- Hello, everyone and welcome back to "English With Lucy."
Today, I have brought you to my favourite window
and outside of this window is my favourite tree.
Many of you might not know this about me.
but I live on a farm in England
and I thought it would be nice for you to see
some of the surroundings in the farm
or if you find it distracting.
I'm going to talk to you about motivation,
but importantly, about the perfect study routine.
I know that lots of you feel that you lack motivation,
and one thing that can really, really help
is implementing a good study routine.
But that can feel quite daunting.
or something that seems very difficult or scary.
In this video, I am going to help you out.
I'm going to show you how you can incorporate
and include every English language skill
into different parts of your day.
We will start with the morning,
move on to the daytime, then to the afternoon,
Ah, quickly, I have some housekeeping.
If you want to receive news lessons from me,
where I'll be keeping you all updated.
The link is in the description box.
So shall we get started? (laughs)
So let's start with the morning.
Now, are you a morning person?
A morning person is someone who is great in the mornings.
You can also call them an early bird.
The opposite of this would be a night owl,
somebody who thrives in the nighttime.
Tell me if you're an early bird or a night owl.
My problem is that in the mornings,
my eyes are blurry and I can't read anything,
I can't watch anything on the TV.
So I think that the best skill to practise in the morning
And this is a good thing to do because for many students,
are their least favourite skills to learn.
It's the skill that they struggle the most with.
I know this because I learned Spanish and Italian
really, really scared of the listening exams.
Can anyone else relate to this?
Reading up here, speaking, maybe here,
writing up here, listening down here.
It's hard skill, it really, really is.
So don't beat yourself up about it.
Don't give yourself a hard time.
Instead, make your listening skills
the thing that you practise every single morning.
I love it when my students ask
for listening practise recommendations
because I have so many recommendations
and I'm going to put them in the description box,
but I'll talk about some of them here.
A great one is to find a daily podcast,
something that you enjoy listening to in English
and make a habit of listening to it,
Maybe you're in bed, maybe you've just got up
One that's really relevant at the moment,
the BBC have a global coronavirus update every morning,
and it's only around six minutes long
So you could know what's going on
with the coronavirus around the world.
if you want to know relevant vocabulary.
Another is BBC News, I especially like Radio 4,
another really great one is Luke's English Podcast.
This is one I often recommend to my students.
I will leave his website down there as well.
He started that podcast in 2009 and he has made
One thing I will recommend if you're listening
to a shorter episode, try to listen to it twice.
I know it can be boring, but it's so helpful
And if you can find one with a transcript,
listen to it with no transcript first
and then read along with it the second time.
This is more appropriate for the shorter podcasts.
Right, so I recommend listening skills for the morning.
Obviously, you can mix these around.
These are just really good ideas
for incorporating English practise into your daily life.
This is what I would ideally do
if I were learning a language,
but let's move on to speaking skills.
You can do this at anytime of the day.
I prefer to do it in the daytime.
Now this little segment of the video
is sponsored by Lingoda and their Language Sprint.
Now in a perfect daily study routine,
you would be able to take a class with a qualified teacher
There is actually a way that you can do this and gain 100%
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I'm really happy to share this opportunity with you
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Remember, places in the Sprint are limited.
This is a language school, spaces fill up.
So you have the link in the description box.
You have my code, SCHOOL 107 for 10 euros off.
So we've covered speaking with a partner there.
What about practising speaking alone?
Because that's something I know a lot of people
have been asking about throughout the pandemic, especially.
Well, there are so many options
and resources available for you, many of them free.
when I was learning Spanish and Italian,
Spanish in particular, was mimicking people.
And they have no idea that I did this,
but I found someone with an accent that I liked
and I would pause it and repeat it
I have actually uploaded quite a few videos with space
for you to repeat the word after me or the phrase after me,
I think I've done done common idioms, common objectives,
common nouns as well recently.
I'll link those down below, but definitely, take advantage
of the space I leave afterwards to repeat after me
Another thing that I really love to do
I act as if I'm in a movie and that somebody
but there is one very specific situation
where I do actually explain out loud what I am doing
as I'm doing it in another language.
So for you, this is probably English,
for me, it's normally Spanish.
I like to create my own personal cooking shows.
I live on a farm, I'm marrying a farmer.
So when I cook, I try to make it
a little more exciting for myself.
And I explain to an invisible audience
and invisible TV camera what I'm doing.
And it is so good for practising your speaking.
And if you dare, film yourself.
I'll watch you later, hilarious.
