Seriousness English as second language?

AkumaTakeshi · 06-21-2011, 11:53 AM

From what I've seen here at MobileRead, many people have English as their second language instead of being native English speakers.

So I thought it would be fun to actually know how you've learned English, was it through school or through some other way? So let's get this started...

I learned most of the English I know today from playing console RPGs, later I started to watch movies without subtitles (they annoy me most of the time because of some bad translations). Reading stuff on the internet helped it too. School didn't had that much impact on my learning, maybe learning some rules and vocabulary but nothing more.

Well I know my English is far from perfect, I still need to check some word from time to time but that enhances my vocabulary and I know I make some mistakes or change the order a particular sentence it's supposed to be. Maybe I've done that in this very post but as a second language I think it's a bit satisfactory

So there it is, share your experience too, hope some folks join me. I'm curious to see if I'm an odd ball to have learned the way I learned.

This thread is aimed at those said people but if some native English speakers want to share an opinion or talk about their experience with other languages that's perfectly fine. And if someone wants to correct me please fell free to do so, I'll even appreciate it if you do so, learning is always good ^^

P.S.: I don't believe I actually misplaced "as" for "an" in the thread title, worst is that I only noticed it after posting. *EDIT* hum it showed "an" before, was a glitch or did someone edit it for me? If so thank you

TGS · 06-21-2011, 02:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AkumaTakeshi

From what I've seen here at MobileRead, many people has English as their second language instead of being native English speakers.

Subject-verb agreement - the number of the subject must agree with the number of the verb

One person has, but many people have. Sorry, but you did ask

encapuchado · 06-21-2011, 02:23 PM

estelle58 · 06-21-2011, 02:23 PM

I learned it from TV and school when I was younger (yeah... wayyyyy back then

) and I continue to learn it when I read english books

poohbear_nc · 06-21-2011, 02:24 PM

Quote:

P.S.: I don't believe I actually misplaced "as" for "an" in the thread title, worst is that I only noticed it after posting. *EDIT* hum it showed "an" before, was a glitch or did someone edit it for me? If so thank you

[fixed that for you]

[don't worry - I'm guilty of typos much worse than this - and never noticed!]

[and English is allegedly my first language]

AkumaTakeshi · 06-21-2011, 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TGS

Subject-verb agreement - the number of the subject must agree with the number of the verb

One person has, but many people have. Sorry, but you did ask

Aye aye captain!!! Gonna change it right away

Thanks

AkumaTakeshi · 06-21-2011, 02:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

[fixed that for you]

[don't worry - I'm guilty of typos much worse than this - and never noticed!]

[and English is allegedly my first language]

Thanks

Sweetpea · 06-21-2011, 02:43 PM

I started my English-language carreer as 11-year old in the last year of elementary school. Then, the first 3 years of high school it was a mandatory subject. And the last 2 years of high school you had to pick at least one foreign language. Figuring, I usually got a 4 or 5 (on a school from 1 to 10) for French and German, and a 7 for English, that choice was easily made (got a 6 for Dutch, btw

)

Naturally, most series here have captions, instead of dubbing. As do most movies (unless for the very small). And staying a year in the US helped my English too, a tiny bit

Salgueiros · 06-21-2011, 07:24 PM

... i learned all i know of English in public school. In Portugal it is mandatory to study English and another foreign language from 5th grade until 9th grade (as you probably know since you are there ehehehehe, at least it was when i was a teenager and lived in Portugal....). Of course, music and films NOT dubbed are a great help, as we can see in our next-door neighbour Spain (where everything is dubbed), and the difference in english language mastery is abysmal compared to Portugal. Besides being a small country helps also, since you tend to be more open to foreign influence

More recently, English was introduced as a second language since day 1 of elementary school. I am expecting kids to be perfectly fluent in Portuguese and English at the end of high-school....

AkumaTakeshi · 06-21-2011, 07:48 PM

I think that I learned more from outside sources than from the school itself, so I was curious about other people experiences.

