Wednesday, May 18, 2005

How to love learning English — improving your motivation

Before you start reading, you should know this: Learning English requires action. You may know all the learning tips, but if you don't start doing things, you will achieve nothing. Therefore our method is not just for reading; it is for reading and doing.
You need two things to learn English well — passion and effective learning methods — and passion is the more important one. Why? Because passion makes you want to learn English; the learning methods only tell you how to do it faster.
If you love learning English:
• You will do it regularly and spend more time on it.
• Learning English will be easier for you. It will be easy for you to remember new words and grammar structures. It's because the brain easily remembers information on a subject that you like. (For example, some people like history and know everything about World War II. If you told a "normal person" to memorize all these facts, they would never do it.)
We know you may not love learning English. And even if you love it, you will sometimes not want to do it. This is how human psychology works — sometimes we are so lazy, bored, and tired that we don't want to do even the things that we like.
Here is what you can do when you don't feel like learning English:
Imagine yourself in the future
Imagine you can talk to native speakers just like you talk in your first language. Imagine other people wanting to speak English as well as you do. Imagine the possibility of writing e-mail to people from all over the world.
It is helpful to read an article about the advantages of knowing English well. There are two such articles on Antimoon: Why learn English and English makes you feel good.
You should know that it is possible to learn English really well. Just look at other people who have done it.
Remember that you are already good
You already know some English (you're reading an article in English right now). That's a big success! Now it's time for more successes. Time to start using powerful methods of effective learning. Time to gain an impressive knowledge of English.
Remember there is a lot that you don't know
You are good, but your English probably isn't perfect. You probably can't understand English-language TV, read books in English, talk to native speakers easily, write letters without mistakes, etc.
You should never think your English is perfect. Even if you are the best student in your class, always try to find your weak areas and work on them. When you've learned to speak English well, your problems will be quite small: punctuation, rarely used grammar structures, rare words, understanding "street language". Right now, your problems are probably more basic: mistakes in pronunciation, small vocabulary, grammar problems with the present perfect tense and conditional structures.
Use your English whenever you can
This is very, very important. The more you use English, the more you will want to learn it.
Because English is so popular, you can use it everywhere. You can use Yahoo to find English-language websites with interesting information, you can watch American cartoons, you can play adventure games on your computer, you can read interesting books in English, or you can do other things that we write about.
If you do these things, you will not only have fun and learn English. If you see that a new English word lets you understand your favorite TV show (or communicate with people, or beat a computer game), you will want to learn more words. So you will learn English more, use it more, learn it more, use it more... If you also use effective learning methods, your English will grow faster than you can imagine.
Talk to people about English
This is a very simple method, but it is very effective. Here's how it works:
You usually talk about things which interest you. But the opposite is true, too. If you start talking about a boring subject, you will begin to get interested in it.
Imagine you are studying a subject that you hate. You are bored and tired, but you have to pass the test tomorrow. If there are people near you, you have two options: you can tell everybody how much you are suffering or you can tell those people about the things you've learned. If you choose the first option, you will only feel worse.
If you choose the second option, and start a conversation on the "boring" subject, you will begin to look at it in a totally different way. Suddenly it will become a subject worth talking about — therefore, an interesting subject.
How can you begin such a conversation? If you're studying English, you can surprise another person by talking to him/her in English. Say (in English): Hi, I'm studying English and I hate it. Or you can say (in your first language): Hey, I've learned 50 English words today. Do you know what's the English word for ...? If there are no people near you, you can telephone or send an e-mail message to your friend.
What will your friends say? Probably they won't be very interested, but it doesn't matter! The important thing is this: After talking about English, you will study it with much more passion. Try it.
Find a friend who is learning English
If you can find a friend who is learning English and is on a similar level of skill, you will be in an excellent situation:
• you will have someone to talk about English with. These conversations will increase your interest in English, as explained in the previous section.
• learning English will be easier, because you will be able to discuss your problems with your friend.
• you will study English more, because you will want to be better than your friend. :-)
You should meet your friend regularly. Ideally, he/she should live near you, or go to the same school as you. If you absolutely can't find anybody willing to learn English with you, you can try to find somebody by e-mail. This is a worse solution: your conversations will probably be less frequent, and it is difficult to compete with someone who you don't know well.
