Monday 16 April 2012

Method 7: Listen and Answer mini stories

This method is simple and easy to use. But I believe that this is the most effective way to speak English without even thinking about it. During our old days, we used to listen to our teachers and repeat after them. The teacher might read some sentence to us and we repeated after that. This is the old, ineffective way.

To use this method, the first thing you do is to listen to a mini story. And the speaker will ask you simple questions. And you answer it. He will ask the same question in various forms again and again so that you can immerse those words inside your heart. So, by the time someone ask you a question similar to the mini story that you have learned, you will just answer it automatically without even thinking about it.

Okay. That's about it. This is the last rule for learning English conversations in easy ways.

So, you might want to ask me, "What is next?" Next is to apply all the seven rules all the time at the same time. But "How? How can you cover it everything at the same time? How can you do that? How can you know that you're doing it right?" Of course, I have all the materials that I can share with you for free (T&C applies) if you want to apply those rules and speak English automatically, effortlessly, correctly and fluently within short period of time. T&C is you have got to show me that you're really interested and willing to commit your time to it. I have no problem giving you my time and energy if you have the enthusiasm to learn.

For more info, please email or add: englishteacherformyanmar@gmail.com

Cheers

Method 6: Use only Real English Materials

What do I mean by Real English Materials? It simply means that those pod casts, movies, TV shows, storybooks and audio books that teach us casual English that you can only find on the streets. Because you don't want to speak formal English. It is simply boring. No one speaks formally in the real life. So, you get the point. And my advice is to start from the easiest ones that interest you. So, please use only English novels and storybooks that are easy and interesting to you. Maybe you will find it interesting by it's topics, such as adventures, romance, etc. It's the best to learn from those in which the speaker speaks naturally, not sounding like a robot, like "How are you?","I'm fine, and you?" conversations. Those kinds of materials are more than boring. Most of the native speakers actually don't greet like that anymore. They will greet like, "Hey, what's up?" or like, "Hey, how are you doing?" etc. We need to learn that real casual English if we don't want to sound funny in front of the native speakers. Start from the easiest and if you're comfortable, you can move onto harder materials. Don't forget, Listening the same thing again and again plays a major role to speak excellent English.

If you are serious about learning English conversation in easy ways, please email or add: englishteacherformyanmar@gmail.com

Of course, your comments and feedback are welcome at all times.

Cheers

Method 5: Learn English by Point of Vew

Do you still remember the second rule, "no more grammar rules"? You might have thought that it was silly not to study grammar rules. But there is a proven technique that you can just learn grammar rules without even studying it. Yes, the grammar rules are not supposed to be studied by itself. In fact, it's like the way we learned our mother language, through excessive listening to what our elders were speaking about.

Point of View stories are brought to you by all the great English teachers these days because they know that it's a cutting edged and proven technique that you and I can use it. Listening to point of view stories is the most effective way to learn to speak English fluently and correctly. For those of you who are not sure what Point of View stories is about, it is a mini story which tells you with 3 tenses (present, past and future tense) and the storyteller is telling the story as if he is part of the story.

For example: the story goes: "there is a boy, named Mg Mg. He goes to the food court and buys himself a meal." So, this is the present tense. And for the past tense, "2 years ago, there was a boy, named Mg Mg. He went to the food court and bought himself a meal." And for the future tense, "6 months from now, there will be a boy, named Mg Mg, he will go to the food court and buy himself a meal." Finally, the storyteller acting in the story, "My name is Mg Mg. I went to the food court and bought myself a meal."

Of course, the real mini story is a bit more difficult and longer. But listening to the mini stories are really powerful to be able to speak English effortlessly. Remember to learn deeply. Repeat it as many times as you can.

If you like my blog and the rules, and if you feel like you want to learn more, please email or add englishteacherformyanmar@gmail.com

cheers

Method 4: Repetition is the mother of all learning

Repetition, in other words, deep learning is the secret of being able to speak English like a native speaker. So, let's look back to how we used to study English when we were at high school. We were forced to memorized all the new meanings at the end of a lesson or a story. Let's say we memorized twenty of them. Yes, we can remember what each word means. But the thing is we were not trained to use those words appropriately like when we should use it and what tense we have to use it. Maybe if you were lucky enough to meet with a good English teacher, he/she would ask you to build a sentence by using the words that you had to memorize the day before. But still it is not enough to be able to speak English fluently and automatically. We need to learn it deep inside our heart. How to do that? Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, and a little more of that. This is the fundamental key to learn to speak English fluently and automatically.

Method 3: Learn English by listening

Happy New Year to everyone of you, guys. I hope you had fun at Thingyan festival. I did go to SMB concert and Toa Payoh monastery.

