What to do to improve my English? / Как улучшить мой английский?

Many of us are in search of the ways to improve our English, and in general, the language we speak, because we realize that the language says a lot about the person himself, and in this way would definitely witness about one’s education and character. If you speak a good language, no matter which one, it would certainly become a good indicator of diligence, respect towards oneself and other people, intelligence and efforts. A good language plays a most important part when applying for a job, going to the cinema, leading various types of negotiations, and so on. We definitely distinguish between various types of styles in the language: colloquial, literary etc. Your friends would burst into laughter if they heard you speaking: “Good day! How are you, my dear fellow? How does life treat you? “… And just speaking with those high-flown and terminological words wouldn’t be of good, especially in informal atmosphere. So, what conclusion should we make? We could only repeat once more that the language is the indicator of your orientation in this life. And, consequently, the normal question emerges: how to improve the language? And moreover – if it’s not native but acquired?
 

You might know that there are many doors for an eager person. Studying English is just another story, if it’s not your native language. You might also know that the older we become the more difficult it is for us to learn and store the new words and phrases in our memory. Similarly, we can not apply the same rule for a foreign language as it happens with our motr tongue – mother tongue is cognized, absorbed from the circumstances and the situation itself– a mother hints the first letters of a word to a baby and thus the first word is being born. We often hear that if parents of a child are bilingual -the child will become bilingual too – and that’s because one can speak both languages equally. And…what to do for those people who have started to study the language in their teens or even later? Wouldn’t they have a chance to succeed? Of course, they would.


Language is being studied depending upon the goal you have. If you need English not for serious goals – you’ll use one methods and disregard other ones, if you want to devote your life to languages – you’ll take some bigger efforts and will be looking forward for any possible ways to find the information you need. So, what goal do you have?

However, the approaches to it may be really similar.
 

Studying English consists of basic methods, exercises and activities which are:
1. Listening.
2. Watching video.
3. Speaking with a native speaker.
4. Catching up for some grammar with the help of the system of various exercises.
5. Going abroad to be in the informal atmosphere
6. Reading.
7. Writing.
8. Games (crosswords, boardgames etc.)




Now, before reading these passages, will you please try to answer one question: What unites these activities and what is the difference between all of them?
 

The first thing is that these are the activities which activate various parts of our brain, that is, various capacities, and are meant to improve our skills: analytical skills, speaking, writing, comprehension etc. So, which one to choose? Do you really need them all? How much time should English be studied? And why-y-y do people spend so much (time, money and effort) learning English and you can’t just learn it by speaking? =)


 

Most of teachers and scientists maintain that learning English only in speaking is not only bad for your grammatical and analytical growth but is also considered to be one-sided improvement of the language, which makes it not effective. The effective and useful language is being developed when all the aspects are present, so that you pay equal attention to them all.
 

A lot of students would definitely say that grammar may sometimes (in most of cases) be boring. That’s another dubious statement which would mean the teacher making English lessons is, either not professional enough, or just prefers to row up on doing exercises, and simply forgets that English is being studied in games too. The teacher should have the sense of timing, have good interactions with students, harmonize all grammatical, speaking and game aspects on his grammar lesson.

 

As for the students, as it was mentioned before, everything depends  on whether students make efforts to comprehend and learn something new or not. Those students, who want to study will always have open ways with a teacher as one will become the source of help, guidance and information.


There are several tips for the students to improve their basic English skills.


1. Listening helps you to develop your comprehension of English, to snatch certain words from the context. The auditory cortex is responsible for listening. You wouldn’t be able to respond to somebody’s request if you couldn’t understand what one’s trying to say. Such sources as BBC and CNN are considered to be one of the best ones to listen to as their speech is considered to be perfect in British terms. When listening, you can also try to listen to one sentence and then write it down after the newscaster. Afterwards, you could try to translate it. Some people, for example advanced students, can make the task more complicated – try to listen and to translate while listening. =) That’s where your English would work. Another activity is just listening and simply trying to render the main idea of the speech in your own words – that would help you to understand better and to formulate your thoughts.  




2. Writing is an indispensable part of English studying. The language itself is being born from writing. All the most creative and beautiful clichés and items of the language result from writing.  When a person writes a lot one has a perfect speaking as one starts thinking English. Your thoughts will be expressed with certain English phrases and you won’t have to think about a certain word –you’ll think English – especially when you write something on a certain topic.



3. Watching videos helps you to acquire and process everything you’ve seen on the screen: these may be various habits and cultural peculiarities of native speakers. If you’re a beginner, we recommend you to listen to the videos with subtitles. That could help you to listen and watch it at once. You could also write down the idea of the film you’ve seen.  


4. Speaking. No introduction is needed for this activity. Everybody wants to speak, however students do not often realize that linking phrases together without certain knowledge can’t be done at once. It requires lots of practicing with foreigners, native speakers, and also doing a sufficient homework – writing, and doing grammar exercises.


Do you still want to study English? =)