In this article, I would discuss how to start learning English. There are five concepts you need to know before learning English. I will discuss some key points that are really important for English language learners to keep in mind before starting their English language learning journey. This article might be helpful for English teachers as well.
1- Motivation and Learning English
The first very important idea is to maintain your motivation level. Many students start the learning journey but quit in the middle and cannot achieve their target. Similar cases occur with teachers; they start teaching but do not engage in active learning, which causes learners to lose interest. When the teacher receives no response from the student, he becomes discouraged as well. In research, this term is known as L2 motivation or second language learning motivation. You can read some articles on Google Scholar about that. My teacher Dr. Muhammad Islam has highlighted it in his research.
2- Focus on Micro-skills while Learning English
The second step I would like to discuss is that we often start learning English as a whole. This means we do not focus on the micro skills of the language. For example, reading may have more than 50 important sub-skills, such as understanding subject-verb agreement, contextual meanings of words, and the correct grammatical category of a word. For instance, the word “construction” may be used as “constructing,” “constructor,” or “constructed.” So, I recommend learners work on parts of speech first and take at least two months to learn them. Do not instantly move on to learning tenses and other stuff. If they start producing language from small structures, there are more chances they would learn fast. For instance, if they learn Use of Can or Use of Could etc. They may achieve their target soon and it will also maintain their confidence.
3- Mistake We Do Watching Movies
Most of the learners start watching movies and they think they would improve English but in fact, they enjoy the actions of the movies which covers the major part of a movie. For example, if a movie contains 1 and half hour, there would be 40-50 minutes for dialogues; and most of the dialogues would be in slang language that means niether the English teachers nor the learners understand that spoken variety of a language. At initial stage, I highly recommend the second language learners to engage themselves in making small sentences and try to ask questions in real life situation. When you ask questions, you get some input from the speakers. That input helps you further improve your productive skills, i.e., writing and speaking.
4- Never Start Learning Vocabulary
Some students without working on structures start collecting thousands of vocabulary words which never help them. In fact, they forget with the passage of time. Vocabulary can only be developed in some context. That means the learners learn vocabulary along with the structures that they have to use in daily life. A newly born baby does the same. He starts uttering those words which he observes. A mother never gives him 100 vocabulary verbs to memorize and use next day. At school level, our teachers give us a huge list of vocabulary words which we never use in daily life.
5- Finding a Partner
Most of us never try to find a partner for speaking practice rather, we run after courses. Courses can only provide you a roadmap, only few of them help you improve your English. Rest is your effort! You should find partners from different apps such as Facebook, YouTube, you can use comment in the comment section that you need a partner for speaking practice. There would be many people to contact you for speaking practice. If you want to share your details here, you can leave your Skype ID in the comment box. Best of Luck!
Article Written by Mubeen Shah
M tayyab
This article helps me lot.