Effective Ways of Studying English :Phonetics,Vocabulary,Grammar

Hello, dear learners!

Let’s talk about effective ways of studying English.

 I have two little granddaughters :)  and it gives me a chance to watch and analyze how kids learn their mother tongue. I think, it can be useful for adult ESL students .

 

 

 Phonetics

 

 During the first year babies learn sounds . Adults talk to them all the time , babies hear the typical sounds of the mother tongue and try to imitate them.

 Were you patient enough to study the correct pronunciation of vowels, diphthongs , contractions, etc? If you were, put + for yourself. If you weren't, you should start now! The best exercise is  listening to native speakers and repeating after them. Use everything you have or want: utube videos, movies, poems, stories and so on. Don’t forget to record yourself and check your pronunciation. You should correct your own mistakes  and never stop doing this exercise.

 The next level is vocabulary!

Kids don’t know  words and adults teach them: parents constantly repeat the words in different ways :"A duck" "This is a duck", "What 's this?" "Where is a duck" etc. First of all, toddlers  memorize  nouns: relatives and toys, pets and room equipment- everything that is around them. Then they learn adjectives and verbs. They get to the elementary level of an ESL student when they are 4, I think. The older kids grow, the more complicated words they learn. This process is endless. Every day of our life we learn new words: we know some old  words and expressions, slang, idioms , and so on. But we need years to enjoy all the diversity of our mother tongue, don't we?

 Do you learn 5-10 new words and expressions every day? If yes, put one more + for yourself. If you don’t, it’s a good time to start doing this every day. Just look around yourself and ask “What’s this ?” or “What is an English word for this?” and look up the answer in the dictionary. Don’t forget to use new words as often as possible to memorize them.

Grammar is a new challenge!

When kids start talking, they can’t make plurals for irregular nouns , use tenses in the proper way, build sentences. But they are so cute! However, parents teach them through the everyday conversations and children learn language rules intuitively, without memorizing any grammar rules!

On the other hand, ESL students are often sure ,that learning grammar  rules is the main key to a foreign language. It 's  a big mistake! Believe me or not, grammar is the easiest part of studying English. Do you know why? It is limited! I mean, there is a  certain amount of rules in English and we are able to study them if we  want to. This is the only part of language which can really be studied! But the trick is : you know the grammar rules , but you don’t know the language!

    So, we should study grammar rules  for communication : speaking, talking, writing!

I'm sure, learners should study grammar in the context of situation. It can be a poem or a song, an episode of a film or show, any situation which is interesting for you, typical for you.  This way you can make your vocabulary richer  and the process of studying grammar easier.

Do you study grammar this way? Put + again!

If you want to be a successful ESL student, you shouldn't forget about a natural way of learning language, you can imagine you are a child and teach yourself.