Spend some money on learning English
If you spend your money on something, you will want to use it. For example, if you buy an expensive tennis racket, you will probably go out and play tennis every day.
This rule is also true for learning English. If you want to increase your desire to learn English, buy a new dictionary, a new SuperMemo collection, an interesting English-language book, English-language cable TV, etc. The idea is simple: You paid for it, so you will want to use it, and you will improve your English.
There is a problem with this method. It only works for a short time. You usually lose your desire to learn English after a few days. To keep learning, you would have to buy something every week!
However, this method is helpful, because it gives you an impulse to start learning. For example, if you buy a dictionary of phrasal verbs, you will probably learn some words from it. Then you should try to use them. For example, write an e-mail message with these words. This will increase your motivation (as explained before), and you will learn more.
Remember that learning English requires action
We have said this many times. One small action is more powerful than reading hundreds of articles. Yes, we know it is very hard to do things, even if they are good for us. We humans are lazy creatures. That is why not many people speak English well.
Still, we hope you can do the things we talk about in our English learning method — not only read about them. You will be successful only if you change something about your life.
Don't put it off. Begin now.
Why learn English
Learning to speak English well may be the best thing you can do to improve your life.
That's right. Do you think it would be fun to have access to information that other people can't get? Talk and write letters to interesting people that others can't communicate with? Impress people around you whenever you opened your mouth? Make big jumps in your career, leaving others miles behind?
You can get all this if you speak English well.
Get access to knowledge
What are you interested in? Is it science? Music? Computers? Health? Business? Sports? Today's media — such as the Internet, television, and the press — give you almost unlimited access to knowledge about your favorite subjects. After all, we live in the information age, don't we?
There's only one problem. Most of this knowledge is in English.
Here are some examples of knowledge you can use if you know English:
• 87% of all pages on the Web. That's over a billion (1,000,000,000) pages of information! It's amazing that learning just one language gives you access to almost all knowledge on the Internet. (source)
• Books — on any subject, from all over the world. Read books by British or American authors, and books translated from other languages. Whatever you're interested in, you can read about it in English!
• The press. Only English-language magazines and newspapers can be bought in every part of the world. You don't have to search for Time, Newsweek, or the International Herald Tribune!
• Science. English is the key to the world of science. In 1997, 95% of the articles in the Science Citation Index were written in English. Only about 50% of them were from English-speaking countries like the USA or Britain. (source)
• News reports. Watch international television networks, such as CNN International and NBC. They broadcast news much faster, and more professionally, than smaller, national networks. And you can watch them everywhere in the world.
Communicate with people
We like to call English "the language of communication". Why? Because it seems all the people in the world have agreed to use English to talk to each other.
• About 1,500,000,000 people in the world speak English. Another 1,000,000,000 are learning it. (source)
• 75% of the world's letters and postcards are written in English. (source)
• Almost all international conferences and competitions are conducted in English. For example, the Olympics and the Miss World contest.
• Diplomats and politicians from different countries use English to communicate with each other. English is the main language of organizations like the United Nations, NATO, and the European Free Trade Association.
If you can communicate in English, you can:
• Contact people from all over the world. Talk about your ideas and opinions on Internet discussion groups. Send e-mail to interesting people. Learn about their life and culture.
• Travel more easily. Communicate with people wherever you go — English is spoken in more than 100 countries (source). Ask directions, have a conversation, or... ask for help. Who knows, maybe English will save your life someday!
Push your career forward
If you want a good job in business, technology, or science, get out of that armchair and start learning English now! (If you already have a good job, start learning before you lose it!)
Knowing English will let you:
• Put "excellent knowledge of English" on your CV. Get your dream job, and earn more money.
• Gain technical knowledge. English is the language of technology, especially high technology like computer science, genetics, and medicine. If you're going to read about technology, you'll probably have to do it in English.
• Learn computer science. Read technical articles without difficulty. Or write your own articles!
• Be a world-class businessman (or -woman). It's simple. International business is done in English. And all business today is international. So if you want to play, you have to know English — to contact other businesspeople, go to conferences, read international business newspapers and magazines, etc.
