Hi! High five!
So welcome to Series English! My name is Antonia Romaker.
And today we are going to talk about the way
to study the English language.
Well, actually I have already two classes, devoted to this topic.
And you can check them out, if you want.
The first one is connected with my experience only,
and the second is about general tips.
So but today we are going to talk about some specifics.
However first of all I want to underline the idea
once again, that the most important
the crucial point in doing anything
is your motivation.
The reason, why you want to study the language.
Find your strong, powerful reason
of doing so and the process will be much easier.
And it will be quicker, because you will put
your heart, your soul into the process.
Thus the process will be more interesting,
more challenging and fascinating!
So you will, well, help yourself a lot,
if you find that great strong reason
for yourself to study the language.
There are so many reasons possible:
studies, studies abroad, meeting new people,
communicating with other people all around the world,
well, your work. Learning a foreign language
might be very helpful for your work,
especially if we talk about English,
if you want to work at an international company.
You can marry a foreigner, why not?
You can move to another country.
That might be your dream, why not?
Start working on it today, right now.
So your motivation, find it.
It's not that hard.
Secondly, self discipline is very important.
because even if you have a tutor
or you study at a linguistic school,
or at a university, if you do not discipline yourself,
the process won't be as quick as possible.
However if you make yourself study at least
five minutes a day or twenty minutes a day,
one hour a day, that would be just perfect!
As for me personally when I studied at the seventh grade,
we had been studying English for three or four hours a day.
So I am sure that you can find like half an hour a day
to study the language.
Just try to push yourself a little bit here.
So I am not talking about working your fingers to the bone,
like you feel exhausted and you like hate the language already.
Don't do that. You don't have to do that.
But study the language every day.
So motivation and self-discipline are the ones,
which are the crucial points here.
So you can study the language yourself,
it is possible nowadays.
Because as long as you have the first two -
motivation and self-discipline -
you will be able to study the language yourself.
The only problem is speaking practice,
you can't practice the language without another person,
you can't do it just yourself.
But as for other aspects you can do everything on your own,
no problem. For example, the books.
There are textbooks, millions of textbooks available.
So you can use any series, like 'Headway',
'Upstream', 'Opportunities', 'Inside Out', 'Cutting Edge'
and many, many, many more.
There are millions of them, literally nowadays!
So that won't be a problem, you can find one.
Usually such textbooks are complex,
so they help you train your knowledge at different levels.
I mean in different aspects.
So you can train your vocabulary,
you can train your grammar, your listening
and writing too. So providing you have a teacher
no problem, this person might check you.
But even if there's nobody to check you
you can still write letters, messages,
post in diaries and so on. For example,
at school me and my classmates used to write little notes
to each other in a foreign language and it was really helpful!
Just little stupid notes, like some guys would write:
'I want you...' then 'to speak with me',
'to help me', and so on, so it was a little private joke. Anyway.
There are also adapted books with adapted stories.
For example, I used to read O. Henry's stories a lot.
They were adapted, a little bit simplified,
but still they helped me a lot and I enjoyed reading them.
There are also authentic books,
you can read them a little bit later.
And it will be helpful as well.
There are audio books, so you can mix
reading and listening at the same time.
There are magazines too, a lot of things here.
In addition you can also use some extra grammar books,
like 'English Grammar in Use' series
or any other. The 'English Grammar in Use' series is my favourite.
Speaking about books, I should once again mention Ilya Franks' method,
who suggested reading books in two languages.
One is your original language,
and the other one is a foreign language.
So his books are kind of divided into two parts,
each page has two parts. The same, well, events
are described in two languages.
One is your native language and the second one is a foreign language.
This method is quite useful.
Moreover you can also find some audio series,
audio podcasts, like VOA, the Voice of America,
or A.J. Hoge stories and so one, there are so many courses,
audio courses nowadays, you might just try to find some of these.
You can listen to them while you are driving,
or you are on a bus, on a train, on a plane.
Anywhere, in any kind of transport,
or wherever you have a couple of minutes for yourself.
And of course the video materials.
There are tons of them, video courses
which are as old as the humanity.
Like the 'Follow Me' video course,
or 'Extra English', a very useful educational TV series, or a TV show.
There are more, you can also watch real TV series,
like 'How I met your mother', 'The big bang theory',
'Scrubs', 'House M.D.', 'Once upon a time',
'Californication'. So you can watch them.
Do not worry if you feel that at first you do not seem understand anything.
It takes time. With time if you keep doing it,
it will get simpler, easier.
There are many YouTubers nowadays,
who help you study the language too, of course, me included.
There are so many of them. You can find a lot of useful classes,
a lot of useful series here. It's like having your personal tutor,
who helps you study each and every topic in grammar, vocabulary and so on.
So nowadays it's getting easier and easier!
And if you haven't decided to study the language yet,
or to improve it yet, then now that's the time to do it,
because it is really a piece of cake!
There are so many things, which might help you do it.
So just stand up, stop being lazy, stop being a couch potato,
and just do it, study the language, study the English language
or the Japanese language, or the French language, any language you like.
The world is your oyster, just have guts to stand up
and do whatever you want!
And the last item on my list for today is correspondence,
or communication. Of course, it depends.
If you have an opportunity to write to a foreigner,
who might check your mistakes, who might help you a little bit,
or simply who might communicate with you and that's it,
this is great! Then just do it!
For example, you might use some Internet services, like Interpals or Facebook
to find a foreigner to communicate with.
Or might also use Skype to communicate.
A very good idea here would be to travel to another country
to find some friends. And then when you go back home,
you could keep communicating with them using Skype
or any other video chat.
So communicating is part and parcel of successfully studying a foreign language,
mastering a foreign language.
Because speaking is like one of the most important spheres of any language.
However usually speaking come a little bit later,
first you just learn how to read,
how to listen, absorb and understand
what other people are saying.
And then you lean to speak yourself.
Even if speaking and communicating with other people is not your strongest suit,
still you need to make yourself communicate,
meet new people and use your knowledge.
OK, that's it, I guess enough for today.
Once again today we have talked about some things
which are more or less general.
Even though we touched upon some layers of the language,
vocabulary, using books; listening, using audio and video,
grammar, using some extra grammar textbooks, and so on,
However, in our next video, devoted to the way
you can study a foreign language, I'm going to get even into more details.
And tell you about some specific methods,
and specific resources you might use.
But that's it for today. I hope that you enjoyed this video class,
and you found it quite useful. If you did, please, press the button,
like it and share it. And I hope to see you soon!
Keep studying foreign languages! Bye-bye!
The problem is that many people start studying a foreign language,
but then they just quit.
It's the easiest way in any kind of a problem,
challenge or trouble to just quit.
But you should remember, that quitting is for losers.
So right now just pick up from where you have left,
and continue studying the language.
Because this challenge should be accepted!
I don't know about you, guys,
but studying foreign languages is like the dream for me!