Until recently, knowing a foreign language meant being an esthete, belonging to a certain circle, or (the most innocuous option) – being known as an eccentric. But times are changing … Now knowledge of a foreign language has become practically necessary for everyone, not only to feel confident on vacation abroad, but also in study, research, work, and in everyday life, to read instructions or indications for use. medicines .. Currently, learning a foreign language in one form or another is available to most people through various courses, private lessons and learning via the Internet.
And yet, the question often arises of how best to learn a foreign language in order to be able to adequately express your thoughts by means of a foreign language, to understand well what you have read and heard.
It is known that any language training is based on four “whales”: reading, writing, speaking and listening.
Abundant reading is your faithful companion in language learning. It gives good results, because in the texts you come across words and phrases you already know, and also increase your vocabulary. Take as a bookmark a sheet of notebook folded in half and write down in it unfamiliar words that make it difficult to understand the text. Learn their meanings using a dictionary. With further reading, such a bookmark will help you more than once. Well, of course, the texts should be selected in accordance with your level of language proficiency. There is an opinion that it is best to start with the text in the original, but just imagine what kind of language jungle you will wander into. A lot of incomprehensible words and grammatical phenomena, not to mention idioms (words with a figurative meaning) and phrasal verbs. Only the most persistent will be able to withstand such torture.
Writing is a challenge not only in terms of English spelling (where “London is written and Liverpool is read”), but also in terms of constructing sentences and choosing one of the 16 tenses of the English verb, as well as other grammatical phenomena. And still write! Write yourself reminder notes, keep a detailed diary – your life story. And try to find yourself a pen pal, preferably a literate native speaker. Don’t be afraid to communicate with a native speaker due to possible mistakes. Besides, communication via e-mails, chats, ICQ is much easier than communication “live”.
In the chain “I read – I listen – I speak”, the conversation is the most difficult. Do not complain about the fact that you have no one to speak English with – the best conversationalist is yourself. Tell yourself what you plan to do during the day, take stock of what was done in the day, retell to yourself the books you read and the movies you watched. But you never know what you can talk about with an interesting interlocutor, i.e. With myself. When you come across unfamiliar words, go into the dictionary. If you are persistent enough, then after a while you will resort to English involuntarily, i.e. start thinking in English.
In order to understand the sounding speech, one must listen and listen. Fortunately, there are audiobo
oks and films in English that you can watch on your computer or on DVD in the quiet and comfort of your own apartment. But here, too, some consistency must be observed. Before listening, you must first familiarize yourself with the texts, translate all unfamiliar words and try to figure out the unfamiliar grammar, and then start listening, and this can be done without interrupting some other action, for example, cleaning the room, preparing dinner or washing the dishes …
Movies in English are also very helpful in mastering the sound side of the language; gestures, facial expressions, and the very action of the film helps you understand its content. And if you do not understand something, you can view these frames again. In addition, if Russian or English subtitles are attached to the films, then in addition to the phrases you hear, you can see the words spoken by the actor on the screen. This greatly facilitates the understanding of the dialogue and the search for an incomprehensible word in the dictionary.
And the last thing is independent language learning. Quite often people are interested in – is it possible to learn English on their own? We are confident that this is possible. The only prerequisite for this is your desire and regular exercise. Remember that it is better to do half an hour every day than three hours once a week. Mastering the English language requires constant practice. Therefore, read more, listen, speak, while not forgetting about grammar and other theoretical questions. Try making a lesson plan for yourself, where one part of the time is devoted to classes with grammar, the other to expand your vocabulary (reading and listening), and the third to expressing your thoughts in English (speaking and writing). Use additional materials – interesting textbooks, audiobooks, films, tutorials, to make the learning process more fun.