to answer. For example for the speaking section there are five different item types: read aloud, repeat sentence, describe image, re-tell lecture and answer short question. For each item type there is a description of the task and a picture of how it will appear on the test screen. There is an explanation of how it is scored. For example 'read aloud' is marked based on: content, oral fluency and pronunciation. Then there are some strategies to help you maximise your score. Finally there is a practice. For the speaking and writing sections there are model responses. CD-ROM:The CD-ROM includes three practice tests which are really essential practice for anyone wanting to take the test. There are very few resources, practice tests, so doing the official practice tests is essential. The CD-ROM is really the most valuable part of the book/CD-ROM package. Doing the practice tests on the CD-ROM will increase your familiarity with the test format and the feeling of doing speaking on a screen. Because candidates need to take the test on a computer, there are a number of differences from an IELTS test. One of the most important is that if a candidate stops speaking for more than three seconds then the program will assume that they have finished and will go onto the next question automatically. If this happens then you will probably get either 0 or a very low score. The other extremely important point to note is that candidates can return to previous questions in reading or writing. Once you finish it is done forever.

Like drops of rain falling on the roof, vocabulary of all different kinds enters our minds and then will often fall away to the sides. We want to catch those rain drops (vocabulary) and keep them.

So we take notes on whatever we can, a piece of paper, a textbook, in our phones. Some words in our textbooks are very important to us, and others aren't. Just as all rain finds the lowest point it can fall to, whatever important vocabulary enters our lives needs to find its way to one place our vocabulary book. This is our go to place for revision, that we come back to, that we can use as a starting point in language exchanges, that we can add details about each item, practice writing it, adding a secondary definition, example sentences. It doesn't matter where we keep the rain, it could be on a website, or in a notebook. But there should be one place. Some vocabulary with appear so often that we will know it without trying. But each drop of rain has its own beauty, especially as the flow in speech.

For a small child, walking for the first time is intrinsically a very, very difficult skill to learn. Despite that inherent difficulty, almost all children learn to walk very quickly. The same goes for language, to begin to process all the connections of language for the first time as a toddler is one of the great miracles of human life - and yet, everyone learns to speak. Children look around, and see that everyone else is walking and talking, so it must be easy. As we grow older, the number of things that we can see everyone doing gets lower. Then after we reach about 20, anytime we see a new skill that we don't have any background in, we immediately don't want to try, in case we make a mistake. Actually many of the things we don't want to try, like a foreign language, or juggling, or a new sport, a new method of analysis, are not inherently difficult. But we perceive them as difficult. As children we perceived hard things as easy, and as we get older we perceive easy skills as hard, and don't learn them. So the key is to perceive the task for what it is, or even perceive it as simple. Language learning is often made out to be much harder than it is, all we have to do is change our perception. Don't think of English as hard, look around, everyone can do it, so you can to.

Fly Buys was a card that gave you points whenever you bought something. These points could be used to get plane tickets at a discount of for free. As the promotion continued users found that no matter how many things they bought, they could never use the points because they were expiring, essentially they always had the same number of fly buy points because the new points just replaced the old ones. People should have tried to use the points on short trips within their country, not for big trips. Learning vocabulary is like collecting fly buys points, if you don't use the vocabulary regularly in short conversations, then you will just be replacing old vocabulary in your brain with the new vocabulary you are learning. You might spend 3 hours a day learning vocabulary, but very little of it will still be there in a month. The tragedy of all of those happy shoppers accumulating fly buys points from supermarkets was that unless you use those points, then they expire. Vocabulary is the same, if you haven't used the word for 'table cloth' within a week of revising it, then it probably won't hang around and wait for you.

Students who are studying by themselves should try to organise or attend language exchanges multiple times a week so that they can practice the vocabulary they have been learning. Its totally acceptable to bring your vocabulary with you and deliberately use it and get feedback. Tell your language partners that these are the vocabulary items you are working on, and go through it together.

