What do you associate with New Year’s Eve? Fun, champagne and… good intentions? Do you still remember what you resolved to do last year? Learning a new language probably ranked right up there with joining a gym and giving up a nasty habit. Regardless of the reasons you had for making this resolution, the result is – unfortunately – almost always the same. After the first days at “full speed ahead”, by spring the motivation has subsided and you find yourself staring discontentedly at the grammar books you bought with such enthusiasm.

But why? Why does everyone think that it’s so hard to learn a language? And that it requires so much time to practice? Could it be because we all have a few bad habits that we’re not aware of (and therefore can’t get rid of)?

Let’s take a look at the most common mistakes and figure out how we can avoid them.

1. Take it slow

When the adventure of a new language starts, your enthusiasm knows no bounds. On the one hand, that’s something very positive. On the other hand, it’s important not to rely on enthusiasm alone. When the newness and initial excitement has worn off, you might not know where to find the motivation to learn. That’s why it’s necessary to steer your initial exuberance in the right direction, and not let it disappear like a flash in the pan. It’s better to take it slow – tame your enthusiasm and make sure that learning a language becomes a regular daily activity.

Otherwise something like this might happen: You’ll study every day for the first week. Already in the second week you’ll skip a day because you’re too tired. The following week it happens again, and then again the week after that. Soon, you’ll be staring, frustrated, at that pile of language books on your desk.

Our Tip:Steer your initial exuberance in the right direction and make sure that learning a language becomes a regular daily activity. Ten minutes a day is better than full-on for a week and then nothing after that.

2. The benefits of a bad memory

No, we’re not crazy. We’re talking to all those people who think that memorization is the key to everything, to everyone who boasts about their photographic memory, and to everyone who gets stuck on vocabulary lists. Don’t get us wrong: a good memory is definitely helpful, but one should not forget (no pun intended) to use and train it the right way.

Memorizing entire phrases can be helpful in certain, clearly-defined situations (like picking up your luggage at the airport, for example). But it won’t be of any benefit when topics come up in conversation that weren’t in that book you so diligently memorized.

Use your memory and make it your ally. Learn phrases and words with which you can make associations or create mnemonic devices. And when a word doesn’t seem to want to come out, find an alternative or paraphrase what you mean. In this way, you don’t only get your synapses firing, but you can also remember things better and for longer periods of time. Try it for yourself!

Our Tip: Your memory is an important ally if you use it intelligently.

3. Nobody’s perfect

No one is perfect… and you shouldn’t try to be! One of the first obstacles you encounter on the path to “fluent mastery” of a language is the absurd and premature demand you place on yourself to speak with perfect and error-free pronunciation and grammar. Of course, you can and will get there with a lot of practice, but it shouldn’t be the highest priority when you’re getting to know a completely new language.

If you get lost in especially complicated grammar when you’re trying to say something simple, or if you’re only sure of yourself when you don’t make even the smallest pronunciation mistakes, then it’s highly likely that within a few weeks, you’ll give up out of total frustration.

“Until I can speak perfectly, I won’t speak. But if I don’t speak, I’ll never improve and can give up hope of ever being able to speak perfectly”. It’s a Catch 22!

Our Tip: Give yourself a break and don’t be afraid to make mistakes! You’ll soon see the progress that’ll bring you closer to your goal.

4. All work and no play…

It’s exactly you – so tirelessly and steadfastly learning – who we’re speaking to here: Are you finally going to get up out of that chair, or do you want to put down roots right where you’re sitting? You’re diligent and persistent. You’ve used your memory and your desire to learn in the best way possible. You’ve trusted yourself to speak to people because you understand that we all learn from making mistakes. And now? Now it’s time to give yourself a reward!

When you set such a big goal as learning a new language, it’s important now and then to pat yourself on the back and enjoy the success you’ve achieved. You’ve managed to have your first real-life conversation? You’ve got all that difficult pronunciation down? You’ve gotten through the jungle of pronouns? Then you should celebrate it and do something fun! Watch a film, sing a song at the top of your lungs, or listen to the radio… but, of course, in the language you’re learning! When you couple language learning with activities that bring you joy, you’ll learn more effectively and remember what you’ve learned more easily.

Our Tip: You don’t have to learn like a crazy person. There should also be time to combine the enjoyable with the practical, and have fun while learning!

5. The goal is always within sight

Learn the art of always keeping your goal within sight. Of course, anyone could say that learning for learning’s sake is the ideal picture of education… that goes without saying. But if you want to reach the end of the road, it’s important that you’re aware of why you stepped onto the path in the first place.

