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How to learn English
- 1.
Motivation: Become a person who likes to learn English.
- 2.
Dictionary: Get a good English dictionary.
- 3.
No mistakes: Avoid mistakes. Try to use correct English from the
beginning.
- 4.
Pronunciation: Learn to pronounce English sounds. Learn to understand
phonetic transcription and the phonetic alphabet.
- 5.
Input: Get English into your
head by reading and listening to lots of English sentences.
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Reading
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Movies
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Adventure games
- 6.
SuperMemo is a computer program that you can use to learn English.
We have used it for 8 years and it has helped us a lot.
Motivation for learning English
- What is necessary to
learn English well? You have to change your life a little — do crazy
things like talking to yourself in English or spending your evening reading a
dictionary. In order to do these things, and do them regularly, you have to
enjoy doing them. If you are like most learners and don't feel like doing these
things, you will have to work on your motivation.
- Improving your motivation
for learning English: We share our psychological tricks that helped us
enjoy learning English and that you can use to boost your motivation and make a
difference in your English.
What is necessary to learn English well?
- 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:
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read a book in English for an hour every day, analyzing
the grammar in sentences and looking up words in an English dictionary
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listen to an audiobook or other recording in English,
stopping it frequently, trying to understand what is being said, and trying to
imitate the speaker's pronunciation
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spend your afternoon practicing the pronunciation of the
English "r" sound
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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
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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
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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. You cannot hate doing these things. Have you ever heard of a person who
became successful by doing something he hated?
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- 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.
- If you are one of those learners and don't
feel like practicing the pronunciation of the "r" sound or thinking
about English sentences every day, we have news for you: You're going to have
to make yourself want to do these things. In other words,
you'll have to work on your motivation. Fortunately, there are proven techniques to help
you with that.
Typical learner vs. motivated learner
- Paula is a typical learner of English
with a generally low level of motivation. She has occasional moments of high
motivation — like the day before her English test or that time when she
couldn't communicate with a foreign customer who called her at work. These kind
of situations make her think "I've got to do something about my
English!". However, they happen very rarely — less than once a month. So
even if she studies quite intensively (e.g. for two whole days before an exam),
the results are poor, because she forgets 90% of the things she learned within
a month. This is no surprise: The way human memory works, you need to review
things all the time; otherwise you just forget them.
- Now let's look at a different English
learner: Judy. Judy reads a special novel for English learners (written in
simplified English) almost every day for 30 minutes. She bought an
English-English dictionary and uses it to look up English words whenever she
doesn't understand a sentence in her book. It was hard to study regularly at
the beginning: Reading books and using a dictionary were not "normal
activities" for her. And every English sentence was a challenge.
- But now, after only two weeks, she can read
much faster. While reading, she often sees words that she has learned in the
past two weeks. When she recognizes such a word, she doesn't have to look it up
in a dictionary and she knows she has made good progress. Judy feels she has
learned a lot of English recently, and she is eager to learn more. Every day,
she looks forward to reading her book. The book gives her the chance to use
what she has learned (enjoy her progress) and to learn even more. Because she
reads regularly, she forgets little and her vocabulary keeps growing.
- Judy is on the right track. She will soon be
able to read English-language newspapers and other resources written for native
speakers.
Enjoyment leads to better memory
- If you enjoy learning English, you will spend
more time on it, and you will do it regularly. A high level of motivation will
also give you another advantage. It will be easier for you to memorize new
words and grammar structures. The reason is that the brain easily remembers
information on a subject that you like. (For example, some people like history
and know everything about World War II. If you told a "normal person"
to memorize all these facts, they could never do it.) So enjoyment of learning
gives you double benefits.
Improving your motivation for learning English
- In this article, we share our techniques for
improving your motivation for learning English as a foreign language. We used
them all the time when we were learning English and we still use them when we
need to boost our motivation in areas other than English.
Imagine yourself in the future
- Imagine you can talk to native speakers just like you talk in your
first language. Imagine other people wanting to speak English as well as you
do. Imagine the possibility of writing e-mail to people from all over the
world.
- It is helpful to read an article about the
advantages of knowing English well. There are two such articles on Antimoon: Why learn English and English makes you feel good.
- You should know that it is possible
to learn English really well. Just look at other people who have done it.
Remember that you are already good
- You already know some English (you're reading
an article in English right now). That's a big success! Now it's time for more
successes. Time to start using powerful methods of effective learning. Time to
gain an impressive
knowledge of English.