What does this mean for textbook designers? How can we choose the most relevant vocabulary? - Place names can be avoided, if people go there then they will learn them, if they don't have anything to do with that city or province then they might not need to learn it - Concepts that are uncommon can be avoided, such as minute household items - Obsolete vocabulary which is rarely used. - Vocabulary which is only ever written should be minimised. This can often be covered in a specialist textbook, for students still no comfortable in conversation then it is unlikely to improve their proficiency, and they may use it in spoken contexts and be discouraged. The onus is on textbook writers to consult linguistic research into which words are most frequently used, and which are obsolete.

You can, but...... it's more difficult. It depends whether you live in an international city, and how easy, and how attractive, it is for foreigners to live and work in your city. If you live in Prague there are always a lot of exchange students and tourists. If you are in an Asian country such as China, Japan or Korea, there are very few opportunities to practice English, and in contrast to Prague, there are a lot of other local people who are trying to practice their English with the few English speakers that are available. Often the only way to get time to practice speaking with a native English speaker is if you are willing to pay them. If you are looking for a private tutor then the best strategy is to look in universities' notice boards. There may be international students who want to make a little bit of extra money, but don't have the resources or local knowledge to put an advertisement online. These students will probably get fewer requests. You can also search for, or start up a language exchange. If you do then you need to focus on how you can help their language skills as well, don't just try to use them for their native English proficiency. If you try to force them to only speak English, you might get a full half hour of free language practice, but it won't lead to a long relationship. The best bet is the internet. Joining online language exchange websites and practicing on skype is the best and easiest way to get the oral practice which you can't find in your books. Try a few, approach it with an open mind, and accept that there might be some strange people, but you just need to find one or two really good practice partners that you can talk to often.

We need more input, we need articles to read, and podcasts to listen to. It's not possible to listen and understand the news from the beginning, so it is important to have reading and listening materials that are at your level. Textbooks do have these, but you will probably already be listening and reading them in class. To really get the rhythm of speech in English, to get enough exposure to new and old vocabulary, all learners need to find learning materials somewhere on the internet.

LingQ is my no.1 recommendation for how to improve your receptive skills: listening and reading. I have personally used it for both Japanese and Chinese and am a paid member. It isn't necessary to be a paid member, but it will allow you to track your progress better. Paid users can save an unlimited number of vocabulary items, but even unpaid members can read and listen to a huge range of podcasts with scripts.

All curriculums are made up of three distinct parts, all of which need to align for the students to achieve what the school leadership want them to. Exactly what the school leadership identify as the key knowledge and skills is a matter of great importance. Language education is no different. Every course has learning goals, which they hope the content, pedagogy and assessment will help their students reach.

We can think of the content as specific skills, such as being able to write a persuasive essay, use present perfect sentences accurately and appropriately or discuss a variety of topics relating to health. Often the core textbook of the course will hold the majority of the target content – otherwise it would be better to choose a different textbook. Where schools go wrong is in choosing content inappropriate for the broader goals of the curriculum. If the goal is for students to be able to use English conversationally, then they will need to be given content relating to conversational styles, idiomatic language and enough lesson time spent on conversational practice. Many courses’ content doesn’t align with the boarder learning goals of the curriculum. Regardless of the quality of the teaching staff and the assessment, if the content and goals are unaligned, then the course won’t be able to deliver.

It’s possible that the content is appropriate, but if the teachers’ methodology doesn’t align with the content then it will be difficult for average and poor students to master the desired knowledge and skills. High achieving students who have access to the appropriate content will still be able to teach themselves. If one of the goals of the course is for students to have a detailed knowledge of grammatical rules appropriate for taking English tests for entrance into university, then the teacher shouldn’t focus too much on getting the students to research their interests and give long powerpoint presentations. They should spend more time on controlled practice activities and checking through answers as students won’t be able to understand why some answers are right and others are wrong by themselves.

