1. You need to plan out your wheel of life.
This sounds counter-intuitive. I know. You say: “I’m just here to learn English, why do I need to work out the wheel of life?”
The fact is learning English is quite easy if you think about it. You just need to learn the basic unit sounds of English, listen to English frequently, find out some friends from other countries to talk with, and attending English class.
But you just can’t do it. And it is because you have too much happening in your life. You have your kid going to school. You have a business of 20 people that you need to take care of and you need to complete your charity projects by next month. That is the reason why, you can’t find your time to study English.
That is why you need to work out the wheel of life to get yourself balanced in all aspects of your life, and then you have more time to focus on the most important things in your life.
2. What is your wheel of life?
You need to draw a big circle on your paper. Divide the circle into 8 pieces (like 8 slides of pizza). Then you need to determine what are those slides in your life. If your life can be classified into 8 categories of importance, what would they be? It can be friends, family, work, charity, investment, sharing knowledge, study, and networking.
After that you need to work out the goal you want to achieve for each category within one year. Why do you want to achieve that goal? Is the goal compelling enough for you? And your action plan for this goal?
3. Relate to learning English:
When you’re working out your wheel of life, if your English is not good yet, you can do it in your own language. You can write down on paper or on a whiteboard. Then you can explain the whole diagram to your partner or your teacher. And the key factor here is pretending that your partner or teacher only speaks English and don’t understand any other languages, so you need to talk to him/her in English.
You may say that: “This is impossible because I know a little English”. You can use your phone and go to Google translate. Whatever the words that you don’t know, you can search for it in Google translate, and you must speak English. Because the goal here is when you go overseas to an English speaking country, you want to talk and have a conversation with the locals. That is why you need to start there (beginning with the end in mind). You need to talk English frequently until it becomes a habit.
In summary, one of the most effective way to learn English is to determine your wheel of life, and explain to your partner, in that way, not only your English is getting better, but also it helps you to fee up your time to focus on the most important things in your life.
