When you learn a new language the only way to improve is to practice, practice and

practice! However it can often be boring to keep studying from books so I'd like to

recommend some interactive learning methods and resources - all using the internet.

Chat Your Way to Better English

Chatting with others, either native or non-native speakers of English, is a great way

to practice your written skills in a stress-free and uninhibited environment. This is a

particularly good method if you're shy about speaking English as it will allows you to

be anonymous online and will build your confidence to eventually speak the

language face to face. By joining a chat room like TheChatPage.com you can

discuss any special interest topic you like, or write posts in the forums. Having an

email pen pal can also be a fun and effective way to practice English and make

friends.

Online Grammar Exercises

For a more fun and interactive approach to practicing grammar exercises, try one of

the many online grammar exercise sites available on the internet. You will find varied

exercises and quizzes for most grammar points where you will be given corrections

to your answer and useful explanations. Joining an EFL community will also give you

access to volunteer EFL teachers who are available to answer all your grammar

questions. Being part of a community such as EnglishForums.com is also excellent

way to meet and communicate with other English learners.

Online Radio

Understanding native speakers and their accents is often one of the hardest parts of

learning English according to EFL students. A great listening exercise, particularly for
advanced EFL students, is listening to English radio stations online. Radio hosts

often speak quite fast which makes this exercise rather difficult; however, this will

help sharpen listening skills and be very good practice for phone conversations or

meetings with native speakers. It is also an excellent way to pick up new words and

learn about a variety of cultural topics.

Podcasts

If you don't have constant access to the internet, downloading podcasts is a great

alternative to listening to radio. The advantage of a podcast is that you can listen to it

at your leisure until you feel you have completely understood the topic. You can also

pause the audio while you look up new words or take notes on the subject. There are

some great sites available which offer podcasts specifically to EFL learners. The

podcasts often come in manageable 15-20 audio files, complete with full transcripts,

additional vocabulary, cultural explanation, general notes and sometimes

comprehension questions. This additional information means podcasts are effective

language learning tools even at a lower level of English.

These resources should enable you to practice your English in a more inventive way

rather than relying on books and classroom time. Of course face to face interaction is

really important but these are excellent alternatives and will contribute to acquiring

more fluency and confidence in your skills.

How To Learn English!

Here are some tips which may help you to master the English Language!

Speak without Fear

The biggest problem most people face in learning a new language is their own

fear. They worry that they won’t say things correctly or that they will look stupid so

they don’t talk at all.  Dn’t do this.  The fastest way to learn anything is to do it –

again and again until you get it right.  Like anything, learning English requires

practice. Don’t let a little fear stop you from getting what you want. 

Use all of your Resources

Even if you study English at a language school it doesn’t mean you can’t learn

outside of class.  Using as many different sources, methods and tools as possible,

will allow you to learn faster.  There are many different ways you can improve your

English, so don’t limit yourself to only one or two.  The internet is a fantastic resource

for virtually anything, but for the language learner it's perfect. 

Surround Yourself with English

The absolute best way to learn English is to surround yourself with it.  Take notes in

English, put English books around your room, listen to English language radio

broadcasts, watch English news, movies and television.  Speak English with your

friends whenever you can. The more English material that you have around you, the

faster you will learn and the more likely it is that you will begin “thinking in English.” .

Listen to Native Speakers as Much as Possible

There are some good English teachers that have had to learn English as a second

language before they could teach it.  However, there are several  reasons why many

of the best schools prefer to hire native English speakers. One of the reasons is that

native speakers have a natural flow to their speech that students of English should

try to imitate.  The closer ESL / EFL students can get to this rhythm or flow, the more

convincing and comfortable they will become. 

Watch English Films and Television

This is not only a fun way to learn but it is also very effective.  By watching English

films (especially those with English subtitles) you can expand your vocabulary and

hear the flow of speech from the actors.  If you listen to the news you can also hear

different accents. 

Listen to English Music

Music can be a very effective method of learning English.  In fact, it is often used as

a way of improving comprehension.  The best way to learn though, is to get the lyrics

(words) to the songs you are listening to and try to read them as the artist sings. 

There are several good internet sites where one can find the words for most

songs.This way you can practice your listening and reading at the same time.  And if

you like to sing, fine.

