How did you start learning ENGLISH?

[termogard]

Originally Posted by MissMisa

I meant it's a shame that in England not many people care about learning a foreign language.

Well, I understood. Perhaps, it's because people in England are taught since a very childhood that English is an universal language everywhere and they really have no motivation to learn any other languages.

Originally Posted by MissMisa

(Most native English speakers here are from America anyway.)

Yes. It is quite interesting to learn an American dialect of English

[Suki]

Originally Posted by MissMisa

Oh and Suki's English is perfect, that sentence is fine.

Her English is better than a lot of people from here.

Originally Posted by dogsbody70

Suki deserve to feel proud of her mastery of the English Language.

Thank you both.

Originally Posted by termogard

Perhaps, it's because people in England are taught since a very childhood that English is an universal language everywhere and they really have no motivation to learn any other languages

I thought a compulsory second language was taught in all schools in England. French, mainly. It's a shame really, cause learning a new language is a fun process to go through. I think every kid should take up a new language around the age of 8. That's the best age to introduce new information into a child's brain. It has been proved that children are way better at learning a new language than adults. The sooner they get familiar with it, the better. I was taking more hours of English than my actual first language when I was 10 and I started doing syntactic analysis of sentences in English before I could even locate a subject in a Catalan or a Spanish sentence. That's why I think English is easier than any other language out there. I was 10 and I already knew everything there was to be taught about English grammar. There's no way I could have gotten that good at, say, Japanese, at such a young age.

[MissMisa]

Originally Posted by Suki

I thought a compulsory second language was taught in all schools in England. French, mainly. It's a shame really, cause learning a new language is a fun process to go through.

Yeah it is, but it's in high school when most kids stop giving a damn or being able to absorb as much of the languages. The options we have are always French, German or Spanish. The compulsory lesson is for 2-3 years (Year 7, 8 and usually 9) for basically as long as the school wants in a week.

I had it for one hour a week or something. Most people saw that lesson as a joke to be honest, and while I know a teeny bit of French (which probably came from going to France rather than the lesson) it's not taken seriously enough.

It used to be compulsory at GCSE level but people were getting annoyed it took up a slot when they wanted to do something else, so they scrapped that.

[ModusOperandi]

Boy did I have a hard time learning English. You see, I’d moved from my native country to Kenya and in order to communicate effectively, I had to learn English AND Swahili at the same time (Kenya’s native language is Swahili but English is widely used since Kenya was a British colony). Needless to say, a new environment -- coupled with new cultural norms, placed alongside two distinct languages -- does not a happy Modus Operandi make. :P

All in all, to make an extremely long story slightly more tolerable, I ended up learning English from the media (I grew up watching silly shows like neighbours, Egoli etc.) and Swahili from communicating with friends and neighbors (which, surprisingly, made my English acquisition process worse). I was young at the time, so I had a hard time creating distinctions between some English terms and Swahili terms since there was something called “sheng’ ” in Swahili which can be loosely translated into “slang.” Sheng’ is mostly the morphing of some Swahili words and also includes the fusion of English and Swahili. I guess you can call it a slightly distorted, youth-inspired, yet an unconventional creole language.

Of course, as I grew older and started delving into the academic world, it didn’t take long for my teachers and tutors to swat the distinctions into me. After that, with all the amounts of mischief and disciplinary caning (I was a delinquent) that went into my primary education, I managed to walk away with the ability to, at the very least, express myself effectively in either of the languages.

[smskamel]

Actually, I've been learning English for thirteen years in school, and then for four years in faculty. It's also my major at work in faculty where everything is dedicated to studying languages (I'm a Teaching Assistant in English language department there )
Nowadays, I'm doing my postgraduate studies in English language and literature.

[Rinai]

My house was a dual speaking language so I started learning English through my parents when my whole family spoke native tongue. Since then, I got to school and have been learning English like that and just being around here. I get high marks and stuff when it comes to my English classes and placement tests. But when I'm online I really don't bother with getting everything nice and perfect. I dunno. I guess I'd rather just relax and get what I'm trying to say across. I had a friend with perfect grammar and it was pretty tiring to read his walls of text sounding all professional. Bweh. {He was a cool guy though.} I save my magic for when it matters- whatever stories I'm writing or class. {Not a good way to practice but I'm learning the art of slang.~} Just as long as people don't reduce words to one letter things then I'm good. {That and typos just seriously piss me off.}

*plooka plooka*