April 14, 2013 at 16:31How to learn English
This text was written by my wife for my own blog. It seemed to me interesting and useful enough for people interested in learning foreign languages, and I decided to publish it here, given that there are a lot of such people on Habré. Why did my wife decide that she could give any advice in this area? Because she graduated from Foreign Languages, speaks fluent English, has taught English classes with different groups for a long time, and grateful students have repeatedly responded positively to her as a teacher, and now she has successfully studied Italian and is already using it in her work.
So, who is interested - please, under cat.
The volume of introductory phonetic courses has always terrified me. You learn transcription, you look at anatomical images with the image of a language rolled up in a tube, you know spelling by heart, you look at the intonation patterns with horror, which you must learn almost before you say your first sentence in English, only then so that all this later crashes about the realities of life, in which you will find another pronunciation, and another transcription, and other regional reading options. Whatever the selected manual, the lengthy time it takes to study the introductory phonetic course (which is about letters, sounds, and about my name, Mr. Smith) is an alarming symptom. Usually, at Elementary level courses, we already speak and write tightly, still not having learned to the end either transcription, types of syllables, or exceptions to reading rules. Do not let yourself get stuck at this stage, because each of you already has some kind of base. You can run through the introductory course a couple of times, talk, stop at a couple of interesting places, and it’s normal to study the laws of utterance even before you learn to read and write. You can take a bull by the horns only by studying the structure of sentences, and not by examining the letters in a microscope. Study the word order, questions, exclamations, orders, interrogations, reactions of English-speaking people to surrounding events in the media. Try to get to the very part of the textbook that talks about these things, and to those manuals where exactly the construction of the sentence is a strong point. Advancement is not deadly. So you will begin to speak faster. to speak, to dwell on a couple of interesting places, and it is normal to study the laws of utterance even before I have learned to read and write. You can take a bull by the horns only by studying the structure of sentences, and not by examining the letters in a microscope. Study the word order, questions, exclamations, orders, interrogations, reactions of English-speaking people to surrounding events in the media. Try to get to the very part of the textbook that talks about these things, and to those manuals where exactly the construction of the sentence is a strong point. Advancement is not deadly. So you will begin to speak faster. to speak, to dwell on a couple of interesting places, and it is normal to study the laws of utterance even before I have learned to read and write. You can take a bull by the horns only by studying the structure of sentences, and not by examining the letters in a microscope. Study the word order, questions, exclamations, orders, interrogations, reactions of English-speaking people to surrounding events in the media. Try to get to the very part of the textbook that talks about these things, and to those manuals where exactly the construction of the sentence is a strong point. Advancement is not deadly. So you will begin to speak faster. exclamations, orders, interrogations, reactions of English-speaking people to surrounding events in the media. Try to get to the very part of the textbook that talks about these things, and to those manuals where exactly the construction of the sentence is a strong point. Advancement is not deadly. So you will begin to speak faster. exclamations, orders, interrogations, reactions of English-speaking people to surrounding events in the media. Try to get to the very part of the textbook that talks about these things, and to those manuals where exactly the construction of the sentence is a strong point. Advancement is not deadly. So you will begin to speak faster.
Techniques breed like mushrooms after rain. In addition to the classical four methods of language learning (this tedious language is described in the teaching methodology, and I will not dwell on them in detail), of which the communicative method is the leading one, dozens of author's unique methods from heaven appear every year, including some of them and communicative. I just hear from every angle, “What do you think of Pupkin’s method? And what about the Zamukhryshkina method? ” I don’t think anything about them, because next year others will come, and each has his own method, and he will “tear” and “blow up” everyone as well. In recent years, I remember Givental (a very, very well-structured allowance).
Dragunkin was also remembered. What he does with the English language cannot be watched without co-Drag-anie. His course is filled with momentary mnemonic tricks that will help you now, but will lead you away from understanding the whole. It is not necessary to study long and hard, you can simply deceive your memory and perception, as the author says. (“It’s not necessary to fall in love, because you can remove a prostitute!”). Moreover, the 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, do not have a 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 language I learn from passive reading.
I remember Petrov, who gallops across Europe, and may come in handy to create some preliminary base for further more serious study.
Bonk, Anti-Bonk, Davydova, Kuzovlev ... the course can be any, even very old and very school, the main thing is to stop your own throwing about whether I chose the right course and, entering this water, do not look back.
If you are taught by a professional translator, then this is far from a guarantee. Even if you are taught by a Russian person with 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 craft and one that can hold your attention in his 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-lawyer from MGIMO.
