How to Learn English

2 easy steps from English is Fun

I. Vocabulary:

You can learn 300 new words in a month, spending just 15 minutes per day:

 1. Open www.lingualeobr.com (you can register or login with facebook).
2. Find favorite movies, songs, books or jokes - whatever you like.
3. Click on 10 new words (you'll see the translation), which you can add to your online dictionary.
4. Choose games to memorize these words, and learn English playing.

II. Speaking:

 

 

Improving Listening Skills: Advice of a Native Speaker

A really cool teacher of English from Canada - Ronnie - advises on how to improve your litening skills. Watch and enjoy!

You might find her advice kind of obvious but are you sure you do those things to improve your listening?

Vocabulary Booster

Have you ever tried to count how many new words you tend to remember during, let’s say, ten days? Unless you are horribly meticulous, you probably don’t count the number of newly-acquired and yet awkwardly-used lexical units.

Frankly speaking, you don’t need this. First of all, it’s pointless. Even if you have learnt all the words they have in Muller’s dictionary, it doesn’t mean that they have become your active vocabulary. Second of all, you don’t need to do this with Muller’s dictionary…do it with your own! Create it using this resource, for example. It allows you to make your own dictionaries and study the words YOU like and YOU need. The tests provided will give you control over what you have remembered well and what requires more drilling.

Go English, Go Social!

Social Networks: Curse or Blessing? No matter what your answer is now, if you think carefully, you will make a social network a useful place.

We study foreign languages to communicate. We can start right away. Let’s try SharedTalk. The source is positioned as a place for “language exchange”. You will find a person who is a native speaker of your target language but will be required to help those who study your native language.

Homework is Evil

That is my favourite incorrect answer ever! 18% of respondents agree with me upon it 

Practice makes perfect. And what can help remember all those weird grammar forms if not drilling as such.
Can you imagine a class consisting of endless grammar exercises? I can! And I can even tell you what the purpose of such classes is. Imagine you have been studying present simple for a while. It’s time you moved on to learning the continuous forms. However, you still make one and the same mistake: “he go”. According to the programme of your course, you are already finishing with the continuous, but in fact you come to every class and do one and the same thing. You continually repeat “he goes” in different tasks.
Surely, such a class is far from ideal. On the other hand, the question is what is better – to forget about this first-person-singular thing and move on to Present Continuous, or to stick to Simple until it is “automated” in your mind.

Writing: Pleasure and Cultural Experience

Writing is boring. At least this is something I keep hearing from my students every now and again. Well, to some extent it is boring. It requires some manual effort. Despite this, what not to like about expressing your thoughts, ideas and emotions in a way that gives you time to think them through and be explicit and eloquent?!
Writing is speaking in a silent manner. Everybody likes to speak. So, I assume everybody should like to write, too. However, not many of us do. I am going to allow myself a guess… Do we write boring letters to boring people about boring stuff? OK then, everything becomes clear.
If we are lucky to find a person with whom it is easy and interesting to communicate, written communication will also bring joy. And when we find them plenty…

Almost a year ago I came across an article about odd hobbies. Frankly speaking, the hobbies considered were not that odd. Moreover one of them got me really interested. The word “postcrossing” didn’t ring any bell but the description was fascinating. Basically random people were exchanging postcards from all over the world according to some simple rules to make the avalanche of cards an organized phenomenon.

Listening vs. Reading

The new poll is on, which means it’s time we analyzed the results of the most recent one. Actually, they came as a surprise. I don’t mean the fact that listening beat them all astonished me. No, I kind of agree with those 48% of participants who believe it to be the most difficult skill to master. And I do not imply that speaking shouldn’t be on the second line of the chart as 40% of respondents insist. Writing came third with 12% in its favour, which is again not that astonishing. What got me stunned was the fact that nobody voted for reading.

In my humble opinion reading is definitely underestimated. It is a fantastic source of vocabulary and grammar. Unlike listening, reading appeals to understanding based on our knowledge of vocab items and structures in which they are used. And if we fail, the tasks become a guessing game. However, success in Reading fully depends on us and our knowledge.

Memorizing and Activating

Nothing is easy. Memorizing the words is no exception. It does require some work. Even if you are lucky enough to have fantastic memory, you might remember the meaning of the word but you might never “activate” it. Memorizing should not be just about the meaning, it’s more about remembering and understanding of how to use the word. So, the first step on the way to enhance the vocabulary is to understand the meaning, the second is to remember the context in which the word can be used and the third is to apply the newly acquired word to life!

Memorizing
I. Flip cards
Write the word on one side and the meaning/translation/collocation with this word on the other. Use the cards each day for several days to firmly learn the words. Don’t overload yourself with too long a word list!

II. Pictures
Draw small pictures that show the meaning of the word if you can. Make a funny picture – it will help the brains to memorize the word easier. We tend to retain more “unusual” pieces of information than the “usual” ones.

III. Opposites
Learn words with opposite meanings (antonyms) and words with similar meanings (synonyms) together. For instance, learn thick/thin (antonyms) and thick/fat (synonyms) at the same time. It will be easier to remember similar and opposite things because they “stick together” in our minds.

IV. Running list
Note down all the new words while you read, do a listening exercise, watch a video etc. Later on define all the words and write down the definition in front of each of them. When the list is ready, you can use it as a kind of flash card. Fold it and check if you remember the definitions. Fold it the other way and see if you remember the words.

Ten Linguistic Commandments

by Worldwide Renowned Hungarian interpreter, translator, language genius and one of the first simultaneous interpreters in the world Kató Lomb

I.

Spend time tinkering with the language every day—if there is no more time available, then at least to the extent of a ten-minute monologue. Morning hours are especially valuable in this respect: the early bird catches the word!

II.

If your enthusiasm for studying flags too quickly, don’t force the issue but don’t stop altogether either. Move to some other form of studying, e.g., instead of reading, listen to the radio; instead of assignment writing, poke about in the dictionary, etc.

III.

Never learn isolated units of speech, but rather learn words and grammatical elements in context.

IV.

Write phrases in the margins of your text and use them as ‘prefabricated elements’ in your conversations.

V.

Even a tired brain finds rest and relaxation in quick, impromptu translations of billboard advertisements flashing by, of numbers over doorways, of snippets of overheard conversations, etc., just for its own amusement.