"How can I improve my English?" is a common question asked by people interested in learning the English language for business or personal communications. There are various ways to improve your English. In last two posts, I had mentioned about how to use dictionary effectively to improve English and how to build your vocabulary fast. Following are some more tips that can help you to develop English language skills.
Studying With Another
Studying With Another
Find some one to study with you if you can. It is not always true that he travels the fastest who travels alone. If some member of your family or some friend with interests similar to yours will join you in this journey, it will be more rapid and more interesting for you to learn English speaking as well as writing.
Train Your Ears to Hear the Errors
The main difficulty in self-education in English does not lie in learning that certain forms are incorrect, but in training your ear to hear these errors when you make them yourself. The mote in a neighbor's eye is really easier to see than the beam in our own, even when we have every intent to be generous with other people and exacting with ourselves.
If you undertake the study with some one else, you can help each other to hear slips of speech, and your mutual awareness of this criticism will be most useful. You can be critics for each other, to keep watch against the old habits you are discarding; also, each of you can play the audience while the other, without self-consciousness or embarrassment, uses the new speech forms, the new words and phrases that he is acquiring.
Work on New Words
Have you both been overworking some poor word until it is so weary that it no longer carries any meaning? Has everything, from the morning sunshine and the noon sandwich to the symphony concert, been "great" or "slick" or "fine"? Let your dictionary furnish a set of substitutes, fresh and strong, and make a game of demanding one each time a new word appears.
Call the play spirit to your aid wherever you can. Devise scores and contests. Set fines and arrange rewards. Words are good fun, as many persons first discovered when they began to work cross word puzzles; but the fitting of words into thought intricacies is much more interesting and absorbing, once it is begun, than writing them up and down in small white squares.
Use Dictionary
When in doubt, consult the dictionary is the best rule to follow. You can find more information on using a dictionary at use dictionary effectively to improve English.
Objectives While Learning English Speaking and Writing
The initial objectives while learning English are the correct and effective use of language for conversation and friendly letter writing, the enlargement and enrichment of your vocabulary, and a wider understanding and appreciation of the spoken and written language of other people. These three objectives are not separable. Each of them overlaps the others; you will attain them, not one at a time, but together. You may seem to make very little progress at first. Do not let this discourage you. If you persist, your quickened attention to speech and your gradually accumulating knowledge of correct principles will soon bring about an evident improvement.
Train Your Ears to Hear the Errors
The main difficulty in self-education in English does not lie in learning that certain forms are incorrect, but in training your ear to hear these errors when you make them yourself. The mote in a neighbor's eye is really easier to see than the beam in our own, even when we have every intent to be generous with other people and exacting with ourselves.
If you undertake the study with some one else, you can help each other to hear slips of speech, and your mutual awareness of this criticism will be most useful. You can be critics for each other, to keep watch against the old habits you are discarding; also, each of you can play the audience while the other, without self-consciousness or embarrassment, uses the new speech forms, the new words and phrases that he is acquiring.
Work on New Words
Have you both been overworking some poor word until it is so weary that it no longer carries any meaning? Has everything, from the morning sunshine and the noon sandwich to the symphony concert, been "great" or "slick" or "fine"? Let your dictionary furnish a set of substitutes, fresh and strong, and make a game of demanding one each time a new word appears.
Call the play spirit to your aid wherever you can. Devise scores and contests. Set fines and arrange rewards. Words are good fun, as many persons first discovered when they began to work cross word puzzles; but the fitting of words into thought intricacies is much more interesting and absorbing, once it is begun, than writing them up and down in small white squares.
Use Dictionary
When in doubt, consult the dictionary is the best rule to follow. You can find more information on using a dictionary at use dictionary effectively to improve English.
Objectives While Learning English Speaking and Writing
The initial objectives while learning English are the correct and effective use of language for conversation and friendly letter writing, the enlargement and enrichment of your vocabulary, and a wider understanding and appreciation of the spoken and written language of other people. These three objectives are not separable. Each of them overlaps the others; you will attain them, not one at a time, but together. You may seem to make very little progress at first. Do not let this discourage you. If you persist, your quickened attention to speech and your gradually accumulating knowledge of correct principles will soon bring about an evident improvement.
