Learning English Blog

There are some mistakes that most teachers make in their first years of teaching. The purpose of elaborating these mistakes is to make teacher more aware, and thus help them teach in a better fashion. Let us discuss the same here.

Speaking Quickly

The purpose of communication is to have meaningful interaction between the participants. Speaking too fast is commonplace among new teachers. When teachers speak too quickly, students fail to understand them. This is a waste of time for both the parties. This is especially important for educators who teach foreign languages like French, German or Chinese. We must remember that a child learning a new language would find it difficult to interpret a sentence spoken too quickly. Speaking slowly, however, can work wonders. It can help your students understand you better. Teachers should gradually increase the pace of conversation as the child starts learning the ins and outs of a particular language.

Unclear Enunciation

Clarity in speaking is the key to productive teaching. Native speakers often do not enunciate clearly. Your enunciation skills should math the learning ability of your pupils. A mismatch would result in frustrated students and waste of time. Proficient speakers emphasize on proper diction. Again, the whole thing boils down to underrating your student’s level of learning.

YES does not always mean YES

Most of the times when a teacher asks his students if they understood a lesson properly they would nod their heads as if saying ‘yes’. In reality, even if they do not get a concept right, they would say ‘yes’, either to shy away from learning or just out of fear. It is the responsibility of teachers to make students feel comfortable in class. A simple way to check if your student has learnt a concept properly is by asking him to repeat the main points of that concept.

Impatience

Many times, we do not wait for students to speak. The result is obvious- improper communication. Communication consists of three important aspects- speaking, listening and assimilating. If we keep on speaking without giving out students a chance to speak, we would never be able to address the pain points of the students.

No Acknowledgment

How often do you acknowledge the answer given by your student? Everyone loves being noticed. Teachers, therefore, should acknowledge the questions, answers and even doubts of their students.

There is at least a billion of people who speak English. 500 million of these people are Internet users. That’s why you started learning this language, right? There are millions of websites written in this language. If you want to benefit from all this knowledge, you should improve your English reading skills. How can you do it? Here are five tips!

1. Read as much as possible

Okay, that’s not a secret. Practice makes perfect. Read as much as you can. It can be everything: a book, newspaper, comic, magazine, instruction, blogs, websites, message boards and so on. If you don’t understand something, then use a dictionary. However, first try to guess what a given sentence or word can mean. There will always be a word whose meaning you won’t be sure of unless it’s a really easy text. If your English reading skills are low, start with easy stories like fairy tales or books for kids. If your English skills are better, try with something more difficult. Constantly try to enrich your reading experience by reading various things.

2. Read only things which you are interested in

It’s very important! Don’t read things which bore you because you will not benefit from it. Read about things which interest you – you will be more concentrated and have more fun. And fun is really important, too! If you love cats, read about cats. Don’t read about stock market only because there’s a text about stock market in your handbook. Forget about handbooks and get something more interesting for you.

3. Practice regularly

Set aside at least 15-30 minutes a day to read. Eventually, it will become your habit. Making reading a habit is one of the best habits you can adopt! The more you’ll read, the better reader you’ll become. A lot of people say that a habit develops after 21 days, so make up your mind that you will read at least 15 minutes a day for 21 days. After this time it should become your second nature. And your reading skills should be way better than now.

4. Pick the right book

Read only books which you can more or less understand. If you need to look up a word in every sentence, it’s not a book for you. Find something easier. You can start with fairy tales which are usually written in easier language. Generally speaking, books for kids are way easier. Don’t be embarrassed to read them – you are learning!

5. Read bestselling authors

Agatha Christie, Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, Dean Koontz, Robert Ludlum and so on. Type “List of best-selling fiction authors” in Google if you want to find more of them. These authors paint compelling pictures, they write very well and reading well written texts is the best way to not only improve your reading skills but also improve your writing skills. You can kill two birds with one stone!

If you take some time, you will become a better reader. These five tips will greatly improve your reading skills – just follow them.

In learning English, music should be included almost by necessity.
Music – What It Does To You! What It Can Do For You!

After listening to a live performance of a Brahm’s symphony, one listener said:

“Every time I heard that emotional melodic tune from the violin section I felt like I wanted to cry because of how rich the melody was. Every single time it was played, I felt satisfied and complete.” (Associated Press Content – “How Music Can Represent Human Emotions” by Drake Hugo)

Can anyone doubt the powerful effect of music on a person’s emotions and physiology?

