Learning English
Nowadays a lot of people all over the world learn English as the world language. There are many ways of learning a foreign language but most people begin learning it at school.
So, what should we do to master a language.
We must learn grammar in any language. Because we can’t build a house without a foundations. But we have too many drills at school. So grammar is important, but it should not be taught in isolation.
We need to practice grammar together with vocabulary. It’s not good when we learn new words but we don’t have much practice using them with the grammar. Practice helps us to memorize the words. I remember words better if they are related to my interests and connected with my hobby.
One of the problems for learners of English is phrasal verbs and idioms. They’re very difficult. And you have to keep yourself up-to-date with them too. For example, the idiom “It’s raining cats and dogs” is so old-fashioned and the average English person doesn’t use that expression.
English pronunciation is hard but English intonation is awful! I think it’s the most difficult part of pronunciation, because if you say it wrong, people think you’re rude.
It’s important to learn both formal and informal English — how to ask for information, how to be polite.
I find reading very helpful. 1 read books, newspapers, magazines and other periodicals. I try to guess the meaning of words I don’t know from their context. This helps me to read more quickly. But I also look words up in the dictionary and make a note of the most useful ones.
Listening to songs can be useful, but some songs have such silly words, though the music is lovely. Listening to the radio and watching videos and educational TV programmes in English help me, too. Especially listening to the news. I was very proud when I realized that I could easily get the idea of what I was listening to.
As I can see, learning a language isn’t easy. Modern world is becoming smaller all the time. Every day distances between different countries seem less. For this reason it’s becoming more and more important to know different languages, especially English.
One billion people speak English today.
It is used by the government, businessmen and universities.
English is the language of politics and diplomacy, science and technology, business and trade, sport and pop music. To know English today is absolutely necessary for every educated person, for every good specialist. Learning a language is not an easy thing. It’s a long and slow process that takes a lot of time and patience. But it’s a must.
English is taught throughout the world and a lot of people speak it quite well. In our country English is very popular: it is studied at schools (sometimes even at nursery schools), colleges and universities.
Everyone will speak English soon — I’m sure of it. We all need to understand each other. To do that we need an international language, and that’s English.