Usually the tutor gives a free trial lesson or trial 20 minutes, if not, ask. Immediately find out whether this is a “phrasebook” or “grammarist”. 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 the questions “yes” and “no” (the first is the very communicative method), even if you do it ineptly. Remember, the tutor's function is supervising, transitions from tasks to tasks should lead you somewhere and provide a general cumulative result. A tutor who can’t immediately figure out what task to give you for the remaining three to five minutes, and who does not have a clear plan in his eyes, even if he is a U.S. citizen and a great clever, is not your tutor. Give him the right not to be a walking dictionary, give him the right to sometimes not know the rule,
I will add that the guys from the former Soviet republics on Skype work literally for a penny. You can hire several.
On this subject, written and transcribed. But I will add some observations:
1) The times of the Indefinite group should bounce off the teeth. All forms of exclamations and questions, nuances in the third person, all abridged spoken versions of verbs, won't, it's, etc.
2) Irregular, they are also the most commonly used verbs. Knowing them, you kill two birds with one stone - here you have a vocabulary, here you have a grammar.
3) All comparative constructions, without which neither conversation nor description will flow - how to say that something is better than something, or worse, or the same, or not worse.
4) Prepositions of time, place, and all other prepositions. Coherent speech is impossible without mentioning objects in time and space.
5) Basic modal verbs - they are even more often used than frequent-frequent irregular verbs (clause 2).
The remaining topics and sections are not intended for gourmets at all, but for you to delve into and be able to translate more thoughts and arguments into the language and get away from the primitive.
This is a very individual thing. You need to know yourself. If motivation burns out like a match right after singing or playing tennis, then motivation for languages is unlikely to last. I will say one thing: in the study of each new language there is a certain period during which it will seem to you that you are marking time or even slipping to the old level. Sometimes you just want to break the lesson from the fact that your head is full of porridge. It is during this period, when the night is dark before flowering, it will seem to you that the textbooks are stupid, and the tutor is mocking you. It is these symptoms that mean that a breakthrough is already near. I advise at this stage to support work on the language at least formally. If you at least have not abandoned this system and passed from the first raptures through this black period, then this will happen:
Another problem is the inability to get results from the topics covered in a reasonable amount of time. And disappointment comes from the fact that the topics are changing, but in order to say something correctly, you have to almost go through it all over again. It happens - numerals passed the topic yesterday, and today in the morning you can’t even correctly name your date of birth. And when will it all end? And what remains after that? And your teacher says: “Well, practice is needed here ...” and sighs: “More practice, and especially in the country of the language being studied ...”. And, say, if you don’t have this practice right now, you don’t go to an English club, don’t meet native speakers at airports and do not exchange greetings on Skype, then I can’t tell you anything comforting. But you must be clearly aware - even if the topic does not pop up at the right time, 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. It does not exist in vain.
In the next article - how I remember foreign words.
So, who is interested - please, under cat.
1. Where to start learning English?
The volume of introductory phonetic courses has always terrified me. You learn transcription, you look at anatomical images with the image of a language rolled up in a tube, you know spelling by heart, you look at the intonation patterns with horror, which you must learn almost before you say your first sentence in English, only then so that all this later crashes about the realities of life, in which you will find another pronunciation, and another transcription, and other regional reading options. Whatever the selected manual, the lengthy time it takes to study the introductory phonetic course (which is about letters, sounds, and about my name, Mr. Smith) is an alarming symptom. Usually, at Elementary level courses, we already speak and write tightly, still not having learned to the end either transcription, types of syllables, or exceptions to reading rules. Do not let yourself get stuck at this stage, because each of you already has some kind of base. You can run through the introductory course a couple of times, talk, stop at a couple of interesting places, and it’s normal to study the laws of utterance even before you learn to read and write. You can take a bull by the horns only by studying the structure of sentences, and not by examining the letters in a microscope. Study the word order, questions, exclamations, orders, interrogations, reactions of English-speaking people to surrounding events in the media. Try to get to the very part of the textbook that talks about these things, and to those manuals where exactly the construction of the sentence is a strong point. Advancement is not deadly. So you will begin to speak faster. to speak, to dwell on a couple of interesting places, and it is normal to study the laws of utterance even before I have learned to read and write. You can take a bull by the horns only by studying the structure of sentences, and not by examining the letters in a microscope. Study the word order, questions, exclamations, orders, interrogations, reactions of English-speaking people to surrounding events in the media. Try to get to the very part of the textbook that talks about these things, and to those manuals where exactly the construction of the sentence is a strong point. Advancement is not deadly. So you will begin to speak faster. to speak, to dwell on a couple of interesting places, and it is normal to study the laws of utterance even before I have learned to read and write. You can take a bull by the horns only by studying the structure of sentences, and not by examining the letters in a microscope. Study the word order, questions, exclamations, orders, interrogations, reactions of English-speaking people to surrounding events in the media. Try to get to the very part of the textbook that talks about these things, and to those manuals where exactly the construction of the sentence is a strong point. Advancement is not deadly. So you will begin to speak faster. exclamations, orders, interrogations, reactions of English-speaking people to surrounding events in the media. Try to get to the very part of the textbook that talks about these things, and to those manuals where exactly the construction of the sentence is a strong point. Advancement is not deadly. So you will begin to speak faster. exclamations, orders, interrogations, reactions of English-speaking people to surrounding events in the media. Try to get to the very part of the textbook that talks about these things, and to those manuals where exactly the construction of the sentence is a strong point. Advancement is not deadly. So you will begin to speak faster.
