Finding time to work on English skills can feel like an impossible challenge, especially when juggling multiple jobs and family commitments. I totally get it; it’s exhausting just thinking about squeezing English practice into an already packed schedule. Instead of piling more onto your plate, I encourage you to integrate English into what you’re already doing—think of it as transforming your daily routines into practice opportunities. Whether you’re commuting, on a lunch break, or just winding down, there are moments where you can engage with English, like listening to podcasts or striking up conversations. Remember, it doesn’t have to be a long commitment; even a couple of minutes can kickstart your practice and help you break free from that first language bubble.
Takeaways:
- Finding time for English practice can be tough, especially when juggling multiple jobs and family responsibilities.
- It’s crucial to integrate English learning into daily activities rather than adding it as an extra task on your plate.
- Utilizing commute time to engage with English content can transform dead time into valuable practice moments.
- Active listening is key: mentally engage with content by asking the five W’s to deepen understanding and retention.
- Lunch breaks present a unique opportunity to practice conversation skills in English, even if it’s just sharing one thought.
- Starting with just two minutes of practice can help build a sustainable habit of learning English throughout the day.
Transcript
You know, one of the biggest challenges that I hear people say they have when it comes to working on their English, when it comes to working on their celpip skills, is the lack of time.
I mean, some of the people that I've worked with in the past have multiple jobs, like not just one, but two or sometimes even three, that they're working in order to try to make ends meet. And. And some of those people even have families.
Maybe that's you, that you have a family as well, and you're working and you're just trying to take care of everything all at once. Your work, your family. And it feels like.
And it probably is even more than feels like at the end of the day, you just don't have enough time to work on. On your English skills.
When everything has been said and done right, you get home and all you want to do is either fall asleep or try to spend time with your loved ones, your family, just to try to recover so you can get back up and do it again all the next day. And just the thought of adding English practice or practice for your celpip exam into that mix is just, quite frankly, exhausting, isn't it?
I mean, there's not enough time in the day, and I. I truly get that. I have things in my life that I'm really working hard to try and make happen.
Like, if you've been a listener to this podcast for any length of time, you know that I am working on a novel, and I have little spurts or little spaces in time where I feel like I'm able to make a lot of progress on it. And then there are other seasons or spaces in time like this one, where I've really been struggling to make time to write.
And it's been like, oh, probably a few weeks now since I've been able to really sit down and work on it.
And what's so frustrating to me is that I'm this close to being finished, and yet I just can't seem to find the motivation or the space, the mental space, to actually sit down and focus on writing. And so it just sits there, kind of waiting for me to pick it up again. And that might be what you're feeling about your English skills as well.
You're frustrated because you don't have enough time to be working on something that is important to you, but you're not sure how to add it to your already busy plate. And that is my first idea for you today.
Instead of trying to add it to your already filled plate, already full plate, I want to encourage you to look for ways to not add it to your plate because stuff is going to fall off. That's not going to work for you.
Instead, I want you to think differently about the things that you do during the day and look for ways to include English in what you're already doing, not add to it, not add to your life, but look at your life and find ways to make what you're already doing be done in English so that you're not adding. You're using what you're already doing as practice time. Let me give you some ideas or examples like when you are.
I know some people have a long commute. I'm thinking of one guy in particular who has to travel sometimes an hour each day in order for him to get to work.
When I lived in Mexico, I had to travel an hour and a half every day one way in order to get to where I had to work. So in total, I had three hours, an hour and a half in the morning and an hour and a half on the way home.
Again, that's three hours of space that you could be using for practice. And maybe your commute time, I hope your commute time is a lot less than that. But that's a space in time where we often.
Where I often disconnect or my mind just wanders or I'm listening randomly to the radio or that's how I used to. To spend those dead times. Now I love to use those times to listen to podcasts that help me to. To learn things that I'm interested in.
I connect to different podcasts to. To get, you know, like investigative journalism reports on what's going on in the world today. And I'm trying to take advantage of that downtime.
And what I'm suggesting for you is how can you use some of that dead time, that time when you are commuting or when you're walking or when you're exercising. Those are all spaces that you could be using to help you to practice. In this case, it could be practicing your listening skills in English.
And when you are practicing those listening skills, what I want to encourage you to be doing is not just passively listening, like letting the words flow over your ears, like passing through your mind, and you're kind of like it's just flowing over you. Instead, what I want to encourage you to do is to try to be mentally answering the five W's. Who, what, when, where, and why?
Who is this story talking about? What is going on? Where is it happening? Why is it important See if you can build that story in your head as you are listening.