When a course’s goals, content and pedagogy are all aligned, there is still a way for the course to fall down. If the tests, and the scores of the students, are unaligned with the content or the teaching then students will have to either reduce their level of engagement with the course content to focus on the knowledge and skills needed for the test, or be unprepared for the tests. This is a very common problem that students have, especially when they are studying for standardised multiple-choice English tests run by non-native English speaking education departments.

Curriculum designers need to focus on aligning these three aspects of the curriculum so that all lead students toward their language goals.

They will help. But taking IELTS classes is not the main factor in getting a better IELTS score. The main factor is your actual level of proficiency in English. Many students stop taking General English classes because they say that they need to focus on IELTS. This is a good idea if you plan to take a test in a month. IELTS classes will help you avoid getting a lower score than you deserve, they won't help you improve your score. If your English proficiency is basically a 5.5, then taking IELTS classes will make sure that you don't get a 5.0. But it won't help you get to a 6.5. It might help you get to a 6.0. But purely focusing on the scoring criteria, essay templates and cohesive devices is not going to make a very big difference. So, taking an IELTS course for more than 10 weeks instead of a more advanced General English class. Certainly for students in Elementary to Upper Intermediate it is more useful to spend more all of your time trying to work on your General English than to look at IELTS. Many students believe that what they test in IELTS is information that can only be found in an IELTS class, actually it is all English.

Getting a part-time job rarely gives international students new working skills, but always helps boost speaking and listening proficiency as well as cultural knowledge. Many part-time jobs are easy to get, but don't have a large degree of customer contact. Perhaps the worst possible part-time job to do is as a cleaner - generally you will be by yourself because managers know that cleaners usually don't clean when they are with someone that they can talk to. If you work as a kitchen hand you will talk to the cooks and the boss, but you may spend long periods of time just washing dishes with no chances to interact. Working in a supermarket stacking shelves could be similar, but the time spent talking to coworkers and managers. Working in a bar is generally not the best plan, but works well for students that already have a high level of speaking confidence. Work in a bar is very tiring because while everyone else is able to drink to keep their energy levels high, you have to maintain your level of interest in the interactions despite feeling sleepier and sleepier. Bars are only open at night, and some are open into the early morning which will make it much harder to study well during the day. Working in a fashion shop is a good choice if you are interested in clothes. You can have long conversations with some customers who will come from a variety of backgrounds. Usually these jobs require little experience and will accept international students easily. If you have a coworker then it will be even better. However, many shops don't have many customers, and you may find that you are sitting in a shop all day with no-one to talk to. The best kind of job is working as a waiter/waitress in either a cafe or a restaurant. You have to have a lot of short conversations, but usually there are quieter times when you can talk more to coworkers and customers who aren't in a rush. Just make sure that you don't work in a restaurant that sells food from your own country. This will pay close to nothing and you will speak very little English. The only advantage is that it is easy to get these jobs. That is because people quit quickly.

This is our second post of our three post series on "Jagged Profiles". This post will give some tips about how to refocus your English study so that you can develop a more balanced English proficiency profile.