Music can rouse the emotions to heights of jubilation and joy, calm the emotions into states of relaxed peacefulness, and, of great interest to teachers, focus the mind and help create an optimal learning environment.

The Significance of Baroque

A style of European classical music from the period between 1600 and 1750 known as Baroque music, including works by such composers as Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel, is especially useful in this regard.

Additionally, certain musical selections from Mozart, especially the piano sonatas, are held by many to help calm the body and mind. Dr. Claudius Conrad, a senior surgical resident at Harvard Medical School, often plays Mozart to patients who are critically ill.

This stimulates certain hormones to flow from the brain throughout the body via the bloodstream creating a calming effect or on the other hand stimulating various bodily systems.

For learning purposes, music with a tempo of around 60 beats a minute appears to have the greatest effect.

“Researchers found it’s the slow tempo section in Baroque concertos, – the largo or andante movement with a restful tempo of about 60 beats a minute – that brings the amped-up learning effect.” (Ostrander, S. & Schroeder, L. 1994. Superlearning 2000, p. 67)

If selected pieces of music can do this to you, it should be a powerful motivation for teachers to use it in a learning session.

What Music Can Do TO You

Playing Baroque and Mozart music in the background while teaching can enhance the rate of learning. A computer with speakers or CD player should be a necessary part of a teacher’s equipment in the classroom.

How welcoming when students enter the room to immediately be greeted by soothing sounds.

Whatever the emotional or physical state of a student before coming to this learning period, within minutes, a positive change can take place through the power of the music.

What Music Can Do FOR You

In addition to considering what music can do to you, it is also important for teachers to utilize another aspect of music in learning, namely, what music can do for you in teaching language vocabulary.

A wide variety of popular songs contain lyrics that mirror the way people of that culture speak in their everyday lives.

When a student is exposed to a catchy, rhythmic tune, and learns to sing along gradually memorizing the words, grammar and vocabulary are absorbed without any conscious effort.

A song can be selected with lyrics that correspond with the theme of the lesson and played to the students. Song sheets containing the words can be printed and handed out so the students learn to sing along with the song.

Certain words and phrases will then easily be remembered, especially if the chorus line contains useful vocabulary.

How To Learn English? – Why You Should Use Music

Apart from the fact students learn new words quickly and remember them, playing a song in a learning period adds variety to the lesson, introduces a fun aspect.

It makes the learning experience enjoyable, one even to be anticipated and looked forward to.

By understanding what music does to you and what it can do for you, teachers will have a learning medium that demands little in time and energy from them, but which is extremely powerful in accelerating the learning process.

So how to learn English with less stress and more fun? Use music.

Regardless of educational level, nationality or age, grammar and spelling seem to baffle many people. And if someone has a learning disability like dyslexia, using correct grammar seems like an almost impossible feat. Using correct grammar can be difficult for those who have English as their mother tongue, but for those who speak other languages, English and it’s complexities can be especially confusing. While a dictionary can be helpful, it will not give answers to grammar questions. Even word processing programs can fail to give the much-needed help in correcting grammar errors that are blatantly wrong.

So, how can a person improve their English grammar? There are several things that might help someone struggling in this area. First of all, it might help to be with people who use correct grammar when they talk and read material that uses good grammar structure within the English language. Since everyone learns his or her native language by listening, even from back to the time of infancy, it reasons that if he or she listens to and reads material with good grammatical structure, they will slowly learn the correct way to write and say things.

It may also help to study a grammar book that gives explanations for the rules of the English language, along with helpful examples. It may not be necessary to understand every detail and concept, but with good examples and practice exercises, one can learn much about correctly forming sentences that are grammatically precise. Learning rules and doing exercises can be monotonous at times, so it will take much patience to continue to learn. However, through consistent practicing, one can overcome most grammatical errors through trial and error.

One of the most helpful ways to learn and understand English grammar is to hire a tutor. In order to make progress, one needs to know when he is making mistakes. With a tutor, a person can work on sentences and phrases throughout the week and then have a tutor check them. A tutor is also helpful because he or she can force the student to be accountable so she can continue to improve her grammar skills. It is hard to learn sometimes and grammar seems to be a boring subject to many people. The personal touch of a tutor, however, can make the learning experience less stressful and more enjoyable.

Although dyslexia and other learning disabilities are difficult to overcome, there is no doubt that people with these problems have the ability to improve. There is software available today that can help those with language problems to improve their writing problems. Some programs even have personalized reports that are generated; and then each person can see what common spelling errors were made. These reports will allow students, professionals, and teachers to see the common dyslexia writing errors that are being made.

