byoungd/English-level-up-tips

Source: https://github.com/byoungd/English-level-up-tips

简体中文 | English

Life Advancement Guide

Starting from a single light of English learning, this guide illuminates learning methods, AI practice, writing, entrepreneurial reflection, recovery from low points, and long-term growth.

Dedicated to my former beloved W.

Three years, five years, ten years, or even twenty years. As long as you name a number, I would be willing to wait for you in the same place. Yet, no matter how reluctant I was, I still chose to let go. Perhaps that was the last gentleness I could give her. Each of us lives in our own past. People use one minute to get to know someone, one hour to like someone, one day to love someone, but in the end, a whole lifetime is needed to forget someone.

Latest Updates: AI Empowering the Real Economy

On June 16, 2026, as Chairman of China Token Cloud Computing Co., Ltd., I was invited by Alibaba (Hangzhou) to visit Alibaba Cloud’s headquarters in Hangzhou.

Visiting Alibaba Cloud Headquarters in Hangzhou

This visit strengthened my conviction: AI should not remain merely a concept, nor be a tool only for the few. Truly valuable AI must enter industries, reach the land, and integrate into the real lives of millions of families.

Learning about the Qianwen Large Model

Moving forward, I hope to explore concrete paths for AI to empower agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fisheries — supporting the real economy. Especially in the direction of rural cooperatives, I also plan to offer free AI training so ordinary people can truly understand and use AI to improve production efficiency and broaden business thinking.

Working for the welfare of the people and doing real things — this is not just a slogan. More recent updates can be found in: My Story.

Project Introduction

This is a long scroll that begins with English learning and ultimately writes toward life’s advancement.

It still retains the main thread of the original “ridiculously good” English learning guide / English learning tutorial (https://github.com/byoungd/English-level-up-tips): how to learn English efficiently, how to build a long-term training system for listening, speaking, reading, and writing. At the same time, it also includes my real records over the years about AI, entrepreneurship, writing, intimate relationships, failure reflection, and starting anew — allowing methods and experiences to illuminate one another.

If English is a key to open the world, then life advancement means seeing yourself clearly in that larger world, training yourself, repairing yourself, and ultimately applying your abilities in real life.

AI Recommended Resources

Highly Recommended: token.love (https://token.love)

token.love (https://token.love) (China Token Cloud) is a unified AI intelligent gateway from Token Cloud Computing: a single OpenAI-compatible API integrates domestic and global large models, bringing models, keys, quotas, billing, routing, and observability into one console. It supports intelligent routing based on cost, latency, and availability, with millisecond automatic failover on single-point failures, and makes every call, usage, and cost traceable. Developers can start using it online instantly, while enterprises, state-owned/central enterprises, and party-government customers can also choose private, offline deployment for data sovereignty and independent control.

token.love Product Page

Recommended Resource: ku0.com - Library (https://ku0.com)

If you need more stable and reliable AI accounts and API resources while practicing the AI learning plan in this guide, you can check out: ku0.com (https://ku0.com).

Background

Hello, friend. Welcome to the Life Advancement Guide (https://github.com/byoungd/English-level-up-tips).

Let me briefly introduce myself: My QQ is 397865076, and my Qzone visitor count has consistently ranked first globally for years — feel free to visit my Qzone (https://user.qzone.qq.com/397865076) and follow me on X (https://x.com/ourleap).

I also recommend following my Douyin account: 词元云韩先凯 (Douyin ID: 72581209403). I will continue sharing content on AI empowering the real economy, English learning, and personal growth.

Douyin QR Code: 词元云韩先凯

When your eyes meet these words, I sincerely hope that what you open is not just a set of English study notes, but a long journey of cognition, action, falling, reflection, and restarting. May these few pages become strings that resonate between our hearts, leaving a clear echo on the path of growth.

Back in early July 2017, the goddess W., who was preparing for the TOEFL, asked me a question: How to learn English efficiently?

While thinking about how to answer, I recalled that during one semester of my senior year, I managed to pass 26 courses (19 retakes + 7 current courses), and once luckily ranked first in my province (Jiangsu) for both English and Chinese in the Gaokao. So, regarding efficient learning, I might barely qualify to say a few words, just as a humble offering.

After exchanging some learning insights with her, I was both amazed by her high enthusiasm for learning and noticed some misconceptions hidden in her methods.

So I wrote a short essay, jotting down scattered experiences about learning English. A few days later, she told me she hoped I could organize these experiences and share them with more people in need.

Before that, I didn’t realize so many students were struggling on their English learning journey.

They had never even thought: English is, after all, a language. Learning it should be as natural and effortless as we learned Chinese back then.

I sincerely hope you can love learning English. If you can’t for now, please try to discover the fun in it, or the benefits it can bring. Allow me to borrow a quote from Steve Jobs (though he was talking about work, the principle is the same):

The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.

The same goes for love for learning.

In this guide, I will try to let personal experience and verifiable evidence illuminate each other, drawing a practical map for English advancement, and placing blogs from a decade ago, reflections after entrepreneurship, and AI-era practices in the same life context. I truly hope it can bring you some small help.

English Proficiency Levels

[email protected]

This image mainly references Global scale - Table 1 (CEFR 3.3): Common Reference levels (http://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages/table-1-cefr-3.3-common-reference-levels-global-scale)

Features

Features Introduction

Chapters

understanding
vocabulary
listening
reading
speaking
writing
ai

The newly added AI chapter has been fully updated to the 2026 version. The focus is no longer on listing generic prompts, but systematically answering four questions:

• Why Gemini is now more recommended as the main engine for English learning
• How to chain Gem / Live / Guided Learning / Canvas / quiz / flashcards into a complete training pipeline
• Outside Gemini, how ChatGPT / Claude / Perplexity / DeepL Write should be divided and coordinated
• How to design a listening, speaking, reading, and writing training loop that truly stands the test of time

If you want AI to truly become an accelerator for English learning — not just a tool you occasionally use for translation — this chapter is worth reading carefully.

word-list
[email protected]
My Story
Entrepreneurship: From Ambition to Mission
Blog Archive from a Decade Ago

Acknowledgments

• Thanks to everyone who cares about and has contributed to this guide ❤️

Side Stories

For the part about love in my personal growth experience, please see:
Ridiculously Good Ex-Girlfriends

If you want to read about my real experience after failing in entrepreneurship, you can also read:
My Story

For a complete entrepreneurial reflection, read:
Entrepreneurship: From Ambition to Mission

To see how I wrote, tinkered, and observed the world at an earlier age, start here:
Blog Archive from a Decade Ago

Read Online

• Zhihu: Ridiculously Good English Learning Guide (https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/444211376)
• GitHub Pages: Life Advancement Guide (https://byoungd.github.io/English-level-up-tips/#/)
• GitBook: English-level-up-tips (https://babyyoung.gitbook.io/english-level-up-tips/)

Repost Notice

When reposting this guide, please indicate the author and GitHub link. Thank you!

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Special Statement

Many enthusiastic friends have said that this guide is thoughtfully written and helpful for their English learning and life advancement, and wish to show appreciation.

Fate has already given me (ridiculously) extra gifts, so no further reward is needed.

Hereby I declare: This guide does not accept and does not need monetary sponsorship.

Please use the spare change you would have used to tip me to buy yourself a few good books.

Isn’t learning the greatest joy in life?

Cheers and Enjoy :)