English was the subject I got the second highest mark in high school (9.4/10). I like reading, but my writing sucked so Literature mark I got was nowhere near 8
I like English in a way I can't quite explain: I feel completely at ease when I'm reading/typing in English, or studying it. It just comes out. Learning French, I have to think really hard just to understand the teacher's simple question and think even harder to come up with one or two discrete words. I don't remember having such problems when I learned basic English.
Students in our country officially start stuyding English at 12, and English is obligatory from 6th grade to 12th grade. But to tell the truth, I think the English in schools was not efficiently taught. Many friends of mine don't grab the basic English even though they've learned it for 6 years! I believe we learn a language outside class much more efficiently than when we do otherwise.
I started learning English at 9. At first it was so-so. I wasn't impressed and didn't find it interesting, but didn't have any complaint either. Just studied.
My sister was 17 at that time and she listened to music a lot. All easy-listening genres and all in English, like The Brothers Four's "Greenfield" or Fools' Garden's "Lemon Tree"... she had big impacts on me. It was music which gradually changed my point of view. Bit by bit, I started liking English without knowing it, until I was 14 and suddenly realized how much I loved the language when I listened to Daniel Powter's "Bad day"...
And I was so into music. And every genre I could listen to: classic, pop, ballad, rap, rock, nu metal. The song must have good lyrics in English, that was all I required.
(I don't pay much attention to music these days as I turned it to books, but still update the well known artists and their songs... No Lady Gaga, please.)
The second source came a little bit later: movies. I honestly don't know how much (or how little?) I learned from the scripts, but sure movies helped me practise listening.
And the Internet, and reading books in English certainly helped building vocabulary a lot. I must admit I started reading in English just 2 years ago. And it was Twilight
and then Percy Jackson...
I kept a notebook to jot down any interesting expression I bump into, a dictionary, some books on using English like when to choose between "damage" and "damages" and stuffs...
This year I'm excused from learning English, the profs said my English is enough to pass the basic level. Next term we will study Specialized English for Diplomacy. I look forward to it, obviously the vocabulary will be like whoa
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.
And I almost always write things up in English, ideas, notes and the such. |
Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70
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.[...]
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and I think they are the things that make English a funny/interesting language to learn
borrowed words, confusing pronunciation, slangs...
(at least I like it better than French)