How do I study in a General English course?

1. Work on your courses on a weekly basis

We strongly advise you to work on the assigned courses around 3 hours per week and meet your weekly learning goals. This includes: 

• Watching around 15 videos a week
• Choosing all unknown words to learn
• Selecting 10 lines per video to speak
• Redoing lines with a low speaking grade to improve your speech
• Taking 1 GoLive! lesson a week, if you have the GoLive! access
• Interested in more? Then check the advanced learning tips below ↓

2. Focus on improving your pronunciation

You can learn more about your pronuncaition in the "Speaking" tab on englishcentral.com. There, you can see both lines and words that you need to master. Once you learn to pronounce the word/line well, it will be removed from the "Weakest" list.

3. Complete your courses within 2 months

In general, you should be able to complete your General English courses in 8 weeks and, by this time, your English level should have improved. Each time you complete the General English courses assigned to you (you may need to do it several times before you can reach your required level), you will finalize it with the Level Up Test to see how much you have improved.

How long will it take me to reach my Required Level?

The time you will have to spend on reaching your Required Level depends on many factors, including how "far away" you are from your Required Level right now, how much effort you put into your studies, if you do extracurricular activities, etc. Most people manage to improve by 1 CEFR level in 3 General English cycles if they apply our learning strategy.

• To know how much you should improve, consult this FAQ.

Advanced learning tips ↓

These tips can be applied by anyone who is motivated in reaching their Required Level faster. However, if this is your first time studying with us, we recommend you take the first 2 weeks to get to know the system, feedback and procedures. 

1. Increase your vocabulary 

If you want to master your English or are looking for ways to express yourself better, we advise quizzing. There are various quizzes you can complete; visit this article for more information.

2. Use Lesson Plans

You can improve more if you complete the following tasks after watching videos (ideally, you should do this with every video, especially if you are already a more advanced learner):

• Open the Lesson Plan by clicking its icon (on the right side of any video).

After clicking the icon, a small window will pop up. 

Read the Video transcript, make sentences with the words in Vocabulary and answer the Comprehension and Discussion Questions.

3. Listen to your Level (Up) Test recording

Do you know that your tests are always recorded? By listening to the audio of your test(s), you can hear where you made mistakes and try to avoid them next time. 

Open the test report, scroll down and download your test's recording.

To see more instructions (with screenshots), visit our guides linked below.