I always had 4/5 and 5/5 from 5th till 9th grade and I had from 18/20 to 20/20 from 10th to 12th grade. But I really don't think that I deserved that 20, well I guess I made everything required to get it but the test had some mistakes in it, some that I looked at them after and kept thinking what was wrong with me back then, still got 19.5 don't know why.

astra · 06-22-2011, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AkumaTakeshi

So there it is, share your experience too, hope some folks join me. I'm curious to see if I'm an odd ball to have learned the way I learned.

No. You are not.
(I think I have told this story, but I cannot be bothered to search for the topic)

Spoiler:

I had English lessons in my school, grades 4-10.
In the last year my English teacher asked me:
Astra, why don't you learn English as well as you do Maths and Physics?
My answer was: Why would I waste my time on learning English language? I would never ever need it working as a survey engineer in Ukrainian (or any other xUSSR republic) coal mine? Now you have to understand that I was born when communism was the only power in the country. The country was closed to the rest of the world. No travelling, no way to leave (or even having such a traitorous thought!) the country, no books in foreign languages, no films. To cut the long story short, absolutely no need in the knowledge of a foreign language. Not today, not in the future. I learned some 100+ words, such as sister, brother, mother, father, supper, dinner, coat...that was it.
In 1990 I could not imagine that in two years time I will be in Israel. I will go to their best technological University where regardless of how good/bad I was in maths or physics, if I didn't know English I could not read any technical book, because they didn't/don't translate them from English to Hebrew.
After I knew I was accepted to the Uni, I spent 7 weeks (two 1 hour lessons per weeks) with a private tutor grasping the basics of English grammar. It was the first and the last time I ever studied English grammar. However, my vocabulary was boosted by another hundred words? 200+ now?
One day, (1995) after another failed English test, I joined my friend to play Genesis - The Original LPMud. It is online text based role playing game. All descriptions are in English. All quests are in English. People speak in English......Astra wanna team?

quickly browsing my dictionary yields zero results for wanna...by that time people who ask the question suspect that I am lagging and move on. Armour, helmet, leggings, spear, sword, shield, muffin, dwarf, pull, push, lift, move, squeeze, light lamp, extinguish torch, regurgitate gem, climb up, climb through, cast a spell, withdraw/deposit 5 gold coins...one letter wrong, you get an error message. I had to know the spelling, the meaning, etc.
3 years I played the game. I think after two years I decided I like Morgul Mages guild (the most powerful and deadly). Creme De La Creme. I? who barely speaks English, who has next to zero skill in role playing, wants to join the best guild (user base close to a 1000 players and only 15 are Morgul Society Mages?). Anyway, I was allowed in, don't ask me why they let me in. I got a Master for an apprenticeship period. He was (as I learned a later) German, ex Lieutenant who actually programmed this guild because he was LoTR fan who read LoTR ever year starting on September 22. His English was spotless.
I hated him! He demanded from me a report every day for all the tasks I have done, if not why. He corrected my English every time. I hated him!
I still remember him but in a different light. Thanks to him I can write this post now. Forcing me to write reports, he manage to break this mental barrier when you start to think and write in English even though making tons of mistakes, but express your thoughts in written English.

Yes, 3 years of wasted life, but without this game I would never master English.
In 1997 I quit the game.
I started to read magazines. Occasionally, Times but mostly Astronomy. Stupid choice, yeah? Why magazines with unusual and difficult vocabulary? I don’t know. I think Astronomy always sparked my curiosity and I read a few books in Russian. I knew that only reading something interesting could be a good motivation/incentive to carry on, otherwise I would give up. Every word I didn't know was written down and translated in a notepad. This notepad would accompany me every day to a factory where I worked on a couple of machines. I could place the notepad nearby and go through the words every day. The first notepad was full when it contained more than 1000 words. However, I realised I was losing whatever I learned of "spoken" English. I didn't speak English at all, but I could chat on the Internet. I installed mIRC to assist me in sustaining at least the same level of so called “spoken” English and by accident met my future wife