2. How to choose a school / courses?
Techniques breed like mushrooms after rain. In addition to the classical four methods of language learning (this tedious language is described in the teaching methodology, and I will not dwell on them in detail), of which the communicative method is the leading one, dozens of author's unique methods from heaven appear every year, including some of them and communicative. I just hear from every angle, “What do you think of Pupkin’s method? And what about the Zamukhryshkina method? ” I don’t think anything about them, because next year others will come, and each has his own method, and he will “tear” and “blow up” everyone as well. In recent years, I remember Givental (a very, very well-structured allowance).
Dragunkin was also remembered. What he does with the English language cannot be watched without co-Drag-anie. His course is filled with momentary mnemonic tricks that will help you now, but will lead you away from understanding the whole. It is not necessary to study long and hard, you can simply deceive your memory and perception, as the author says. (“It’s not necessary to fall in love, because you can remove a prostitute!”). Moreover, the 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, do not have a 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 language I learn from passive reading.
I remember Petrov, who gallops across Europe, and may come in handy to create some preliminary base for further more serious study.
Bonk, Anti-Bonk, Davydova, Kuzovlev ... the course can be any, even very old and very school, the main thing is to stop your own throwing about whether I chose the right course and, entering 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 a guarantee. Even if you are taught by a Russian person with 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 craft and one that can hold your attention in his 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-lawyer from MGIMO.
Usually the tutor gives a free trial lesson or trial 20 minutes, if not, ask. Immediately find out whether this is a “phrasebook” or “grammarist”. 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 the questions “yes” and “no” (the first is the very communicative method), even if you do it ineptly. Remember, the tutor's function is supervising, transitions from tasks to tasks should lead you somewhere and provide a general cumulative result. A tutor who can’t immediately figure out what task to give you for the remaining three to five minutes, and who does not have a clear plan in his eyes, even if he is a U.S. citizen and a great clever, is not your tutor. Give him the right not to be a walking dictionary, give him the right to sometimes not know the rule,
I will add that the guys from the former Soviet republics on Skype work literally for a penny. You can hire several.
4. Which sections should be studied in depth, and which for general knowledge?
On this subject, written and transcribed. But I will add some observations:
1) The times of the Indefinite group should bounce off the teeth. All forms of exclamations and questions, nuances in the third person, all abridged spoken versions of verbs, won't, it's, etc.
2) Irregular, they are also the most commonly used verbs. Knowing them, you kill two birds with one stone - here you have a vocabulary, here you have a grammar.
3) All comparative constructions, without which neither conversation nor description will flow - how to say that something is better than something, or worse, or the same, or not worse.
4) Prepositions of time, place, and all other prepositions. Coherent speech is impossible without mentioning objects in time and space.
5) Basic modal verbs - they are even more often used than frequent-frequent irregular verbs (clause 2).
The remaining topics and sections are not intended for gourmets at all, but for you to delve into 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. You need to know yourself. If motivation burns out like a match right after singing or playing tennis, then motivation for languages is unlikely to last. I will say one thing: in the study of each new language there is a certain period during which it will seem to you that you are marking time or even slipping to the old level. Sometimes you just want to break the lesson from the fact that your head is full of porridge. It is during this period, when the night is dark before flowering, it will seem to you that the textbooks are stupid, and the tutor is mocking you. It is these symptoms that mean that a breakthrough is already near. I advise at this stage to support work on the language at least formally. If you at least have not abandoned this system and passed from the first raptures through this black period, then this will happen:
Another problem is the inability to get results from the topics covered in a reasonable amount of time. And disappointment comes from the fact that the topics are changing, but in order to say something correctly, you have to almost go through it all over again. It happens - numerals passed the topic yesterday, and today in the morning you can’t even correctly name your date of birth. And when will it all end? And what remains after that? And your teacher says: “Well, practice is needed here ...” and sighs: “More practice, and especially in the country of the language being studied ...”. And, say, if you don’t have this practice right now, you don’t go to an English club, don’t meet native speakers at airports and do not exchange greetings on Skype, then I can’t tell you anything comforting. But you must be clearly aware - even if the topic does not pop up at the right time, 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. It does not exist in vain.
In the next article - how I remember foreign words.