How to Develop Your Mental Model of English

Your brain will automatically build your mental model when you flood your brain with English you enjoy and can understand.

As your brain builds your mental model, you will naturally and easily be able to understand more and more English. Your mental model will continue to grow.

What, exactly, should you do to flood your brain with English? Use all four aspects of English: listening, reading, writing, and speaking. These aspects are interconnected. This means that flooding your mind with any of these aspects helps you to develop all of them. 

Listening

Beginner? Intermediate? Advanced? No matter what level you are, be sure to listen to as much English as you can, every day. Try to flood your brain with things you enjoy already enjoy watching and listening to...but...do these things in English. Your brain is a marvelous and brilliant communication device that will naturally discover patterns and try to make sense out of what you see and hear. It will put all these pieces together to create your Mental Model of English.

Speaking

If you’re new to learning English, or if you’re not happy with the way your English sounds, don’t worry about speaking, pronunciation, or intonation right away. If you are  happy with how your English sounds, but  you have to try to remember grammar rules as you speak – stop. Instead, keep listening to English.

Once you fill your brain by listening to enough English, you will find yourself speaking natural-sounding English – linking words together with correct pronunciations, correct grammar, correct rhythms, correct stresses, and correct intonations. Don’t force it. Trust that your marvelous brain will build a Mental Model of English for you, and that you will speak naturally when you are ready.

Warning : If you try to speak English too early, you may make the very common mistake of trying to pronounce English words using the sounds from your own language. If you use your language's sounds to pronounce English words, other people might not be able to understand you.

Reading

It’s true – English is not a phonetic language; English words aren’t always spelled the way they sound. Once you’ve heard and seen enough English, your brilliant brain will connect how English sounds with how English looks in your Mental Model of English.

Warning : If you try to read English too early, you may make the very common mistake of trying to pronounce English words using the sounds from your own language.

Writing

If you haven’t felt confident in your ability to write correctly in English, if you agonize over appearing smart when you try to write – stop. Once your brain has built a Mental Model of how to read in English and what correct sentences look like in English, writing in English will be easy and natural too.

You can do all of these things on your own…except, I’m sorry to say, it will take a long time. You are highly motivated to transform your life and open the doors to better opportunities as soon as possible. You want a shortcut on your journey to becoming fluent in English.

No problem.

Click for Part 3: The Best and Fastest Way to Build Your Mental Model of English