G'day mate, how're things? Today, I am going to underscore the importance of output learning for your English study. What do I mean by this? Well, output means speaking and writing, while input means listening and reading. Let me explain.
- Speaking and writing are, so to speak, akin to your body's daily digestive system. Assuming you're suffering from constipation, you might feel not very well, and in a worst case you need to use a laxative to relieve yourself. By the same token, you need to practise the words, expressions, grammar and pronunciation in a real situation, otherwise you will forget pretty much everything. But of course, it has to be done by step-by-step, such as Read aloud ➡︎ Recording & Self-Analysis ➡︎ Internal Monologue (Self-Talk) ➡︎ Online English chat ➡︎ Self-Evaluation.
- You need to strike a balance between input and output learning. I always suggest having the ratio of 6:4. The more you input, the better outcomes you will get throughout your output practice. One of the best daily menus is: R - Reading 5 articles from online news; L - listening to a few podcast programs; W - Writing a 300-word English blog; S - Speaking to your lappy, yourself, and then a native speaker or someone who is a fluent speaker.
- The continuation of practising both speaking and writing has a huge benefit for your English. That is, boosting your active vocabularies and phrases in written and spoken discourse. Just inputting doesn't work if you wish to plant their roots of your new words and phrases deeply. Ultimately speaking, you can't speak things that you can't write, nor can you write things that you can't speak. Of course, there should have exceptions, but usually I reckon it's definitely safe to say like that.
- Last but not least, output practice only gives you a chance to precisely spot your weak points regarding grammar and pronunciation. You can hardly see or recognise your faults if you just do reading practice or listen to podcasts. Verbalising yourself is a good start of more practical learning.
If you are a restless kind of guy, then you should put yourself out there, get out of your comfort zone, and do something new when it comes to English learning. Let's do more practical practice, shall we?
"Novelty always exhilarates me"
That's all for today. Thanks for reading.
Have a lovely weekend!