How to learn English

This text was written by my wife for my own blog. It seemed to me quite interesting and useful for people interested in learning foreign languages, and I decided to publish it here, given that there are a lot of people at Habré. Why did my wife decide she could give any advice in this area? Because she graduated from Inaz, she speaks English fluently, has taught English for a long time with different groups and grateful students have repeatedly favored her as a teacher, and now she is successfully learning Italian and already uses it in her work.







So, who is interested - I ask under the cat.

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1. How to start learning English?

The volume of introductory phonetic courses always terrified me. You learn the transcription, you look at the anatomical pictures with the image of a rolled-up tongue, you know the spelling by heart, you look with horror at the intonation patterns, which you have to learn almost before you say your first sentence in English, only then , so that all this can then be broken about the realities of life, in which you will find another pronunciation, another transcription, and other regional variants of reading. Whatever the chosen benefit, the lingering time for studying the introductory phonetic course (which is about letters, sounds, and my name is Mr. Smith) is an alarming symptom. Usually, at Elementary level courses, we already speak and write tightly, still not fully learning either the transcription, nor the types of syllables, or exceptions to the reading rules. Do not let yourself get stuck at this stage, because each of you already have some kind of base. An introductory course you can run a couple of times through your eyes, speak, stop at a couple of interesting places, and it’s normal to study the laws of utterance even before you learned to read and write. One can take the bull by the horns only by studying the structure of sentences, and not examining letters in a microscope. Learn the word order, questions, exclamations, orders, inquiries, reactions of English-speaking people to the surrounding events in the media. Strive to get exactly to the part of the textbook, where they talk about these things, and to those benefits, where exactly the construction of the proposal is a strong point. Advancement is not fatal. So you start talking faster.

2. How to choose a school / course?

Techniques breed like mushrooms after rain. In addition to the classical four methods of learning the language (this tedious bjaka is described in the teaching methods, and I will not dwell on them in detail), of which the communicative method is the leading one, dozens of copyright unique heavenly methods appear every year, which, and communicative. I just hear from every angle “What do you think about the Pupkin method? And about the method Zamukhryshkina? ". I don’t think about them, because others will come next year, and each has his own method, and he will also “tear up” and “blow up” everyone. In recent years, I remember Givental (the manual is very well structured).



I still remember Dragunkin. One cannot look at what he does with the English language without co-Dragania. His course is filled with momentary mnemonic tricks that will help you now, but will lead you away from understanding the whole. Not necessarily long and hard to learn, you can just deceive your memory and perception, as the author says. (“It’s not necessary to fall in love, because you can rent a prostitute!”). Moreover, supporters of this author from among my former students, “intoxicated” by the ease with which the author suggests that they take the bull by the horns, have no real idea of ​​their competence.



I remember the method of reading Ilya Frank, which I practiced in reading Italian fairy tales, but I don’t believe in speaking in the target language from passive reading.



I remember Petrov, who gallops across Europe, and can be useful for creating some kind of preliminary base for further more serious study.



Bonk, Anti-Bonk, Davydov, Kuzovlev ... the course can be any, even very old and very school, the main thing is to stop my own throwing about whether I chose the course correctly, and, having entered this water, do not look back.

3. How to evaluate a tutor or teacher?

If you are taught by a professional translator, then this is far from being a guarantor. Even if you are taught by a Russian person with an experience of emigration or a girl who married there, for example, then this is also not a guarantee that you will be taught English. High prices here are more a habit than any guarantee.



Do not look at decorative things (pronunciation, year of assignment, stories about the realities of life in the country of the language being studied), only a fan of his own business and one that can keep your attention in a fist and give you a system can set up your linguistic apparatus. In other words, a provincial school teacher with a serious, dynamic approach can give you more than a relaxed diplomat and lawyer from MGIMO.



Usually the tutor conducts a free trial lesson or a trial 20 minutes, if not, ask. Immediately find out, "phrasebook" is or "grammar." If this is not the one you need - say goodbye. Even during the introductory lesson, the teacher is obliged to encourage you to speak out, and not just make you answer yes and no questions (the first is the same communicative method), even if you do it ineptly. Remember, the function of the tutor is controlling, transitions from tasks to tasks should lead you somewhere and provide a general cumulative result. A tutor who can not immediately figure out what task to give you for the remaining three to five minutes, and in whose eyes there is no clear plan, if he were at least three hundred times a citizen of the United States and a big clever is not your tutor. Give him the right not to be a walking dictionary, give him the right sometimes not to know the rule, but to feel it, but if he is a bad methodologist, then look for another.

I will add that the guys from the former Soviet republics on Skype work literally for a penny. You can hire a few.

4. Which sections should be studied in depth, and which ones for general knowledge?

This topic has been written and rewritten. But I also add observations:



1) Times of the Indefinite group should bounce off the teeth. All forms of exclamations and questions, nuances in the third person, all abbreviated verbal versions of the verbs, won't, it's, etc.



2) Incorrect, they are also the most commonly used verbs. Knowing them, you kill two birds with one stone - here you have the vocabulary, here you have the grammar.



3) All comparative constructions, without which neither the conversation nor the description will flow - how to say that something is better than something, or worse, or the same, or no worse.



4) Prepositions of time, place, and all other prepositions. Connected speech is impossible without mentioning objects in time and space.



5) Basic modal verbs - they are even more frequently used than frequent-frequent irregular verbs (p.2).



The remaining topics and sections are not intended for gourmets, but in order for you to penetrate and be able to translate more thoughts and arguments into the language and get away from the primitive.

5. How to learn a language easily and not lose motivation?

This is a very individual thing. Need to know yourself. If motivation burns like a match immediately after practicing singing or tennis, then language motivation is also unlikely to last. I will say one thing: there is a certain period in the study of each new language, during which it will seem to you that you are sticking to the spot or even have slipped to the old level. Sometimes you just want to break the lesson, from the fact that in my head a complete mess. It is during this period, when the night is dark before flourishing, you will feel that the textbooks are stupid, and the tutor is mocking you. It is these symptoms that mean the breakthrough is near. I advise at this stage to support the work on the language at least formally. If you at least did not abandon this system and passed from the first enthusiasm through this black period, then this is what will happen: one fine and unexpected day you will get a feeling of strength and ability to describe almost any subject in the language being studied, and keep up the conversation and listen news ... And you laugh at your gloom.



Another problem is the inability to get results from the topic covered within a reasonable time. And the disappointment comes from the fact that the topics are changing, but in order to say something correctly, you have to almost go all over again. So it happens - yesterday the topic of numerals passed, and today, in the morning, you cannot even correctly name your date of birth. And when will it all end? And what will remain after this? And your teacher says: "Well, practice is needed here ..." and sighs: "More practice, and especially in the country of the language being studied ...". And, let's say, if you don’t have this practice now, you don’t go to an English club, you don’t get acquainted with native speakers at airports and don’t exchange Skype greetings, then I can’t tell you anything to comfort you. But you must be clearly aware - even if the topic does not emerge at the right moment, then all the same vain knowledge and vain exercises do not exist. Your subconscious and motor skills have already begun to do work that you do not feel. Vain does not exist.



In the next article - how I memorize foreign words.