Stop Worrying About Grammar
Is grammar a nightmare for you? It is so for most language learners. But grammar is an integral part of a language that you cannot simply ignore. And you needn’t worry about it all the time too! Here are a few essential things that you need to know at the outset, and things will fall into place as you make progress each day. Enrich Your Vocabulary Start by taking one step at a time. While you may dream of speaking or writing flawless sentences, try learning new words first. Learn as many as you can. You can even set a target of the number of words you will learn each day. Try translating words from your mother tongue to their English counterparts. They are sure to come in handy once you start framing sentences. Know The Parts of Speech Once you learn a word, find out which category it would fall into- whether it’s a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, article, and conjunction, etc. Remember that some words can be used as both noun and verb depending on the context they are used in. Identifying these words and placing them into their corresponding parts of speech categories will give you a better understanding of how they can be placed in a sentence. Focus on Subject-Verb Agreement This is where most people tend to go wrong. If the subject in the sentence is singular, the verb is followed by an ‘s’ or ‘es’. But if the subject is plural, the verb remains in its base form. Eg: The boy plays football every evening. The boys play football in the evenings. Know Your Tenses Well If you make mistakes in the tenses used, the whole idea of your communication could go astray. So plan before you speak, as to whether you would be talking about something that happened yesterday or something that’s going on now, or you want to be imperative by instructing someone and so on. Use the right tense forms to aid in communication that’s devoid of any confusion. Keep your Eyes and Ears Open While you watch and hear people talking, or shows on TV, or anything on the internet, be careful to grasp how sentences are framed. Of course, people do use slang expressions that may not be grammatically perfect, but it takes you one step closer to speaking. Speak, make mistakes, unlearn, and speak again! This would be a never-ending process where you would be preferably having someone to correct you whenever there is a bump. Be open to criticism because it’s ultimately going to help no one but you! Unlearn your mistakes and try to correct them the next time you speak. Remember that failure is the stepping stone to success. Keep falling, keep getting up and you are sure to make progress on the way! The courses at English House, India’s best online English learning platform is aimed at easing the seemingly-complicated aspects of English grammar and help you walk past the stumbling block called grammar.
Thinking English? Think in English!
Learning English (or any other foreign language) is an intricate process in which you have to take care of every single thing, including your thoughts. Apart from acquiring all the basic language learning skills, starting to think in English is the wisest decision you can take in your language learning journey. Albeit you score well in grammar and feel relaxed during conversations, if you haven’t reached a level you can think in English, it means you haven’t mastered the language yet. Why Start Thinking in English? • It helps you develop all the key learning skills viz; Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. • It improves your chances of becoming fluent as it makes your brain attuned to think in English. • It gives you a hundred percent freedom to express what’s on your mind because there’s no chance you will get embarrassed. • Thinking in English requires less confidence compared to speaking in English. • It is that one thing you can do and practise anytime of the day. How To Do It? Thinking in English is the step many learners skip as it’s not that simple to let your thoughts start flowing in a language that is not your native. As it’s human nature to think in their mother tongue, you have to take conscious efforts to accustom your thoughts to evolve in English. Here are some tricks that help you start thinking in English. 1. Create a Contextual World This is the most effective way to let your thoughts blow in English. You have to surround yourself with English. This eventually makes it difficult for you to think in your native language. Listening to music or news, reading etc. help you create a world where everything is connected to English. 2. Try to think Directly Take deliberate attempts to think directly in English. It helps you detect the gaps in your knowledge, and you can start working on it. In the early stages, you can substitute your native language where you lack the flow while you are trying to think directly in English. 3. Don’t Focus on Perfection The best thing you can do to get fluency through thinking is to get rid of your conviction that it should be perfect. When you emphasise on perfection, ultimately you get frustrated out of not being able to express what’s going on your mind. 4. Try to Visualize Brain treats imagination and reality alike. So it’s always good to visualize you are learning English. Envisage the things you are going to say by associating the images in your mind with the words in English. If you continue to think this way, you can witness remarkable progress in your language. 4. Say No to Translating It takes only half a second to speak directly what you are thinking! But we think in our native language and then translate word by word to English before we actually speak. This mentality won’t make you fluent as your mind will be involved fully in translating, which takes relatively more time. So try to think directly in English rather than thinking in your mother tongue and kill your tendency to translate. 5. Read When it comes to thinking in English, reading widens your spectrum of thinking, improves your vocabulary and fluency. It gives you ideas for further thinking. You won’t read means you won’t think! 6. Start Journaling Writing makes it easy for you to think in English and channelise your thoughts. It also helps you to remember and put to use the things you have learned. You can write about your ideas, feelings or things that surround you. Try to practise the above listed tips and bingo, you are confident enough to talk like a native! PS: There are no set of rules as to what topic is best to think about. Be at your comfort zone, relax and think about the things that excite you but only in ENGLISH!
