I’ll let you on to a little secret: if you think that you will learn to speak English like a native speaker just by coming to class twice a week, you’re wrong!

It’s like practicing for your driver’s test, it’s not enough to just pass the test, you have to actually drive everyday in the traffic to be able to say that you can drive. Otherwise you’ll just forget and you won’t be able to drive anymore after a few weeks or months.
The same is true about language learning. You have to practice and practice, and did I mention practice?

“But teacher, I don’t have time to study at home!,” I often hear as an excuse.
I don’t want to sound harsh, but I think you are wasting your money and your time paying for lessons if you’re not committed to your goal. Don’t tell me you don’t have 10 minutes everyday to:

• listen to a short news clip from the BBC
• read a short article and look up words you don’t understand
• listen to a song in English and see how many words or sentences you understand or recognize
• write a short email to your teacher, and ask him to correct it or annotate the mistakes so that you may do the corrections yourself the next day
• chatting to other English students on a social network IN ENGLISH
• speaking to other English students with voice over MSN or SKYPE
• even better, make friends with native speakers on a social network and chat with them! Be careful though, you never know who you can meet online…don’t give out your address or credit card number

Useful links

Ingles online, a Brazilian site/

The American’s guide to speaking British English

About.com Huge resource for learning English

Correspond in English

Huge list of links for learning English

BBC Learning English

Read books online by daily email

Listen to free audio books

Well that’s it for today!
No more excuses for not practicing your English at least 10 minutes a day.
You’ll notice your progress and so will your teacher