Study As Often As Possible!

Only by studying things like grammar and vocabulary and doing exercises, can you

really improve your knowledge of any language. 

Do Exercises and Take Tests

Many people think that exercises and tests aren't much fun.  However, by completing

exercises and taking tests you can really improve your English. One of the best

reasons for doing lots of exercises and tests is that they give you a benchmark to

compare your future results with.  Often, it is by comparing your score on a test you

took yesterday with one you took a month or six months ago that you realize just

how much you have learned.  If you never test yourself, you will never know how

much you are progressing.Start now by doing some of the many exercises and

tests on this site, and return in a few days to see what you've learned. Keep

doing this and you really will make some progress with English.

Record Yourself

Nobody likes to hear their own voice on tape but like tests, it is good to compare your

tapes from time to time.  You may be so impressed with the progress you are making

that you may not mind the sound of your voice as much.

Listen to English

By this, we mean, speak on the phone or listen to radio broadcasts, audiobooks or

CDs in English. This is different than watching the television or films because you

can’t see the person that is speaking to you.  Many learners of English say that

speaking on the phone is one of the most difficult things that they do and the only

way to improve is to practice.

Finally

Have fun!
The problem: other people's languages
Just as everyone thinks they're an expert on language, everyone thinks they're an
expert on learning languages... that is, on other people learning languages and why
they ought to. Typical interested parties:

 People want students to learn foreign languages.

 People want immigrants to learn the national language.
 People want their home language to be the national language.
 Minorities are concerned that their languages not disappear.
 Esperantists want everyone to learn Esperanto.
 Non-Americans want to learn English.
 Non-Americans are worried that everyone will learn English.
   Parents may want to teach their children something besides the national
language

Discussions of these subjects generally veer off into pointlessness, because they're
based on morality and myth. People talk about what peopleshould do, what
languages they should speak or not speak. But you can't talk about that till you
know what's involved in learning a language-- how hard it is, what's needed to do
it, when it happens or doesn't happen. When these things are discussed at all,
people generally get their facts wrong.

My purpose with this page is not so much to argue for or against any of these
goals, but to set out the facts (as far as they're known), and draw some mostly
unwelcome lessons.

Some myths about language learning

  Or half-myths; but those can be more dangerous than outright falsehoods.

Languages are learned in school

People can learn languages in school... but most of the time they don't. To see this,
simply look at American foreign language instruction. Many high schools and colleges
require several years of a foreign language; the usual result is that students make the
absolute minimum effort to pass, and five years later are unable to produce a sentence
in the language.

These courses typically take 3 to 5 hours a week; one might expect more of bilingual or
total-immersion schools. But even here the results are not perfect. Some Canadian
schools teach French to anglophones by immersion; it's reported (François
Grosjean, Life with Two Languages, p. 219) that the students do well enough
academically, but have "great difficulty" communicating with French-speaking
Canadians outside the school, and don't initiate conversations in French.

European schools have a better reputation than U.S. ones, but I'm not convinced that the
situation is spectacularly different. After ten years of English, students may do quite
well; but if they don't have ongoing opportunities to practice, their English may not last
much more than the American students' French or Spanish.

The basic fallacy here is to take learning as an irreversible process. Because someone
learned something in school, whether it's Latin or trigonometry or the exports of
Venezuela, it doesn't mean that they still know it. An example is the father of a friend of
mine, a Brazilian who studied in the US for a year. Forty years later, he can still read
English, but he's quite unable to carry on a conversation in the language.

To sum up: school courses may help you to learn a language (see below); they can't be
counted on to teach it to a whole population. Immersion schools will probably work,
though even that will be of no use if the student doesn't keep using the language after
graduating.

My ancestors learned by 'sink or swim'; so can you

This one tends to get trotted out in arguments against bilingualism. The idea is that
immigrants never received special treatment in the past, and yet learned the national
language just fine; so present-day immigrants shouldn't get any help now. It ain't
necessarily so.