• Become a better scientist. Contact scientists from other countries, go to international conferences, visit academic centers abroad. Learn about new scientific discoveries by reading papers, books, and magazines.
• Use your computer more effectively. Most computer applications are in English, so you will understand them better — and become a better employee.
• Learn new skills for your job. The section "Get access to knowledge" explains how English helps you learn.
Enjoy art like never before
English lets you feel the culture of the world like no other language. With a good knowledge of the English language, you can do wonderful things:
• Watch American and British films in the original. Once you try it, you'll never go back to dubbed versions!
• Read great books. Every famous book was written in English or it was translated into English. There is an amazing number of titles — from classic plays like Hamlet to modern thrillers like Jurassic Park.
• Enjoy English-language music more. Believe us: music is much better if you can understand the words.
English is easy to learn
English is not only the most useful language in the world. It is also one of the easiest languages to learn and to use:
• Simple alphabet — no special symbols such as é or ä. Type in sweet, part, film on your computer. Now try süß (German), (Polish), (Russian). Which is easier?
• Easy plurals — simply add s to a word. One car, five cars; one telephone, two telephones... There are very few exceptions.
• Words are easy to learn. In French, it's la fille and le chien. In German, it's das Mädchen and der Hund. In English, they're just a girl and a dog. And that's all you need to know.
• Short words. Most of the basic words are short: run, work, big, go, man. Long words are often shortened: sitcom = situational comedy, fridge = refrigerator, OS = operating system. Speaking English saves you time. :-)
• Words don't change. But in many languages, one word has many forms:
English: The man is blind.
German: Der Mann ist blind.
English: This is a blind man.
German: Das ist ein blinder Mann.
English: I see a blind man.
German: Ich sehe einen blinden Mann.
• Call everybody "you". You can say "Do you speak English?" to your friend or to your teacher. In other languages, you have to use the right word for the right person. In English, everybody is equal. :-)
• English is everywhere. You can easily access English-language television, music, websites, magazines, etc. You don't have to learn from boring textbooks. You can learn and use your English at the same time. Using your English is especially important because it increases your desire to learn.
Get satisfaction
English is not only useful — it gives you a lot of satisfaction:
• Making progress feels great. We'll never forget the moment we discovered we could speak with Americans or watch TV in English.
• You will enjoy learning English, if you remember that every hour you spend gets you closer to perfection.
• Using English is fun, too, because every sentence you speak or write reminds you of your success.
English makes you a more powerful, happier person. It is not difficult to imagine some situations where knowing English gives you a great feeling.
We hope that, with our help, your progress in English will soon give you a lot of satisfaction, too. Many people have followed our methods and watched their "English power" grow very quickly. You can read about these people in the Successful English learners section of Antimoon.com.
English makes you feel good
If you have read our article "Why learn English", you already know that English can improve your life. It can let you get smarter, meet people, earn more money, etc. But have you ever wondered how it would feel to know English well?
Imagine...
You're at an English class. Everybody is doing an exercise. People are all talking about the exercise; there is a lot of noise. You finished two minutes ago, and now there are people around you asking questions. "What does extemporaneous mean?", "What's the answer in point 2?". You know the correct answers and you help them. You know why they asked your help — because they know you are good. You feel respected and admired. The teacher has noticed your skills, too. He looks at you with admiration.
You're flying on a plane, coming back from your vacation. You see the person next to you reading an American newspaper. Since the flight is going to take a long time, you decide to have a conversation. "The engines are awfully loud, aren't they?", you say. "Yeah. It looks like the airplane may break into pieces at any moment", he laughs. The conversation goes on. You speak easily and you enjoy it. A moment before touchdown, your neighbor says: "You speak just like an American. Your pronunciation, your grammar — it's amazing!" You get off the plane smiling. What a great day!
You're on a bus to school, just like every day. You decide to spend the time reading a few pages out of a book. You take it out. The book is in English. As you start reading, the person sitting next to you looks at the book's cover and notices the English title. The person gives you a long look of admiration and envy. A moment later, some other people in the bus start staring at you. They would like to be able to read an English book, but they can't. You feel satisfaction. You're glad you've spent time on learning English.
