Your Friend English

It is thought that the ability to speak depends on the number of words in one’s vocabulary. And yet, when it comes to expressing oneself, most of the terms get hardly retrieved at once. Interestingly, in a reading text these words are likely to be easily recognised and may seem entirely clear. Were the speaking to do with just vocabulary, everyone would learn a dictionary by heart. However, in actual fact, effortless speaking is based on psychological factors such as self-reliance, self-esteem and confidence in one’s abilities.

Have you noticed that sometimes you speak more smoothly, and other times you get stuck all the time in the search for the right word? That is due to your phycological state. The nature of the relationship you have with a person you talk to defines how you feel and eventually how well you speak. If the interlocuter makes you feel lower, unable, inadequate or manifests their omniscience and predominance, then what you are likely to experience is isolation and the desire to dismiss from the conversation. Furthermore, when you speak awaiting being judged for making mistakes, paradoxically you make them even more and people pick up on them to a larger extent than when you speak confidently.

As long as you are not a proficient English speaker, it is advisable to interact with anyone you feel comfortable with, anyone who speaks at your speed rate, uses a comprehensible word range, is legible and nonjudgmental.

The feelings of calmness, comfort and positivity are going to relieve anxiety and provide confidence to face the conversation. As a result, an agreeable interaction will foster you to have another talk. Evidentially, after a series of such conversations, your English skills will inevitably look up, allowing for a confident dialogue even in a more unfamiliar setting.

That being said, the right partner in the conversation determines relationship with a new language, at least at the beginning, until you get the hang of it and obtain confidence in your abilities. For this reason, you had better start practising with a friendly interlocutor who would be able to help you obtain necessary self-confidence before finding yourself in a stressful situation. There are three defining conditions to observe:

You should like a person you talk to, be willing to share stories from your life with them, and be curious about your interlocutor’s life as well.
Your “friend” ought to use comprehensible and accessible word range as well as be legible.
You’re supposed to hear from the “friend” regularly.

Regular daily conversations with a trustworthy person will enable you to acquire calmness needed to be in harmony with English and eventually overcome the language barrier, which will be a basis for further mastering by finding yourself in a more spontaneous situations with all kind of people.

Students who haven’t succeeded in learning a foreign language in the first place tend to search for a good teacher who would fulfill a miracle and ultimately manage to make them speak the language fluently.

In reality, neither of the best teachers in the world, though, will be able to force the student to study if not the student himself. On the other hand, there are some tricks which a good teacher may share with the student, making the learning process simpler and more accessible.

Here are some of the aspects you had better take notice of provided you are looking for a reliable teacher.

The Country of Origin

As for nationality, choose anyone from any country on condition that the teacher’s pronunciation and accent are close to the original one. A mother tongue may be an excellent speaker, and yet not to be a promising teacher. You risk doing a lot of passive listening rather than putting new knowledge into practice through the opportunity to speak.

Another point in support to non-native teachers is that they are highly likely to know English grammar better than native speakers, as well as to be more susceptible to truly useful lexis. Not to mention, know how to build up the studying process in order to gain essential results faster.

Having said that, they are bound to share with you all the prompts on how to retain words in long-term memory, teach you useful idioms, more advanced words and collocations, and provide you with tips on how to ace an English exam. Such expertise can be explained by their relentless quest for the ways that would approach them to the advanced level.

In general, teachers who speak English as a second language are likely more informed and, given non being a native speaker, display continuous curiosity and inquisitiveness towards the language, thus boosting their knowledge and preparation, unlike “all-knowing” natives, many of which are quite satisfied with their “native” status and therefore do not do anything to remain up-to-date or increase their knowledge.

Humane Qualities

The teacher you choose ought to be empathetic, supportive and encouraging. This means to be completely aware of the efforts students make and challenges they are facing on the way to improvement. Senses of empathy and comfort the student may experience from the teacher, while being listened to, may help them express themselves more effortlessly and eliminate tension.

Trust-based relationship

As a follow-up to the previous one, trusting relationship between the teacher and the student may be essential for a successful learning process. For this matter, non-native teachers’ first-hand experience or “having been in the student’s pans” serves as a base for generating comprehension, connection and confiding relationship between the two.

As a result, the student who attends classes willingly is not afraid of speaking to the teacher or making mistakes. Being in non-judgmental setting, they tend to share their life experiences or daily occurrences which contribute to their speaking skills improvement, and thus overcoming the language barrier.

Equal Interrelationship

A good teacher is one who can be at a level with a student, namely, not to use very complex vocabulary in order to avoid some confusion and not to give the student a feeling of being worse or not enough.