Those videos will go with me to the grave.
That means that I will die with these videos.
Right, so we move on to the afternoon. (laughs)
So in the afternoon, I recommend that you practise
your writing and your reading skills.
I just feel that this is the perfect relaxing time of day.
If you are a student, you can take a break from studying.
If you have a job and you work throughout the day,
and I'm talking about taking a short break or doing this
Now reading's quite an obvious one.
I can recommend any sort of media like books,
fiction, nonfiction, newspapers.
One thing that I've discovered recently
that I absolutely love is the "Happy Newspaper."
I was getting really, really down and depressed about
all of the negative news in the world.
And whilst I still think it's important to read that news,
I needed something that I could have for a bit of me time,
And there is a newspaper called the "Happy Newspaper."
I've checked and it's available internationally.
It's a small newspaper that shares only happy, good stories.
And so that could be a really nice option for you
if every afternoon you just sit down
and choose a number of good, happy stories
It could be five, it could be seven,
they're quite addictive (laughing)
or you could time yourself and say,
right, I'm gonna do 10 minutes of happy reading.
I will link that particular newspaper down below.
I am a subscriber, let me know if you go for it
because I'd love to share opinions on the stories.
Now obviously, there are books as well.
I feel like I should make a separate video on books
that are appropriate for each level of English,
but there is one in particular that I will mention.
And it's actually a series, it's Olly Richards'.
He runs the website, IWillTeachYouaLanguage,
and he has a series of books called "Short Stories"
I've just ordered the Swedish one as well
because I'm feeling particularly drawn
to that language at the moment.
So they're stories for beginners,
but you can read at a nice pace, pick up new vocabulary.
They're really, really fantastic.
that there are short stories available
for any beginner in a language.
So in the afternoon or potentially the evening,
I feel like some people might prefer the evening.
It depends on how chaotic your household is.
If you have a more peaceful time in the afternoon,
One thing I really recommend is looking
This is something that has been talked about
There was a real trend a couple of years ago
with people showing their bullet journals,
but don't discount how effective this can be
You can use bullet journals to track your exercise,
but I would use it to track your vocabulary
and your language skills that you've picked up
and how you've been feeling when speaking
in the other language and documenting what you've practised.
Another thing I will recommend is real pen pals, okay?
So a pen pal is somebody who you write to.
And now there are lots of language exchange websites
which are fantastic, I also recommend that you do that.
But one thing that must not be forgotten is the power
of a written letter and how it can make you feel
Receiving a letter that somebody has written to you by hand
and having to write a written response,
it almost provides an obligation to you.
You feel that you must understand it completely
and you must respond adequately.
Sometimes in English, when we want to refer to postal mail,
we call it snail mail 'cause it takes such a long time
And there's a website called globalpenfriends.com,
to find a physical snail mail pen pal.
See if you can find an English speaking pen pal
or maybe another pen pal that is also learning English
and start a pen friendship with them.
You can send gifts, postcards, talk about where you're from,
It's a really fantastic way of practising your writing.
And if the other person agrees to it,
you can ask them to send back your letter with corrections,
but only if they are up for it.
If they are writing to you in your language
that they are learning, you can also return the corrections
I really, really recommend going back to listening skills.
You want to rest your eyes and just have something
that will help you drift to sleep.
And I found a fantastic app for this.
A friend actually recommended this app to me
because I was having some trouble with some stress
and I was struggling to go to sleep.
I was struggling to let go of my phone as well.
put my phone away and just listen.
This app Calm has guided meditations and relaxing music,
but most importantly, it has bedtime stories in English.
And sometimes these stories are read by celebrities
And as soon as I heard these stories,
I just thought of my students, what a lovely way
to go to sleep with English in your brain,
but in a relaxing way, one final bit of language practise
There are also many other apps
that have bedtime stories as well.
I'm sure you can search for those,
Right, that's it for today's video.
I hope you enjoyed seeing my favourite tree,
but do let me know if you found it distracting
I won't do every video like this,
but I enjoy showing you a little bit more about
If you are interested in what I do in my daily life,
then you can follow my vlogging channel.
I've put the link down there as well,
and I show my life on a farm in the English countryside.
Don't forget to check out Lingoda to as well.
Click on the link in the description box to check the dates
for the latest Sprint and to sign up
and use my code, SCHOOL 107 for 10 euros off.
Don't forget to connect with me on all of my social media.
I've got my Facebook, my Instagram and my email lists.
So you can receive emails from me.