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The Art of English
The Art of Englishby: Teacher Dave Garrison Before you begin studying English, you should ask yourself a few questions.• Why do I want to study English?• What are my objectives in life?• What do I hope to achieve by improving my English communication skills?There
could be many reasons why people choose to improve their English
language skills. Is it because you want to improve your scores at
school? Maybe you just want to improve your speech to make your
holidays abroad more enjoyable.
Or better yet, it could be because you want to improve your
communication skills at work with your foreign colleagues or customers.
Maybe your parents are pressuring you to study English.Many
students try to study English as if it were a science subject like
mathematics or biology. In my view, they are making a big mistake.
English is an art. As such, it needs to be practiced. Doctors practice
medicine. Lawyers practice law. They are always practicing to improve
their skills. That’s why, at CELI, classes are focused on giving
students the maximum opportunity to practice using their skills in
individual and small group settings. Studying grammar will give you the
basic rules of how to express
yourself in any language, but only practice will give you the
vocabulary and confidence to improve how you use it to communicate.Like
every decision in life, practicing English must be something you want
to do. If you don’t make a strong commitment to constantly practice
your English then it just won’t happen. After
you have made up your mind that practicing English is something you
really want to do then setting goals is easy. As an example, maybe you
want to travel to an English-speaking country to study in a university.
That would be great right? To achieve your goal, you should list all of
the steps you need to reach your goal. The steps should be progressive
from the easiest to the most difficult. Keep a record of your goals and
which ones you have already achieved. For example, all students know
that if you want to study at a university in America, you will need to
take a TOEIC or TOEFL test and also pass an oral interview at the
embassy to get your student visa. All three of these tests combine the
four basic language skills including listening, speaking, reading and
writing. Students have so much stress about these tests.To best
achieve your long term goal, I recommend you practice English the
natural way. The natural way would be to focus on listening, speaking,
reading and writing in exactly that sequence. That is the natural way
people have learnt their own native language. If you can remember back
to your childhood, you will know you learnt to listen before you could
speak. As a small baby, you always looked up at your mother and
wondered why she was making all those strange noises. Then, when you
were about 1 year old, you suddenly realized some of those sounds your
mother was making actually meant something. So, you began to listen
more intently to determine which sounds were related to the things you
wanted until you could eventually copy those sounds and make your
mother understand what you wanted.Unfortunately, many school
systems in Asia adopt a different point of view because they prefer the
native language of the student to be firmly in place before teaching
the child a new language.
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