Inability to figure out what has been said by the teacher or enormous efforts made to keep up with the interlocutor may create misunderstanding and withdrawal. Even correcting mistakes, depending on personal resistance to criticism and willingness to embrace remarks, should be done by the teacher in a delicate way, not letting disappointment take over the student.

Interest in Outcome

A teacher who is interested in your progress is certainly a good teacher. That is possible to reveal after time through activities being prepared for the student – whether they are elaborated, well-structured, focused on development of the speaking skills through engaging conversations, or they are merely boring aimless exercises from a textbook just to pass the time fast.

The teacher who is interested in your progress considered it as a personal victory, and his or her desire to teach is not counted in money, but in personal aspiration drawn on honesty responsibility and hard work.

Concern about the Student

Lastly, choosing an appropriate teacher, remember you choose a like-minded friend that should inspire you, be interested in you as a person, and that can be manifested in the teacher asking questions, showing enthusiasm for your success, being a good listener.

Once you have overcome the language barrier with the help of such a friend, you will have just to continue sharpening up on your vocabulary by watching videos or films, listening to music, reading stories without help of other’s.

To sum up, what really matters is the feeling the teacher gives you. So, choose a teacher not according to a number of degrees or certificates they have, but according to the time you are willing to spend with them conversing in the language you are learning.

Technological era we are living in provides us with a myriad of fun and exciting learning apps it is quite simple to engage yourself in a study process, isn’t it? And yet, many students continue struggling with learning a new language, attributing it to bad memory or no flair for languages.

As a matter of fact, there is some truth in that, namely, memory is getting worse as we are getting older and, luckily, not all people are born to be philologists or linguists. On the other hand, we may well develop knowledge and skills by using effective methods and prompts for successful learning.

Basic Concepts

Before we delve into some of the most working methods of learning a new language, it is essential to highlight that there are no shortcuts and language acquisition requires a lot of effort no matter how fun the chosen methods and learning materials are.

The good news is that as soon as English becomes a part of your daily routine, and it happens through practising on a daily basis, it no longer appears to be a heavy burden.

The bad news is that you have to switch passive learning approach to mostly active one which implies high concentration on singular words or statements with the purpose of memorisation and applying a series of oral activities in order to move new information to a long-term memory.

Top 7 Effective Methods for Learning English

Here are some of the effective ways of learning a language based on my experience.

Watch a 3–5-minute video with English subtitles on different life topics, such as friendship, healthy eating, cities and towns etc. After watching it many times, try to convey orally the content using words and expressions from the video.
Read articles from a textbook or on the net out loud and check the pronunciation of any word that sows doubt in you. In addition, make a summary orally of what you have just read.
When it comes to new vocabulary, you may want to link new words to those with a similar meaning that you know already without translating into your own language. In other words, learn various more complex synonyms of the words you know already. For example, next time when you need to say “important” you will use “essential” or “crucial” instead.
It is also fundamental to keep in mind that new words get forgotten after a while unless you have created a strong association at the stage of their memorisation. Make sure to revise them periodically until they fix firmly in your long-term memory. You may do it by reflecting on different synonyms of the words you come across.
Any practice shouldn’t be something automatic like repeating words from a CD or after a teacher. The best way to master your English vocabulary is to be forced to put it into practice by answering spontaneous questions in a friendly environment, whether you talk to a friend or a “like a friend” teacher, or speak to yourself seeking to give as complete and rich vocabulary answers as possible.
Not to tackle far too difficult videos and texts that would make you look up every single word. This will probably cause you to lose interest soon.
Find a friend abroad or a friendly teacher of English you feel comfortable to share your thoughts and life events with. Put on a pyjamas, sit comfortably and make a call him or her and tell everything that has happened recently, trying to insert new words and expressions you have come across lately.

Learning a New Language Abroad

It may seem that the best way to learn English or any other language is in the country of its origin, and yet it is not the easiest one. Its effectiveness is justified by indispensable integration that immigrants deal with and by the necessity to communicate with residents or coworkers in their language.

Plus, during a dwelling in a foreign country we unconsciously tend to pick up on some words and expressions around us that are being deposited in our minds. That’s why the study process appears to be faster and less demanding than when you do it with the help of a textbook.

However, you should take into account that, as long and boring a learning process “with a textbook” may seem, anyway it is less stressful and overwhelming considering unlimited time at your disposal, in comparison to learning in a foreign country where you may need to use the language for work or study purposes immediately.