You're at an international airport. You walk quickly, and you look confident. You understand all the signs around you, you understand the announcements. You know that if there were any problems you could easily communicate with the airport's staff in their own language. You walk to your gate, thinking how much more difficult it would be if you didn't know English.
You're having a great moment with your girlfriend. You're sitting close to each other, your hand is around her back. The radio is playing a beautiful song. You can understand every word of it. Your girlfriend asks: "What's the song about?". "It's about love, honey", you reply. "You're so smart. I wish I knew English like you do", she says. You feel loved and admired.
How to learn English
1. Passion: Become crazy about learning English.
2. Dictionary: Get a good English dictionary.
3. No mistakes: Never make mistakes. Use correct English from the beginning.
4. Pronunciation: Learn to pronounce English sounds. Learn to understand phonetic transcription and the phonetic alphabet.
5. Input: Get English into your head by reading and listening to lots of English sentences.
• Reading
• Movies
• Adventure games
6. SuperMemo is a powerful computer program that you can use to learn English. We have used it for 8 years and it has helped us a lot. It's probably the most important computer program in our lives.
You may want to read about why you can trust our advice about learning English and why we are recommending products in some of our articles.
Reading — the most important way to learn English
Why read
Before you can start speaking and writing in English, your brain must get enough input (correct English sentences). You can't speak English if you have never seen an English sentence in your life. This is obvious. And you can't speak English well if you have not seen a large number of English sentences.
There are two ways to get correct English sentences: listening and reading. Both are good, but reading is usually much easier than listening. With the help of a good dictionary, you will be able to understand English texts much more easily than, for example, English television or movies.
Reading can really change your English. It can let you use English grammar and vocabulary naturally and fluently. How? We explain in our introduction to input:
If you read a few books in English, you will see that your English has become better. You will start using new vocabulary and grammar in your school compositions and e-mail messages. You will be surprised, but English phrases will just come to you when you are writing or speaking! Things like the past simple tense and how to use the word "since" will become part of you. You will use them automatically, without thinking. Correct phrases will just appear in your head.
It will be easy to use English, because your brain will only be repeating the things that it has seen many times. By reading a book in English, you have given your brain thousands of English sentences. They are part of you now. How can you make a mistake and say "I feeled bad", if you have seen the correct phrase ("I felt bad") 250 times in the last book you've read? You simply cannot make that mistake anymore.
How to read
These great results come especially quickly if you do three things when reading:
1. Pay attention to interesting things: new words, phrases, and grammar structures.
2. Use your dictionary to learn about these interesting things. The more you use your dictionary, the faster your progress. If you don't like to stop reading (to look up a word in your dictionary), you can write down all the interesting sentences, or you can underline them in the book with a pencil. You can learn the words and grammar in these sentences later.
3. Add these interesting things to SuperMemo. This will give you everyday contact with correct English. With SuperMemo, you will not forget useful words and grammar. Because of this, you can build your knowledge very quickly.
What to read
You should always read English texts which are at the "right level". What does it mean? There should be some words that you don't know, because you want to learn something. However, there shouldn't be too many difficult words, because you don't want to use your dictionary 10 times in one sentence.
Here are the kinds of texts that you can read in English:
• Literature. If normal books are too difficult for you, we recommend the Penguin Graded Readers series. They are famous books, written in simple language. There are many levels of difficulty — from "easystarts" (which use only 200 basic English words) to "advanced" (3000 words).
• Science books. If you are interested in science, you can get great science books written in English. There are many famous English-speaking authors in many subjects, such as psychology, evolutionary biology, physics, or economics.
• Textbooks. If you're studying at a college and you use textbooks written by English-speaking authors, you can get the original English versions. If you are learning a new computer language, you can use a book in English. You will learn your subject and English at the same time.
• The Web. On the World Wide Web you are completely free. You can read about every subject in the world — whatever interests you. Because you will often spend many hours surfing the Web, you can also learn a lot of English.
There are also some small things to do. For example, you can start using English versions of your operating system, your word processor, and other applications. You can also find people who will write e-mail in English to you. You should simply read in English as much as possible.
Watching movies in English
English learners have a big advantage over learners of other languages: Hollywood is in America and it makes English-language movies. So, if you know English and you like movies, why don't you watch movies in English? You can have fun and, at the same time, learn a lot of English.