Remember there is a lot that you don't know
- You are good, but your English probably isn't
perfect. You probably can't understand
English-language TV, read books in English, talk to native speakers easily, write letters without
mistakes, etc.
- You should never think your English is
perfect. Even if you are the best student in your class, always try to find
your weak
areas and work on them. When you've learned to speak English well,
your problems will be quite small: punctuation, rarely used grammar structures,
rare words, understanding "street language". Right now, your problems
are probably more basic: mistakes in pronunciation,
small vocabulary,
grammar problems with the present perfect tense and conditional structures.
Use your English whenever you can
- This is very, very important. The more
you use English, the more you will want to learn it.
- Because English is
so popular, you can use it everywhere. You can use Google to find
English-language websites with interesting information, you can watch American cartoons, you can play adventure games on your
computer, you can read interesting books in English, or you can do other things that we write about.
- If you do these things, you will not only
have fun and learn English. If you see that a new English word lets you
understand your favorite TV show (or communicate with people, or beat a
computer game), you will want to learn more words. So you will learn English
more, use it more, learn it more, use it more... If you also use effective
learning methods, your English will grow faster than you can imagine.
Talk to people about English
- This is a very simple method, but it is very
effective. Here's how it works:
- You usually talk about things which interest
you. But the opposite is true, too. If you start talking about a boring
subject, you will begin to get interested in it.
- Imagine you are studying a subject that you
hate. You are bored and tired, but you have to pass the test
tomorrow. If there are people near you, you have two options: you can tell
everybody how much you are suffering or you can tell those people
about the things you've learned. If you choose the first option, you will only
feel worse.
- If you choose the second option, and start a
conversation on the "boring" subject, you will begin to look at it in
a totally different way. Suddenly it will become a subject worth talking about
— therefore, an interesting subject.
- How can you begin such a conversation? If
you're studying English, you can surprise another person by talking to him/her
in English. Say (in English): Hi, I'm studying English and I hate it. Or
you can say (in your first language): Hey, I've learned 50 English words
today. Do you know what's the English word for ...? If there are no people
near you, you can telephone or send an e-mail message to your friend.
- What will your friends say? Probably they
won't be very interested, but it doesn't matter! The important thing is this:
After talking about English, you will study it with much more passion.
Try it.
Find a friend who is learning English
- If you can find a friend who is learning
English and is on a similar level of skill, you will be in an excellent
situation:
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you will have someone to talk about English with. These
conversations will increase your interest in English, as explained in the previous
section.
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learning English will be easier, because you will be able
to discuss your problems with your friend.
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you will study English more, because you will want to be
better than your friend. :-)
- You should meet your friend regularly.
Ideally, he/she should live near you, or go to the same school as you. If you
absolutely can't find anybody willing to learn English with you, you can try to
find somebody by e-mail. This is a worse solution: your conversations will
probably be less frequent, and it is difficult to compete with someone who you
don't know well.
Spend some money on learning English
- If you spend your money on something, you
will want to use it. For
example, if you buy an expensive tennis racket, you will probably go out and
play tennis every day.
- This rule is also true for learning English.
If you want to increase your desire to learn English, buy a new dictionary, an
interesting English-language book, English-language cable TV, etc. The idea is
simple: You paid for it, so you will want to use it, and you will improve your
English.
- There is a problem with this method. It only
works for a short time. You usually lose your desire to learn English after a
few days. To keep learning, you would have to buy something every week!
- However, this method is helpful, because it
gives you an impulse to start learning. For example, if you buy a dictionary of
phrasal verbs, you will probably learn some words from it. Then you should try
to use them. For example, write an e-mail message with these words. This will
increase your motivation (as explained before), and you will
learn more.
Read Unlimited
Power by Anthony Robbins
- Anthony Robbins' book Unlimited Power: The New Science of
Personal Achievement gives excellent advice on how to achieve
any kind of goal. This book has changed the lives of many people, so you might
want to take a look at it.
Remember that learning English requires action
- We have said this many times. One small
action is more powerful than reading hundreds of articles. Yes, we know it
is very hard to do things, even if they are good for us. We humans are lazy creatures. That is why not many people speak
English well.
- Still, we hope you can do the things
we talk about in our English learning method — not only read
about them. You will be successful only if you change something about your
life.
- Don't put it off. Begin now.
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