First, if those ancestors immigrated as adults, then very likely they didn't learn the
national language well, if at all. For Americans, at least, the details are generally several
generations back and misty. We forget just how multilingual the country was at the
height of European immigration. People generally moved into ethnic enclaves, married
among themselves, and worked in menial jobs where there was little need for English.
There were daily newspapers in half a dozen languages in all the major cities (indeed, a
surprising number of them still exist). Much of the bureaucracy we have to deal with
today didn't exist: income tax, health plans, credit card contracts, forms required by
schools. Older immigrants could often get by with a minimal command of English, or
none at all.

Children might indeed be sent to a school which taught in English only. This 'worked'
in the sense that the child learned English; but this is far from proving that this is the
only or best way to treat immigrant children. At the very least these children missed a
year or two of instruction, and the later they came, the less command of formal English
they would have attained.

And maybe that was acceptable in 1880 or 1920, when most jobs required little
education and minimal formal English. Today almost all jobs require a high degree of
schooling; and complicated forms and directions are inescapable. What worked several
generations ago may be insufficient today.

I know this guy who speaks ten languages!

A complicating factor in almost any discussion of these issues is that the people
discussing them-- and that includes myself and probably most readers of this page-- are
likely to enjoy languages, and may have learned a few essentially for fun.
For such people, the brutal facts about most people's language learning-- i.e., that they
don't do it-- may be hard to believe or sympathize with. We learned French, and
enjoyed it! Look at all those Larousses on the shelf! We had so much fun talking to that
schoolteacher in Versailles, buying French rap at FNAC, reading Daniel Pennac,
answering that Tech Support call from Montréal ... can't people see that learning
languages is both fun and useful?

Well, no, any more than people in general see the fun in manga, or algebra, or skeet-
shooting, or ska. Like it or not, language geeks are a minority, and their abilities are no
guide to language policy.

Children learn languages easily

This is a popular commonplace, and one asserted by linguists as well, mostly due to
Noam Chomsky's belief in an innate 'language organ'. (Steven Pinker's The Language
Instinct popularizes Chomsky's ideas.) Unfortunately, the evidence is against it.

Children begin learning languages at birth (infants pay attention to their parents' voices,
as opposed to random noises or even other languages), and haven't really mastered it
subtleties before the age of ten years. Indeed, we never really stop learning our
language. (See David Singleton,Language Acquisition: The Age Factor, p. 56.) This
isn't exactly the sort of behavior (like foals walking an hour after birth) that we call
'instinct' in animals.

But at least it's effortless, isn't it? Well, no, as we can see when children have a choice
of languages to learn. What's found is that, to be frank,children don't learn a
language if they can get away with not learning it.

Many an immigrant family in the U.S. intends to teach their child their native language;
and for the first few years it goes swimmingly-- so much so that the parents worry that
the child won't learn English. Then the child goes to school, picks up English, and
within a few years the worry is reversed: the child still understands his parents, but
responds in English. Eventually the parents may give up, and the home language
becomes English. An anecdote from Grosjean:

Cyril, a little French boy in the States, started going to an English-language day care
center, he brought home English-speaking friends, he watched television, and American
friends of his parents quite often came to dinner. Above all, Cyril realized that his
parents spoke quite good English, and as there was no other reason for speaking French
(no French-speaking grandmother or playmate, no French -speaking social activities
outside the home), Cyril probably decided that the price to maintain both languages...
was too high. Little by little he started speaking English to his parents and ceased to be
an active bilingual, although he retained the ability to understand his fist language.

The linguist R. Burling spent two years in the Garo Hills of India; his son grew up
speaking English and Garo-- mostly the latter. They left India when the boy was three;
for awhile the boy would attempt to speak Garo with anyone he met who looked Indian.
But within six months, he wouldn't speak any Garo and seemed to have trouble with
even simple Garo words.

A child is likely to end up as a fluent speaker of a language only if there are significant
people in her life who speak it: a nanny who only speaks Spanish, a relative who doesn't
speak English, etc. Once a child discovers that his parents understand English perfectly
well, he's likely to give up on the home language, even in the face of strong disapproval
from the parents.

These stories help demonstrate that it's a myth that children learn to speak mainly from
their parents. They don't: they learn mostly from their peers. This is most easily seen
among children of immigrants, whether they come from differing language
backgrounds or merely diffferent dialect areas: the children invariably come to speak
the dialect of their neighborhood and school, not that of their parents. (I found a neat
example of this in my college's alumni magazine: A liberal family in Mississippi sent
their daughter to the public schools, which except for her were all black. She grew up
speaking fluent African-American Vernacular English.)