Why watch movies in English
If you are a fan of movies, you will notice that they are much better in the original. Watching a dubbed film will never be as good as watching the original version. Why? Because in the original version, the actor's voices are real. Everything is just like the director imagined.
Learning English by watching movies is learning by input. The learning process is similar. First you get lots of correct English sentences into your head. Then you can imitate them and you can make your own sentences. And isn't that why you are learning English — to be able to make your own sentences? That is why watching movies (just like reading books) is such a great way to learn English.
Of course, there are important differences between movies and books. With books, you learn how native speakers write in English. With movies, you learn how they speak English.
• You learn what words they use. When speaking, native speakers use words and phrases that you often won't find in a book. Spoken language is different from "book language". For example:
Book: The price of five dollars was acceptable, and I decided to purchase it.
Spoken: It was, like, five bucks, so I was like "okay".
In many movies, the dialog is like real spoken English. Movies also let you learn informal and slang words which are not yet in English dictionaries. For example, in a movie you might hear Give me the freaking keys!, but you won't find the word freaking in a dictionary.
• You learn how they say these words. Movies let you improve your pronunciation, not only grammar and vocabulary. If you listen to Americans or Britons speaking English, you can learn to speak like them.
• You learn to understand spoken language. Movies are made for native speakers, not for learners of English. So the actors talk fast, just like native speakers talk in real life.
How to learn as much as possible?
The difficulty of watching movies
You won't learn anything from the movie if you don't understand it. You probably won't enjoy it, either. :-(
This is one big problem with movies: They are much more difficult to understand than books. If you don't understand a word in a book, you can simply look it up in a dictionary, because the word is written there (you know its spelling). With a movie, you sometimes hear something, but you don't know what it is. Sometimes you don't even know if you've heard one word or two. There are other reasons why listening is more difficult than reading, and they all mean one thing: If you want to understand a movie, you have to know a lot of English words — and not only their spelling, but also their pronunciation.
You can greatly improve your vocabulary by reading books, looking up words in your dictionary, and repeating them with SuperMemo. But even if you read 200 books in English, you would still not understand everything! There will always be some words that you didn't know before. And some of the dialog will be spoken very quickly and unclearly. (You should know that sometimes even Americans can't understand some of the dialog.)
What to do when you don't understand something
If you are playing the movie from tape or DVD, you can stop it whenever you don't understand a sentence. You can then play the sentence many times and try to look up words in a dictionary (which is not easy, because you have to guess the spelling!).
Most DVDs let you turn on subtitles. With subtitles, it is easy to look up difficult words in your dictionary, because you know the spelling.
However, there is an even better way. ESLnotes.com is a website which has "guides" to popular movies. A guide is a list of over 100 difficult sentences from a movie with explanations. (Here is an example guide to The Graduate.)
Now the most important thing: You first read the explanations; then you watch the movie. So, when you're watching the film, you already know the necessary vocabulary!
We think this is the best strategy for watching movies, because:
• It feels great to understand a movie in the original! It's very, very motivating when you learn a word, and then the knowledge of the word lets you enjoy the movie. It gives you a lot of pleasure — so you will want to learn more English vocabulary to understand even more.
• You don't have to stop the movie. (Or you have to stop it less frequently.) You can simply watch it and enjoy it.
A guide doesn't explain all the difficult sentences in the movie. But the explanations in the guide should be enough to help you understand what's happening in the movie.
Learning techniques
What else can you do to learn from movies more effectively? The same things that you should do when reading books:
1. Pay attention to interesting things: new words, phrases, and grammar structures.
2. Use your dictionary to learn about these interesting things. You can stop the movie to look up difficult words. You can also write down all the interesting sentences, and look them up later. But do use your dictionary!
3. Add these interesting things to SuperMemo. If there is an ESLnotes guide to the movie, you can add all the sentences in the guide to your SuperMemo collection — before watching the film. Later, you can also add the words that you have written down when watching the movie.
Where to get movies in English?