For many learners they naturally gravitate towards a few skills. Extroverts love to speak and listen, and introverts usually prefer to read and listen, especially when they are at a lower level. Few people prefer writing, it is less common because it is usually the least developed of the four skills in the initial and intermediate stages. The best strategy is to identify your weakest skill, and then focus on it until it is at a similar level to your other skills. Following are some practical recommendations about how you can put more work into each one of them. Listening: When you are walking to school or work use headphones and listen to a podcast: at Level Up English we recommend http://www.lingq.com. They have an app in both the apple store and google play. As you are coming home from school work listen more. Just let the words pass over you and see what you naturally understand and what you don't understand, don't worry about. When you are at home continue to use LingQ, but read at the same time. As you are listening really look for the parts that you don't understand well, and then reread them. Don't be afraid to repeat, or rephrase, often not understanding is because you simply didn't know that word, so you can even ask, what does "limousine" mean? Speaking: Attending classes at language schools are the best way to improve overall speaking. If you talk with native speakers who aren't trained in language teaching they will probably ignore your mistakes if they can understand you, and if they can't understand you, they won't be able to help you fix your errors. You will get to practice in pairs and groups For students who are at a very low level of pronunciation, it is best to find a private tutor who is either very experienced, or also speaks your first language so that communication of task instructions are still clear. They will give you feedback. To develop accurate sentences the best way is to practice producing sentences that you already know are correct, from your textbook or from a magazine that you are interested in, online interviews or other materials that aren't too academic. You need to practice saying correct sentences out loud so that you can feel how accurate grammar sounds. If you already have relatively accurate grammar and vocabulary, but it takes you a long time to produce each sentence, or you are having trouble speaking for extended periods then you can attend language exchanges. Writing:

Writing really needs to be taught, and you need feedback on it. Joining an English for Academic Purposes course to learn the craft of writing and have an experienced teacher. Writing is most often developed most significantly when students are in university courses and can attend the university's writing skills unit.

There are some excellent texts that are appropriate for self study. For absolute beginners there are a variety of good textbooks: http://www.cambridge.org/au/cambridgeenglish/catalog/skills/effective-writing">Effective Writing (Whithrow). For intermediate learners who aspire to write academically but are just beginning: "http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Academic-Writing-Edition-Longman/dp/0131933957" Introduction to Academic Writing (Oshima & Hogue). For students already at university and struggling to improve their writing this text is really the best choice: https://www.mup.com.au/items/120101" How to write a better thesis (Evans, Zobel and Gruba).

Getting a penpal through one of the exchange sites such as http://www.livemocha.com is a good way to do it. You may have to look for a long time to find a reliable partner, and definitely don't use their language learning software unless you want to learn a swag of unrelated nouns.

Reading: When you read from a textbook they always give you true or false, or multiple choice questions, right? One of the easiest ways to develop your English reading skills is to read a text, and then imagine you are the examiner, figure out which parts could be misunderstood easily and write your own questions. You will know the answers to all of them, but the process of writing them will really force you to: understand the whole text, read for details, pick out hard words, find the parts where the grammar conveys subtle meaning. Start using twitter and follow the celebrities and sports stars that you love and allow notifications for your phone, but don't let them buzz or make a sound, they just turn up when you want to open your phone. When you are looking at the posts, make sure you read each one. Don't worry if you don't understand everything, just read for interest.

This is our third and final post in the series on "Jagged Profiles". The majority of our posts relate to the experience of learning English from the perspective of the learner, however this post is focused on the teacher. The majority of language schools will ask students to take some kind of entrance exam, moreover, the majority of these entrance exams will not focus on all four skills - it's simply not practical. Usually this is dictated by the cultural expectations, and at others it is in effect luck of the draw when the Director of Studies has a very strong belief about which skill(s) best represent overall ability. When I was studying Chinese in China, the entrance exam was reading and writing. Even though I was at that time already able to speak and listen at a B1 level, they put me in the level that was second from the bottom. I moved up two level and still found the oral component of the class was pitched slightly below what I needed, but the reading and writing was more than challenging enough to occupy my mind for all four hours of the daily classes. Chinese prioritise reading and writing over speaking and listening, it's cultural. For English teaching institutions, the tendency is to focus on speaking and listening, but for the sake of efficiency, it is still easiest to test for reading and writing. Setting up a listening test, and then marking it, is a pain. If a student can complete a reading and writing task at their own speed then the overall adminstrative requirements are quite a lot lower than if there is a speaking or listening assessment. A short discussion with the DoS usually will enable them to contextualise the students reading and writing performance, so to this degree, English teaching schools are often quite even handed in their treatment of students. All of that said students will still come into an Intermediate class with Upper Intermediate speaking and Pre-Int writing. The solution is to actually draw up a diagram and explain to students about the concept of a Jagged Profile - and ask students to reflect on their own level and think of strategies to bring their weaker skills up. It is essential that you don't pair students who are too different in speaking level with each other. If students are too different, they will feel that it is either a waste of time, or intimidating. The other skills are usually completed individually, so they are less of a concern.

