050: Study English How Much?

Hi I'm A.J Hoge the director of Effortless English. It's time for today's student question. Here's today's question: A.J how much should I study English each day? That's a great question, a super common question students ask me all the time. “A.J how much should I study English? you know 30 minutes a day, 40 minutes a today, an hour, what's the best?

Well, the best would be 24 hours a day, but of course you probably have to sleep eventually and you probably have a life, you probably have a job or you're going to school, hopefully you have friends. If you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a wife or a husband you may have children, so you have a busy life. So obviously for most people, studying English 8 hours a day or 10 hours a day, it's not possible it's too much. And that's okay because it's not necessary. So my best answer for you is, at least one hour per day, total.

So if you can listen to English, study and learn English one hour per day, that's a good amount that will help you improve, improve, improve steadily. You will improve by doing one hour a day. Now if you're very busy maybe one hour still seems like a lot, like “Oh one hour a day, that's a lot” but, it's actually not so tough if you break it into pieces.

So for example one hour a day, you could listen to English 15 minutes when you wake up in the morning. Later when you're going to work or going to school or cleaning the house, you could listen to English again for 15 minutes, now you have 30 minutes, that day. Then later when you're, when you're coming home or your kids go to school or or your you're, you're in a bus or driving, you could listen another 15 minutes, now you're up to 45.

And then finally before bed you could listen to English again for 15 more minutes, that's one hour, right. Just little small pieces through the day, anyone can do that, you can certainly do that. That gives you the minimum one hour per day. Do that and your English definitely will improve, your listening will improve and you're speaking will improve. And by the way, I don't like this word “study”, study English. Study has this feeling of school, feels very serious, feels boring to me.

I like the word “play”, play English. For example think of sports, a basketball player right? that people play basketball. People are happy to go out and play basketball for one hour or two hours or more. People love to play soccer or football they play it, even though they're practicing even though they're getting better, the feeling inside the emotion is play, find happiness. Well, I want you to have that same feeling as you listen to English, practice English. I want you to play English, don't study it.

So one hour minimum each day. If you can do more, that's great! of course more is better, the more you do each day the faster you will improve. So if you can do two hours per day, again break it into pieces, you can do two hours per day that's the even better, three hours per day fantastic, five hours a day incredible.

Just remember, follow the pattern break things into pieces, use your iPod, so you can walk and exercise and drive and sit in a bus or a train, you can do other things as you listen to English by using an iPod. So use these methods at least one hour a day, that's the minimum and more is better. That's the answer to today's question, to learn more about the effortless English system, join our free e-mail course at EffortlessEnglishClub.com, bye bye.