Why are you learning a new language? For love? To get a raise? Because you want to try your luck in a new country? Because you can’t stand films that are dubbed? Very good. Keep your goal in sight and imagine that with every tiny step forward, the path to your goal gets shorter and the top of the mountain gets closer.

Our Tip: Keeping a goal in sight increases motivation. Before you start, set a goal!

source: www.babbel.com

What can make learning a language easier? Can you fill in the gaps in the tips?

1. Make sure that learning a language becomes a regular (1) ……. activity. (2)………… a day is better than full-on for a week and then nothing after that.

2. Use your memory (3)………… .

3. Don’t be afraid to make (4)………… .

4. Combine the (5)……….. with the (6)………….., and have (7)……. while learning!

5. Before you start, set a (8)……. .

Key:

1. daily

2. Ten minutes

3. intelligently

4. mistakes

5. enjoyable

6. practical

7. fun

8. goal

After a couple of months, she booked a low-cost flight to London. She landed at Stansted airport and managed to buy a one-way ticket to Victoria station by coach, with the help of a couple of Spanish retirees who were also heading to the centre of London.

But once in London, she ran into a major source of frustration: she couldn’t understand or speak to the people she met. She returned to Italy after a week, rather than two weeks as she had arranged, and called my language studio for advice.

Welcome to the age of global English. Few people speak like the Queen, and no one is exempt from grammar mistakes.

If you are a beginner learner or teach adults at a beginner level, here are seven tips to make starting to learn English easier. Each tip starts with one of the letters in the word ‘ENGLISH’ to make them easier to remember.

1. Exercise

Learning a foreign language is like going to the gym. Your muscles are strengthened only if you practise every day. It’s the same with language: practice makes perfect.

Tip: dedicate 15 minutes of your time to English every day. You can listen to music or a podcast, read a book, watch short movies on the Internet, play games on your smartphone, or meet up with native speakers for a language exchange.

2. Not just words

Beginner students may feel most comfortable when they listen to single words and repeat them, as children do when they are shown flashcards. But this is less useful for adult learners, who will want to sound confident and fluent when talking to native speakers. If you learn ‘chunks’ of language, or phrases, it will be easier to create sentences and sound natural when speaking.

Tip: start to learn collocations immediately. ‘Having breakfast’ is different from ‘making breakfast’. The former means you eat it, the latter means you prepare it.

3. Go for it

Keep trying. Every time you start something new, a moment comes in which you think you might as well quit. But as the saying goes, ‘if at first you don’t succeed: try, try, try again.’ To help you stay motivated, remember why you started learning English. For example, one of my students had a granddaughter whose mother was British. Both her granddaughter and daughter-in-law lived in the UK, so she wanted to learn English to communicate with them.

Tip: keep a journal of your common mistakes. Revise them in order not to make them again. However, don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Errors are not a negative reflection of your intellectual abilities. They are a necessary feature of acquiring a new skill.

4. Label

Two viral television advertisements on the web, one for a brand of whisky and the other for an auction website, show two old men beginning to learn English for different reasons. In both short films, there is a technique I find crucial to remembering new words: labelling. The two elderly people label all the objects in their houses, and this helps them memorise items belonging to daily life.

Tip: label everything you need to know. Use colourful post-it notes: each colour could identify a category of things. For example, you could use green sticky notes for electrical appliances.

5. Involve others

There is nothing better than involving your family and friends in your learning process. You need moral support in this new challenge: the more, the merrier. When you show people what you have learnt, they will be impressed.

Tip: take a video selfie introducing yourself, your family and/or friends in English. Do that every week, and after a month you can watch the videos again to see how much your English has improved.

6. Set goals

You may identify with a specific linguistic area, and want to focus on it. Setting goals to learn the language related to this area can help. For example, if you want to go shopping for clothes in an English-speaking country, you will need to know phrases like ‘where are the changing rooms?’, and ‘can I pay by credit card?’.

Tip: keep a diary in which you write what you’d like to learn for seven days. At the end of the week, check if you have achieved your goals.

7. Have fun

Being a beginner learner is not easy at all. It can be easy to feel inadequate and frustrated. Most learners who take up learning English usually quit because they feel discouraged. So you must make the process of learning fun. If positive emotions are linked to the learning process, it will be definitely easier.

Tip: if you make mistakes, just laugh at them. The important thing is to have fun and persevere.

Learning English is not a piece of cake. It is tough and challenging. But, in my opinion, expressing yourself in another language is the most exciting, significant challenge. The feeling when someone understands you is just fabulous.