This is our first post in a three post series on "Jagged Profiles". This post will introduce the concept and provide a definition.

There are four main skills in language learning, and English is no different. Learners have to develop proficiency in Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing. But some students may be very strong in some areas, and weak in others. In contrast, other learners have a relatively even skill level across all four. If a student's skills level across the four major linguistic areas of proficiency looks like the the score card of the student below, then they have a jagged profile.

The skills of Listening and Reading are significantly higher than their Speaking and Writing. When they enter a school, if the test is based only on a short essay they will be put in a relatively low level class and may find the text book too easy. In contrast if the entrance test is simply a multiple choice reading and listening then their score will be relatively high, but they may struggle to participate in group discussion activities in a higher level. For everyone involved it is a difficult situation. For the student it is frustrating - their classes will go from feeling too easy to difficult. For their classmates it may be frustrating because students are either too much better than then, or too much worse. For the teacher they have to adjust their lessons to cater for different skill levels. For students who finish the reading very quickly they need to have a harder reading for them to do while the other students are finishing the first piece. Do you have a jagged profile? For me personally in my Chinese learning, my Speaking and Listening are much better than my Reading and Writing. When I took language classes I felt like the pace was much too easy, that was partly because the entrance test included only Reading and Writing. If you have a jagged profile where your Speaking isn't as good, then you can do things like read a book out loud and record it, or simply spend more time in conversation.

Many people will say that reading about it in English is more accurate, or more complete, or more clear. The problem is though that often English explanations are very general, and cannot take into account the similarities and differences between the target English grammar and your first language. Some grammar explanations written in English will show common mistakes, but they can't possibly show all of them. The other reason why it's important to read about grammar in your first language first is that it is the fastest way to get a basic understanding of the concept. Linguistic concepts vary significantly between cultures. For example in Chinese, they use the same conditional form regardless of the likelihood of the event. First conditional: "If our football team can score one more goal, we will win." 如果我们的足球队可以再射门，我们会赢了。 Second conditional: "If I were you, I wouldn't buy that car." 如果我是你，我不会买那辆车。 Many Chinese learners of English use the first conditional for all conditionals. Clearly in the second sentence it is impossible that the speaker could become someone other than themselves. While they can produce the "past simple, would/could + infinitive" structure of the second conditional, they don't realise that the two conditionals are used in different situations. If they had read this information in Chinese the distinction would have been clear - that's assuming that the Chinese speakers who wrote the textbook understood this distinction themselves. After you have got the basic idea in your first language, then you can read about the same grammar in English. This should refine or extend on the idea.

When we are learning English, we can't always rely on the teacher to guide us in every single way. We also need to have the determination to spend long periods of time outside of class improving our skills, especially in areas of weakness. We need to develop 'learner autonomy'. This basically means that the learner is in control of their own learning. We can be active, and thinking about our own strategies and motivation, rather than passive and waiting for the knowledge to be given to us. Henri Holec said it himself: 'Autonomy is the ability to take charge of one's own learning'. There are a number of ways we can take control of our learning, but the most important is developing a learning schedule. For most students at a language school studying English in Melbourne or any of the other major cities in Australia, there are a lot of opportunities to develop one's English proficiency after the four hours of class with a teacher each day.

