Learning the English language is no easy feat. Apart from the actual language itself, you must learn the various etiquette tips for using it. When it comes to a professional work setting, here are a few of the most common etiquette tips.

Tips for Emailing

Email is a very popular way to get into contact with others without having to pick up the phone. Due to the easy accessibility of email, you can send a message around the clock. You should always ensure that you’re using a professional email address when talking with business associates. Never use personal email addresses as it can seem unprofessional to the recipient. Make sure that when you reply to messages, you’re only replying to those who need to read your response. Don’t reply to all the people included in the first message if there isn’t a need to.

While much online communication tends to veer towards the casual and ungrammatical, professional emails should be reread and follow standard English rules. Begin with a salutation or greeting like “Hello (name),” and end with something like “Best, (your name)” or “Sincerely, (your name).”

Tips for Phones

The phone has always been the traditional form of contact for businesses. However, the way the phone is used is a little different these days. Instead of just talking, you can now text associates throughout the day. You can even implement a text message system for business purposes to respond to customers. While texting casually, people often use emoticons and abbreviations, but in a professional situation it’s best to limit abbreviations and misspellings. Abbreviations like ‘u’ can seem very informal in a professional environment. However, texts do not need to begin, or end, with greetings or names if the person already knows you. If contacting someone for the first time through text, it is standard to begin with a brief introduction: “Hello (name), my name is (your name), from (business).”

Tips for Skype

Skype is a very popular video chatting software that is utilized by many businesses who are having meetings with various people. It’s always important that you have your Skype chat set up in a quiet environment where the person on the other end doesn’t have difficulty hearing you. You should always look at the camera when you’re talking with others instead of your screen. This helps to appear as if you’re talking more directly with the person than when looking down at your screen. Skype is used by many businesses for remote or initial interviews, so learning good Skype habits can help you in your professional goals. Practice and make sure your microphone can pick up your voice.

Tips for In-Person Communication

When it comes to talking with a person face-to-face there are some necessary etiquette tips you need to be aware of. First, in America especially eye contact is seen as respectful and necessary. You want to ensure that you’re making eye contact. Don’t divert your eyes to your phone, a television, or another area as it will have the other person thinking that you’re not fully listening to them. Don’t be afraid to use hand gestures when talking. However, be mindful of the other person’s personal space and ensure your gestures aren’t invading it. If you are unsure of how you’re coming across, remember that mirroring other people’s tone, volume, and pose can help establish connection. Practice beforehand with native speakers who can notify you of specific communication quirks you may not be aware of.

Professional communication etiquette is something that every country has. When it comes to those in the United States, we have some cultural etiquette practices that define how we talk to one another. The above four groups of tips should help you to succeed in the professional world as an English-language learner.
~
Brooke Chaplan is a freelance writer and blogger.She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She loves the outdoors and spends most of her time hiking, biking, and gardening. For more information, contact Brooke via Facebook at facebook.com/brooke.chaplan or Twitter @BrookeChaplan

So, you’re looking for some quick ways to help you along in improving your English? Of course, you won’t be able to master any language rapidly, but you certainly can take the necessary steps to improve English fast.

How to Improve Your English

​To be frank: there are several ways to improve your English.

Don’t think of this as “ways” but rather “avenues” to improve your English skills. I have listed out four pillars which you must absolutely focus on: listen, write, speak, and read. These are the things that best encompass the totality of language competence; practice them and you’ll be well on your way to improving your English Skills.

It should, however, go without saying that these suggestions can only take you so far. If you want the most thorough and effective way to prepare for ESL, you’d be wise to look into tutoring — taking lessons and learning from a teacher are some of the most potent ways for you to improve your English as a second language.

Listen

Listening is vital, you no doubt already know this. Through listening, you are able to immerse yourself in understanding how words are spoken, how things are pronounced, enunciated, etc. It may seem passive but listening is most certainly an active and deliberate behavior on your part — you must put effort into it.

Here’s a handy little list if you’re wondering about what sorts of things you should be listening to:

• Podcast, these are great because they allow you to hear genuine long-form discussions and, best of all, there’s a podcast for practically every subject or interest out there
• TV/Movies, many casual forms of entertainment have been shown (albeit anecdotally) to radically improve the language capabilities of non-English speaking viewers.
• The News, not only is it a great way to stay informed but it also provides you with a simple and concise form of English meant to deliver a message as efficiently as possible
• Again, listening is not passive. However, that doesn't mean that it can’t be fun — it’s just a matter of finding things that you want to listen to that will also serve the purpose of helping you to learn English faster.

Write

Writing is also a major aspect of language that you need to grasp. It will improve your English grammar, it will improve your English vocabulary, it will improve your English. Period.

Sure, it may seem a bit intimidating but, for now, you merely want to start small with your writing capabilities and work your way up gradually. Here are some things you can try to improve your writing:

• Journaling, it's a great way for you to begin conceptualizing your thoughts and feelings and projected them outward in English (it also boasts quite a few mental health benefits as an added bonus)
• Write down words and phrases that you hear and would like to retain
• Comment and discuss on places like Reddit

These are all great ways to bolster your skills as a writer while also being relatively casual and stress-free.