At the same time I decided to expand my fantasy reading beyond The Lord of the Rings. I found Shadow Rising in Russian, in Russian section of a local library in Israel. After I finished it I found out it was book 4 out of many...wanted to find other books and failed. That was a pivotal moment in my history of learning English language. I ordered the rest of the books (7) in English. Some from Amazon.com some I bought in Steimatzky. Since then, I read in English only. Until I moved to the UK, I kept the habit of writing down and translating every unfamiliar word then memorising the words during my work shifts at factory.
I was admitted to High Intermediate EFL group for First Cambridge Certificate on my third week in the UK that surprised me to no end. Even my future wife was a bit surprised

They didn’t teach us grammar (unfortunately) because it was taken for granted that whoever got into High Intermediate knows all of it. I did learn many useful bits and pieces such as writing formal letters, the meaning of phrasal verbs, etc. The FCC final had 5 exams. Reading, Writing, English in Use (sort of grammar test), Speaking and Listening. Speaking and Listening were the most difficult. I am a slow person. I need time to think when I talk, let alone that I didn’t realise (and for some unknown reason my tutor never explained it to us, maybe because she thought everybody understands it?) that on exam I didn’t have to reply truthfully on every question

. I had to role play and sustain the conversation with my interlocutors. Listening was only marginally better. I got C for speaking and somehow B for listening. Writing and English in Use were A, but Reading, my strongest skill in my opinion, was B (you could call it reading and comprehension).

That’s my story

AkumaTakeshi · 06-22-2011, 12:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by astra

No. You are not.
(I think I have told this story, but I cannot be bothered to search for the topic)

Spoiler:

I had English lessons in my school, grades 4-10.
In the last year my English teacher asked me:
Astra, why don't you learn English as well as you do Maths and Physics?
My answer was: Why would I waste my time on learning English language? I would never ever need it working as a survey engineer in Ukrainian (or any other xUSSR republic) coal mine? Now you have to understand that I was born when communism was the only power in the country. The country was closed to the rest of the world. No travelling, no way to leave (or even having such a traitorous thought!) the country, no books in foreign languages, no films. To cut the long story short, absolutely no need in the knowledge of a foreign language. Not today, not in the future. I learned some 100+ words, such as sister, brother, mother, father, supper, dinner, coat...that was it.
In 1990 I could not imagine that in two years time I will be in Israel. I will go to their best technological University where regardless of how good/bad I was in maths or physics, if I didn't know English I could not read any technical book, because they didn't/don't translate them from English to Hebrew.
After I knew I was accepted to the Uni, I spent 7 weeks (two 1 hour lessons per weeks) with a private tutor grasping the basics of English grammar. It was the first and the last time I ever studied English grammar. However, my vocabulary was boosted by another hundred words? 200+ now?
One day, (1995) after another failed English test, I joined my friend to play Genesis - The Original LPMud. It is online text based role playing game. All descriptions are in English. All quests are in English. People speak in English......Astra wanna team?

quickly browsing my dictionary yields zero results for wanna...by that time people who ask the question suspect that I am lagging and move on. Armour, helmet, leggings, spear, sword, shield, muffin, dwarf, pull, push, lift, move, squeeze, light lamp, extinguish torch, regurgitate gem, climb up, climb through, cast a spell, withdraw/deposit 5 gold coins...one letter wrong, you get an error message. I had to know the spelling, the meaning, etc.
3 years I played the game. I think after two years I decided I like Morgul Mages guild (the most powerful and deadly). Creme De La Creme. I? who barely speaks English, who has next to zero skill in role playing, wants to join the best guild (user base close to a 1000 players and only 15 are Morgul Society Mages?). Anyway, I was allowed in, don't ask me why they let me in. I got a Master for an apprenticeship period. He was (as I learned a later) German, ex Lieutenant who actually programmed this guild because he was LoTR fan who read LoTR ever year starting on September 22. His English was spotless.
I hated him! He demanded from me a report every day for all the tasks I have done, if not why. He corrected my English every time. I hated him!
I still remember him but in a different light. Thanks to him I can write this post now. Forcing me to write reports, he manage to break this mental barrier when you start to think and write in English even though making tons of mistakes, but express your thoughts in written English.

