They were all masters in their craft. Picasso is known for his creative masterpieces. While Mozart learned how to master the art of composing beautiful melodies, and Kobe is admired around the world for his ability to control the basketball court.
It is common to believe that people such as Picasso, Mozart, and Kobe Bryant, were just born with these gifts of natural talent, but if we examine their life deeper we discover that they put hours and hours of time to become the best at their craft.
Kobe Bryant wouldn’t be known as one of the greatest basketball players of all time, if it weren’t for his routine of waking up at 4 am to exercise and work on his fundamental basketball skills. No one even knew of Mozart or Picasso until around 10 years after they started in their areas of art and music.
The same goes for your English. You won’t master English overnight, but once you have figured out how to live your English every day, “deliberate practice” is a technique that can help you break through plateaus and conquer your English.
Every shot gives him feedback of his shooting technique. Each missed shot shows him that he needs to make small adjustments in order to improve. He’s not just spending time in the gym. There is a deeper purpose behind his practice.
Although it is important to find ways to live your English along your journey to RealLife fluency, it is even more crucial to schedule time to live your English deliberately if you want to level up your English skills and reach the stage of mastery.
If you want to unlock your true potential as an English learner, deliberate practice is a key habit to your growth and success.
Mimicking is a really useful practice to improve your English listening and pronunciation skills. If you want to take your conversational English skills to the next level, this is a very effective exercise to help you improve your accent, intonation, rhythm, and sound more like a native when you speak.
The exercise involves watching a video such as a TED Talk and repeating each phrase that you hear. TED Talks are amazing resources because you get the chance to learn from world class experts and each video is accompanied with a transcript of the entire speech.
Afterwards, watch the TED Talk for the first time while following along with the English transcript. Try to see if you can understand the general idea of the presentation.
If you want to know the definition of popular slang expressions that you can’t find in a normal dictionary, check out the Urban Dictionary.
Start the video with your cell phone’s audio recording app turned on, and after each line try to imitate what the speaker just said while recording yourself. Pay attention to their accent, intonation, and rhythm, trying your best to mimic what they say.
Once you feel confident with your performance, move on to the next one minute section, repeating the same exercise until you finish the video. If you can, send the recording to a friend or English coach that can give you feedback on your mimicking performance. A good goal for yourself would be to imitate one TED Talk per week.
This is a very effective exercise to improve your English pronunciation fast. As you do this mimicking exercise, you will tune your ear to the specific sounds of English and the language will become more natural to you. In no time you will be speaking English like the native experts that you listen to in the TED Talks.
Anki’s scientifically researched algorithms simplify the process of memorizing and retaining new vocabulary in a short amount of time. It gives you instant feedback on the words that you have mastered and the ones that you need to continue to work on. Also, since it’s available on Android or iPhone you can review vocabulary anywhere while on the go.
Check out this article where we dive deep into how to make the most out of this practice.