Supporters of the 'language instinct' make much of the fact that children learn to
speak without formal instruction-- indeed, they notoriously ignore explicit
corrections. For instance, an example collected by Martin Braine [Pinker, p. 281]:

Child: Wnat other one spoon, Daddy. 

Father: You mean, you want the other spoon. 
Child: Yes, I want other one spoon, please, Daddy. 
Father: Can you say "the other spoon"? 
Child: Other... one... spoon. 
Father: Say "other". 
Child: Other. 
Father: "Spoon." 
Child: Spoon. 
Father: "Other... spoon." 
Child: Other... spoon. Now give me other one spoon.
This argument ignores the fact that very little of what we learn is through formal
instruction. Children aren't schooled in video games, either, yet they pick them up with
the same seeming ease.

The apparent effortlessness is largely an illusion caused by psychological distance. We

just don't remember how hard it was to learn language. (In fact, there's some studies
suggesting that memory is tied to language, so that we can't remember the language
learning process.) The perception of effortlessness should be balanced, anyway, by the
universal amusement (which some cartoonists have been mining for nearly half a
century) over children's language mistakes.

Another anecdote: my wife liked to tease a young boy who was having trouble
understanding the reciprocal nature of personal pronouns:

Adult: Is this your ball? 

Child (trying to say it's his): Yes, it's your ball! 
Adult: So, it's my ball? 
Child: No! (cries)

That's not exactly easy!

Another clue that children find language difficult is that they become agitated when
someone speaks the 'wrong' language. An English-German bilingual child, Danny, was
speaking to a German-speaking researcher; trying to help, his mother (who normally
only used English with him) asked,Was macht der Vogel? ("What's the bird doing?")
Danny, startled, told his mother, Nicht 'Vogel'! ("Not Vogel!") He points to the
researcher and said Du Vogel ("You bird"), and to his mother and said Du sag
'birdie' ("You say birdie").

Another example: an Italian-German bilingual girl, Lisa, became upset and started to
cry when an Italian friend spoke to her in German. On another occasion, Lisa's father
said something to her in German, and she responded, No, tu non
puoi! ("No, you can't!") Keeping two largely unknown language systems separate is a
tricky task, and associating each with different people helps: Lisa can count on knowing
that whatever Daddy says is Italian. If anyone in her life could use either language at
any time, the learning task would become much harder.

One may fall back on the position that language may be hard for children to learn, but at
least they do it better than adults. This, however, turns out to be surprisingly difficult
to prove. Singletonexamined hundreds of studies, and found them resoundingly
ambiguous. Quite a few studies, in fact, find that adult learners progress faster than
children (Language Acquisition, pp. 94-106). Even in phonetics, sometimes the last
stronghold of the kids-learn-free position, there are studies finding that adults are better
at recognizing and producing foreign sounds.

Now, I think Singleton misses a key point in understanding this discrepancy: the studies
he reviews compare children vs. adults who are learning languages. That's quite
reasonable, and indeed it's hard to imagine an alternative approach; but the two groups
are not really comparable! All children have to learn at least one language; but few
adults do. So the studies compare the situation of all children with that of the minority
of adults motivated to formally learn other languages.

Why do children learn languages well, when even adults who want to learn them have
trouble with them? Innate abilities aside, children have a number of powerful
advantages:

 They can devote almost their full time to it. Adults consider half an hour's study
a day to be onerous.
 Their motivation is intense. Adults rarely have to spend much of their time in
the company of people they need to talk to but can't; children can get very little
of what they want without learning language(s).
 Their peers are nastier. Embarrassment is a prime motivating factor for human
beings (I owe this insight to Marvin Minsky's The Society of Mind, but it was
most memorably expressed by David Berlinski (in Black Mischief, p. 129), who
noted that of all emotions, from rage to depression to first love, only
embarrassment can recur, decades later, with its full original intensity). Dealing
 with a French waiter is nothing compared with the vicious reception in store for
a child who speaks funny.

