What is necessary to
learn English well?
What is necessary to learn English well?
Changing your life. Learning English requires action. You may know all
the learning tips, but if you don't start doing things, you will achieve
nothing. The fact is, if you want to learn to speak English well, you must
change your life. Here are some examples of things you will have to do:
Read a book in English for an hour every day, analyzing the
grammar in sentences and looking up words in an English dictionary
Listen to an audio book or other recording in English, stopping it
frequently, trying to understand what is being said, and trying to imitate
the speaker's pronunciation
Spend 30 minutes in the afternoon practicing the pronunciation of
the English "r" sound
Carefully write an e-mail message in English, using a dictionary or
a Web search every 20 seconds to make sure every word is correct, and
taking 5 minutes to write one sentence
Think about an English sentence you've read, wondering if it could
say "a" instead of "the" in the sentence, and trying to find similar
sentences on the Web to find out the answer
Walk down the street and build simple English sentences in your
head (talking to yourself in English about the things you see around you)
What kind of person would do all these crazy things? Only one kind.
The kind of person who enjoys doing them. If you want to learn to
speak English well, you're going to have to become that person. Have
you ever heard of anyone who became successful by doing something he
hated?
The problem
The problem with learning and teaching English as a foreign language is
that all English learners want to speak English well; however, most
learners don't want to spend time on learning English on their own.
(Which is probably why they sign up for English classes and hope their
teacher will force knowledge into their heads.)
This lack of motivation means that learners basically don't spend their
own time on learning English, and if they do, they don't do it regularly.
For example, a typical learner might study English phrasal verbs for 12
hours before an English exam. However, he will not read a book in
English for 30 minutes every day. He just doesn't feel that learning
English is pleasant enough, so he will only do it if he has to. The
problem is that a huge one-time effort gives you nothing, while small,
everyday activities will give you a lot.
Negative attitudes
One of the reasons why people don't want to spend their time on
learning English is that they associate learning English with unpleasant
things. When they think "learning English", they think about boring
English classes, boring exercises and boring homework. Even if they
know they need English in their career, that might not be very
motivating if the job itself is boring! In their minds, learning English is
something they have to do, not something they want to do.
Typical learner vs. motivated learner