And then when the story is over, or when the podcast is over. I guess when I've said when the story is over, I'm thinking of if you're listening to a news, a news report on the radio.
When it's finished, try turning it off and then retell the story to help you with, like, retell the story in your own words, with the objective being helping you to pay attention to what you just heard. Because there are two ways to listen.
There's the passive way, like I was just saying before, where the words just kind of flow over you, but you're not really paying attention to the details of what's going on. If you're working on yourself at practice, that's not really the kind of practice that you want to be doing.
You want to be focusing on detail, details, and that's a great way to do it. The 5W exercise. As you're listening, or maybe if you're at lunch, we're talking here about ways to include English in what you're already doing.
If you work every day, you probably have a little bit of time for lunch break. I talk about this all the time.
But your lunch breaks, if you work in an environment with other people who speak English, don't waste this opportunity. This is a wonderful opportunity. Scary, but a wonderful opportunity for you to practice your conversation skills in English.
And if you are an introvert like me, those opportunities can feel like a space for you to just be by yourself. That you, you know, lock yourself in your cubicle or in your office and you don't come out and you just eat and just, you know, relax.
By watching YouTube videos or listening to something, you avoid talking to people.
But what I want to encourage you to do is to use that time as practice where you go on purpose with the intent of listening to the conversation with the people around you and contributing just one idea. Participate just once in that conversation in your lunch. Make that your. Your mission. When you go to have lunch, don't just see it as lunch break.
See it as an opportunity to practice listening skills and speaking skills. And all you need to do is contribute one idea. Excuse me? Just one idea. That's all you need. It doesn't have to be a long speech.
It doesn't have to be you talking for the whole time. Just put it in your mind. I just need to contribute one idea and then see what happens next.
See if there's an opportunity for you to continue the conversation. Sometimes there will be. Sometimes you'll open the door to a one wonderful conversation with somebody.
Other times it will be just you conveying your idea, and that's that. But the goal is for you to put yourself in those places. Because you know what?
Like this whole conversation that I'm having with you about trying to include English in your day. What I found is that we often build bubbles around ourselves, don't we, in our first language.
When I lived in Mexico for 16 years, I had a bubble around me that was all in English. But believe it or not, the TV shows that I watched, the people that I hung out with, the things that I listened to, were mostly all in English.
I didn't have to use my very limited Spanish skills, which meant my Spanish skills took a long time to grow. Eventually they did.
Eventually I figured out what I was doing by surrounding myself with English all the time, and I started to look for ways to pop that bubble. But I bet that that's something that you have unconsciously or purposefully maybe have built around yourself, this bubble of your first language.
And my friend, that bubble is working against you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year. I've said this before in this podcast, but I have very good friends that I've known for the time that we've been here, like 10 years.
But they've been living here in Canada for 20 years, two decades. And you know what level of English they're at? Beginner. Why?
Because they built around themselves a first language bubble so that they don't have to use their English at all. And now they're really struggling because they do need to get a CELPIP score. They do need to demonstrate their English skills.
So they're scrambling after 20 years of living here in Canada. So don't fall for that idea of thinking that just because I live in an English speaking country that my English is going to magically improve.
It won't. It will only improve the more you use your English. So stop trying to add English to your life.
Look for ways to include English in what you're doing already. Look for ways to pop that first language bubble that it's so easy to build around ourselves and.
And begin trying to make English be a part of your life. Look for those spaces that you can switch them over from your first language to English.
And finally, what I want to leave you with is all it takes is two minutes. Stop thinking that this practice has to turn into hours long. Like we have this conditioning in our mind.
I think that we think that when I'm practicing or when I'm studying, it has to turn into these hours long ordeals where I have to, you know, lock myself in my room to study. Don't do that to yourself, especially if you're struggling just to get that habit going again.
Like me and my writing, I need to go right down to small little steps. Two minutes. Two minutes. James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, he writes about this all the time.
Well, in his book Atomic Habits, he has a whole chapter on this.
But he argues that with just two minutes practice, but increasing the two minutes frequency during the day, like the number of times you do those two minutes of practice, that's how you start to get a new habit rolling much easier. You have to make it easy for you to get that habit going again. So just two minutes today.
See if you can find those two minutes to devote to your English skills. And don't forget to be looking for ways to include English in what you're doing.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Speaking of the this is not the Speak English Fearlessly podcast anymore. Thank you for listening to the Celpip Success podcast. My name is Aaron and I did that once again, didn't I? I introduced myself at the very end.
Well, hi, I'm Aaron. Thank you for listening to this podcast and I hope that you'll come back again next time for another edition. We'll see you soon. Bye Bye.
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