If adults could be placed in a similar situation, they might well learn languages as
readily (I don't say 'easily'!) as children. The closest such situation I can think of is
cross- cultural marriage. And indeed, this works quite well. My wife, for instance, a
native Spanish speaker who came here in her late 20s, has learned exceptional English,
since we speak it at home. By contrast, some of her Spanish-speaking friends of the
same age, married to other Spanish speakers, speak English haltingly and with a strong
accent.
A pun is described as playing with words.

Drilling for oil is boring.

Boring can mean being fed up, or it can mean drilling a hole. This pun mixes those

meanings up.

Sometimes a pun uses a word, because, when spoken it can sound a bit like

something else.

In the Canadian forests, it's sometimes hard to cedar wood for the trees

Here 'cedar' sounds rather like 'see the' in the common phrase.

In this case, the dogs name has been chosen to complete the word 'badminton', the

game you play using shuttlecocks!

My dog Minton just ate two of my expensive shuttlecocks!

"Bad Minton!"

Here are some other puns. If you don't understand what the joke is, trying saying

them out loud first and then ask your teacher.

A: Sometimes when I'm bored, I'll make spaghetti......

B: just to PASTA time away. Now that's using my noodle.

A: A man goes to the Doctor with a piece of lettuce hanging out of his ear.

"That looks nasty," says the doctor.

B: "Nasty! " replies the man, "this is just the tip of the iceberg."
For teachers - Radio programmes
Innovations in Teaching
A six part radio series from the BBC World Service. This series was produced and broadcast in 2004.

What is meant by innovation in teaching? Are there some genuinely new ways of teaching language? Are
there new technologies - e.g.: the interactive white board - that have revolutionised how we learn and
the way we teach? What innovative methodologies are of interest to the classroom teacher or
educationalist working around the world?

Innovations in Teaching comes up with the answers as we look at challenges and changes in the
world of ELT and find ideas for teachers to take away.

Copyright information - Please Read

These programmes are copyright British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
You may download these programmes for your own personal or classroom use only. They may not be
copied, distributed or made available to other websites. For any questions relating to the use of these
programmes please email: learningenglish@bbc.co.uk

Programme 1 - New Directions

We begin the series by thinking about what 'innovation' really means - ELT materials writer, Jeremy
Harmer, offers some insights. We also hear about the British Council's ELTON Awards for Innovation;
and well-known writer and teacher-trainer Scott Thornbury reveals his latest corpus-based approach to
teaching grammar.

You can find out more about the British Council's ELTON Awards for Innovation
onwww.britishcouncil.org/learning-innovation-awards. 

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Programme 1 (6.3 MB )

Programme 2 - Interactive Whiteboards

This time the spotlight's on technology as we hear how interactive whiteboard can transform the ELT
classroom. But even with an ultimate techno-tool like this, we discover that methodology remains all
important. The British Council's teachers in Malaysia tell the story of how they switched from the old to
the new overnight! 

Programme 2 (6.6 MB)

Programme 3 - Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) - Part 1

Now we turn to Europe and focus on methodology, for an increasingly popular way of putting content
and language learning together. Find out how learning about Rockets and Robots in Germany, and
teaching Biology in Bulgaria are changing the way we teach English!

For more information and ideas about cross-curriculum teaching try these
websites: www.factworld.info(the Forum for Across the Curriculum Teaching)
and www.scienceacross.org (the Science Across the World site)

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Programme 3 (6.5 MB)

Programme 4 - Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) - Part 2

Team teaching, talking about volcanoes, and making presentations on Geometry - all happening in Italy,
and all showing new ways of teaching English. Warrill Grindrod goes to Milan to continue our look at
Content and Language Integrated Learning - or 'CLIL' for short. 

Programme 4 (6.7 MB)

 Programme 5 - Let's Get Talking
We look at both hi-tech and low-tech approaches to the challenge of spoken communication. How can a
simple game of chance can improve students' speaking skills? And how can the latest technology help
decode fast authentic speech? 

If you want to know more about Streaming Speech go to this website: www.speechinaction.com

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. 

Programme 5 (6.6 MB)

Programme 6 - Reference Revolution

How often do you use a dictionary? Probably lots. And how often do you think about what goes into it?
Probably not much. Well time to think again as we discover why English language dictionaries are at the
forefront of the Reference Revolution.

Programme 6 (7.3 MB)