So what happened to Maria? Well, after a couple of months attending my English course and following these tips, she became more confident.

Now, she can understand the main points when people speak in English to her about familiar matters such as family, work and travel. She can describe past experiences and events, her routines and future plans.

And more importantly, she has moved to London, where she has found love.

Good luck, great beginner learners out there!

source: British Council

Do you remember what the letters of ENGLISH stand for?

1. E……

2. N……

3. G……

4. L……

5. I……

6. S……

7. H……

Key

1. Exercise

2. Not just words

3. Go for it

4. Label

5. Involve others

6. Set goals

7. Have fun

Learning to speak English is the best thing you can do to improve your life. If you speak English you can get information that other people can’t understand, you can communicate with people who don’t speak Hungarian, and you can have better career opportunities.

English is not only the most useful language in the world, but it is also one of the easiest languages to learn. There are plenty of possibilities to improve your English. If you don’t have English classes at your school or work, you can take English lessons from a private teacher, you can go to a language school, or you can learn by yourself. There are plenty of books, CDs, websites and mobile applications that can help you learn English.

If you want to speak English well, you have to improve all your skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. Writing is the most difficult language skill to learn, it takes many years of practice to be a good writer.

Before starting a course you are generally required to take an assessment test to determine your knowledge in English. You can usually choose from elementary, lower-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate, advanced and proficiency courses. There are also lessons that focus on specific skills, like vocabulary building, pronunciation or exam preparation.

to improve – fejleszteni
career – karrier
opportunity – lehetőség
plenty of – sok
private teacher – magántanár
mobile application – mobil applikáció
skill – képesség
practice – gyakorlás, gyakorlat
to be required to – valaki meg van kérve valamire
assessment test – szintfelmérő teszt
to determine – meghatározni
knowledge – tudás
elementary – alapfok
lower-intermediate – gyenge középhaladó
intermediate – középhaladó
upper-intermediate – erős középhaladó
advanced – felsőfokú
proficiency – anyanyelvi szintű
to focus on – valamire koncentrálni
specific – speciális
vocabulary building – szókincsfejlesztés
pronunciation – kiejtés
exam preparation – vizsgafelkészítés 

Matthew Youlden speaks nine languages fluently and understands more than a dozen more. He can switch from language to language like a chameleon changing colors.

He has the following advice for those who want to pick up a second language. If you believe that you can never become bilingual, take note!

1. KNOW WHY YOU’RE DOING IT

This might sound obvious, but if you don’t have a good reason to learn a language, you are less likely to stay motivated over the long-run. Wanting to impress English-speakers with your French is not a very good reason; wanting to get to know a French person in his or her own language is another matter entirely. No matter your reason, once you’ve decided on a language, it’s crucial to commit:

“OK, I want to learn this and I’m therefore going to do as much as I can in this language, with this language and for this language.”

2. FIND A PARTNER

Matthew learned several languages together with his twin brother Michael (they tackled their first foreign language, Greek, when they were only eight years old!). Matthew and Michael gained their superpowers from good-old, healthy sibling rivalry:

“We were very motivated, and we still are. We push each other to really go for it. So if he realizes that I’m doing more than he is he’ll get a bit jealous and then try and outdo me (maybe because he’s my twin) – and the other way round.”

Even if you can’t get a sibling to join you on your language adventure, having any kind of partner will push both of you to always try just a little bit harder and stay with it:

“I think it’s a really great way of actually going about it. You have someone with whom you can speak, and that’s the idea behind learning a language.”

3. TALK TO YOURSELF

When you have no one else to speak to, there’s nothing wrong with talking to yourself:

“It might sound really weird, but actually speaking to yourself in a language is a great way to practice if you’re not able to use it all the time.”

This can keep new words and phrases fresh in your mind and build up your confidence for the next time you speak with someone.

4. KEEP IT RELEVANT

If you make conversation a goal from the beginning, you are less likely to get lost in textbooks. Talking to people will keep the learning process relevant to you:

“You’re learning a language to be able to use it. You’re not going to speak it to yourself. The creative side is really being able to put the language that you’re learning into a more useful, general, everyday setting – be that through writing songs, generally wanting to speak to people, or using it when you go abroad. You don’t necessarily have to go abroad; you can go to the Greek restaurant down the road and order in Greek.”

5. HAVE FUN WITH IT

Using your new language in any way is a creative act. Matthew and his brother practiced their Greek by writing and recording songs. Think of some fun ways to practice your new language: make a radio play with a friend, draw a comic strip, write a poem, or simply talk to whomever you can. If you can’t find a way to have fun with the new language, chances are you aren’t following step four.

