Hi Junior i like the idea of exchanging emails for learning English only.I think not all the members like it.They like to answer your questions and give you very useful advises but not chatting with you on line.
what are the practical steps to speak english fluently
Hi Leena
I read some of the suggestions that have been made in order to become fluent in English. Some of them are good but they are not in sequence.
In my opinion, If you want to become a fluent English speaker you should take some advice:
There are four skills in learning English which are READING, LISTENING, SPEAKING and WRITING.
The most important thing that you must bury in your mind is that reading and listening are inputs whereas speaking and writing are outputs. In other words, if you want to improve your speaking and writing skills you should first master in reading and listening. There are some ways that you can do so which I try to summerize them in here.
1) Read as much as you can. But your reading must be active. It means that you must think about the structure, unfamiliar words etc as you read. There is no need that you stick with some complicated grammar structures or try to understand all the unfamiliar words that you come across, but the fact that you see them for the first time and recognize them whenever you see them for example in other passage or book is enough. It would be better to prepare yourself a notebook that you can write down the important words or structures. To begin reading I recommend Penguin Readers books. They are classified according to difficulty levels.
2) For listening there is two options:
2.a) Apart from reading, you can listen every day for about 30 minutes.
2.b) You can only concentrate on your reading and become skillful at your reading then you can catch up on your listening.
I myself prefer the latter because when you are skillful and nativelike at reading, your listening skill grows automatically. Since you have lots of inputs in your mind, you can easily guess what the speaker is going to say. This never means that you do not practise listening.
For listening I recommend cartoons or some movies that are specially made for children. Their language are easy and does not cotain complicated phrases. Or if you are good at listening you can listen to VOA or BBC programs which are broadcasted every day.
Again the thing to remember is being active in listening and preferabaly taking some notes.
If you follow these pieces of advice, your speaking and writing will improve automatically and you can be sure that with little effort they will be perfect.
I hope these suggestions helps you.
Alireza
I read some of the suggestions that have been made in order to become fluent in English. Some of them are good but they are not in sequence.
In my opinion, If you want to become a fluent English speaker you should take some advice:
There are four skills in learning English which are READING, LISTENING, SPEAKING and WRITING.
The most important thing that you must bury in your mind is that reading and listening are inputs whereas speaking and writing are outputs. In other words, if you want to improve your speaking and writing skills you should first master in reading and listening. There are some ways that you can do so which I try to summerize them in here.
1) Read as much as you can. But your reading must be active. It means that you must think about the structure, unfamiliar words etc as you read. There is no need that you stick with some complicated grammar structures or try to understand all the unfamiliar words that you come across, but the fact that you see them for the first time and recognize them whenever you see them for example in other passage or book is enough. It would be better to prepare yourself a notebook that you can write down the important words or structures. To begin reading I recommend Penguin Readers books. They are classified according to difficulty levels.
2) For listening there is two options:
2.a) Apart from reading, you can listen every day for about 30 minutes.
2.b) You can only concentrate on your reading and become skillful at your reading then you can catch up on your listening.
I myself prefer the latter because when you are skillful and nativelike at reading, your listening skill grows automatically. Since you have lots of inputs in your mind, you can easily guess what the speaker is going to say. This never means that you do not practise listening.
For listening I recommend cartoons or some movies that are specially made for children. Their language are easy and does not cotain complicated phrases. Or if you are good at listening you can listen to VOA or BBC programs which are broadcasted every day.
Again the thing to remember is being active in listening and preferabaly taking some notes.
If you follow these pieces of advice, your speaking and writing will improve automatically and you can be sure that with little effort they will be perfect.
I hope these suggestions helps you.
Alireza
Alireza
thank you so much for every advise you gave.I am really able to read English books so quick and with no hesitation.My Engish accent is a good one as my teachers told me.My reading might be not active as you mentioned because i dont concentrate on words or structures all the time.I have bought a couple of novels from this collection (penguin),but they are so boring and hard to understand though.Listening is a bit difficult activity.I watch movies like Titanic,Mr and Mrs smith and so on but still cant follow all what they say.I can understand the whole movie but not every sentence they speak.Some broadcastings are boring like BBc,all what they talk about is politics and economics the thing i truly hate to hear.I love to listen to Celien Dion in all her albums.Her accent is nice and her language is clear.The main problem is speaking.I dont know what happens to me when i start speaking.I forget all what i learned i feel embarresed when i cant compose a correct sentence in my mind.Actually i dont speak English all the time.perhaps this is the whole problem.
