The beginners of English language

10 Tips on How to Learn a New Language
contributed by David Davis
There are many reasons why it is beneficial and interesting to learn a new language. For example, many people who choose to emigrate for financial reasons would find it very difficult to make the most of their move if they cannot speak the language because they would not be able to get a job. Other people may simply have an interest in linguistics and the differences between languages, so they choose to learn foreign languages for this reason. There are also many social reasons for learning a language. For instance, if you have foreign friends or family or maybe even to communicate with someone in secret! However one of the most important reasons to learn a language is to broaden your mind and to make yourself more accustomed to other cultures.
Here are some tips for learning a new language and different strategies that can be used:
1. It is very important that you try to study the language every day. In order to make yourself more accustomed to the language you need to expose yourself to it. However, try not to overload your brain. Try to take breaks every ten minutes or so and only study for an hour to an hour and a half a day.
2. Certain languages have different genders for different nouns so it is very important to learn the genders when you are learning the noun. For example in German:
die Tür {the door} feminine
der Tisch {the table} masculine
das Hund {the dog} neutral
If you do not learn the genders with the noun, it is more difficult to understand and apply the grammar of the language.
3. In order to build up your vocabulary a good idea would be to read a lot of books. Look up the words that you do not understand, write them down and maybe even the next day, take a few of these words and try to learn them. However, its important to have a good dictionary because many words can have a lot of different meanings.
4. A good tip is to have a phrase book or vocabulary book and any time you come across a word that you do not understand, you can write it into its proper section. Eg noun, verb adjective etc. This way, it makes the words a lot easier to learn and to look up. learn them. However, its important to have a good dictionary because many words can have a lot of different meanings.
5. You need to be very careful of 'false friends'. Some words may seem similar in your own language but they may have a totally different meaning in the language you are learning. For example:
German: Rat (council) English: rat
bald (soon) bald
French: warning (advertisement) warning
allure (speed) allure
6. Try not to translate word or sentences literally. A literal translation often does not convey the actual translation of the original text. Do not be afraid if your translation is not literal to the original text because every language expresses its meanings in different ways.
7. If you study the language in the country where it is spoken you will more than likely experience a rapid improvement not only in your vocabulary, grammar and speaking skills but also in your confidence because you will become immersed in the language. You will also get to experience the true culture of the country, the food that they eat and the way of life of the people. Many English speaking students choose to give grinds in the country of their target language because it not only helps them with learning the language by speaking to their tutees but it is also an excellent way to make friends.
8. Try to speak as much as possible- you can even practice by speaking to yourself! Pronunciation is very important so that people can understand you, so practice as much as you can.
9. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. If you can get your main point across, that is the most important thing. If you are having a conversation with someone and you come across a word that you do not know how to say, try to explain it in a different form. For example, if you do not know how to say 'pen' you could say 'the object that you write with'.
10. The most important thing is to try to have fun and to make the most of learning a new language. By incorporating grammar into riddles and jokes it can make it a lot more interesting and fun when learning a language.
The Psychological Factor
contributed by Gabrielle Guichard
When it comes about learning a foreign language, many people wonder if they will be able to memorize enough vocabulary. But this question never occurs about their mother tongue. And yet, it was a foreign language; nevertheless, among all the questions that new parents ask, no doctor has ever heard: "Will my baby be able to learn my language?" Be honest. Do you know all the words of your mother tongue? The answer is: "no". New words, and new ways of using old words, appear every day. Twenty years ago, who would have been able to understand such a sentence: "Click here to download your digital book"? Nobody. You never stop acquiring new vocabulary and you never know how long you will be needing it. Do you still use "tomagotchi"?
When you don't know the exact name of a thing, you don't hesitate to call it "whatsit". Why do you think foreigners do otherwise? (The French word for whatsit is machin. That's a good start! You already know the word that can virtually replace any other!)
Sometimes, you have the word on the tip of your tongue... and it sticks there! But you do know this phenomenon and don't think that it is due to a bad memory. You should not give this phenomenon more importance in the language you are learning than in your mother tongue. You need to learn only 2000 or so basic French words to be able to create any paraphrase you need. You can't avoid some work in order to learn these essential words and all the more if you want to learn quickly. Before you contemplate to buy a learn-in-a-breeze method, be sure it is right for you. It is not as wise as it is said to rely on a method based upon mnemotechnics. The first words seem very easy lo learn; so, you buy the method; and you discover quickly, though too late, that a dozen words later, it is all the more difficult to learn a new word that you have also to learn the trick to memorize it.
What is the Hardest Language to Learn?
contributed by Ron Tichenor
Did you ever wonder 'what is the hardest language to learn?' If you have ever spent time studying a foreign language, you may have thought at one point that you had chosen the most difficult language to learn. But is that just temporary frustration talking, or is there really one language that is harder to learn than all the others?
There are lots of factors that make a language hard or easy to learn. The most important is what your native language is - the language you grew up speaking. This will have the greatest impact on how you learn languages. Other factors are - learning a new alphabet or writing system, new grammar rules and strange new sounds to make.
It's really a combination of actual characteristics of a language and your own personal experience. But if the majority of people agree that one language is hardest to learn, then it probably is. I take a survey on my website and the vast majority of people seem to choose the hardest language based on what their native language is. Although many who speak English as a second language choose it as the most difficult language, it is not the most popular choice.
English is my native language and I have an opinion on where English stands in relation to other languages. I think that English is an easy language to learn to speak badly but a difficult language to speak well. I also think that writing English properly is very difficult and that is where people have the most difficulty with English. But I also don't think that English is the most difficult language. There are lots of better candidates for that.
