See if this decribes you:    you have studied English for many years in school, and each term you somehow passed the tests and went on to the next, more difficult level. But now after all that work and headache, you can't speak nor write more than a short sentence, and when you do, your grammar is all wrong. Worse yet, when a foreigner approaches you, your brain freezes over like the arctic ice caps, and you feel like you forgot all your English.
 
But you didn't forget English. In fact, you never learned it in the first place.

Can you learn to play basketball or the piano by watching from the audience and never trying it yourself? Of course not, but Thai students mostly do the same when they study English. Look at the first picture below. It shows a simple way to think about how to learn English. It is what people who are good at English do:
It's simple: English goes in, and English comes out, changed into the students' own stories, ideas and opinions. But most students in Thailand don't do this. They do something like this:
English comes in, but real English never comes out. They may think they understand what they hear and read, and they may get a good idea of what English speakers say to each other, but they never put their own brains and mouths to the task of putting the words together from scratch. Instead, the students only squint their eyes at fill-in-the-blank worksheets and take multiple-choice tests. This is not English. In the end they aren't able to do anything with English and forget most of it. But even worse is this:
Many students don't even have real English coming in in the first place, let alone coming out. Not only don't they practice using anything, but they never see what English really does in real life. When real English comes their way, they are shocked and understand nothing, after years of study. Isn't that a sad waste of time?
 
The fact is, understanding is not the same as doing, and English is something you do: you listen and read, and then you write and speak. It is very important to understand all the grammar rules, but then you must learn what to do with them in real life, and go do it. Your good or bad grades on multiple-choice tests are no measure of your English ability. Unfortunately, with class sizes so big in Thailand (not to mention old-fashioned teaching styles), few students have many chances to do real things with English in school.

But you shouldn't give up. There is more to this story than what happens in school. If you can't speak or write after years of study, a lot of your problem probably comes from you. The fact is, there are always some students who are good at English after studying it in all the same ways that you have, so they must have a secret, right? It's not the latest brand of talking dictionary. It's not computer chips implanted in their brains. And we're not talking about those very few people whom we might call "language geniuses" who soak up language like sponges. We're talking about normal students. Do you want to know?

As teachers we have noticed what all the students who are good at English have in common. Somehow, either naturally or because of their parents (or sometimes because they have smart friends who influence them), they don't act like most other students. So lets talk about that!

What are the secrets of those who learn English the fastest and deepest?

Secret #1:   Good learners make their learning into DOING. They turn studying into using as fast as they can. For example, when they learn something, or even just read something, they try it out in their own mouths to see how it feels and sounds when they say it. They try writing new sentences to see if they can do it themselves. That way, the new language goes through the "language wires" in their brains.

Silly students never do anything with what they learn. They just stare at it on the paper or on the whiteboard. They smile but don't speak. They say, "I understand." They wait for the tests. If they pass, they feel that they did the right thing.

Secret #2:   As a part of using English, good learners constantly ASK QUESTIONS, such as "How do I say 'ตุ๊กแก' in English?" or "Is it correct if I say 'blah blah blah'?" or "Why did he say 'blah blah' and not 'blah blooh'?" They are always trying out new combinations of words, and they like to ask if it works or not. They are not afraid of their teachers.

Silly students never ask questions and just take everything as it comes whether they really understand it or not.  They never try to put words together themselves, and only memorize whatever the teacher gives them. They are often afraid of their teachers and afraid of native-speakers.

Secret #3:   Good learners are not afraid of making mistakes, never apologise for them, and always look for corrections. This way, they learn from every mistake, and their English gets gradually cleaner until eventually all the spots are wiped off. They are not worried that people will see them as stupid if they make a mistake. They know that they are on the learning path, which is full of traps and potholes. They just laugh (or swear) when they fall down, get up, and keep walking. And  they remember where every trap and pothole was for next time.

Silly students are afraid to show their ignorance, so they stay ignorant. They think mistakes are bad, so they go very slowly and shyly. When they trip over the potholes or fall in the traps, they curse at themselves and cry, and apologise, or even blame their teachers. They never dare come back to that place to try again. Instead, they say, "I'm bad at that" and give up.

Secret #4:   Good learners mix new learning into what they already know, and try to use it together. This way, they build their English up higher and higher. They always use and re-use the basic, everyday English they learned already, and try to add to it to make it better. Each new level of difficulty is only a small step for these people.

Silly students forget what they learned before and then learn new things and do the same again. They never have any more in their brains than the most recent lessons. Often they have forgotten words they learned in Prathom 2. When they study at the difficult levels, they cannot use any of it because they have forgotten the basic English they must have to support it.

Secret #5:   Good learners try to say their own real feelings, say their opinions, and tell their own stories. They imagine everything in their own world turned into English. This way, they take in English as part of themselves, instead of leaving it in the books. This may sound too big for an English learner to do, but actually they start small and build from there. When a foreigner comes along, they can talk about themselves and their world.

Silly students see English as something from the teacher and from books and leave it at that. They don't use it for themselves. When a foreigner comes along, they have no idea how to answer any questions about themselves or where they live.

Secret #6:   Good learners believe that they should be able to speak and write English if they try and get help, just like you can if you try and get help. It may take a long time, but you can.

Silly students see English as something they will never be able to do, and are not surprised nor upset to see themselves stay at the same level forever, so of course they never get anywhere.

