It would seem that English would be a hard language to learn, with all of its irregular verbs and pronunciation rules.
English has borrowed so many words from other languages, in order to know how to read them, you have to know which language it comes from.
Formulating questions requires changing the word order. “You are learning English?” is correct syntax – word order in most every other language; in English you must say: “Are you learning English?”
Word order has great importance in English, and not just for questions. You can say “A cute little brown dog”, but “a brown cute little dog” would not be correct (unless you add commas, like so: a brown, cute, little dog).
In spite of these difficulties, English is one of the easiest languages to learn. Read on to find out why.
Learning English as a Second Language
Students must familiarize themselves with English Learning using the right strategy and resources. Regular practices must come into play while learning English as a second language. Examples are:
- Knowing the core difference between ESL and ESOL teaching will help you navigate your way through a complex learning process. Taking an ESL course is beneficial as a native speaker, meaning it pays better than ESOL, which applies to learners with multiple languages alongside English.
- Improving your vocabulary should be a necessity. And by any means possible, you must stick to a learning routine that strengthens your English fluency.
- Students must equip themselves with powerful resources to set the path right. Learning English doesn't have to be a difficult task if you know what to do.
Improving Your Reading Skills
When a student desires to learn English, they have no other option but to study helpful resources. This is also an act of reading. Improving your reading skills helps to strengthen your vocabulary. Within a short while, you begin to speak differently. But reading isn't usually fun without the best practices.
Best English Tutoring Strategies: Building to Grammar through Reading
Building your grammar through reading follows a pattern. Some students flip pages minute by minute without grabbing the detail, while others read between the lines. To improve your grammar, you must direct your focus on the subject at hand. Here are a few practices for both ESOL teachers and students:
- Comprehending contextual displays: listening to learn helps build your reading skills. Understanding the objective behind a context brings meaningful explanations to the mind of readers. A teacher reads instructions, guides, or simple context aloud with a repeated grammatical structure and students must listen for it. Repetition helps to master any act.
- Listening to Notice: noticing the changes in a grammatical structure is slightly different from listening to comprehend. This helps to identify forming blocks for various grammatical forms. The teacher reads a text aloud, allowing the students to take note of it. The text is put down to paper, and students must carry out gap-fill classwork.
- Understanding grammar forms: both the teacher and students have one primary goal—to make English grammar appear simple and fashionable in its way. Students must, however, read out an excerpt that holds targeted grammatical structure, after which they identify them with the different grammar rules.
- Correcting grammar forms: English Learning takes a slightly different approach in this aspect. Each student gets a passage that holds multiple grammar errors. They all must correct every form through the power of reading.
After putting the following measures into practice, applying them in real life should come next. Students must apply the different grammar forms in their everyday life. A more advanced learning process requires students to use what they've learned to produce writing.
Learning English as a second language is quite different from other learning processes. The adaptive brain becomes familiar with targeted grammatical forms before integrating them into everyday living. You, in particular, must do regular assignments and follow up on each lesson.
Four Things to Consider Before Taking English Lessons Online
English lessons, just like every other learning subject, improve our knowledge. Getting an online teacher is a must for every English learner. We recommend hiring experts from Superprof because they are the best. But before anything, you need to differentiate your right from the left. That said, here are some factors to consider before hiring an online teacher:
Pick a Study Partner
You don't need the whole world to master the art of English. The internet is full of resources. You need at least that one person who shares the same goal with you. You can pick a study partner at home by reaching out to friends with similar wants. Pick a time and a spot to meet and study.
It can be in your home or the garden behind your residence. It may even be in the morning or after school. Just ensure you stick to your regular meetings and English speaking.
Use Highly Educative Materials
Reading random online texts can be boring at times. And for the most part, you may grab little or no knowledge. Use English materials made for and written by native speakers. Learn their way of expression and get familiar with eye-catchy phrases.
At first, it may seem tiring. But with time, studying with such materials becomes easier. The materials you need, the more fluent you should be.
Be Real
Ask yourself: why do I need to study English? What can I do with it? These questions help to set realistic goals. If you're not honest with yourself, you might end up wasting your time and resources without anything to show for it.
Do you want to travel to an English-speaking country for your next holiday? Is there an English-speaking interview next week? Find a valid reason to study and motivate yourself to keep going because if you don't, no one will.
Learn New Words
Whether at school, work, or anywhere, you can choose to improve your English speaking in fun ways. It doesn't necessarily have to be singing or looking for new words online. While you read, underline intriguing words and phrases. Join a community of scholars and observe the way they chat. If you notice an unfamiliar term, look it up immediately or save it for later.
Learning new words is an effective method for improving your vocabulary. By understanding these words and integrating them into your day-to-day life, English will become a piece of cupcake for you.