Learning a language is about developing personal connections with the language, people and culture. If English is just a book and tests, then it will be difficult to really feel the meaning. Friendship - developing friendships with speakers of the language is essential to growing personally in a language. Partly because you can practice with them. But, also because when you do study, you can think about how the words and grammar relate to your friends. When I was learning Japanese in university I used to spend two sometimes three hours before meeting my Japanese friends just revising vocabulary. I remember one time in particular my Japanese friend invited me to go to Karaoke (KTV) at 7pm that night. I downloaded the lyrics from three songs that I had been listening to and first read for the unknown words and looked them up and write down the definitions in my vocabulary book. A few were hard to understand how to use from the dictionary definition: gaze, destiny, overcome. I looked at the example sentences and wrote them down as well. I reread the lyrics and practiced singing them. I could follow the general meanings of each songs, but I couldn't understand some lines. At certain times it was too fast initially and I needed to practice making the sounds quickly. I didn't realise it at the time but this was exactly the kind of muscle training that my mouth needed to produce Japanese words more fluently. As I was singing and following the rhythm I could feel how the words across the sentences could be broken down and within each word how the syllables could be separated.

I took the lyrics with me in my pocket to the Karaoke and I was trying to use some of the new vocabulary with my friends, some were very useful - others weren't. The time came for me to sing. As I sung I was putting my recognition of the Kanji to the test. Linguistically I was up to the challenge - I still sounded awful but as I sung I did understand what it meant to be 'lost in the gaze' of a loved one. I talked with a friend about it and I never forgot any of that vocabulary. When we learn because we want to share music, art, stories with speakers of that language, and be a part of that community, that is when we will really make big improvements with our language proficiency. Are you curious, do you learn English because you want to find out more? When we are curious about something, we will always remember what we find out.

Life is happening through text messages. Facebook, Wechat, Line, Whatsapp, they are all ways that people text each other, and anywhere there is communication, there can also be language learning. In English language school classes students need to write 200-300 word essays, at university they can be as long as 5,000 words. But once people enter the workforce there is rarely need to write anything longer than an email, and usually they are only one paragraph if you are doing it right. The reality is that most writing is in the form of short messages online. So it is worth practicing them from the start. When we meet someone and make contact, a regular text message through phone text is often the easiest, but as people become more friendly and closer they will use Facebook. When I was in China I spent a lot of time on Wechat, the Facebook of China. I used to have my grammar and vocabulary notes next to me, and try to send texts to Chinese friends using that vocabulary and grammar. Whenever they responded with a word I didn't know, I would look for it in my dictionary and write it down carefully. The language that regular native speakers use in text messages, is the most crucial language to learn. Whatever people use in short messages must be absolutely essential - if you don't know it you must learn. The phrases that are taught in textbooks can never be as close to the heartbeat of a language as actual texting.

Grammar is all around us. If you are learning about past simple, then don't just look at the example in the textbook, or what your teacher has given you, keep looking for more in the world around you. When you are on the train or tram look at the advertisements. When you are watching a TV series (with subtitles) then try to look out for the grammar. Once you have learnt a new grammar point, then usually the way people use it will become more obvious. Before you paid attention to that part of the language, you probably didn't notice it as clearly when people use it. If someone tells you that somebody's hair is starting to go grey, the next time you see them you will look very closely to see if it is really true. Then you can see it clearly, he really is starting to go grey. But if nobody told you about that, you wouldn't have noticed. Language is the same. When we focus on a grammar point it essentially highlights it, it becomes easier to perceive. After taking language classes and hearing the teacher talk about the grammar, and then doing the exercises and the speaking activities, the language often still feels quite unnatural, and you might not be sure if it is really used like that.

As we learn a new language we pass through a series of phases, each with different durations, challenges, and feelings. We all want to reach a high level of proficiency, enough to speak with our friends or family effortlessly, to study in the language, or work in the language. We all have an idea of exactly how that language success looks. For me learning Japanese, was about going out and hanging out with Japanese friends and talking entirely in Japanese. When I was learning Chinese I wanted to be able to work with Chinese clients and do business. I achieved different goals in these languages but the road I travelled for each was in many ways very similar. The journey can be likened to approaching an island and making our way from one end to the other.

