Kaizen

In Japanese culture, Kaizen is the name for the 1-minute principle to learn something new. It's often used to improve your skills in a chosen area. How does this method work?

You should practice a skill for just one minute every day at the same time. If you can create this habit, you're more likely to stick with it for months and even years. It is a way to develop a desire for self-improvement. Let's say you can't find 15-30 minutes a day to practice your English pronunciation. How about just one minute a day?

My suggestion as a teacher is to pick an app or TV show or web site that peaks your interest. One fun app that students like a lot is SPEAK. It's a computer-generated dialogue that prompts you to record your responses to a fictional character as in a real conversation. Then, the program highlights each word in either GREEN or RED, to indicate whether or not you have pronounced it correctly. You can repeat your response to try to get it right as many times as you want.

A good listening web site I've mentioned before is Randall's Cyber ESL Lab. It's full of over 100 listening dialogues that take less than 2 minutes to listen to. These dialogues are at a normal rate of speech and spoken in very informal American English, just like our typical daily conversations in real life! You can challenge yourself to listen to one a day and check your understanding with the short 5-question comprehension quizzes afterword. Of course, you can also read the script and find definitions for new vocabulary. Challenge yourself to go from Easy to Medium to Difficult levels!

Another option is to watch a short video clip on Voice of America Learn English website or app.

There are clips for news, idioms and even grammar.

Here are the links to the sites I mentioned:


Speak App - by Speakeasy, Inc.

VOA Learning English - https://learningenglish.voanews.com/

Randall's Cyber ESL Lab
https://www.esl-lab.com/


Also, I've started an Instagram page to challenge you to listen and understand American English. it's https://www.instagram.com/accent4professionals/

Finally, this approach has worked for me in a personal way. I've recently started learning Chinese on Duo Lingo. It is set up so that you complete one lesson a day. Each lesson takes just a few minutes. It has motivated me to continue because the lessons are getting easier and I'm even recognizing characters. This is something I didn't think I could do. Well, I'm going to test my knowledge with my best friends (two sisters from Taiwan). Hopefully, they will understand me!

Happy learning to you all!

Maria