It has been considered why English grammar seems to be difficult for some people. There are many factors that can contribute to this. If a person has dyslexia or a learning disability, it could be because he was born with this problem and thus, it could not be helped. Far more often, however, are those who simply did not understand or learn grammar rules while in school. This could be due to lack of quality teachers, parental support or just laziness on the part of the student. Because some people struggle so much with grammar, many teachers will not emphasize its importance and students are pushed to the next grade.

Another issue with English grammar comes from those who have a different native tongue. If your mother-tongue is close to English in some ways, then English grammar will be easier for you. However, if your native tongue has nothing in common with English at all, it will be more difficult to learn and understand English grammar. All languages have their own idiosyncrasies and take time and patience to conquer.

Learning and understanding English grammar can be made easier or more difficult based on several factors. If a person is older, his memory may not be as good as it used to be. Some people just seem to learn easier than others and have a greater aptitude for language. Other things that can make a big difference are having consistent exercises and learning and also having confidence as you learn.

Thankfully, there are tools, books, and tutors available to help those who struggle. Many computer programs and websites give huge amounts of information and downloads that can help a person to use correct English grammar and/or learn the English language better. Even if a person continues to struggle with English grammar, there are tools available to help them correct their grammar and spelling errors so they can write without unnecessary and embarrassing mistakes.

Just because English speaking is the most used language in the world. Many people decided to learn to speak English for different goals: some of them learn for business, some of them learn it for pleasure…etc

Before starting to learn English you should know the right method to do it. When you know the right method everything is going to be easy, and you will finally speak English fluently.

Speaking fluently means that you speak more naturally, which means that you can do it by avoiding all the formal techniques and the useless methods.

Many students think that grammar is everything. They think that when they learn grammar, they will speak, but the truth is the opposite of that.

English grammar do not help students to speak, it just helps them to think about English. Many students stay stuck to this idea just because that they do not know the truth.

Memorizing word lists is also like grammar. If you memorize word lists, maybe you will never speak. Whenever you want to speak, you will start to think which word should you use and which word you should not use and finally you can not use any word just because you made your English vocabulary list by memorizing word lists.

If you think that speaking English can be done just reading some textbooks, I think that you will never speak English, because the rule is very simple: reading helps you with the writing skills. Listening will help you with the speaking skills.

Yes, listening is everything if you want to improve your English fluency. When you listen to English you will improve the way you speak, it helps you to speak without thinking. It also helps you to improve your pronunciation in English.

Listening can also improve your grammar, many students do not believe it but it is the truth.

A child of six years old can speak English very well, with a clear pronunciation and with correct English grammar, and this without studying English grammar and without memorizing word lists.

If you want to speak English fluently, forget about English grammar and word lists and focus only on listening to real English conversations.

The best part of it is that you will have fun in teaching yourself and it will not cost you a penny either.

The first prerequisite is that you must know your primary language very well. This will ensure that you know and understand the various and different parts of speech. The more you know which part of speech is to be used, the easier it becomes to master the syntax of a new language. Next, be sure that you really do wish to teach yourself English.

Once you are determined to learn this language, you must then think about how best to go about learning it. You need to decide whether you wish to speak it fluently or are it for some general use or whether you need to use it to study for a graduate course. Next, you will need to address the issue of which resource to use in order to teach yourself English.

It pays to look to using books and audio tapes as well as CDs which are effective resources to help you teach yourself English. The best places to find these and other resources include the Internet and a good bookstore. It is also up to you to decide whether to use a book (with tapes) or whether you need to make use of one of the better known audio programs.

You can choose to buy this material online or you can purchase it from a store. The Internet will provide you with many more options and you can also find what you need for free. Another way of using the Internet is to listen to online radio broadcasts in the English language such as the BBC World Service. You should also make use of podcasts which offer more benefits as compared to the Internet radio.

You can even download the podcasts and then listen to a show over and over again until you have begun to understand the language better. It is also a good idea to interact with native speakers of the language and in fact, you ought to try and immerse yourself in the language as much as you can. It is also important to start your learning process by spending between 15 and 30 minutes each day in studying English.

The best way to succeed with teaching yourself the English language is by memorizing different words and rules. You should also make use of CDs and video clips which will help you teach yourself English in a more effective manner. If possible, try and study English in an English speaking country as this will increase the speed with which you start to learn the language.

To teach yourself English effectively, it is also important that you master grammar as well as pronunciation and learn how to construct a sentence the proper way.