LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE

“Learning a New Language [English]”

“Learning a New Language [English]”

Introduction

Learning a new language is always a very interesting experience. I studied English since my childhood in school and high school but not able to speak, read and write it properly. Then I decided to learn it properly as it is not my mother-tongue. When my parents immigrated to America, I definitely had to improve my language skills.

Concrete Experience

After immigration to America, for improving my language kills, I took admission in a language institute. The institute had an English language course of one year which offered reading, writing, listening and speaking courses. I attended the centre five days a week and spent three hours daily over there. We had fifteen students including me who all had other languages as their mother-tongue.

That was a very interesting class. We had different instructors for reading and other skills. We had a very interactive session there. I worked hard to overcome my weaknesses. I always did my home assignments. I learnt by heart dozens of new words, improved my accent, grammar, structure of sentences and listening. I drilled myself for pronouns and prepositions.

In class, we usually practice patterns, but also the exercise, we have to ask the students questions and answers. We also do school work, which means reading two paragraphs, including 10-20 with the translation at the bottom of a very bold new vocabulary. These classes, we are still with the sentence structure (many of which I already know) a wide range of practices, but also began to understand writing more. I think that we read about 5 pages per week from our reading materials. This book is designed for foreign students from the book, it is easy and fun. I probably spent only about 10 minutes daily. I found myself more than ever to enjoy the class, so my conversational ability, and little progress. We have a lot of communication activities. We have scanned the article, indeed, making it hard to read the vital information.

Our teachers encouraged us not to use a phrase dictionary and translation difficulties for us. We must be able to understand them to record their next class. I think that learning English should be comprehensive, rather than just focusing on writing and reading. In modern society, speaking is an important way of communication. One who can get a high score in English test, but cannot properly speak fluently, is not a real good at English. The sixth month in my English class was too hard for me and I struggled very much to go through text books to acquiring vocabulary and fluency from authentic native sources. I tried a lot and made it possible to clear the mid-term. I received a 'B' grade in that term. Then my teacher suggested me to learn English from watching movies and listening songs. The first time, I see subtitles, and then I read the script. If there are some good sentences, I write down, ...