Leveling-Up Your English Proficiency

The holidays are quickly approaching. Whether or not you celebrate anything, most places in the United States will be closed in recognition of them. This means that you are going to have the opportunity to take some time off from your daily routine and spend time with family and friends. It can be great to rest a bit during these periods of time, but it can also be somewhat problematic. Why? Because it is very easy to lose focus entirely and allow yourself to become too relaxed. Honestly, I have been experiencing this for the past week. Ever since I finished my exam, which was the final challenge before finishing my program, I have been in a relaxed state of mind. Of course, I have been sticking to my habits like keeping track of my daily goals, writing in my journal every night, and writing these blog posts, but there have been other things that I have not been as focused on because I have been "taking it easy".  Taking it easy, so to speak, can be benefic...

In previous entries, we have discussed the reasons why you should continue to improve your proficiency. You probably know from personal experience why you should: maybe you want to be taken more seriously at work, maybe you want to improve your grades, or maybe you want to be able to lead your team more efficiently. There are many different reasons why you should and, in some cases, why you might even need to.  But here's the thing and I'm sure you'll agree: learning a language can be both exhausting and repetitive which can eventually lead to you losing interest in it. A few summers ago, I tried to teach myself French. At first it was exciting. I was also reading French literature and the idea of potentially being able to understand the parts in French without having to consult the endnotes kept me motivated. However, after a few months of very little progress, I decided to take an indefinite break from learning French. And you want to know why? Because I ha...

Well, I am unsure as to how to begin this. To start, I would say that I am writing from a very interesting place. Lately, I have been going through some things that have impacted my ability to do all of the things that I wanted to do, like going to school and thinking about my career. So, I thought that I would turn my turbulent experiences into a lesson for thinking about your journey into gaining proficiency.  To start, I would have to go into a little bit of detail into what I have been going through lately. To be very frank, I do not know how to explain things, so I am going to take the direct approach and try to be as honest as possible. I was hospitalized for a mental breakdown recently because I tried to take on too much for this term. I was under the delusion that I could handle more than I actually could. Trying to multitask is never a good idea because what can happen is that we can try to do too much at once and this can have potentially negative consequences. ...

English is a complex language. There are many different parts of it you must learn to attain mastery of the language. While each part is important and necessary to becoming a fluent speaker/writer of English, there are certain parts that are more crucial than others. For example, I would say that knowing that the noun typically comes before the verb in a sentence is more important than knowing that a colon is used when the second part of the sentence is more important than the first part and a semi-colon is used when both parts are equally important. This is why it is important to prioritize which areas of English you need to work on.  You may remember that when setting goals you should be as explicit as possible. If you need a refresher on that post you can read it here . Once you have clearly defined your goal and broken it down into smaller parts, you should figure out which parts are the most important. In other words, which parts need to be complet...