share your English learning experience
What do you think of learning English?
Can you give me the difficult, strange, funny, stupid, good, bad things about learning English??
I think it's a good topic and it can help us to know a lot of things about learning English. Welcome to put forward your comments.
share your English learning experience and help all of English learners improve their English.
I'm Asian so It's difficult for me to listen to native speakers. Normally, I 'v just understood around 60% what they had said. Please, tell me the key ways to improve effectively my listenning skill.
Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks so much.
I am Asian, too. It's also difficult for me to understand what native speaker said. I am always guessing what they are talking about. But i think if you talk to the native speaker more, you will improve both your oral English and your listening.
Can you have some difficult, strange, funny, stupid, good, bad things about learning English?
i am curious about this problem...and i think it's meaningful to talk about. we can communicate with each other.
Good is like
its good cuz there are so many resources available to discuss learn know experience,
Good is cuz we ve got interest in learning
Good is it works somehow or anyhow for u if uve learned it.
bad is in that if u start speakin american english in a bunch of non americans or for e.g. asians most of them would consider you alien and stare you( like a crow in peacocks))
bad i the feeling that if u would have been in the placewhere that particular language is being spoken u could have learned it in days< but you simply cannot becuse you are bound somehow.
Strange is when i started learning american accent i dunno know iwas difficult fo me to do so in normal way, but somehow a person who is exposed so much to american media like me but never tried to learn the speaking style earlier has some kinda default setup in his mindset.
Like i discovered after hardwork upon learning accent that one day iwas practicing and suddenly i startedspeaking like a Texan i dint believe cuz ive been onto learning accent like for many month but i hardly could make my pronounciation like a normal american but somehow there was a shift of gear and i started speakin like Texans and i got it verified by my american friend he dint recognize me.
So tats allllllll.
My friend Jessica, from Italy, taught herself English, but she still makes funny mistakes that make me laugh.
She calls blisters "bubbles", because that's what they are called in Italian. Italians call them bubbles, but I can't remember how to say "bubbles" in Italian. She once showed me her foot, and she said "Oh my God, Adam! I've got a bubble on my foot!" That just made me laugh.
She also finds it hard to understand the different pronounciation between words such as "sheet" and "shit"; "beach" and "bitch." So a lot of the times, when she says the word "beach" it sounds like she's saying "bitch."
You can easily say one short sentence, but it's difficult to go on to say another sentence. Maybe, lerning isolated sentences one by one might have affected our language skill. But reading a long story is just about reading sentences and getting information.
Any good solutions? I am waiting for your wisdom. Thank you.
i think,to be able to speak another language is one of the nicest thing in the world.coz u can understand the other people and u can say what u want.but there is a difficulty for us.coz we cant find any native speaker for practising.technology will help us for that.we can chat with native speakers.we can also hear pronunciation of words from computer.of course we will have some difficulties.but i think it is worth to learn a different language despite these difficulties.i will do my best to learn other languages.i wish u a good life...
Adam? From Great Britain? And you're not talking about the "superiority" of BrE? Did hell freeze over?
<<She also finds it hard to understand the different pronounciation between words such as "sheet" and "shit"; "beach" and "bitch." So a lot of the times, when she says the word "beach" it sounds like she's saying "bitch.">>
I've noticed the same thing with native Italians speaking English. They just can't seem to hear it and end up using the Italian equivalent which is a sound kind of in between the two.
I think it general they do not annuciate English vowels enough. Many of them say "destruct" and "distract" the same. I can understand the "e" and "i" mix up, but there is an "a" and a "u" difference too! At the beginning of my relationship with my husband, this used to cause a lot of funny incidences. Still does at times...
I'm an Asian ( Indonesian, with sunda ethnic origin ), And I have to say that subjectively, there are some difficulties in learning english :
1. Pronunciation ; English has more vowel and consonant sounds than my languages (Bahasa Indonesia and sunda) do.
2. Grammar ; We have no tenses, we have no gender case, we have different pluralisation method, we have different method to say active and passive voices.....etc. etc..etc...etc.
3. Spelling ; This is what I don't like from english language, It's spelling system !
4. Culture ; I never realised that a language can be very related to culture, until I found that in daily basis, English native speakers and native speakers of my tounge use different ways to express what's in their mind or what they feel.
Knowing a lot of grammar rules or having so many vocabularies doesn't mean that you are able to understand every finest nuances of English language.
Beside those difficulties, I need to say that learning other languages can widen your way of thinking and give you different kind of Wisdom.
One more thing, the more I learn other languages, the more I like other languages. The more I like other languages, the more I love my languages.
Regarding pronunciation of English, I think I can deal with that much easier than the average of my people.
I remember that I have an ability to imitate other people's way of speaking. I have an ability to imitate the accent of other ethnic groups in Indonesia.
I think my ability is an advantage for me to deal with English sounds (not as perfect as native speaker of course ).
Regarding grammar ? I'm still working on it.
Regarding spelling ? What can I say ? My English Teacher ( an american ) doesn't like it either.
Regarding culture ? I do think that I have to spend some times in an English speaking country, maybe a year or two...maybe more.....
I'm quite nervous when speaking English is especially infront of Native English speakers. I sense most times they correct me as a way of looking down on me though there were some Native English showed their good will of helping me.
It could simply wasn't them looking down on me but a simple cultural misunderstanding.
I am an Asian too but I don't find any difficulty in writing, speaking or listening English. I am able to do this because i followed all the advices given in antimoon.
English speakers (and most people generally) who are not often exposed to other languages and the people who speak them tend to assume that anyone who can't speak English fluently is stupid or retarded. I've seen this many times. It's just a simple result of ignorance, though, and they are not being mean. When you live in a society where everyone speaks the same language, the only people who speak it poorly are those who have serious cognitive deficits, such as the mentally retarded. If you then encounter someone from another culture who is not a native speaker of the national language, it's natural to assume that he is retarded as well, because he makes the same mistakes that you've previously heard only among retarded people. Of course, he makes mistakes for a completely different reason, but if you aren't familiar with other cultures, you wouldn't necessarily realize that.
People who deal with speakers of other languages all the time do not look down upon those who speak a language poorly, when it's just a question of practice and experience. Nobody is fluent after 50 hours of instruction, no matter how smart he is, and people who work in multilingual and multicultural environments know this.
Americans live in a fairly isolated society from a linguistic standpoint and thus tend to reach the incorrect conclusions I've described above. The British have a bit of the same problem, although being so close to the Continent makes them slightly more worldly in many cases. I don't know how extremely homogenous societies such as that of Japan react to people who speak the local language poorly, but I'd expect the same general principles to apply.
Is that true Mxsmanic ? I haven't met with a single English native speaker who thinks that way. On the other hand, I know some English native speakers who think that it is "Cool" to speak other language than English or it is fantastic to speak more than one languages. One of my American friend said something like this to me ; "You speak Bahasa, Sundanese, and some Javanese ? And now, you are able to communicate in English well !That's amazing ! You must be very smart !"
He thought that I'm smart just because I speak more than one languages, including the only language he speaks. Funny isn't it ?