Yes, 3 years of wasted life, but without this game I would never master English.
In 1997 I quit the game.
I started to read magazines. Occasionally, Times but mostly Astronomy. Stupid choice, yeah? Why magazines with unusual and difficult vocabulary? I don’t know. I think Astronomy always sparked my curiosity and I read a few books in Russian. I knew that only reading something interesting could be a good motivation/incentive to carry on, otherwise I would give up. Every word I didn't know was written down and translated in a notepad. This notepad would accompany me every day to a factory where I worked on a couple of machines. I could place the notepad nearby and go through the words every day. The first notepad was full when it contained more than 1000 words. However, I realised I was losing whatever I learned of "spoken" English. I didn't speak English at all, but I could chat on the Internet. I installed mIRC to assist me in sustaining at least the same level of so called “spoken” English and by accident met my future wife

At the same time I decided to expand my fantasy reading beyond The Lord of the Rings. I found Shadow Rising in Russian, in Russian section of a local library in Israel. After I finished it I found out it was book 4 out of many...wanted to find other books and failed. That was a pivotal moment in my history of learning English language. I ordered the rest of the books (7) in English. Some from Amazon.com some I bought in Steimatzky. Since then, I read in English only. Until I moved to the UK, I kept the habit of writing down and translating every unfamiliar word then memorising the words during my work shifts at factory.
I was admitted to High Intermediate EFL group for First Cambridge Certificate on my third week in the UK that surprised me to no end. Even my future wife was a bit surprised

They didn’t teach us grammar (unfortunately) because it was taken for granted that whoever got into High Intermediate knows all of it. I did learn many useful bits and pieces such as writing formal letters, the meaning of phrasal verbs, etc. The FCC final had 5 exams. Reading, Writing, English in Use (sort of grammar test), Speaking and Listening. Speaking and Listening were the most difficult. I am a slow person. I need time to think when I talk, let alone that I didn’t realise (and for some unknown reason my tutor never explained it to us, maybe because she thought everybody understands it?) that on exam I didn’t have to reply truthfully on every question

. I had to role play and sustain the conversation with my interlocutors. Listening was only marginally better. I got C for speaking and somehow B for listening. Writing and English in Use were A, but Reading, my strongest skill in my opinion, was B (you could call it reading and comprehension).

That’s my story

Hey Astra, long time no see

Well, and I thought that I had an habit of writing way too much on posts, seems I'm not alone on that too

I wish I had the opportunity to live or at least have some big vacations on England or something, in a way to improve my spoken English, because it just sucks

I can understand what people say perfectly fine, unless it's way too quickly spoken, but to speak I take some time to think in what I'm gonna say and sometimes the pronunciation of certain words is a bit off or even completely far off.

The funny thing is that sometimes I know how to express something in English or the specific word to explain something but I can't come up with the equivalent in my native language. It's a bit annoying sometimes.

And I almost always write things up in English, ideas, notes and the such.

astra · 06-22-2011, 03:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AkumaTakeshi

I can understand what people say perfectly fine, unless it's way too quickly spoken

I have a problem with understanding

I am tired as well as embarrassed of repeating: Excuse me, could you repeat it please?

Quote:

Originally Posted by AkumaTakeshi

sometimes the pronunciation of certain words is a bit off or even completely far off.

Even worse in my situation. I learned my English by reading, writing/typing and memorising words. As a result I don't really need spell checker. Cool, right? It would be cool, if it were German where you pronounce words the way they are written (at least that is what I have been told, I don't know German).

