Home: How to learn English: Input

Input - getting English into your head

What is input and why you need it? Input is a short word for "English sentences that you read or listen to". When you read and listen to English sentences, parts of the sentences stay in your memory, which lets you build similar sentences yourself. Input — not speaking, writing or grammar tests — is what you need to use English grammar and vocabulary like a native speaker.

You shouldn't learn English by grammar rules because grammar rules are difficult to memorize and because building sentences by using grammar rules is very slow. You can't use English fluently if you have to think about grammar rules.

Why your input should be fun: Thrilling, enjoyable and/or funny content is the key to your progress.

Reading is easier than listening: You can get input in only two ways: reading and listening, and reading is easier than listening, because: (1) You can see the spelling of all the words, so you can look them up in a dictionary, and (2) When reading, you can always stop to think and look things up. With listening, this is not always possible.

The power of reading — two cases: These two stories of people who learned English well by reading show what can happen to your English if you get lots of input.

Great output skills without output practice? Richard Boydell's example shows that to learn good output skills, you may not need output practice at all.

You can get English input in many different ways:

• Reading in English gives you easy input (easier than listening). When reading, pay attention to new words, phrases, and grammar patterns.
  • Why you need to start reading on your own
  • How to read English texts if you want to improve your English
  • What to read
• Watching movies in English gives you spoken English input and helps you learn informal English vocabulary. You will often have problems understanding movies; we present a few techniques to help you with that.
• Adventure games are computer games where you control a character who talks to other characters. They give you lots of spoken English input and are fun to play.

Besides, good dictionaries give you input in the form of example sentences. By reading the sentences, you can learn how to use a word. SuperMemo gives you regular input and helps you keep it in your head — if you add sentences to your items.