Secret #7:   Good learners NEVER GIVE UP. Have you ever seen a sped-up movie in which where people or cars are rushing around and around, but some things, like trees and buildings, never move? From the teacher's eyes, good learners are like those things that never move while other students come and go. The learning of good learners is unbroken over time, so they don't forget very much.

Silly students easily give up. They want things to be easy and clear for them, and when they are not, they run away. For decades Thai education has made the mistake of always giving students lists of things to memorize and a few choices on tests, so when someone asks the students to think independently, even a little, they think it is really difficult because they only know how to choose answers from a list. It takes thinking to really see how all the parts of English work together and to do it yourself. This is too much to ask of many students (even though it's actually not hard), so they run away. Then they come back, because they have to. Then they run away again, or look for a different teacher to make it clear to them while they sit and do nothing in their chairs.

Secret #8:   Good learners know that the only "trick" to learning is work and patience. They know that it is their job to learn, and that they have to do something themselves, not just sit.

Silly students take shortcuts and look for "special techniques" or tricks to help them pass the tests. Plus, they want the teacher to do most of the work for them so they don't have to think.

Secret #9:   Good learners don't follow their friends. They care if they are really learning or not. They don't copy their friend's homework. They go to study without worrying if they will have friends to sit with or not. They don't let their friends' silliness distract them or derail their plans. They make progress in a straight line according to what they need, not what their silly friends "need" to make their lives easier.

Silly students do everything in herds like cows, or (should we say it?) buffaloes. They can't do anything alone, nor can they think alone. They make plans to study together with their friends, and then almost every time one of their friends has a problem and the plan goes down the drain. Their studies never go in a straight line, and often go backwards.

Secret #10:   Good learners take good notes in class. That doesn't mean they write down everything the teacher says like frantic robots. It means that they try to organize the lesson information in a way they can read and understand LATER. The notes are to help them after class when the teacher's words have faded from their minds, so they write it so it will make sense, with the main ideas first and the smaller ideas later if there is time to write them.
 
To do that, they have to make sure to listen to the teacher all the time, not just copy from the whiteboard like a fool. Many main ideas will come from the teacher's lips and never be written on the board. What they write in their books may look very different from what the teacher wrote, because it will include ideas that were only spoken, and because it is for THEM, not for the teacher. They might use boxes and arrows and lines to separate and connect ideas. Click here for a summary of good notetaking techniques.
 
And, the notebooks of good learners will be organized to help them find things later. Often it works like this: the daily work and notes that they write go in the front of the book in whatever order that it comes, but they have special pages in the back of the book for certain categories, like VERBS, IDIOMS, ADJECTIVES, GRAMMAR EXAMPLES etc. Anything they think is important will put in the back pages in the right category. That way, they can always find something they forgot really fast. You can see these students always putting stuff in order during class.
 
Also, when they take notes, they hate to write down things they don't understand. If they feel that they have to do that to get an important idea, they make sure to write question marks so they can ask the teacher later what it means.

Silly students, of course, don't even take notes at all, or at best they copy things like robots without understanding anything, and because they get so busy writing things they don't understand, they don't listen to the teacher and miss many important ideas. They end up with senseless, disorganized notes and no understanding, but feel tired from all the work! And later they have no idea what they studied.
 

Empty Notebook =

Empty Mind

Secret #11:   Good learners look for real English outside of class. They look for fun or interesting things to read in English or watch movies and TV shows in English and challenge themselves to understand it. This way, they get to see how English really works and what people really say with it.
 
The truth is, the good learners are often the ones who like to read for fun in Thai, too, and we don't mean comic books. When they have nothing else to do, you can often see these people with their noses in storybooks, novels, or nonfiction books about things that interest them. Everybody is reading Harry Potter these days, but the good learners read everything else, too. There are so many good books. And because they do that, the language part of their brains is very strong. So, it isn't that overwhelming for them to take on the patterns of another language.
 
Good learners watch English-language movies in soundtrack and try to catch words and meanings. It's often difficult, but if there is a movie they are crazy about, they watch it many times and try to get the dialog more and more.
 
Cable TV is also a great source of everyday English. There are many fun shows on the Nickelodeon channel, for example.

Silly students never touch outside reading in English, and don't look for English to listen to. They only look at whatever the teacher forces them to study, so they don't get a very rounded idea of everyday English, and miss all the fun in it.
 
And of course, the silly students are usually the ones who never read in Thai, either, except for comic books. Some comic books in this world have achieved the level of fine art, but the kind most Thai students read are pure junk, just like most TV soap operas are junk and most fast food is junk, all things companies put out to make money from people with no brains. Because silly students don't read much even in Thai, the language parts of their brains are not developed. Reading their own Thai schoolbooks is painful enough for these people. Read in English? Forget it.
 
And finally, silly students don't even get near English soundtrack movies, because they hate to read the Thai subtitles (probably because they can't read very fast even in Thai) and hate to think when they watch movies.

Secret #12:   PRACTICE AND REVIEW. After class good learners look again at their work and notes, review the mistakes they made, and sometimes even recopy their work neatly. Then they repeat the English to themselves many times. This helps the lessons dig in deeper and last longer.

Silly students never look at their work again, never practice, and soon forget what it was all about, so when they go back to class, they are at square one again, and make the same mistakes.