Leveling-Up Your English Proficiency

Ever since my traveler's blog to India, these posts are seemingly becoming more and more metacognitive (that is, I am getting as much out of writing them as I hope you are getting by reading them). This week I want to discuss something that you have probably experienced before. This thing is perhaps one of the most difficult decisions you will have to make because there really is no way to know for sure if you should do it or not. What am I talking about?  The urge to quit.  Earlier today I was reading a blog post about when to know it's time to quit. As you probably remember from last week's post, I've been going through a lot of personal stuff, most of which has been strenuous and tiring. Well, I'm not going to lie, staying on track has been difficult; not only with school and work but with this as well. Earlier today I found myself wondering if maybe it was time to call it quits for this blog. Yes, honestly, I was considering if it was time...

Sometimes in life we are forced to face a major challenge or issue. Sometimes these issues can be so challenging that all we want to do is hit the pause button on everything else and focus on whatever the issue is. This might seem like the right thing to do initially but it will likely have a negative impact on whatever progress you've made so far in other areas of life. This week I was confronted with such a challenge. I don't feel comfortable getting into details, but this particular issue has taken much of my focus and even required me to leave work early on Wednesday (something I would never do under normal circumstances). I admit that the latter half of the week was extremely tiring, and at times, it felt nearly impossible to stay on course with my goals. Even as I write this, the issue still exists, but I can't let it hold me back from doing what I need to do like writing this weekly blog post. While this post does not necessarily have to do with improving y...

As I'm sure you've seen by now, we have officially launched our website. While we will continue to add new features and tools to it over the next several months, we felt it was important to publish something with the basic information about our brand. So what am I getting at?  The site was actually finished an entire week before it was published, and I'm glad that we took the extra time to look over and revise it. Here's why: Unbeknownst to me was the fact that a website's interface on the computer typically needs to be slightly altered for the mobile interface. While I was looking over the site myself, I had several close friends and relatives take a look at it and give me feedback. The only concern most people had was they said that in the services section on the homepage it was hard to read the text because the picture was behind it. Now, I knew that wasn't the case on the computer, so initially I was a bit confused by what they meant. Then I realized...

Setting Goals Taking Proficiency Step By Step As you all might be aware, I, R.M, am an international student with a fervent desire to study English. In addition, I have agreed to write for Level-Up Proficiency as I believe that they have the right mindset to understand that gaining proficiency in a language is a hard and intricate process. In order to succeed, there has to be an immense amount of dedication on the part of the learner and the instructor.  That being said, I was not as fortunate to have an instructor or mentor of sorts to help me out in tough times. That being said, this is my experience of setting goals to make up for the fact that I have had no outside help. This can be hard! This requires you to keep your motivation levels at a constant! So, I hope that this helps to not only keep your larger goals of proficiency in mind, but also help you to pace yourself so that you can reach the finish line as quickly as possible! Understanding Where You Are At… ...

In our last post I had mentioned how setting goals is extremely important especially when deciding on whether or not it's time to upgrade your routine. If you missed that one, you can check it out here . I had said, half-jokingly, that perhaps the next post I write was going to be about the importance of setting goals. Honestly, I wasn't going to actually commit an entire post to just that topic because, to me, goal setting is about as common sense as putting gas in the car. However, I experienced something last week at work that reminded me that a lot of people actually struggle with setting goals. Actually, it's more like I experienced something again.  As I'm sure you know by now, I work as a professional tutor at my school in addition to taking graduate classes. My job as a tutor requires me to work with various different types of students including both native and nonnative speakers of English. Do you want to know what one of their biggest issues is regard...