I know I didn't write here for sometime. I will punish myself by finishing off the rest of the methods asap.

So, as far as the title goes, we should learn English by listening. This could be the major and magic key in order to speak English automatically, fluently and correctly. I'm sure we all have the habit of practicing our English by reading the English conversation books or even textbooks when we were high school. The main problem here is that we were taught to be able to write English correctly. So, the main reason when we were at school is to use grammar correctly. We know grammar rules more than the native speakers. I'm sure you know it by now that being able to speak English fluently, quickly and automatically is very little to do with mastering in grammar rules. So, why do we bother learning grammar rules? Yes, if we want to sit IELTS, TOEFL, etc. for the purpose of getting into some colleague or university. I'm not saying that learning grammar rules is not important. But if you want to speak English with confidence, you must stop reading textbooks and conversation books. You should focus more on listening. And if you listen a good English conversation podcast, you learn vocabularies and grammar rules as much as you can learn by reading. I assure you that. But you have to make sure that you listen to easy enough English conversation pod casts or stories, which means that you should understand 95% or more without stopping or pausing while you are listening. You can try children's storytellers pod casts or elementary level conversation pod casts. In fact, I have lots of pod casts that I can give you. But I will have to make sure that you finish reading all of the seven methods. The reason is that I need to know if you are serious about it and willing to commit to it.

For more info, please email or add: englishteacherformyanmar@gmail.com

Cheers

Friday 6 April 2012

Method 2: No More Grammar Rules

As the title goes, we shouldn't be studying all the grammar rules in order for us to be able to speak English fluently and automatically. Yes, we all have learned in this way for our whole lives. As we speak according to the grammar rules, we tend to focus on analyzing too much on what we are talking about. We think about it too much, like focusing on the tenses, present tense or past tense or future tense or simple perfect tense or past perfect tense, etc. It's totally useful if you're writing. You can take your time and think about it. You can even erase your mistakes. That's not a problem. But when we speak, it's totally different. We don't have time to think like that. We need to be fast when someone is asking you about something.

Let's think about how we learned to speak our mother language.  We did not even know all the grammar rules until 5th grade. But it doesn't mean we didn't talk till that time. We mostly learned by listening to what others were speaking. It's the same way. We should learn mostly from listening to real English conversations. Maybe reading a simple novel will help. But do not study textbook. It will not help you to learn how to speak easily.

So, no more grammar books in your life. But don't worry. there will still be alternative ways to learn grammar rules. You will not even realize that you learned it. Stay tune and I will tell you more about it.

Thursday 5 April 2012

Method 1: Learn English by phrases

Hello again,

I hope everyone is doing well.

Today, I will talk about the first learning English method, which is "Learn it by phrase". Since childhood, we all were taught to learn English by individual words by using textbook way. I'm sure you still remember those single words, we usually call it meaning, at the end of a story or a lesson. And our English teacher would ask us to learn it by heart that night as we were supposed to read out loud without looking at the book on the next day. We have been learning this way for our whole lives. But it doesn't help at all to be able to speak English fluently and automatically. We must change that concept. We have to learn it by phrase.


So, what is phrase? A phrase is a group of words or part of a sentence or sometimes it can be a whole sentence. For example, when you're reading a story book or listening to a podcast, you want to learn the new word "cat". Instead of just trying to memorize the single word "cat" by heart, you take a phrase from that sentence, e.g. "Susan loves cats". It's so much easier to remember the word "cat" by learning it by that phrase "Susan loves cats". Because you know vividly in your mind who Susan is and what the word "cats" means. And one more good point in learning by phrase is that we learn Grammar rules automatically and as we speak, we can speak out loud quickly. So, next time when you say, someone loves something, you will automatically and quickly put the letter "s" in the word "love". It's the way the native speakers learn their language. So, if we just learn the word "cat" by heart, the chances of forgetting to put "s" to "love" when we speak or write are higher. So, learning individual words is not useful anymore. It probably was useful in the past because our seniors did not find a better way, I suppose. At least they had much more time to study than we have today since they did not have to spend time on the internet or facebook or youtube.

That's all for today's lesson. So, the next time when you're reading or listening English conversation or story and you find a new vocabulary word, please write down the entire phrase or sentence if it is short in your notebook and review it from time to time. Fill out your notebook  with all the phrases.

Okay, before I call it a night, I would like to mention to you that this blog is not for those who want to learn purely Grammar. If you just want to learn the Grammar rules, all the tenses, this blog is not for you. And sometimes, you'll probably find that I make a mistake or two grammatically. I do apologize for that. I hope you learn something today. I'll see you soon at the next lesson.

Cheers