What is necessary to
learn English well?


What is necessary to learn English well?
Changing your life. Learning English requires action. You may know all
the learning tips, but if you don't start doing things, you will achieve
nothing. The fact is, if you want to learn to speak English well, you must
change your life. Here are some examples of things you will have to do:
 Read a book in English for an hour every day, analyzing the
grammar in sentences and looking up words in an English dictionary
 Listen to an audio book or other recording in English, stopping it
frequently, trying to understand what is being said, and trying to imitate
the speaker's pronunciation
 Spend 30 minutes in the afternoon practicing the pronunciation of
the English "r" sound
 Carefully write an e-mail message in English, using a dictionary or
a Web search every 20 seconds to make sure every word is correct, and
taking 5 minutes to write one sentence
 Think about an English sentence you've read, wondering if it could
say "a" instead of "the" in the sentence, and trying to find similar
sentences on the Web to find out the answer
 Walk down the street and build simple English sentences in your
head (talking to yourself in English about the things you see around you)
What kind of person would do all these crazy things? Only one kind.
The kind of person who enjoys doing them. If you want to learn to
speak English well, you're going to have to become that person. Have
you ever heard of anyone who became successful by doing something he
hated?
The problem
The problem with learning and teaching English as a foreign language is

review things all the time; otherwise you just forget them.
Now let's look at a different English learner: Judy. Judy reads a special
novel for English learners (written in simplified English) almost every
day for 30 minutes. She bought an English-English dictionary and uses it
to look up English words whenever she doesn't understand a sentence in
her book. It was hard to study regularly at the beginning: Reading books
and using a dictionary were not "normal activities" for her. And every
English sentence was a challenge.
But now, after only two weeks, she can read much faster. While reading,
she often sees words that she has learned in the past two weeks. When
she recognizes such a word, she doesn't have to look it up in a dictionary
and she knows she has made good progress. Judy feels she has learned a
lot of English recently, and she is eager to learn more. Every day, she
looks forward to reading her book. The book gives her the chance to use
what she has learned (enjoy her progress) and to learn even more.
Because she reads regularly, she forgets little and her vocabulary keeps
growing.
Judy is on the right track. She will soon be able to read English-language
newspapers and other resources written for native speakers.
What to do?
If you are like Paula and don't feel likereading in English in your free
time, focusing your attention on English sentences, or practicing the
pronunciation of the "r" sound, you will have to do something about it.
There are many techniques to help you with motivation, but the best one
is probably to do something fun.
If you can use your English to watch a funny video on the Internet, read
an article about your favorite band, or communicate with smart people
on a discussion forum, you will begin to think of English as your key to
fun. When you think "English", you will no longer think about boring
classes, difficult grammar rules or lists of words to memorize— you will