thank you so much for every advise you gave.I am really able to read English books so quick and with no hesitation.My Engish accent is a good one as my teachers told me.My reading might be not active as you mentioned because i dont concentrate on words or structures all the time.I have bought a couple of novels from this collection (penguin),but they are so boring and hard to understand though.Listening is a bit difficult activity.I watch movies like Titanic,Mr and Mrs smith and so on but still cant follow all what they say.I can understand the whole movie but not every sentence they speak.Some broadcastings are boring like BBc,all what they talk about is politics and economics the thing i truly hate to hear.I love to listen to Celien Dion in all her albums.Her accent is nice and her language is clear.The main problem is speaking.I dont know what happens to me when i start speaking.I forget all what i learned i feel embarresed when i cant compose a correct sentence in my mind.Actually i dont speak English all the time.perhaps this is the whole problem.
I just wanna know that Does the English Grammer is Important in Talking English?Because I've seen many People who talk in English without any Grammer Rules....Please reply as soon as possible.
Thanking you.
-Saurabh A.
Thanking you.
-Saurabh A.
Hi Leena,
I work for a big Bank and have a great position there, probelm is my interaction with fellow collegues.I have read some of your comments and wise advises on how to improve your vocabulary. And the one thing i could pick was that i need to know more English words so that i dont have to break when speaking to people.
You see the problem is not just that with me. I simply cant strcucture my sentences no matter how hard i try, and this affects my self-esteem as well.
Do you have any special remedy that you could give me? Basically i got the poorest primary education South Africa could offer, but this was due to poverty, so amongst my peer i am the only one with the worst accent, and most importantly they cant understand what i always try to say to them.
I work for a big Bank and have a great position there, probelm is my interaction with fellow collegues.I have read some of your comments and wise advises on how to improve your vocabulary. And the one thing i could pick was that i need to know more English words so that i dont have to break when speaking to people.
You see the problem is not just that with me. I simply cant strcucture my sentences no matter how hard i try, and this affects my self-esteem as well.
Do you have any special remedy that you could give me? Basically i got the poorest primary education South Africa could offer, but this was due to poverty, so amongst my peer i am the only one with the worst accent, and most importantly they cant understand what i always try to say to them.
hello mogly
the best advises were not written by me.All important steps came from the members here who are either native people or those who worked very much on English.I think getting more vocabulary is an important step for improving any language,but my problem is that i forget them very quickly if i didnt use them.Magazines and newspapers have a great deal of useful words.
I think speaking English most of time is the greatest step in speaking fluently
the best advises were not written by me.All important steps came from the members here who are either native people or those who worked very much on English.I think getting more vocabulary is an important step for improving any language,but my problem is that i forget them very quickly if i didnt use them.Magazines and newspapers have a great deal of useful words.
I think speaking English most of time is the greatest step in speaking fluently
Hi Leena
Would you perhaps have any idea how long it could take me to learn and speak fluently, if I dedicate 30 minutes a day towards this. This is beside speaking english all the time because its the only language I speak here at work.
And also I have learned that you can damage your english through early and careless output(speaking).
Would you perhaps have any idea how long it could take me to learn and speak fluently, if I dedicate 30 minutes a day towards this. This is beside speaking english all the time because its the only language I speak here at work.
And also I have learned that you can damage your english through early and careless output(speaking).
No football or outside activites today because of snow, so I'm stuck behind my PC until this evening.
Greetings to all you students of the English Language from outside the UK. On the whole you have a very high standard of written English.
Now, here's a lovely jubbly opportunity for you to make some money.....how about passing your skills in written English to an allegedly large number of British university undergraduates who are top notch and up front at verbal communication ability, but absolute crapshit at writing it down:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/12/nwriting12.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/12/ixhome.html
Greetings to all you students of the English Language from outside the UK. On the whole you have a very high standard of written English.
Now, here's a lovely jubbly opportunity for you to make some money.....how about passing your skills in written English to an allegedly large number of British university undergraduates who are top notch and up front at verbal communication ability, but absolute crapshit at writing it down:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/12/nwriting12.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/12/ixhome.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/12/nwriting112.xml
Come on girls'n'guys...help us out here.... :-(
Come on girls'n'guys...help us out here.... :-(