6. ACT LIKE A CHILD

This is not to say you should throw a tantrum or get food in your hair when you go out to a restaurant, but try learning the way kids do. The idea that children are inherently better learners than adults is proving to be a myth. New research cannot find a direct link between age and the ability to learn. The key to learning as quickly as a child may be to simply take on certain childlike attitudes: for instance, lack of self-consciousness, a desire to play in the language and willingness to make mistakes.

We learn by making mistakes. As kids, we are expected to make mistakes, but as adults mistakes become taboo. Think how an adult is more likely to say, “I can’t”, rather than, “I haven’t learned that yet” (I can’t swim, I can’t drive, I can’t speak Spanish). To be seen failing (or merely struggling) is a social taboo that doesn’t burden children. When it comes to learning a language, admitting that you don’t know everything (and being okay with that) is the key to growth and freedom. Let go of your grown-up inhibitions!

7. LEAVE YOUR COMFORT ZONE

Willingness to make mistakes means being ready to put yourself in potentially embarrassing situations. This can be scary, but it’s the only way to develop and improve. No matter how much you learn, you won’t ever speak a language without putting yourself out there: talk to strangers in the language, ask for directions, order food, try to tell a joke. The more often you do this, the bigger your comfort zone becomes and the more at ease you can be in new situations:

“At the beginning you’re going to encounter difficulties: maybe the pronunciation, maybe the grammar, the syntax, or you don’t really get the sayings. But I think the most important thing is to always develop this feel. Every native speaker has a feel for his or her own language, and that’s basically what makes a native-speaker – whether you can make the language your own.”

8. LISTEN FIRST

You must learn to listen before you can speak. Every language sounds strange the first time you hear it, but the more you expose yourself to it the more familiar it becomes, and the easier it is to speak it properly:

“We’re able to pronounce anything, it’s just we’re not used to doing it. For example the rolled r doesn’t exist in my form of English. When I was learning Spanish there were words with the hard r in them like perro and reunión. For me, the best way to go about mastering that is actually to hear it constantly, to listen to it and to kind of visualize or imagine how that is supposed to be pronounced, because for every sound there is a specific part of the mouth or throat that we use in order to achieve that sound.”

9. WATCH PEOPLE TALK

Different languages make different demands on your tongue,lips and throat. Pronunciation is just as much physical as it is mental:

“One way – it might sound a bit strange – is to really look at someone while they’re saying words that use that sound, and then to try to imitate that sound as much as possible. Believe me, it might be difficult at the beginning, but you will. It’s something that is actually quite easily done; you just need to practice it.”

If you can’t watch and imitate a native-speaker in person, watching foreign-language films and TV is a good substitute.

10. DIVE IN

So you’ve made the pledge. How to proceed? Is there a proper way to go about learning? Matthew recommends the 360° maximalist approach: no matter which learning tools you use, it’s crucial to practice your new language every single day:

“I tend to want to absorb as much as possible right from the start. So if I learn something I really, really go for it and try to use it throughout the day. As the week progresses I try to think in it, try to write in it, try to speak to myself even in that language. For me it’s about actually putting what you’re learning into practice – be that writing an email, speaking to yourself, listening to music, listening to the radio. Surrounding yourself, submerging yourself in the new language culture is extremely important.”

Remember, the best possible outcome of speaking a language is for people to speak back to you. Being able to have a simple conversation is a huge reward in itself. Reaching milestones like that early on will make it easier to stay motivated and keep practicing. And don’t worry, you won’t annoy people by speaking their language poorly. If you preface any interaction with, “I’m learning and I’d like to practice…” most people will be patient, encouraging and happy to oblige. Even though there are approximately a billion non-native English-speakers around the world, most of them would rather speak their own language if given a choice. Taking the initiative to step into someone else’s language world can also put them at ease and promote good feelings all around:

“Sure, you can travel abroad speaking your own language, but you’ll get so much more out of it being able to actually feel at ease in the place you are – being able to communicate, to understand, to interact in every situation you could possibly imagine.”

Source: Babbel.com

To summarize the article can you fill in the gaps in the advice given?

1. ……… why you’re doing it.

2. Find a …….

3. Talk to ………..

4. Keep it ………

5. Have ……. with it.

6. Act like a ……..

7. Leave your ………..

8. ……… first

9. ……. people talk.

10. …….. in.

Key

1. Know

2. partner

3. yourself

4. relevant

5. fun

6. child

7. comfort zone

8. Listen

9. Watch

10. Dive