Leveling-Up Your English Proficiency

As I have mentioned several times, I have developed a passion for reading that has taken me to a completely different place in terms of my career and my life as a whole. That being said, becoming the avid reader that I am did not come easily. I had to develop the resilience and the patience to understand that my linguistic skills needed time and a serious commitment in order to improve. Therefore, I think that you have to develop a similar mindset when you decide to embark on the journey to become an avid reader.  Since the previous post has been all about recommended books to read, this post will be about my journey as an ESL student trying to learn to read novels written in English. Note: This post is targeted towards English language learners and beginners who wish to learn to read English. If you are familiar with the language and the content of the written work, you can skip this post. If you are at an intermediate level, another post will be dedicated to your situa...

As mentioned in previous posts, reading can be a great way to improve your English proficiency. There are two significant ways that reading can help: first, depending on the genre of book, reading a book may give you an idea to use or expand on, and second, reading exposes you to perfectly written text which means you could learn a thing or two just by being mindful of how a book is written.  However, despite the potential benefits reading could yield for you, there are a lot of books to choose from, some of which can be helpful and some of which might overcomplicate things. This primarily depends on how advanced your proficiency is. For example, if you have only just begun to learn English you probably want to avoid any books written in the nineteenth century considering such books tend to include dense passages and complicated vocabulary. However, if you have been speaking English for a while, you might appreciate the advanced writing techniques used in such writing. Ther...

As most of you may know at this point, I am an international student who moved to the United States on August 21, 2014. I came to the United States as a university freshman at the age of eighteen. I remember the moment I landed almost as though it happened just yesterday— that moment was such a rush of excitement and mystery for me. I was a young child on the verge of starting a new phase in my life. However, life in the United States was not as dream-like as I thought it would be. Issues ranging from academic difficulties to culture shock started to plague my college experiences. Now, the average reader would expect me to use this article to rant and complain about my woes and struggles, but I won’t do that. As you may have figured out, I am a reflective individual. I like to look back to find out what I have missed. So, that is exactly what I am going to use this article to do. With every choice I made back in the day, there is a moment when I wished that I had asked for h...

Imagine this: Traveling halfway across the world to attend a school or fill a corporate position in a country where no one speaks your native language. You are suddenly immersed in a completely new culture, one in which all you know is based on what you have seen in movies. Not only do you feel like a stranger in a strange land, but you are forced to figure things out with minimal support. This, for many people coming to the United States, does not require much imagination because it is something that is commonly experienced. When I try to imagine myself in such a position, I am instantly filled with concern. Honestly, I'm not sure how I would handle such an endeavor, nor do I think I would want to. Yet, every year it seems hundreds and thousands of immigrants put themselves in such a position by moving to the United States. I have the utmost respect and admiration for these people, whether they are moving here to attend a four-year university or to start their own busines...

As we have talked about before, learning English is not an easy thing to do. There is a lot of commitment and time that is needed in order to reach the proficiency level that you desire. That being said, I  want to stress the point that it is always better to seek help rather than go at it alone. I am aware that asking for help is not the easiest thing to do, but the benefits outweigh the difficulties. I can personally attest to this from my own personal experiences of having a mentor throughout my journey of learning English. Through this article, I intend to highlight significant experiences that I have had with several mentors that I have had throughout different stages of my life. All of these mentors range from teachers to authors with each of them serving their own function; each of them have taught me a lesson or two that have managed to stick with me through the rest of my life as a student and as a human being. In addition, I also want to express once agai...

In previous posts, there have been plenty of tips on the best ways to learn English. There has been plenty of advice and tips to make the best of your language learning progress and get the results that you desire. That being said, this post covers tricks or learning techniques that do not help you when learning English. As I have said before, these are just from my own experiences. I am aware that everyone reading this post has different goals and learning methods that work for them. Therefore, I will try to keep this post as general as possible. If you would like help in creating personalized learning tactics that serve you best, email us now at levelupproficiency@gmail.com All that being said, it is time to delve into what has hindered my English learning progress: I. I Relied on the Dictionary… For Everything Yes, as the title states, I was at a point where nothing else really mattered for me other than using the most advanced vocabulary that I was capable of at ...

Email writing is perhaps one of the most common forms of writing in both academic and professional settings. This is because emails are one of--if not the most--convenient ways of communicating with your teachers or colleagues. Writing an email may seem harmless however it is a bit different than writing a text to a friend. In this post, I am going to talk about three common mistakes nonnative speakers of English make while writing emails. In addition, I am going to include a template you can use to ensure your emails will be as concise as possible. Note: I have seen the following mistakes made by both native and nonnative speakers, however, for the sake of this post, I am only going to refer to them as mistakes made by nonnative speakers. Also, each of these common mistakes are interconnected, meaning that if you are making one of them, you are probably making the others as well. I. Giving Way Too Much Information This is probably the top mistake that nonnative speakers make w...