Speak

You’ve no doubt thought to yourself, “how do I improve my English speaking?” Simply put, it’s really just a matter of finding someone who you can talk to. Whether it’s a friend, colleague, or teacher, what’s most important here is being able to practice your abilities.

If, however, you seldom have anyone to speak English with, you can also do a couple of things on your own. Namely, speaking and recording yourself. This is a great way to assess your skills and objectively look at ways to improve.

Read

Reading is the highest intensity of all the 4 pillars. It’s something that you need to diligently work towards in letting your brain acclimate to processing words (and perhaps even characters) that it’s never seen before.

With that being said, you ARE reading this. All things considered, you must be doing fairly well in the reading department.

In order to further improve your skills, you might want to consider picking up some reading materials of your choice and dedicate a good hour or so a day towards reading in English. You don’t have to read 500 pages a day like Warren Buffet, but give yourself some dedicated English reading time each and every day.

Conclusion

Like I said, these are essentially the 4 pillars of a language. If you want to begin the process of improving your English you’ll need to focus on these in some capacity.

You can choose to tackle them however you’d like: whether it’s one at a time or all at once. It really all depends on how confident you are with each aspect of the language but be aware enough of your strengths and weaknesses to know what you need to prioritize.

Connie Benton is a passionate traveler, freelance writer, and guest contributor. You can reach out at [email protected].

In most cases, learning a new language is hard - especially if you are learning a language that has nothing in common with your native one. For example, for an Englishman, it will be easy enough to learn Spanish, but very difficult to learn Chinese because of the strong difference between language groups and linguistic constructions. However, this is surmountable if you develop the right habits in learning a foreign language. Below we have compiled seven of the most important and effective ones.

Everyday Learning

The habit of learning a language should be a habit. This is the first rule of success. There are many studies that describe the mechanism of habit formation and give different time periods necessary for its consolidation - from two weeks to a year, but in any case, the strength of your habit will depend only on the amount of effort and determination.
Therefore, the first habit of successful students studying a foreign language is daily learning. Even if you study the language 30 minutes a day every day for six months, you will already feel the result. 30 minutes is not so much, and the first task is to turn 30 minutes of language learning per day into your habit and not deviate from this task, regardless of external circumstances.

Everyday Practice

However, it is not enough to learn the language every day - it is necessary to practice every day as well. Yes, at the first stage it will be just a repetition of new words and phrases, but further tasks will gradually become more and more difficult. There are a lot of exercises for daily practice - for example, reading news in the language you are studying, watching movies and videos, listening to podcasts, reading books in the original, all kinds of cards, memos, mobile applications and much more.

Making the Focus on Real-Life Language
​
If you have ever studied a foreign language, then you probably noticed that most programs and courses (especially in higher education institutions) are aimed at remembering all grammatical constructions, but ... feel a stupor when you need to answer the simplest question in real life. Successful language learners know about this pitfall, therefore, constantly strive to learn the language in the form in which it is spoken. They do not focus on rules that exist only in books. They focus on a lively conversation, proper pronunciation, and most importantly, understanding the real speech of native speakers.

Going to the Goal

It is a trend to know several foreign languages, but the trend is not something long-term motivation can hold out on. You need a deeper goal than just being trendy. So, for example, those who want to work in the IT field, begin to learn English for programmers - with an exact understanding of why they need it. So, those who want to move to Japan or China begin to learn these languages, because they understand that it will be difficult to get used to a new country without being able to exchange at least a few phrases with local residents. Therefore, the goal is what will move you along the path of language learning every day. Find this goal before starting your study.

Taking Every Opportunity to Learn

For successful language learners, language learning becomes their lifestyle, and they use every free minute to do it. They learn the language while they stand in line or use public transport, they communicate with native speakers on social networks and on special sites, use applications to track performance, ask themselves questions in a new language, answer them themselves, and always carry a textbook with them - in case a free minute appears.

Reviewing and Refreshing Their Knowledge

The features of our memory are such that any information that we receive and supposedly remember still disappears after some time. Only those data that are used and repeated daily or almost daily pass from the category of short-term memory to long-term. This is exactly the result that you need to strive to learn a new language. And that is why successful students from time to time return to topics and materials that have already been worked out in order to move this information from the short-term use compartment to the long-term one.

Making Use of Mistakes

Mistakes and even bad results are still results, and this is an indicator that you are not standing still.  This is an indicator that you are striving for knowledge, but at the moment you missed something or did not work out to the end. This is an indicator that you need to go back a little and close a certain gap in knowledge. Successful students perceive their mistakes in this way. This is not a reason to abandon your goal and quit learning a language - this is an occasion to improve your knowledge. And this is only good if the error surfaced in the learning process, and not in the process of actually using the language - this would cause much more inconvenience in the latter case.

Conclusion

​Learning a new language is a complex and time-consuming process. And it’s better to be prepared for this in advance. However, the right habits can simplify your path and increase your effectiveness. And the most important habit to achieve this is constancy and improvement.

Frank Hamilton has been working as an editor at review service Online Writers Rating. He is a professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digital marketing and self-education. He also loves traveling and speaks Spanish, French, German and English.