ESL Blogs

English! The international language. The language which acts as an intermediary throughout the world. What are the main components of this particular language? Is it only Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing? Well, if English is a 4 story building first story is Listening, second one is Speaking, third one is Reading and then comes the Writing story. As you all know any building requires a foundation, This 4 story English building also has a foundation. It consists with 4 main parts, Grammar, Vocabulary, Pronunciation and Learning training. Learning training in the sense doing something, then observing, then thinking about it and finally applying what you know into real world situations.

If you have a very good knowledge in Grammar, Pronunciation, Vocabulary and Learning training so called study skills, then it is like a solid foundation. As you know, to strengthen the building we should strengthen the foundation. Same goes with English.

How can we improve all those aspects? Grammar is a set of rules which govern the design patters of English language, if you learn at least one grammar rule per week you will soon finish all the basic grammar rules in English.

How to deal with Pronunciation? This means, how we should properly pronounce a word, where we should stress and where we should use intonation. Phonemic chart helps us to improve pronunciation, nowadays we can easily use online resources to listen and learn how to pronounce words properly.

When it comes to Vocabulary, it is all about collecting new words to your memory so you can use it when in need, if you can memorize 5 words per day, how many words will you collect in a year? It is wise to memorize a short and a simple sentence which includes new words than just memorizing word by word.

Learning training is the most important part of them all, because no matter how hard you learn English, you'll forget them all if you don't practice it. Let me tell you a story, think of a bird on the ground, now imagine it's flying up to the sky, now imagine that particular bird stops flying... what will happen? it will definitely come to the ground. Now think of a person who is new to English, it's like the bird on the ground, now that person is learning and practicing English, it's like that bird is flying up to the sky. Now what will happen if that person stop practicing English? yeah, you're right; like that bird comes to the ground level, that person will also come to the ground level. If that person keeps on practicing English, he or she can get into the space, now that's what we call fluent in English, after that you don't have to worry about your English anymore. As an example we can take a satellite, we need a rocket to take it to the space, but once it is in the space, it will not come down to the ground unless we want it to come back to the Earth.

Now it's time to think about the stories of that almighty building called English. We always start with listening. If you're a good listener then you will eventually become a good speaker. To do that you can always listen to English music, specially to old songs and English radio channels like BBC world, that's my favorite. Sometimes I don't listen to it, but I just play it in the background while I do my work. There is a difference between listening and hearing. Listening means we are trying to understand the sound signals, hearing means sound signals go through our ears but we are not trying to understand it. But in my opinion we should train our ears for both situations.

Next is reading, if you read a lot, you'll be a good writer in no time. in fact listening, speaking, reading, writing help each other to consolidate English. If you don't have a partner then start thinking in English, in my opinion that is a great way to improve English, usually non native speakers think in their mother tongue first and then they try to translate it into English; that process consumes a lot of time. If you start thinking in English as much as possible, then you'll be able to think in English and express your ideas faster than ever. Believe me it's a fact. If you afraid of talking to someone, then it's time for you to start thinking in English; no need to worry, because only you know what you're thinking. Make sure you think something worth and it's better to think about something you like the most, that will keep you engaging with the thinking process, otherwise you'll get bored and you'll stop trying.

Another way to consolidate English is teaching, that is the ultimate way of consolidating English. There are lots of new comers who don't know much English, so you can teach them something you know for sure. They will appreciate that and on the other hand you will improve your English. According to my point of view defeat is not the worst of failures, not to have tried is the true failure. In fact that's why I'm typing this article, I don't think about the 100% accuracy or what others might think, I'm thinking about expressing my ideas through writing. I believe this exercise will help me to drive my enthusiasm towards fluent in writing by at least 1mm, that is more than enough to satisfy my pleasure and I sincerely believe some of you'll find this article important. Thank you!

There's a long way to go. No matter how far it is, it always starts with one step towards the destination.

Kosala Siribaddana