Hi all,
I'm an Indian trying to come to terms with English. I've come a long way since I started, and I'm happy about it.
I'd like to know from all such non-native learners how many hours on an average you practise English, and for how long you've been doing this, and how far you've come since you started. Guess this should be an interesting topic for all of us.
Personally, I started some 15 months back, I practise for around 3 hours a day, and I've reached an extent where I can fool an unwary person into believing that I've been living in England all the while. But still a long way to go, I'm afraid.
Minno,
So you've only studied English only for 15 months and write English that well? Umm that's quite amazing. As for me, I started learning English at school in my country when I entered middle school at the age of 13, and it's been almost 5 years since then. I cant really tell you how many hours I've alloted to studying English a day, it really depends... when I had English classes at school I at least spent 2 hours or so, and besides that I read some English newspapers and watched English TV programmes and movies, so on an average... probably 2-3 hours a day, I think.
Monnio,
How do you divide your three hours time on practising English?
I give only one hour time on reading articles (that's what my English practice) and at the same time I try to look up complex words in online dictionaries for understanding them better.
Unfortunately, I'm unable to watch English movies due to some strange reasons. I don't spend my time on the listening part. I do spend some time on writing as I post something here, that's what my writing practice so far.
I took it seriously from the last 7 months and have been spending one hour daily on learning and practicing the language. ( mainly reading and writing).
I have spoken only 12 or 15 English sentences in my whole life with someone else. That's what has been my spoken practice. (I wish I could speak more and more in my real life. That's the only thing that I can't do myself properly).
Well, I can't fool anybody else with my English. It is pathetic. The only positive appreciation that I have received so far by a web moderator who ran the political website. I posted something there (rather harsh comments) during Iraq's war. He asked me that I had ever been to the US for studies.
He told me that my English was nice. To be honest, I was so happy that day and was unable to take a sleep properly because I was simply over the moon).
Monnio, I think you should practice spelling ''practice'' right. It has a ''c'' not an ''s''.
B, I think you should practise looking up the facts before correcting others. Monnio has spelt the word in a perfectly acceptable fashion.
Sorry, I just looked up ''practise'' in the dictionary and it said another spelling of ''practice''. I thought ''practice'' was the only spelling of ''practice''. Well, If you saw someone spell ''grammar'' as ''grammer'' would you immediatly correct them or would you try to look it up.
Weird, that's the only British spelling that I know of that actually makes more sense than the American spelling.
Weird, The British spelling of ''practice'' makes more sense than the American spelling and the American spelling of ''defense'' makes more sense than the British one.
The British version of "defense" and "offense" has the word "fence" in it, so I always thought it made more sense than the American one.
I think ''practise'' and ''defense'' make more sense because they have an ''s'' and not a ''c'' and also ''defense'' has nothing to do with a fence.
The British spelling of "defence" DOES make sense, because a "c" before the letters "e", "i" and "y" is pronounced the same as a letter "s".
It doesn't matter whether it's an "s" or a "c". "C" is pronounced as an "s" sometimes.
Also, the British "colour" makes more sense than the American "color", because the the "or" in the American "color" are NOT pronounced like the word "or". The last syllable in "colour" or "color" is not pronounced like the word "or". It isn't stressed as much, hence the letter "u" in the British spelling. The British spelling makes more sense.
It's not pronounced "colOR". It is pronounced more like "colER". So the "u" in the british "colour" makes more sense than not having a "u".
Why isn't "fence" spelled "fense" in the US?