Why English Tutoring from Superprof is Important
English tutoring is now common. When nations handle business with other countries for beneficial purposes, what would you expect from a person that works in a company with a strict language policy? Putting meaning into any contextual expression in English is a must-have skill for most people. Aside from that, you must know understand what it takes to be a professional English speaker.
Tutoring, in general, pays both in the long and short run. Whatever you want to learn, there's a tutor on Superprof willing to teach you the process. When it comes to English learning, a tutor from Superprof can help with the following:
To Create a Unique Learning Experience
The benefits of having a one-on-one lesson with a tutor are enormous. You'll learn a lot and still figure out ways to learn more on your own. By assigning a professional, you expose yourself to unforeseen benefits you thought weren't there. From discovering new vocabularies to writing to speaking fluently, everything becomes easier. Your tutor will not only help to sharpen your knowledge of the language; they will also help to improve your communication skills. The fun part is, you get to learn comfortably.
To Gain Personalized Attention
Not everyone loves to learn in multitudes or a class with others. The common complaint here is that group learning serves as a distraction. The focus level is reduced or down to zero, provided that you're learning alongside others. While it may be true, you can still use a more effective learning method.
Having a tutor by your side while you study creates personalized attention that sharpens the brain. Genuine interest in learning springs out of you, and what seems difficult becomes super easy like magic.
To Build Confidence
Most English learners become timid and prone to public discussions—not because they don't want to. Sometimes, it is better to remain in silence than to speak with no meaningful contribution.
To be among other scholars, you must also be fluent. Your confidence level must be top-notch. In this case, your tutor can help build better confidence with good tutoring and a heart-to-heart conversation. So next time you get into that public discussion, your confidence level springs up, and you apply everything you learn.
Find English lessons here on Superprof.
To Build Better Communication Skills
Knowing how to speak good English is exceptionally different from communicating fluently with it. While both look similar, communicating seems more difficult.
Do you have a press conference coming up soon? Hire a personal tutor from Superprof to help prepare your mind for the event. Most ESL and ESOL students know this: English without good communication skills is nothing. Reading without an excellent comprehending skill is out of it. Why learn English if you can't communicate better with it? A good tutor will look for the problem source and root it out.
To Retouch What Seems Confusing
You can't learn everything instantly. Some subject matters will come easily; some don't. Along the line, you may notice some confusing topics too. Unlike a group lesson, personal tutoring helps to avoid loopholes like this. Getting a good tutor is the best feeling, as you can always retouch previous schemes. If you find anything confusing, your tutor is right there to assist you.
Also, you won't have to feel timid about asking questions compared to group tutoring. You can freely seek answers to whatever challenges you face. Best of all, you get to build your level of understanding better.
Learning English is something we may not escape in years to come (if not now). The world is evolving, and we all need a moderate level of understanding among each other. So it's true: English Language is serious business. Fortunately, with Superprof, help is not far-fetched.
Find good IELTS preparation course here on Superprof.
A Vast Number of Resources to Learn ESOL
Probably more so than for any other language, you are likely to find study materials, videos, tutorials and audio aids in English, a global language.
The Internet has thousands of websites to help you learn English:
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Duolingo offers bite-sized lessons to help you learn English in comfortable segments and games for you to prove your ability in a fun and easy way.
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You can download their app to your phone so that you can play and learn as you travel to work.
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HelloLingo is a new website built around a learning community. Here you can meet native speakers of English online who are learning your native language. They will help you learn English while you help them learn your tongue.
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A great advantage to this program and others like it is that you will learn slang and informal expressions; aspects of culture that you cannot learn from a book. There are many websites dedicated to English learning. There, you can determine your current level of language ability and build a custom lesson plan that suits your needs. They have videos and games to help you sharpen your skills and make learning fun!
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Most websites offer daily English learning through interactive video and quizzes, as well as language lessons targeted to specific needs such as business and exam skills. This is particularly useful if you are studying for IELTS or TOEFL.
Learn about how English become the language of business and how it can help your career.
Both BBC and The British Council websites have an app you can download to your phone for learning 'on the go' – while you are out and about.
In addition to these and other targeted websites for English learning, you can watch movies, and listen to podcasts and songs in English.
Watching movies with English subtitles gives you a double dose of learning: you can practice your reading skills as well as your listening abilities!
Find the best English lessons near you.
Downloading an English dictionary to your phone or other mobile device lets you listen to how a word is spoken as well as the possibility of studying while you are on the bus or train.
Many such dictionaries even offer separate British and American English pronunciation. Learning English through film and literature is a great way to improve.
Find good IELTS training online here on Superprof.
Grammar Tips: English has Fewer Word Agreement Rules
Word agreement means matching subject to verb:
- The results show that people love learning English. (the subject and verb are plural).
- The results shows that people love learning English. (a common mistake: subject is plural but verb is singular).