Spoiler:

In English is poses a serious problem for me. For argument sake a good example would be a simple word -daughter. Instead of saying daughter like dote, I want to say it the way I remember the spelling

Another example is a family joke now. When I first met with my wife, she asked me something about films and I said that the last film I watched was (I said it in English) Star Wars.
She didn't understand me even though we speak the same language. I said it exactly as it is written. She just could not get it

Quote:

Originally Posted by AkumaTakeshi

The funny thing is that sometimes I know how to express something in English or the specific word to explain something but I can't come up with the equivalent in my native language. It's a bit annoying sometimes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AkumaTakeshi

And I almost always write things up in English, ideas, notes and the such.

although in this case it is a positive thing I think. It helps you to keep your English in shape

I will never study another language. Enough is enough. If I can keep my English at the same level as it is now or improve it, I would be more than happy.

crich70 · 06-22-2011, 09:17 PM

Well I'm a native English speaker but I have heard that it is among the most difficult languages to learn. Part of that is the 'borrowing' that English does from other languages and part is due to how some words can be pronounced one way in one sentence and another way in a different sentence. Wound vs Wound for example. "He had a wound." "He wound the clock." Same spelling but different meanings. And of course things like its and it's etc. And that's without regional slang (coke, cola, soda, pop) added in. All four of the words "coke, cola, soda, pop" are talking about the same thing but you might hear one used in one part of the country and another used somewhere else. Of course I also remember a study on language that was on TV yrs ago. They were trying to determine if only a person born in France could really speak French properly. It turned out that part of a person's mental development as a very young child is listening and imitating sounds others make and somehow that's wired into the brain as we grow so some problems adapting to a new language is probably due to how our brains are wired as young children too.

lestatar · 06-22-2011, 09:33 PM

My own non-scientific observations in chatting with many non-native English speakers around the world:

English [American version or otherwise] is one of the easiest languages to learn in terms of being able to speak colloquially. Simply consume a steady diet of movies, TV shows, newscasts, etc for a few months - motivated and reasonably bright folks will be chattering away in conversational English in no time at all.

Now, writing English? That is a whole other ball of wax.

06-21-2011, 11:53 AM	#1
AkumaTakeshi Lounge Lurker Posts: 669 Karma: 1635154 Join Date: May 2011 Location: Portugal Device: Kindle 3 Wifi (Screen Broken)	English as second language? From what I've seen here at MobileRead, many people have English as their second language instead of being native English speakers. So I thought it would be fun to actually know how you've learned English, was it through school or through some other way? So let's get this started... I learned most of the English I know today from playing console RPGs, later I started to watch movies without subtitles (they annoy me most of the time because of some bad translations). Reading stuff on the internet helped it too. School didn't had that much impact on my learning, maybe learning some rules and vocabulary but nothing more. Well I know my English is far from perfect, I still need to check some word from time to time but that enhances my vocabulary and I know I make some mistakes or change the order a particular sentence it's supposed to be. Maybe I've done that in this very post but as a second language I think it's a bit satisfactory So there it is, share your experience too, hope some folks join me. I'm curious to see if I'm an odd ball to have learned the way I learned. This thread is aimed at those said people but if some native English speakers want to share an opinion or talk about their experience with other languages that's perfectly fine. And if someone wants to correct me please fell free to do so, I'll even appreciate it if you do so, learning is always good ^^ P.S.: I don't believe I actually misplaced "as" for "an" in the thread title, worst is that I only noticed it after posting. EDIT hum it showed "an" before, was a glitch or did someone edit it for me? If so thank you Last edited by AkumaTakeshi; 06-21-2011 at 02:32 PM.

06-21-2011, 02:23 PM	#3
encapuchado Banned Posts: 130 Karma: 7587966 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Mexico Device: Black Sony Touch (650)	Last edited by encapuchado; 06-23-2011 at 02:43 PM. Reason: Bad url

06-21-2011, 07:24 PM	#9
Salgueiros Eudaimonia Posts: 898 Karma: 9164418 Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Vancouver, Canada Device: Sony PRS T2, Sony PRS T3, Sony DPT-RP1	... i learned all i know of English in public school. In Portugal it is mandatory to study English and another foreign language from 5th grade until 9th grade (as you probably know since you are there ehehehehe, at least it was when i was a teenager and lived in Portugal....). Of course, music and films NOT dubbed are a great help, as we can see in our next-door neighbour Spain (where everything is dubbed), and the difference in english language mastery is abysmal compared to Portugal. Besides being a small country helps also, since you tend to be more open to foreign influence More recently, English was introduced as a second language since day 1 of elementary school. I am expecting kids to be perfectly fluent in Portuguese and English at the end of high-school.... Last edited by Salgueiros; 06-21-2011 at 07:31 PM.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
The first English-language novel written by an Arab	boxcorner	Lounge	5	04-18-2011 03:40 AM
If English is not your primary language	SeaBookGuy	General Discussions	17	01-21-2011 07:53 AM
Are contractions hard for readers if English isn't their first language?	John Carroll	Writers' Corner	38	01-05-2011 03:54 AM
Metadata to specify default language is English?	kjk	ePub	4	06-22-2010 04:05 PM
Changing from french language to english	escalla	Sony Reader	3	05-14-2009 12:57 PM