5 Surefire Tips to Build Your Vocabulary
5 Surefire Tips to Build Your Vocabulary One of the biggest steps in language learning is building your vocabulary. The more words you learn, the easier it will be to communicate. But it’s also impossible to learn every word in the dictionary. Fortunately, learning new words doesn’t work like that. Instead, it’s all about being aware of the right words to use in a conversation. You can devise these 5 strategies to level up your vocabulary game faster. 1. Read books As cliche as it sounds, reading is the biggest vocabulary booster. When you read, you get to explore different words and learn how they are used in certain situations. Moreover, it’s the most distraction-free method to understand a language. While reading, you will get ample time to understand a word and use it in the right context. The tricky part is choosing the right books to read. If you’re just starting to read, go for books that are easy to understand. For example, abridged versions of classic stories or children’s books can be a good starting point. Pro tip: Carry a small notebook to note the new words that you learn. This book will be evolved to become your go-to vocabulary source. 2. Watch TED Talks TED Talks are an inspirational source of learning. TED speakers talk about a particular subject to an audience. It can be anything from technology to philosophy. Choose a topic of your interest from the TED Talks YouTube channel and you’re good to start. The speakers will be using many persuasive words to command the interest of their audience. You can take note of these words to use them at a later stage. 3. Keep a journal Keeping a journal to record your thoughts is a great way to build your vocabulary. Write about your day using simple words. You can use the words you’ve learned in your journal to talk about your routine. Plus, journaling is also an effective way to improve your mental health. 4. Group words based on their meanings One interesting way to build your vocabulary is by grouping words together by meaning. You can create a note to record the words with similar meanings. For example, you might learn words like outstanding, superlative, or magnificent to describe something really good. You can use these words while appreciating your friends or colleagues for their positive actions. 5. Re-write news headlines This is an advanced exercise to boost your vocabulary if you regularly check out the news. Try rewriting the headlines of important news without losing the meaning. Doing so will put your vocabulary skills to the test because news headlines are precise and to the point. When you try to rewrite them, you’ll need to rampage through all the words you know to find the perfect replacements. Wrapping up Building a ready-to-use vocabulary at your disposal comes in handy when you communicate with people. Additionally, people with better vocabulary are 2x more effective in their communication than those with limited vocabulary. If you are looking to boost your vocabulary & overall communication skills in English, you can take a look at our WhatsApp-based courses that turn you into a passionate learner. Over the years, English House has helped over 8 lakh students learn and speak English from scratch.
Learning English the auditory way
How did you learn your mother tongue? Did somebody teach you the basic vocabulary and the grammatical concepts when you were a toddler? No! You imbibed the language because you were surrounded by it. And a foreign language like English is no different! While the exposure to the mother tongue came in naturally, learning English for most of us need a conscious effort. And the easiest and most effective way to do it is by listening to it consistently. Words and structures make way from the ears to the brain and then finally to the tongue. We need to pave the way, rest will follow. What can you listen to? It is an irony that most people who wish to learn English now had been exposed to the language in school or college. Some might have had English as the “first language” of the curriculum. But still, they aren’t able to communicate well in English. That’s because maybe all those stories, essays, prose, and poetry never struck a chord with them! It is important to fall in love with the process of learning. And to fall in love with the process, you need to fall in love with the content first. Now that you have easy availability of high-bandwidth or unlimited internet, you can choose to listen to content that keeps you intrigued. 1.Podcasts and Audiobooks While BBC news and cricket commentaries were the go-to methods to listen to quality English in the 90s, it is the podcasts and audiobooks that people take to these days. While news can get boring at times, and cricket commentaries amuse only the sports enthusiasts, you can choose to listen to your favourite genre of content from the best of speakers available on platforms such as Google podcasts,Apple podcast,Spotify, and more! If you still cherish those moments from your childhood when your mother or grandmother read out stories to you in your mother tongue, and believe that those stories helped you to connect with the language, audiobooks can still do the magic for you. You can choose to listen to some brilliant classical literary works, fiction, or thriller on platforms such as Amazon’s Audible. 2. Movies and series If you are a movie buff but was always wary of watching English movies because of their heavy accent, you got to believe in yourself. Choose a movie of a genre that you enjoy, choose one that has got some amazing reviews, and watch it with a packet of chips to munch on! Enjoy the visual treat and listen well to the actors. Keep doing it and the learning happens involuntarily. You will be surprised to find yourself catching up on the accent, the usages of native English speakers, and intonation. Thanks to OTT platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney + Hotstar, and more, there are some brilliant movies and series that you can binge-watch on! While our primary motive is to be entertained, the learning happens eventually. 3. Listen to people You might have people around at your workplace or in your friends circle who speak fluent English. Observe their speech, listen to the words that they use, the fillers that they add in to avoid unnecessary gaps( excessive use of fillers is though not recommended), and try to converse with them in English. If they are somebody close to you, they wouldn’t make fun of the mistakes. Instead, they would correct them for your good. 4. Listen to yourself The biggest mistake that language learners make is the fear of making mistakes. But always keep in mind, that nobody is perfect. Even the most eloquent of speakers make blunders too! So consider mistakes as pitfalls in the path to learning. Wondering how to? Consider that you have followed all or any of the auditory methods mentioned above, and you want to find out whether it is reflecting in your speech, but you do not have anybody close who would ardently listen to you, then you could be your listener too! Choose a topic which could be anything casual from how your day went or describing a striking picture from a magazine, or the review of a movie that you watched recently. Speak about it and record it on your phone. Play it, do a self-analysis, and find out where you could improve. Make it a part of your daily routine and you have turned into a passionate independent English learner! 5.Listen and write The LSRW(Listening- Speaking- Reading- Writing) method is the most widely accepted method to learn a language by language experts across the globe. If you are an auditory learner, try adding writing to your learning method to notice the remarkable difference it makes. Maintain a vocabulary journal where you write down new words, phrases, and expressions as you listen to podcasts, audiobooks, movies, or people. Find out their meanings, sentence examples, and try writing a sentence of your own too! Go through the journal once in a while, to revise the new words so that you absorb them completely and tend to use them in your speech and writing. Writing takes you one step closer to fluency. Realizing the importance of the auditory method in language learning, our course, and syllabi at English House, India’s best online English learning platform is primarily audio-based. With a lifetime access to high-quality audio content that focuses on grammar, and vocabulary concepts, we recommend students to plug in their earphones and listen to our audio-based notes over and over. After all, only good listeners can be great speakers!
