Have you ever fought about your learning style and how it
influences your learning of English?
You can watch here one from many films about this issue. Do you
agree with that what is introduced in the video?
I believe that I have to find my ways of learning, the best for me. This is not
so obvious, teachers usually don’t help me with this. I’m still looking for it,
experiment, try different methods, various tools. Some of them work better for
me some don’t work at all. It’s one of the reasons why I’m not as good at English
as I should be. But I believe I manage to find the best way of learning. And
you? What are the best methods for you?
I think everybody has its own best methods of learning English as we all learn differently and process things differently so everyone could tell us completely different stories. But definitely you learn quicker when you abroad, simply because you have no choice and you have that language everywhere 24/7.
ReplyDeleteHowever, and this is good news for those who learn English in Poland, you have to learn English abroad all over again, because English we learn at home and language spoken in the uk, for instance, are completely different. Of course it depends where you land in the uk, in what region, but the fact remains the same: we are all beginners when we are abroad.
I live in the uk almost 10 years and I spoke English when I left Poland, but I needed few years to speak native English. Different accent, shortened words, new words not found in any dictionaries, different sounds, signs, gestures, phrases. Some people catch them quick, some need more time, depending on our abilities. I used to watch tv with English subtitles, which helped me enormously with understanding scouse and Scottish and the way Brits speak, very good method if someone can watch it like that. You just simply start talking like them because you hear it lots of time on tv.
The best way to learn language is to have a contact with someone speaking native English. We can find those people online. Skype facebook chats are full of people speaking English. Sit and click. You always find someone helpful. People have psychological barrier talking to someone in different language, they are ashamed of saying anything to avoid embarrassment, thinking someone will laugh at me. Very common and unnecessary. Once you break the ice, you realise you can speak language and it gets better and better... The biggest problem is we think too much what and how we want to say when we talk with somebody eye to eye. So I find socialising online helpful. When you stop bother how you speak you start talking smoothly and you stop thinking about it.
Another method, quite useful, at least for me, were online hidden objects games. Great for kids and for adults. Someone may say: silly idea, childish. So find one of those games and try to find all of the things on the list they ask you and you will know what I'm talking about. You discover how many words you still don't know, and how many you can learn there. And quicker because you connect word and that object together.
That's all I can think of right now.
It’s a great comment. A lot of useful tips and lots of interesting reflections. Thank you for this.
ReplyDeleteBut for me knowing that when, finally you go to the UK you will know almost nothing and you’ll have to learn language ones again is not good news. Of course it’s better to know it earlier but still it’s make me less optimistic with my English learning. Actually I’ve already experienced it by myself when I’ve been to the UK. So I try to do what you Sylvia advised – watch a lot of films, listen to British podcasts and read English newspapers. At least I won’t have to learn everything from the beginning. Of course there is only a small possibility that I’ll need to use my English with native Brits for more than a few days. And speaking with other not-native English users is usually easier. So I’ll survive, I hope :)
But there is one very important element which is a big problem for me – I have almost nobody to speak with in English :(