A Short Guide for Practicing English Productively

At the Writing Center, we often meet with students who are already working to improve their English fluency, but who want guidance on how to make that work more productive. With that in mind, we designed this guide to help you learn more from your daily encounters reading and listening to English.

Many students study in places where English is not commonly spoken. They have to rely on recordings, videos, and/or a single instructor’s voice. For someone who lives in a place where English is spoken widely, though, the phrases you hear and read daily are the most valuable language learning resource you have.

By changing some of your current approaches to language learning, you can build your fluency—and hopefully find studying language more engaging.

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Set specific language learning goals

Read with the express purpose of noticing, acquiring, and imitating the English other writers have used. Start by choosing a focus or goal for your reading. Here are a few examples.

• “I overuse long sentences in my writing, so when I read, I try to notice how authors express the same meaning more concisely.”
• “My professors gave me feedback that I need to work on transitions, so I notice how authors use discourse markers (i.e. however, therefore etc.).”
• “I am interested in creative writing in English (as this is something I do for pleasure in my own language). To structure my stories, I need to better understand how writers use time markers to organize a story (i.e. initially, after a certain time).”

Here’s an example of how setting a specific goal before reading helped an English learner notice a variety of time expressions in a text. Here, a teacher narrates his experience in the classroom.

Develop habits to help yourself remember new English words and phrases

• When you find a new phrase, repeat it: say it out loud, highlight it, and/or write it down.
•  Pay attention to the small words, too (like prepositions and articles)! For example, the following are relatively meaningless without their smaller words:
  • “head over to the…”
  • “with the intention of…”
  • “one of the most wonderful/confusing times…”
• You’ll want to record the phrase in a place where it is easily accessible to you. Because it is so important to return to a phrase after your first encounter with it, you might decide to carry a
  small notebook or open a document on your phone where you are able to frequently and easily record and revisit such language.
• Take note of the larger context in which you encountered the phrase. Write down the full utterance or sentence.

Learn the most typical way a word or phrase is used

When we don’t understand a word, we look up its meaning. While this practice builds comprehension, we often need different kinds of information about a word to help us use it precisely and accurately. We need to know how most other speakers of English would employ the word and for what purpose.

Let’s take the example of the word “palpitate.” If you look up the word, you find definitions such as “beat rapidly” or “shake with fast, tremulous movements.” Based on these, we might reasonably come up with the following sentences:

I suggest that you palpitate the juice box before drinking from it.
Palpitating the body warms up the muscles before a workout.

These examples don’t quite work, though. One of the most frequent ways we use “palpitate” is when talking about the heart beating because of fear or excitement. Now, with this information, we know that palpitating a juice box in the first example isn’t quite right. Rather, we could say, “My
heart began to palpitate when I realized what was happening in the neighbor’s house,” which would be much more accurate.

So, when learning a word, try to fill in the following blanks about it:

We usually use this word when talking about …
When I think of this word, I imagine…

Learn words in groups or units

Instead of trying to learn words one-at-a-time, learn phrases. In the case of the word “preside,” for example, look out for surrounding words, such as “preside over a meeting,” “preside over a case,” or “preside over an empire.” Do you notice how “preside over” appears in all three examples? These are the types of chunks to pay attention to and learn.

You cannot always plug in a single word in a new sentence and expect its meaning to stay the same. By learning chunks (a few words grouped together), you are learning how a particular word is used across contexts. Most everyday language naturally occurs in chunks: “How’s it going?” “What do you think?” “I’m sorry” etc.

In the following example, we’ve modeled how you can move from noticing individual words to learning chunks of words:

Individual vocabulary: After numerous unsuccessful encounters with Martha where she showed disdain for me, I finally persuaded her to accept a dinner invitation at one of the most exquisite restaurants in town.

Grouped vocabulary: After numerous unsuccessful encounters with Martha where she showed disdain for me, I finally persuaded her to accept a dinner invitation at one of the most exquisite restaurants in town.

Learn phrases you can use across many contexts

Much of the language in academic writing gets recycled over and over again. This means that even if you are writing about a new topic, you can return to certain phrases you used in an earlier paper. You’re never really starting from scratch.

Many examples of common academic language offer metadiscourse—language about the writing itself. This includes phrases like, “This paper will discuss ,” or “By analyzing ____________, the authors argue ____________,” or “At the same time, ____________.” It is very likely that you have already come across many of these phrases without knowing how important they are—look out for them actively and reuse them in your own writing.

As you read, start to notice metadiscourse more actively. Take a look at the following example:

In particular, the researchers found that the high levels of consumption of trans fat and cholesterol pointed to a need for more health-focused programs for ageing adults in the community.

The bolded phrases have an important framing role. The first phrase tells the reader that the information to come will present a key finding from a study. The second phrase connects this finding to its larger real world application. Taken on their own, though, the bolded phrases don’t have much meaning, which is why they can be so usefully reused across many writing contexts.

Learn phrases to help you soften your speech or writing

A skill you may not realize you need is softening or hedging—in order to indicate uncertainty, humility, hope, or complication.

Being able to nuance or soften your utterances is crucial when you want to be polite, make suggestions, offer advice, or make requests. Say you want to request an extension on a paper. Knowing what you want to say, you may send off an email asking “Can I have an extension on this paper?” Your professor might find the email a little inconsiderate. However, if you say, “Given these reasons, I was hoping that you would consider granting me an extension…,” it communicates a needed degree of politeness and consideration.

Hedging (or softening) is also commonly used in academic writing in order to introduce a level of uncertainty or doubt to your argument. Read the following examples to learn how to modify English to make it less abrupt or direct:

Phrase	Softening/Hedging
Can I have an extension on this paper?	I was hoping you would be able to grant me an extension on this paper.
The author concludes that increased activity on social media is a key cause of mental illness.	The author seems to suggest that increased activity on social media is a key cause of mental illness.
We can implement the following changes in our teams.	We might consider implementing the following changes in our teams I would recommend implementing the following changes in our teams.

Create your own phrase notebook

Besides studying grammar, you also need to build your vocabulary to increase your fluency in English. Rather than finding an existing vocabulary list to study, though, create a personalized vocabulary notebook of your own. For one, the words and phrases in an already compiled list may not reflect how people actually speak and write in your social circles or in your academic discipline. Further, building these lists in response to words or phrases you’ve already encountered can reinforce your ability to remember them.

Of course, you cannot possibly record all the language you need to know in one go. You’ll add to this notebook as and when you encounter especially useful language.

You’ll also want to identify categories to help organize your notebook and make it meaningful to your own academic, personal, and professional life. You might create categories around:

• A subject or topic you are studying such as “climate change” or “The Great Depression”
• A purpose you have for speaking or writing such as writing down phrases you can use “to apologize,” “to express doubt or uncertainly,” “to speak to a potential employer,” “for email correspondence with professors.”
• Discipline-specific phrases. A discipline-specific phrase is one that someone outside your field may not fully grasp or be able to use. For instance, sitting in a class as a prospective finance major, you can keep a running journal of phrases in your field such as “rate of return” or “create value for shareholders.”

Additional resources

Baruch College’s Tools for Clear Speech program has a wide range of resources for developing oral intelligibility in English, which means working to make sure your listeners understand you. If you’re looking to work independently, we recommend their interactive exercises and resources.