Fun Ways to Practice English on Holiday

Holidays and English practice sound like opposites. One is relaxing; the other feels like homework. But here’s the secret: a trip abroad is a free immersion course in disguise. Every menu, ticket machine, and friendly bartender is a mini-lesson — and because you’re relaxed, your brain absorbs more than it ever does at a desk.

The trick is to make practice feel like play. Here’s how.

1. Order Everything Yourself

No pointing at the menu, no letting a friend speak for you. Make a holiday rule: you order your own coffee, tickets, and tapas, in English, every time. It’s a tiny daily rep — thirty seconds of real speaking — and by day five you’ll notice you’re not rehearsing the sentence in your head first anymore.

Level it up: ask one extra question each time. “What do you recommend?” or “What’s in this dish?” turns a transaction into a conversation.

2. Play Tour Guide for a Day

Visiting a castle, a market, a viewpoint? Narrate it — out loud if you’re brave, in your head or as a voice note if not. “This bridge was built in the 1800s… the view from here is incredible… I think that island is famous for something.”

You’re practising exactly the skill exams and real conversations demand: describing things spontaneously. Bonus: record a 60-second “postcard” voice note each day. By the end of the trip you’ll have a fluency diary — and proof of progress.

3. Turn Menus and Signs Into a Game

Give yourself a point for every new word you can figure out from context before checking your phone. Museum plaques, warning signs, cocktail menus — holiday reading is short, practical, and full of pictures, which makes it perfect learner input.

Snap photos of words you like. Five new words a day, captured in real situations, will stick far better than fifty from a flashcard app.

4. Chat With People Who Are Paid to Be Nice

Hotel receptionists, tour guides, waiters, and shop assistants are the friendliest conversation partners on Earth — being pleasant is literally their job. Use them shamelessly:

• “What do locals do around here in the evening?”
• “Is it worth visiting the old town?”
• “How’s the weather looking tomorrow?”

These chats are short, predictable, and zero-stakes. If it goes badly, you smile, say thanks, and walk away. It never goes badly.

5. Take a Tour or Class in English

Book the English-language walking tour instead of the one in your native language. Or better: do an activity — a cooking class, a surf lesson, a wine tasting. When you’re busy kneading dough or falling off a board, you stop translating and start just understanding. That’s the moment language learning actually happens.

6. Make Your Phone Work in English

For the length of the trip: maps in English, restaurant reviews in English, weather in English. You’ll read it all anyway — you might as well collect vocabulary while you do. Reading reviews before dinner (“cosy but slow service, try the lamb”) is surprisingly rich, natural English.

7. Collect One Story a Day

Each evening, tell someone — a travel companion, a tutor, or your voice notes app — one thing that happened that day, in English, in under two minutes. The lost luggage, the wrong bus, the best ice cream of your life. Storytelling is the most useful speaking skill there is, and holidays hand you fresh material daily.

The Mindset Shift

You don’t need to add English practice to your holiday. The practice is already there — in every order, every question, every sign. All you’re doing is choosing not to avoid it.

And if you want to lock in the gains when you’re home, that’s the perfect moment for a conversation lesson: you’ll have stories to tell, new words to test, and the confidence that comes from having used English in the wild.

Happy travels — and happy talking.