How To Start Learning English Correctly. Psychologist's Advice - Image, Self-development

2023 Author: Oswald Adamson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 12:13

The plans to learn a foreign language quickly and easily often remain unfulfilled, leaving in the mind a disturbing question: "Why couldn't I?" Let's figure out what "could not" means

Before you act, first decide for yourself: how much language do you need, for example, the most common one - English?

Do you want to be able to talk? Communicate in English when traveling abroad? Or do you want to read books on it? Watch the video? Chatting with foreigners on the Internet? Or just helping your child learn the lessons?

All these classes require both a different level of language proficiency and a different nature of proficiency in it.

Realistic and unrealistic expectations

Getting started, it is necessary to determine the criteria for assessing language learning. The easiest way is for a student who prepares for the exam, constantly training: he completes tasks, learns the results and therefore can really see how the preparation is going.

For an adult, things are much more complicated with the assessment. For example, you decide that you want to learn how to read books in English. Or speak it. Are you starting? Then it's time to decide exactly how you will learn.

In the study of a foreign language, a high level of proficiency is the result of long-term work. So please be patient. You will need regular classes. Lessons on a case-by-case basis will not make the desired progress and quickly become frustrating.

Are your expectations realistic? Learn to appreciate not the instantaneous proficiency of the language (this, alas, will not happen), but your progress: you started reading, you were able to build a sentence yourself and say something.

If learning to read is the most important thing for you

The lessons you take may not be frequent, but regular. And get ready to read a lot. Do you love books? Learning to read books in the original is a worthy goal. You just have to start with adapted texts, and you need to read a lot. Consult with your teacher: let him help you select literature, gradually complicating the texts. For a beginner, reading the simplest texts in a textbook is already a joy and victory.

If you want to learn how to speak

Lessons are needed often, with conversational techniques. It will take years, not months, to learn to speak fluently.

You may have been thinking about intensive courses to help you speak quickly. Such courses are suitable if you are going to prepare for a trip abroad, where you will have to speak English. Because intensive courses are a start; it is expected that all other knowledge a person will "get" in communication with foreigners.

Sometimes learning a foreign language is compared to training in the gym, where the result is achieved through prolonged exercise. One of the most common mistakes is ignoring exercise. For example, they learn whole lists of new words and then forget. It is better to learn fewer words, but practice using them many times.

Usually a foreign language is taught in a complex: both to speak, and to understand by ear, and to read and write. Naturally, we do all this in our native language!

I have no ability

Not true! Learning a foreign language requires not one particular ability, but a whole group of abilities. We can safely say that everyone has some of them, and no one has all of them.

This means that something will be easy for you, but in something else you will have to work hard.

Do you write competently in your native language? If you are good at literacy in your native language, it will not be too difficult for you to become literate in a foreign language, since the same abilities are in demand.

If you have a good ear for music, the intonation of a foreign language will be given to you without much difficulty. You can feel the beauty of the sound of the language, start to speak beautifully yourself with pleasure. If you have good logical thinking, then you will be interested in the patterns in the use of grammar rules, in arranging words into sentences. All foreign language learners progress at different rates. This is normal.

Everyone has their own character

One person will be free to strike up a conversation without fear of saying something illiterate. He will be sincerely happy that he could turn to the interlocutor and he understood him.

The other person will not say anything until they are sure they are speaking correctly. He may seem slow-witted for a while, but perhaps one day he will pleasantly surprise both fellow practitioners and the teacher.

The problems are different. Maybe you're just making high demands on yourself, or maybe you need some time to believe in your knowledge. Most likely, these experiences are familiar to you, and they arise not only in the process of learning a foreign language. Then it is worth visiting a psychologist for some time in order to feel more confident not only in foreign language classes, but also to improve the quality of life in general

By the way, if you are sensitive to how you are treated, listen to yourself: how comfortable are you in this group, to communicate with this teacher? Now there are many foreign language courses and tutors. In conditions where you have a choice, it is not at all necessary to commit violence against yourself and spend time where you are uncomfortable. And learning is better if you enjoy learning.