06-21-2011, 02:23 PM	#4
estelle58 Cat lover Posts: 487 Karma: 1149782 Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: Montreal, Canada Device: iPhone, Kobo Vox, Kobo Glo, iPad mini, Kindle Paperwhite, Kobo Aura	I learned it from TV and school when I was younger (yeah... wayyyyy back then ) and I continue to learn it when I read english books

06-21-2011, 02:43 PM	#8
Sweetpea Grand Sorcerer Posts: 9,707 Karma: 32763414 Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Krewerd Device: Pocketbook Inkpad 4 Color; Samsung Galaxy Tab S6	I started my English-language carreer as 11-year old in the last year of elementary school. Then, the first 3 years of high school it was a mandatory subject. And the last 2 years of high school you had to pick at least one foreign language. Figuring, I usually got a 4 or 5 (on a school from 1 to 10) for French and German, and a 7 for English, that choice was easily made (got a 6 for Dutch, btw ) Naturally, most series here have captions, instead of dubbing. As do most movies (unless for the very small). And staying a year in the US helped my English too, a tiny bit

06-21-2011, 07:48 PM	#10
AkumaTakeshi Lounge Lurker Posts: 669 Karma: 1635154 Join Date: May 2011 Location: Portugal Device: Kindle 3 Wifi (Screen Broken)	I think that I learned more from outside sources than from the school itself, so I was curious about other people experiences. I always had 4/5 and 5/5 from 5th till 9th grade and I had from 18/20 to 20/20 from 10th to 12th grade. But I really don't think that I deserved that 20, well I guess I made everything required to get it but the test had some mistakes in it, some that I looked at them after and kept thinking what was wrong with me back then, still got 19.5 don't know why.

06-22-2011, 09:17 PM	#14
crich70 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 11,305 Karma: 43993832 Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Monroe Wisconsin Device: K3, Kindle Paperwhite, Calibre, and Mobipocket for Pc (netbook)	Well I'm a native English speaker but I have heard that it is among the most difficult languages to learn. Part of that is the 'borrowing' that English does from other languages and part is due to how some words can be pronounced one way in one sentence and another way in a different sentence. Wound vs Wound for example. "He had a wound." "He wound the clock." Same spelling but different meanings. And of course things like its and it's etc. And that's without regional slang (coke, cola, soda, pop) added in. All four of the words "coke, cola, soda, pop" are talking about the same thing but you might hear one used in one part of the country and another used somewhere else. Of course I also remember a study on language that was on TV yrs ago. They were trying to determine if only a person born in France could really speak French properly. It turned out that part of a person's mental development as a very young child is listening and imitating sounds others make and somehow that's wired into the brain as we grow so some problems adapting to a new language is probably due to how our brains are wired as young children too.

06-22-2011, 09:33 PM	#15
lestatar LB's lolz Mutt Minion Posts: 2,902 Karma: 5700001 Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Hong Kong now but NYC forever Device: Kindle3, GalaxyTab, BB Bold9700, BB 8300, Sony Clie, Palm Vx, Palm III	My own non-scientific observations in chatting with many non-native English speakers around the world: English [American version or otherwise] is one of the easiest languages to learn in terms of being able to speak colloquially. Simply consume a steady diet of movies, TV shows, newscasts, etc for a few months - motivated and reasonably bright folks will be chattering away in conversational English in no time at all. Now, writing English? That is a whole other ball of wax.

Advert

Advert