Increase Your English Language Score With These Steps

Here are tested and proven ways you can increase your performance in the English language examination.

A wide vocabulary is one of the most important aspects to acquiring your language. Not only does it help you to understand the questions you are asked, but it also makes for impressive answers. By looking through old work exercises and exams you can get to know the types of vocabulary examiners choose to use, and the words that look impressive in your answers.  

• Immerse Yourself In The Language

The second best way to improve your English is to immerse yourself in the language. By that, we mean read widely – newspapers, online articles, books, magazines. We also mean doing things like watching TV, listening to English language music and so on. These are fun and easy ways to prepare your study programme as they are enjoyable to do.

 

• Write a Timetable

A timetable is a really useful tool to helping you to pass your exam. It provides a framework to the revision you need to do; it helps you to plan your time carefully; it is of great use in making you identify those areas on which you need to work.

The best way to prepare a timetable is take a diary, or an excel worksheet, or even a hand drawn grid. Start from the day of your exam and list the days backwards from there. Next, on a separate sheet make a list of everything on which you might be tested. For those areas in which you are really confident, you need to do nothing as you can pass these areas already; everything else should be divided up between the time you have.  

As you tick off the days on your timetable, a sense of achievement comes about which really helps your confidence.

Of course, while a timetable is an excellent tool to use for preparation of exams, it is also a good way to organize your everyday study, to help you spread your workload.

• Do Your Homework

Of course, everything you do in preparation for your exams is homework, but certain types of questions and tasks come up more often than others.  Your lecturers will often give you a collection of past questions, or you can find them online. 

It is a great study tip to practice getting perfect answers to these questions. You can even learn them off by heart. Just remember to adapt your answers to the question that is actually set in the real exam.

• Learn How To Pronounce Words

The oral part of any English study is very important. English is a language with many odd pronunciations and the more of these you can learn, the better. 

While you cannot learn every odd pronunciation, you can learn the most common ways to say sounds. Collections such as ‘cious’ and ‘tious’ words (pronounced ‘shus’ as in ‘conscious’) can easily be learned and will help your performance in the exams.

• Learn Spelling Patterns

A good speller is often a good English speaker. There are some rules that can be learned. These include such things as a short vowel is followed by a double consonant, and the ‘I before e except after c’ guide that applies to many words.

• Learn Your Stock Phrases

Exams are about impressing the marker. Study is about becoming as competent as you can be. Little impresses more than the accurate use of a good phrase. There are certain phrases that you may need to ask in an exam, so learn them to enable you to use them easily without causing any stress. Phrases such as ‘Can you repeat that, please?’ and ‘Could you give me a moment to think?’ are good for oral tests, while linking phrases such as ‘On the other hand’ and ‘Under certain circumstances’ are the kind of phrases that might come up in your written tests.

It doesn’t matter how good your answer is if you misunderstood the question. Examiners, such as for TOEFL or TOEIC love to ask similar types of question, it is a way that they can keep standards in line.

Remember, if immersing yourself in the language is the second best way to study English, then speaking it with friends and family is the best way. That is because this is an active process. Your brain is constantly thinking, actively choosing the best words and phrases. 

Sticking with the steps explained in this post will help you develop a good score in English Language.