Chapter 3 Action Plan

Congratulations on making it through Chapter 3 of the English Tea Break Roadmap. In this chapter, we talked about adding "boosters" as activities to help with dual-coding alongside immersion. We learned about the value of Anki, how to set it up, and how to use it to learn English vocabulary quickly. We also discussed some other, non-essential boosters that are less important than Anki, but still give variety to your study routine.

Now, it's time to start using what you learned in this chapter to improve your English studies.

One-Off Checklist

The first part of your Chapter 3 Action Plan is to set up Anki, if you haven't already. Once these tasks have been completed, you'll be ready to use Anki as your main booster in your study routine.

Download and install Anki

Create a deck and optimize your settings

Create card templates

Create your first cards

If you can check off those boxes, you're done with the one-off checklist for this action plan! But before we get into the daily study guide, let's quickly talk about the important idea of Anki buffers.

Anki Buffers and The Word Bank

In this case, a buffer is like a protection or a safety net. When you're using Anki, you want to make sure you never run out of new cards to learn. A large buffer of new cards ensures that Anki will have new cards to show you.

So, you have to create more new cards than the number of new cards Anki shows you. For example, if you set your deck settings to show 10 new cards a day, then you also need to create at least 10 new cards a day. 11-20 would be even better. By doing so, you won't run out of new words to learn, and your buffer will grow larger.

Also, when it's time to create new cards, you don't want to have to think of new words in that moment. It's a good idea to have another buffer here. During immersion, when you find a word that you don't know, write the word on a piece of paper or in your phone. I call this buffer a Word Bank. When it's time to make new Anki cards, open your Word Bank and create cards from the list of words there.

I only write individual words in my Word Bank, not whole sentences, because it takes too long. I don't want to break immersion for more than a second. When I create Anki cards, I've usually forgotten the original sentence of the unknown word. That's okay. Just create a new sentence using the new word.

The Word Bank serves two benefits:

1. I don't have to break my immersion to create new Anki cards every time I find an unknown word.
2. When I create new Anki cards, I always know which words to use.

With that important tip explained, it's time for the daily study guide.

Daily English Study Guide

In the last study guide, I told you to focus on having fun. I wanted you to explore the language and find content that you really enjoy.

That advice will remain throughout this whole roadmap. Having fun is a key principle of the English Tea Break philosophy because you learn much faster when you enjoy the process.

But now, we're starting to add proven study methods into the fun. We're building on the previous chapter's study guide.

Recommendations for Everyone

All Personas should use the instructions below to study every day:

Remember: When creating new Anki cards and adding words to your Word Bank, do enough to at least maintain the buffers. It's better if you can grow the buffers a little bit each day. But remember that creating Anki cards is not the same as studying Anki cards. And adding to your Word Bank is time spent outside of immersion. Maintain or grow your buffers by 1-5 words every day, and then go back to studying.

Persona-Specific Recommendations

Beginning with this Action Plan, I'm going to give additional recommendations based on the persona that you chose for yourself.

These recommendations are in addition to the recommendations shown above. In other words, everyone should follow the guide above, and you should also follow the recommendations shown below for your persona. If your persona doesn't have persona-specific recommendations yet, don't worry, I'll have some for you in the next action plan.

Additional Reading - Student, Reader, Tester

Read a simple English blog: +10 minutes

The best choice would be a blog about your interests or hobbies, but if you'd like a recommendation, try a cooking blog. Food is also a big part of learning new cultures, so it's a good idea to learn about the foods English speakers eat! You don't need to understand every word in the blog post; just keep practicing.

Additional Listening - Tester

Grammar videos: +10 minutes

Use English subtitles or no subtitles, but no native subtitles. Depending on the test you'll be taking, you may have specific grammar instruction needs. Look for grammar videos that help you with those topics. For general grammar, this YouTube playlist from English with Lucy is a good place to start.

Additional Writing - Student, Tester

Daily journaling: +10 minutes

Pretend that you are writing to me and tell me what happened during your day, thoughts that you had, or things you're excited about. Or, you can just make up a funny story. Try to use some of the new Anki words that you studied each day.

Additional Speaking - Worker

Self-Talk: +10 minutes

Focus on pronunciation while you speak out loud to yourself. Describe your day or what you're interested in. If you can't speak in full sentences yet, just say some vocabulary words that you remember.

When to Move On

In the next chapter of the roadmap, we'll be Adding Input to improve the way that you use immersion for your studies.

Follow this action plan for at least a few days before advancing to the Adding Input chapter. You're ready to move on when you feel comfortable with the following items:

1. Studying with Anki, creating new cards, and adding to your Word Bank
2. Maintaining or slightly growing your Anki buffers every day
3. Practicing your persona-specific studying
4. You've explored some non-essential boosters and found some that you enjoy

There are fun ways and boring ways to learn English. Make sure to continue to prioritize fun by choosing study activities and content topics that interest you.

See you in Chapter 4 where we'll improve your immersion techniques!