How did you start learning ENGLISH?

[dogsbody70]

We have many non- English members on this forum. I am very impressed by your pretty good interpretation of the language.


How did you start and were/are you happy with the techniques or methods of being taught?

[Ronin4hire]

Originally Posted by dogsbody70

We have many non- English members on this forum. I am very impressed by your pretty good interpretation of the language.


How did you start and were/are you happy with the techniques or methods of being taught?

dogsbody, English is basically the world language.

In most non-native countries it is taught as compulsory from a very young age.

This is true in Japan too.

Basically... English no longer belongs to England.

[Suki]

Yup pretty much what Ronin said.

English is taught at schools from a very young age. Speaking from my own experience, I attended English school in the afternoons after regular school, so I took about 4 extra hours of English lessons a week, plus 2/3 hours of English class at primary school and later on all through high school. I started reading books that were entirely written in English at the age of 12. I was able to do so because I'd been getting loads of extra hours outside of school and I'd picked the habit of watching movies in its original language, which was English most of the time. All of this and the music. Listening to songs in the language you're learning really helps, cause all the new words you hear are easily remembered as well as casual expressions and such, and then you just kinda find yourself using them and you might not have heard them anywhere else but they sound right to you cause your memory tells you they've been used before so they actually exist and you're not making shit up. I have a pretty good lyrical memory, so all the words I'd read from the books and all of what I'd hear from the movies it would all get stuck somewhere inside my head, and then it all settles down and you realize you can just use all of the knowledge you've been getting from all sorts of different sources. It's an amazing feeling, really x) I dunno, it's been a long time since I last felt I was using a language I wasn't fluent at when speaking English, cause as of today it no longer feels like a foreign language to me. I gotta say though, I put so much effort into learning it as a little girl that it took away all the energy there was in me, so to speak. I don't think I could take up any other language and get as good at it as I did with English, I feel totally incapable of going through that again.

[dogsbody70]

ronin its the technique or method that I was interested in.

[dogsbody70]

Suki I admire you very much indeed. quite phenomenol really and it makes me feel so incompetent because in UK we have never really learnt other languages well.


French and German were the main ones, but not taught at a really early age when children tend to absorb languages more easily.

We are spoiled really I think and many of us are lazy. I have quite a few Scandinavian friends and their English language is exceptional.

I wonder what happened with esperanto-- which was a man made language supposed to be international.


Anyway I do admire all of you who have mastered English-- goodness many of us are not good at our own language.

I would have thought that for SUKI-- it was her first language because she is so competent. congratulations.

[SCIFFIX]

I started to learn english by myself when I was 7 years old with a dictionary and a videogame on the hands, hahahaha. Of course sometimes my mother gave me a hand, but most of the time it was just I fighting alone against the dictionary.

I only started to attend classes 5 months ago, I tried before but I didn't have much time available. Yeah I'm very grateful to videogame, I learned a lot playing Final Fantasy!!!

One of my objectives in this forum is to practice english in reason to improve my poor writing skills.

I want to learn as many languages as I can. Would be wonderful learn Japanese, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Italian...

[dogsbody70]

Sciffix good for you. you are doing really welll. It can be hard learning just with a dictionary. sounds as if those video games have been really helpful for you.

[protheus]

Cartoon Network in the '90's (since 1995 to be exact) helped me, at least it gave me the push I needed. It wasn't translated like it is now and that made me want to know what all the characters are saying and the written translated movies helped me to get the words and the meanings in different situations, all this long before learning it in school (it was only from 5th grade).
At school it was just a sort of pseudo learning of English, with changing teachers even 5 times a year, and every new one was the same, "Good afternoon", "My name is..." and only this. Grammar, real grammar learning, started in the College, but at that time, I was already having access to the PC and internet (all in English, something that helped me even more), and what I was learning from the teacher was just a conclusion of what I already knew from those sources. Even in College, my teachers changed at a rate of 4 per year, and every teacher with a different style of learning, I was lucky I knew enough to manage, but for the others, was difficult.
Since I graduated with A+ (10 with honor) I can conclude that everything helped me, cartoons, movies, teachers, PC and the internet.

Ahh, later edit here, I forgot about the internet, the one part that "coached" me the most was the IRC chat system.

[SCIFFIX]

Originally Posted by dogsbody70

Sciffix good for you. you are doing really welll. It can be hard learning just with a dictionary. sounds as if those video games have been really helpful for you.

Thanks dosgsbody. Some people who usually don't play videogame think that it let children violent and antisocial, they think videogame is a form to marginalization and social isolation. Those people simply don't notice the amazing potential of this teaching tool that we call videogame.

All my gratitude to Sega Genesis, SNES and Playstation !!!!

[Kasomi]

Originally Posted by SCIFFIX

Thanks dosgsbody. Some people who usually don't play videogame think that it let children violent and antisocial, they think videogame is a form to marginalization and social isolation. Those people simply don't notice the amazing potential of this teaching tool that we call videogame.

All my gratitude to Sega Genesis, SNES and Playstation !!!!

You know, I have many friends who started learning English by playing videogames, and they aren't violent at all :P And, may I had Nintendo 64 to the list? My sister learned part of her English skills by playing Zelda Ocarina of Time

As to answer Dogsbody's question, in Quebec (Canada), we learn English as a second language starting at 8 or 9 years old, through high school and even in college. I read a lot of books, eventually started reading mangas in English and then I started going to English forums (well, what I mean is forums where English is the language used for the most communication )