The overwhelming favorite for most people is Chinese. There are two main reasons for this. It's not the grammar because Chinese grammar is actually quite easy. It's the tones. The same word can be said in four different tones and have four different meanings. That's just Mandarin Chinese. In some other dialects (like Cantonese) there can be up to nine distinctly different tones! This makes this language very difficult for someone to learn if it is not their native language.
The other reason Chinese is so difficult is the traditional writing system that is still widely in use. There is a different symbol for every word! This makes even a basic vocabulary of a few thousand words very difficult to learn to read and write.
There are other candidates for the Most Difficult Language to Learn such as Arabic, Russian, Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian, Navajo and many others. what do you think? Fill out the Hardest Language to Learn Survey and get a chance at a free giveaway of a language learning product!
Ron is a long-time language enthusiast, exploring Spanish, French, Swedish, Cornish, Esperanto and others. Learn more about studying a language on your own at Language Learning Advisor This guide for self-study language learners has reviews and recommendations of language learning methods and products, links to online learning resources, learning tips to maximize your study time and effectiveness and articles on language learning.
When Is The Best Time To Start
Learning A Foreign Language?
contributed by Sue Copas
This is an often asked question and generally the standard answer is that the optimum age for learning a language is between 3 to 7 years of age, but is this necessarily so?
There can be no doubt that children tend to pick up on information much faster than adults do and that a child of primary school age, having picked up the basics of a language will appear to be more confident and have a better knowledge of the language than an adult who has been studying for a comparable time. Let us examine the type of knowledge accumulated by both types of student though and see whether the younger student is really any better.
The younger student will probably have been given a few nouns to learn each week in order to expand his vocabulary and will also probably have been given an insight into simple verb structures. The medium of communicating this knowledge is most likely to be working through simple story like passages, translating them in a group and by repetition, a great breadth of knowledge of complete structured sentences will have been gained.
The adult learner will probably in a similar manner be given a list of nouns to learn complete with their gender specific definite and indefinite articles. Although in English grammar, the definite and indefinite articles (a & the) are not gender nor number specific, they are in many foreign languages and this will probably be easier for them to comprehend than for a child. The adult student will spend time working through verb conjugations and verb tenses during their studies; once again, this generally difficult subject for most learners, will be somewhat easier for an adult than for a 5 year old student. This structured knowledge of the workings of foreign grammar will then be combined with the same story like passages as put to the younger students, but a much deeper knowledge of grammar and workings of a language will be inherent in the adult's progress.
So what in actual fact is the net outcome of a comparison of the progress of these two groups of students? Basically one would be hard put to quantify whether one group was better than the other; the younger group would generally be more fluent, confident and have a wider breadth of knowledge, on the other hand, adult learners would almost have a deeper and more grammatical knowledge of any given language.
If we look to real world examples we can perhaps find some analogous corroboration of the point made above; if we take a language translation service in London they have general translators as well as technical translators. The general translators, whilst being fully qualified and more than competent, can be fairly young and recently qualified. The technical translators, however, will be fully qualified in a language but also hold some sort of technical qualification, or have worked in a specialist field for a number of years. They will be somewhat older than the general translators and will have used their advantage in age and experience to accumulate a depth of knowledge.
This is perhaps a somewhat loose analogy, but I believe it still demonstrates the point that the learning process taken up at different ages produces different types of final result, ultimately none really being superior to another.
Why You Should Learn to
Speak a Foreign Language
contributed by Larry M. Lynch
There is a multitude of reasons for wanting to speak the lingua franca of another people; travel, business, education, matrimony, retirement, personal pleasure, even family or friends among many others.
Indeed it's no small feat to habla Español, parlez Francais, or sprechenze Deutsch, but the prestige, financial gains, personal satisfaction and even peer envy that can accompany this easily-nurtured skill, can be supremely rewarding. If you're not already an ex-pat, don't start packing your bags just yet though, you've got a little "work" to do first.
If you're already an ex-pat, then learning or improving your communicative skills in a foreign language may be a moot point. There you are, one of the millions of "escapees" from the USA, UK or other country, now surrounded by new horizons, vistas, culture, everyday life and a foreign language you need to master as quickly and adeptly as possible out of necessity.
Perhaps you'd like to study abroad; Fashion Design or the Culinary Arts in Paris with French as the medium of communication. Learning Renaissance Art in Milan or Rome would certainly be enriched by your fluency in Italian. Delving into Architecture or beer-brewing in Germany will be far more rewarding if you integrate into their society using your best German.
If you want to immerse yourself into Anthropology or Mayan Culture in the Yucatan, Mayan or Nahuatl would serve you even better than Spanish might. You could also simply double up and learn both languages. (Yes, you most certainly can!)
Exploring the mysteries of Oriental Antiquities, culture or martial arts in the Yellow River Valley of China requires at least some communicative skills in one of the dialects of Chinese, don't you think?
Acquiring knowledge of ancient and modern agricultural techniques or perhaps the secrets of Yoga in the vast stretches of exotic India will be far more enriching with one of the local dialects of the country flowing like honey from your tongue.
Would you like to learn Karate, Judo or the art of making Sushi in Japan? Do you think knowing how to speak Japanese might make things easier?
You might be thinking of honing your Tango dancing skills in Buenos Aires, or improving your Salsa steps in Cuba or Colombia, then Spanish could pave the way to your progress. The list could go on and on, but just think how the "right" foreign language could not only make it all very possible, but expand and deepen your quest as well.
But, you're thinking, how can you, with limited time, resources and perhaps even more limited patience, make any decent headway in a reasonably short time? You may well ask, "Can I indeed, at my age, really develop good communicative skills in a new tongue?"
Yes, you can and you will if you'll use some of my "quick tricks" for heightening your language–learning experience and incorporating your prospective new language into your present everyday life.