STEP 1 - MAKE A STUDY PLAN

When we start something new, we should take some time and think about what we want to achieve and how important it is to us. If it's not important, we will get busy with other things and soon forget about our new challenge.
If you want to study a foreign language, you have to make it important for you.
a)Planning to travel to an English speaking country in a year, two years or even 10 years later can make English important to you and help you study and learn.
If you've chosen a country to visit, let it become your goal........your dream. If not, you'll need to make other dreams and goals.
b)Choosing the path to your goals is the next step. It's good to have a variety of ways to study. Ideally, students should take lessons, study at home, and have some natural contact with native speakers. Choosing a school, choosing a teacher, choosing a textbook, choosing other study books, choosing a lesson day and time, choosing CDs or DVDs, choosing homestudy activities like watching tv or listening to the radio are all important. Studying about your choices and deciding which combination of study methods will give you the information to make your study plan.
c)Your study plan should include what activities you want to do and how much time you want to allow for each activitiy. You should write this down, refer to it often and change it as often as you wish. Having a study plan for next week and next month is more important than what you did last week.


There are many aspects to learning English. speaking, listening, reading, writing, casual English, formal English, daily conversation (and aizuchi）, story telling, humour etc. You should also pay attention to pronunciation, body language, idioms, grammar, vocabulary.... just to name a few more. All students tend to enjoy some parts more than others (eg. many students like speaking more than writing) and consider some parts more important than other parts, so naturally, students develop strengths and weakpoints. This is ok, but you should allow some time to work on the parts of English you don't like too.

STEP 2 - CHOOSE a teacher or a school

After you pay 500,000 yen to a school and start taking lessons you might get some surprises. It makes sense to do some research before making your decision. There are thousands of things you can look into but here are some suggestions to give you some ideas.
a)Look around the school.
Do the toilets work?
Are the air conditioners too cold?
Are there any windows or plants?
Are the seats comfortable?
Is the carpet cleaned (more than once a month)?
b)Meet and say hello to some teachers as they walk around the school.
Are they friendly to students?
c)Ask about the teachers.
How many teachers are in the school?
How long have they been teaching English?
What countries are they from?
What are their approximate ages?
How many classes do they teach a day?
d)Ask about the school.
What textbooks are used?
How many student levels are there?
How can students progress to the next level?
Can students book into the classes they want to?
How are the lessons chosen for each class?
How do students get feedback?
e)Take a trial lesson.(Man to Man and Group)
f)Find out about cancellation fees. Cancelling a lesson and cancelling your whole contract.

On the other hand you might want a private teacher. (Man to Man and group lessons are options). Teacher-Student introduction site are getting more and more popular. Check out http://www.senseisagasu.com. Check out my personal site to see if I'm looking for private students or not. http://www.geocities.jp/eikaiwalesson

Like joining a school, there are many things you can research but it's not as important. If something goes wrong, just tell your teacher that you'd like to stop your lessons for a while because your getting busy with ......work. Then, find another teacher.

STEP 3 - BUY A TEXTBOOK and maybe some other study books.

Textbooks should be used to create a lesson topic and provide information for practicing key sentences. Students should look in the textbook for only a short time. They should be practicing and using English face to face.
When choosing an English study book, DON'T choose a book with Japanese writing.

STEP 4 - ATTEND classes regularly.

If you really want to improve your English QUICKLY, you need to take a lesson or two everyday. If you have a busy life, and want to maintain your present level of English until you can find time to study more intensley, then attending a lesson once every two weeks might be enough. The important thing is that you think about your goals and how serious you are and decide how often you should attend a lesson, THEN you should attend classes as often as you first planned.
It's important to take notes during class. The teacher might introduce 30 new words in a lesson and you write down the 10 which you don't know or use so that you can remember and use them. In other lesson, there might be a lot of discussion and you might write down 4 or 5 sentences which you usually say incorrectly or don't know how to say.
You should challenge yourself each lesson to write down GOOD notes. This will make your lessons even more interesting for you and be useful for later review.

STEP 5 - REVIEW lessons and study privately.

If you want to remember a phone number but don't have a pen, you have to repeat it several times when you first hear it, then think about it and repeat it in your mind every hour or two.
The same can apply for important words, sentences and structures which you learn in a class.

1)The first step is to read through your notes and circle or highlight the notes you plan to review. If the words and sentences are difficult, 3 words and 1 sentence may be enough.
2)Now that you have impotant and not too much information to review, you should write it neatly into a seperate notebook.
3)You now have a neatly written notebook with only the most important words and sentences for you to review. You can review this notebook a few times a week. Each time you review it think about if you have used the new English in a real conversation or not. If you have used it put a check mark next to it. If you really want to remember it try to use it in your next conversation or lesson.
4)After you've used it several times, and you're confident you can will remember it and use it again in the future, place a big X through it in your reveiw book. Your eyes will quickly go to something which you need to reveiw and remember.

STUDYING AT HOME will help you improve faster and save you money.
Which do you think is the best way to improve your listening comprehension?
1) Listening in a classroom for 100 hours or
2) Listening to English radio and children's programs at home for 100 hours.
maybe `in a classroom` but I'd say there's not much difference, only expense.