Just started writing a blog in English, is this really a good idea?

I have been listening to Coach Shane’s Let’s Master English (LME) podcasts and watching his CoachShane’s Daily Dictation videos these past few weeks. Although I can’t really see significant improvement to my English (yet), those podcasts and videos are somewhat helpful and interesting, at least they help to build up my enthusiasm (again).

Coach Shane keeps suggesting that writing blogs in English will help for improving English writing skill, so I am creating this blog today, hopefully I will continue to post some thoughts and what’s happening here. I have been stuck in the English learning plateau for years, so I really hope that this will help me get to a higher level of English proficiency.

Aside from Coach Shane’s podcasts & videos, I also enjoy listening to CulipsESLPodcast. Their podcasts are real fun for me so I guess I will keep listening.

Many teachers/coaches/guides online say that the best or perhaps the only way to improve speaking is to speak, I guess they might be right. Unfortunately I don’t really have the luxury to chat with a native speaker, so I have to try the other ways. I have tried talking with my friend Paul (of course he is not a native speaker) in English for a few times, but he seems to be kind of busy these days, we don’t really get to keep practicing. The other thing I’ve tried is an interesting APP called liulishuo (流利说), which can be used to practice speaking by myself. However, the APP’s scoring system keeps giving me 86 on average even though I have tried really hard to pronounce the words, it’s really frustrating and I almost lose the enthusiasm to use it.

Writing this stuff already takes me half an hour! I wish I can do better next time.