A Major Obstacle and how to Deal with it

So, as it was already mentioned, the learning approach should be active. In the meantime, a major challenge remains that of non being able to find proper words and being stuck in an attempt to retrieve relevant vocabulary while speaking, not to mention, the fear of making mistakes. To overcome this, you need a friendly, encouraging, non judgmental interlocutor who would help you feel comfortable with the language your learn, and who no way demonstrates prevalence over you. The more you are relaxed, the less anxious you feel, and thus you get more fluent.

You may have times when you are more talkative and times when it is hard to retrieve appropriate words. What really matters is how you forgive yourself some weaknesses on the way of continuous improvement and becoming a better version of yourself. The real interest awakens when we start comprehending more so that it doesn’t take much time to read an article or listen to a radio programme. Subsequently, the feeling of accomplishment stimulates further mastering of a target language.

Many foreign language learners tend to believe that living in a country of the language origin and socialising with native speakers may guarantee rapid language acquisition. As a matter of fact, very few think of all the conditions to be observed and inconvenience to overcome on the way to fluency within a short time. Let’s delve into this argument.

Learning a language in the country of its origin sounds great: whatever you refer to is written or pronounced in that language. However, can it be of use when it comes to speaking?

Imagine you are in that country because of work and spending months continually interacting with your foreign colleagues, and moreover, hanging out with them after work. Will you see a substantial result over a short time? Surely.

Or maybe you started a three-year bachelor’s degree programme at university and your daily activity comes down to studying and interacting with your peers. Will you make any progress after a while? Undoubtedly.

What if you are there for a two-week training course or even residing for a prolonged time, but without really exposing yourself to this language, without connecting with native speakers and constantly seeking to steer clear of social life? In this case you will probably see very little progress over time, less than that you can achieve by doing a series of daily activities at home using right methods of language learning.

As to practising it with native speakers, most of us expect to be able to speak as fluently and accurately as mother tongue speakers do. Instead, we listen to them passively like television and when it is our turn to speak, we might feel self-conscious, insecure and judged because our abilities are not nearly as good as theirs.

Secondly, it is the wrong impression that native speakers are going to correct you whenever you talk, as they are more interested in your ideas than mistakes you are making and, more importantly, interrupting constantly is supposed to be impolite and discourage the interlocutor from speaking.

Thirdly, the hope of losing a foreign accent cannot be fulfilled immediately or even over time because it requires a change of the habitual tongue position in the mouth and understanding sounds of the target language. Therefore, a lot of listening and pronunciation practice is to be done.

Finally, native speakers might use sophisticated words that could be replaced with more simple ones in a dialogue with a non-native speaker providing a language learner with ease and convenience rather than the feeling of inadequacy.

To start with, how many of you have got down to learning a language with determination promising yourself that this time you will surely succeed in it? And how many times have you set the ball rolling?

After a number of attempts to master the target language, have you ever asked yourself what made you give up or why you didn’t manage to achieve the desired result? Oftentimes students blame their teachers for incompetence or justify own incapacity of picking up a new language by a lack of talent or having no predisposition to languages.

In reality, without removing responsibility from teachers, they are just the figures who facilitate the learning process providing students with proper learning materials. Though, it must be admitted that some of them are liable to “infect” the latter with enthusiasm and engage them in learning better than other teachers.

Regarding talent, you might have heard about cases when students, who had failed to make progress in learning a foreign language at school, eventually accomplished their goal and, furthermore, kept on acquiring other foreign languages using right learning methods. Draw your conclusions.

So, what does success lie in if not in a competent teacher and innate talent? Or, in other words, what essentially prevents us from becoming proficient foreign-language speakers?

Stop Halfway

First and foremost, the feeling of having enough of studying comes up right before getting close to noticeable results. This probably happens because students start off intensively overloading themselves with excessive practice and anticipating immediate results. Subsequently, not having received them in a short time, feelings of frustration and exhaustion come along. It is advisable, therefore, to spread out the load, starting off from minimum effort and evolving it into an enjoyable full-fledged session. Such an approach will arguably allow you to get used to the target language without exposing yourself to unnecessary stress and frustration.

Be in a Comfort Zone

Language learning covers various areas. As a rule, students struggle with Speaking and Listening. Nevertheless, when it comes to improving these areas, paradoxically they focus on the ones they know better, deliberately avoiding mastering troublesome areas as if to stay within their comfort zone. By working on your weak points with persistency, dedication and constancy, you are highly likely to reach a desired outcome after all.

Not to Make it a Priority

Is the foreign language you intend to acquire your priority? Is it something you desperately need in your life so that you give it preference as to anything you cannot get by without? If it is so, then you will always find time throughout the day to practise the target language and will consciously make efforts to see explicit results soon. Otherwise, be content with small progress leaving aside high expectations.