English. Learning problems

I think it’s no secret to anyone that the existing teaching system is not aimed at a quick and successful study of the English language. The reason for this problem lies behind many factors: tutors who get big money for an hour of “helping” you, private schools “making money”, outdated teaching methods in educational institutions, authors of hundreds of books of the latest revolutionary methods “English in 30 minutes”, “Iron Curtain” at which the majority of teachers were born. A discussion of this problem periodically pops up at various conferences, but as the saying goes, “but things are still there.” This article is intended to help make up for lost years of language learning.

Recall

The most important thing is not to consider language learning as a goal, we learn the language to read magazines, talk with people, watch movies, and perceive speech. To begin with, we recall the basic rules of the English language, which in truth are not very many, but it is more correct to say very few. But I immediately focus on the word “remember”, you do not need to learn the rules, fix exercises. Let the rules be a cheat sheet that helps to understand “why is it here on the end and not at the end" Those. you don’t need to look for rules in an unfamiliar English text, you just need to read the text, not understandable sentences, or parts thereof, write out (ctrl + c, ctrl + v will not work) in a notebook. Alexander Dragunkin’s book “Fast English” can help you quickly remember, or understand, some rules, or language features that were taught in a very sophisticated way at school. But I’ll say right away that it’s hard to read his books, a lot of unnecessary information, so I don’t advise you to get involved in his “new Russian” method. And let's get a notebook in which we structure the rules from his book, for ease of use. Let's create a cheat sheet for ourselves.

For example, my version of the cheat sheet (which is understandable and useful, I think it will only be me) What is hidden under three stickers:

To begin

The most difficult step, the wrong choice of which can discourage any desire for further study. The BBC Learning English service to help you, let's start with the How to ... section (www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/howto ) There are sections “How to ... discuss”, “How to ... conduct a conversation”, “How to ... explain, ask, advise”, “How to ... ask, suggest, invite "," How ... to report or respond to the news "," How to ... welcome, apologize or forgive. "

Now we are preparing a little for further work and will try to make it more productive. To begin with, it will be difficult to read because of the poor vocabulary, we will install TranslateIt! or similar for contextual translation of words with transcription and pronunciation. Pros of TranslateIt! that it can capture text from almost any source (web browser, pdf reader, notepad) which is good.

Let's start with “How to ... Discussing ”lecture“ Making suggestions ”.

We open the lecture using the Script link (pdf - 21k) on the lecture page, read it fluently, i.e. we don’t think much about the meaning of unfamiliar sentences, just “what we understood, we understood,” we write out unfamiliar words with a translation in a notebook (as an optimization of the process, we create excel we copy the unfamiliar words into a column, then we set google translate to the whole column, and we copy it back , to the next column, but after finishing work with the lecture, you should still rewrite these words in a notebook). Now download the same lecture in mp3 Download - mp3 (1.8mb)and by ear (we close the pdf so as not to be distracted) we are trying to understand the meaning of the lecture, or at least recall those sentences that you fluently read. Let it be very difficult to understand this speech, the announcers read especially without highlighting individual words with pauses, swallowing the endings in places. But this is the first time, I assure you. They listened. Now open pdf and start working with paragraphs. We read the first paragraph aloud, clearly pronouncing familiar words, we listen to the unfamiliar (and try to repeat ourselves) in TranslateIt! , Lingvo, Google translateor any other convenient service, the main thing is not to lose sight of the text for a long time (hence the minus of dictionaries in the form of books, until you find a word - you forget the text). Now we play this paragraph in mp3, check the correctness of our speech, and proceed to a detailed translation. We translate in a less literary language, but as close as possible to the original. And so on until the end of the lecture.

Now back to the main page of the lecture (www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/1756_how_to_discuss/page2.shtml ) We look at the table as a plan of the lecture, in mind we recall what was discussed, and proceed to the exercises. The plan for working with the exercises is the same: we read fluently, listen, translate paragraphs, listen to the paragraph again - we answer questions.

And so 3-4 times a week, the main thing is to choose specific days and hours for learning a language. For example, Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 20:00. This will teach punctuality, one missed lesson can turn into laziness ... and you quit studying. Our goals are more rosy.

The best option is to work together, translate paragraphs in turn, discuss about the correctness of the translation, adjust the spoken words to each other, and ultimately disassemble the tasks for lectures, because some tasks involve dialogue, or conversation.

The place of your studies is better to choose some coffee house where you can do lectures calmly, without being distracted by household chores. A laptop and a 3G modem with a traffic of 2 megabytes per lecture (or free wifi) will help organize a mobile lecture audience for two.

Get in the taste

In parallel with the lectures, we will need to learn the words that you wrote out in a notebook. What is the best way to teach? There is no definite answer, each one works differently, it’s easier for me to write cards on cardboards (business cards) - on the one hand, the English word, on the other hand, and repeat in the evenings. There are programs like “ IT - an inconspicuous teacher ”, just create your own dictionary, and while working at the computer, you see pop-up words with translation. I repeat - to whom it is convenient, who remembers the best.

In addition to unfamiliar words, we will need to learn irregular verbs, without them it will be difficult. To facilitate this task, I advise you to look at the book by Alexander Dragunkin “Irregular Verbs”. Its division of verbs into groups greatly simplifies this task.

For practice, I advise you to watch in the evenings on one series of your favorite animated series (The Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama, South Park, etc.) without translation and subtitles. The sentences in them are built simply, clear speech, sometimes conversational. Gradually, you will understand more and more offers, and get more pleasure from cartoons ... and from yourself of course.

Result

After completing the entire course of the lectures “ How to ... Discussing ” (5 lectures), I think you will notice that you began to understand the language much better, one lesson began to take much less time, speech is perceived much more easily.