Learning the language is full of curiosity and joy. Buying the textbooks, telling friends about your new hobby, thinking about how great it will be to use the language proficiently, making new friends and reconnecting with old friends who also have a connection to the language.It is similar to how we feel when we see the island from the boat as we are approaching. Once we hit the sand and learn the greetings and the basics of the sound system, the alphabet (for English), we can feel huge amounts of progress in the first hours of learning. We are also finding out about the most salient aspects of the culture and it is exhilarating.

We can now see the general argument structure of the language: Subject, Verb, Object. The words we learn come up regularly in almost every English discourse. Once we know the 100 most commonly used words and their general meaning we already recognise about half of all the words in English writing - that's a lot!

We learn major modals like 'can', 'must', 'should'. We can negate. Grammar follows consistent patterns with many of the verbs. While there are a lot of difficulties, we are still using present, past and future simple to express basic meanings. All you have to do is add 'will' and you can talk about the future, and put an '-ed' on the end of the verb to talk about the past. Present continuous is just 'to be' and the -ing, and we can use it to talk about now or the future - how easy is that. Our confidence is building as quickly as our vocabulary is. There are so many resources for us. The way forward is clear, grammar is relatively straightforward.

The trees are becoming thicker and the trail harder to follow, but through the canopy comes plentiful light. The easiest parts of the language have already been mastered, but there are so many irregular past simple verbs. It's harder to guess when to use 'in/on/at'. We need to learn perfect tenses and some of these need the use of participles. Eat/Ate/Eaten is fine, but so many others don't seem to follow any clear rules. The problem of when to add an 's' hasn't gone away. But the light still shines, you are having conversations where you really feel you are better, you can see the improvement, it is slow but consistent. You recognise more of the words from TV series and can understand most of the jokes. Learning about culture in the language, either in written form or video is satisfying.

The sunlight that comforted us is long gone as we hear different uses of past simple and present perfect from different speakers, but regardless, we always seem to be getting them wrong. Why do people keep saying there is no 'to + verb-ing', I thought I just read that. I know that I have to remember which verbs need the to-infinitive and which are gerunds, but how can I remember that in the middle of a sentence during conversation. I am still struggling with when to use a/an/the/no article, maybe I should just give up and say whatever I feel like - the rules are so complex and seem to change anyway. You have invested so much time in this. At first it was so fun, the progress was so clear. Now it seems like there is no improvement. It doesn't matter which article you read, roughly 20% of the words will still be words that you don't know, or words that you have learnt before, but can't remember the meaning of anymore because they appear so infrequently. Every essay is full of mistakes and it is hard to tell stories.

From the vantage point you can see the other side. You still have a long way to go, but the path is clearer. Many of the words you studied and forgot are now becoming more familiar. It is easier to process speech at full speed, but comprehension of authentic listening and reading is still very hard. Essays have persistent spelling and small grammatical errors but '?' is seen less and less often. The logic and structure of essays and oral presentations are always acceptable - it's about the accuracy and fluency now.You are able to develop meaningful friendships with native speakers and other advanced speakers of English with whom you talk freely and have a deeper knowledge of each others' histories, values and goals for the future. You may even have a boyfriend or girlfriend. The ice of the long winter is melting, but you still need to get 7s in your IELTS and still need to submit essays.

You made it, you are studying real content completely in English where there is a very low language barrier, or you are working in an English office and have the advantage of also being a native speaker of another language. You go out with friends and can follow everything, tell jokes and live it up.

The talk suggests five principles and seven actions. Five Principles: Attention, meaning, relevance, memory and psychological state. Seven Actions: listen a lot, get the meaning first, start mixing, get as much comprehensibly input through a language parent, build muscle memory in the face, unconsciously connect the word and the image (meaning) rather than drilling.