Getting movies in English may be a problem if you are not in an English-speaking country. Most stores will have only movies dubbed in the local language. Dubbed movies help people who do not know English, but if you are an English learner, they are your greatest enemy. :-)
How can you get original versions of movies? Here are some ideas that you can try:
• Your cable or satellite TV may have movie channels in English (for example, HBO is a popular channel which shows a lot of movies; unfortunately, it is not free).
• You can buy DVDs or videotapes at Amazon.com. (Or Amazon.co.uk, if you are in Europe.) However, the prices may be a problem. You can buy your favorite movies on DVD or videotape. But you can't buy every film that you want to see.
• In some countries, movie theaters (cinemas) show films with subtitles in the local language (and not dubbed movies). It is a good idea to watch them, especially if you can avoid reading the subtitles. :-)

Learning English with adventure games
What is an adventure game?
An adventure game is a kind of computer game which is similar to a movie. There is always a story and the main character (usually a person, such as a detective or a pirate). The difference is that you don't just watch — instead, you control the main character. You use your mouse or keyboard, and your character moves around in the game world, looks at things, picks them up, uses them, and talks to other characters. Your character also talks to you. For example, when you tell him to look at something, he will tell you what he sees. You can then use this information to decide what to do next.
Anyone who played an adventure game knows that they are great fun. But adventure games are also a great way to improve your English.
Why adventure games are good for your English
When you play an adventure game:
• You improve your understanding of spoken English. In modern adventure games, you can hear all the characters speak real English. The dialogue is easier to understand than in movies: it is slower, clearer, and you can usually stop the action and listen to a phrase again. Therefore, playing an adventure game is excellent listening practice.
• You gain a "grammar intuition". When you play an adventure game, you have contact with a large number of grammatically correct and natural English sentences. These sentences are not only spoken (as on TV). In many adventure games you can also turn on subtitles. If you do, you will hear the pronunciation and see the spelling at the same time. The result? More will be left in your memory.
• You improve your pronunciation. Listening to good spoken English is always good for your pronunciation.
• You increase your motivation. When you play an adventure game, you are in a situation where knowing English makes you feel good. It's simple. If you can understand the dialogue, you know what is going on in the game. This helps you solve the puzzles and understand the humor. You have fun. You give your brain a signal: "English gives me pleasure", and your motivation increases!
How to use adventure games?
When you're playing an adventure game, you learn some English even if you don't want to. But of course you can learn even more if you try.
One useful technique when playing an adventure game is very simple: use a dictionary. Pause the game frequently and look up new English words in a good dictionary for learners. You will understand more of the game, and of course you will learn some English vocabulary.
If you are really motivated to learn English, you can write down all the new words. Later, you can add these words to your SuperMemo collection so that you will remember them forever.
If you want to improve your pronunciation, pause the game frequently and try to repeat English sentences as well as you can. This is a great pronunciation exercise, and it's much more interesting than exercises in textbooks. Adventure games make it possible, because the pronunciation in those games is clearer than pronunciation in movies.
If you are especially interested in improving your understanding of spoken English, you can play the game without subtitles. In order to play, you will have to understand spoken language. At first, you will surely have problems, but you will become better and better. Notice that when using this technique, it will be difficult to look up words in a dictionary, because you will not see the words on the screen — you will only hear them.
Recommended adventure games
Which adventure game should you buy? The short answer is: Any game from LucasArts Entertainment. You will get an intelligent story (more intelligent than most Hollywood movies), incredible humor, beautiful graphics, stirring music, and voices of talented actors. LucasArts' adventure games create a true atmosphere. They take you to another world — a world that you don't want to leave...
Here are the latest adventure games by LucasArts Entertainment. They all have spoken dialogues, and you can also turn on subtitles.
• Grim Fandango. Read the review at GamesDomain, the official page on the LucasArts website, download the demo version (54 MB), or buy the game at Amazon.com (only if you live in the USA).
• Curse of Monkey Island. Read the review at GamesDomain, the official page on the LucasArts website, download the demo version (18 MB), or buy the game at Amazon.com (only if you live in the USA).
• Escape from Monkey Island. Read the review at GamesDomain, the official page on the LucasArts website, download the demo version (32, 82, or 116 MB), or buy the game at Amazon.com (only if you live in the USA) or at Amazon.co.uk (if you live in Europe).