Another example of word agreement is matching noun and pronoun: The man walked to his car – not 'the man walked to him car' or ' the man walked to their car'
Nearly every language has word agreement rules, but English has fewer of them than, say, French or German or Portuguese.
In French, a chair is gender feminine - la chaise, but if you are talking about an armchair, it is gender masculine – le fauteuil. Confusing, right?
German, with its three article designations, male, female and neutral, is even more complicated.
English does not assign objects a gender: everything is 'the' or 'a(n)'.
In other languages, you must match articles according to the object's assigned gender; in English there are only two articles to choose from.
Native English speakers sometimes have trouble learning other languages because English has no gender assignments and there are no rules for what would be considered a feminine, masculine or neutral object.
Get the best tutors and take ESL classes Toronto.
Capitalizing Letters
In German, for example, every noun is capitalized – written with the first letter of each noun in capitals.
By contrast, the rules for capital letters in English are very simple: proper names and the first letter of each sentence are capitalized.
Find good IELTS training online here on Superprof.
Exceptions Rather than Rules
Grammar rule exceptions are probably the most frustrating aspect of learning English.
Nouns ending in -ing
That ending usually belongs to verbs but can occasionally be used for nouns: “My breathing is more difficult when I climb mountains.”
breathing is usually a verb but, in this sentence, acts as a noun.
Adjectives ending in -ly
“The waitress was really friendly.”
Generally, it is adverbs that end in that manner; however, some adjectives also end in -ly.
Adjectives as nouns
“Society should do more for the homeless.”
Typically, 'homeless' is an adjective describing someone who has no home but in this sentence, it is used as a noun.
Nouns as adjectives
“I really like my history teacher.”
History is normally a noun but, in this sentence, the word describes what kind of teacher the student likes.
Nouns acting as verbs
“The law forbids texting while driving.”
Technology often causes nouns to act as verbs, such as in the above sentence. The word text, until recently, has always been a noun.
For students of English, it is sometimes easier to learn grammar rule exceptions rather than memorizing all of the rules because the exception points to the rule.
Other than these five basic exceptions, English grammar is relatively easy, following a simple subject-verb-object structure that many other languages also conform to.
You can get good ESL classes near me here.
Verbs and Verb Usage is Easier in English
Although there are irregular verbs in the English language, listing them all could be done on a single A4 piece of paper, including all the forms (conjugation) of those verb.
Compare that with Spanish, whose irregular verb list and conjugation thereof would fill sixteen pages.
All English irregular verbs except for to be and to have are irregular in the same way. Here are three examples:
- Buy bought will buy
- seek sought will seek
- fight fought will fight
Do you see the pattern to follow?
Regular verb conjugation in English is easier too. A typical French verb, for instance, has more than fifty endings that you must learn.
Compare that with any regular English verb, which only has four endings.
Clearly, people learning English as a foreign language benefit from the minimal changes between verb tenses.
Vocabulary Building is Easier English
The average English speaker uses a vocabulary of approximately twelve thousand words, with a substantial percentage of them being synonyms for different, commonly used words.
People who are learning English as a second language should not concern themselves with the number of words they know; rather on how they relate or connect to other words. For example:
the word familiar is rooted in family. If you have an idea of what the word 'family' represents, you can relate objects that are 'familiar' to the idea of 'something comfortable and known', such as family.
Another way to boost vocabulary is to group words into families, otherwise known as rhyming words – words that have the same sound.
This can be a fun exercise: for each step you take as you walk, you speak a word. By the time you arrive at your destination, you might have reviewed an entire sound group!
English writing is easier than writing in many other languages. More than half of the words in the average English vocabulary can be correctly spelled by how they sound.
Breaking words down into syllables – individual sound parts that make up any word is a great help in developing writing skills.
Let us try this technique using the word usually. This word has four syllables, defined: u-su-al-ly.
'Usually' is one of the most mispronounced words of the English language. Most English learners pronounce it 'u-shur-ly' or 'u-woo-ly', ignoring the second syllable altogether.
Sounding words out is a common technique used by native speakers of English to teach proper spelling of words to their learners, a method you too can use to improve your writing and speaking abilities.
Check out our ESL courses online.
Language Learning is Serious Business
Esl students take learning English seriously. It is indeed an important subject, but it doesn't have to be difficult.
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Making use of the numerous resources: online, in print and on the air – in the form of music or radio broadcasts can help improve your English listening skills.
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Incorporating the language's idioms and slang phrases into your learning can help improve your speaking skills.
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Using spelling hints such as sound words, or learning what language English words come from will help with writing proficiency.
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Making English learning fun makes this language easy to learn!
Find out how mastering English can help you access higher education and MOOCS
Curious about being back at school in 2020? Check out the article Back to School in 2020 to learn more.
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