Search results for 'tag:Spelling tag:Learn English' matching tags 'Spelling' and 'Learn English'

Re: favorite vs. favourite

Anonymous — Thu, 01 May 2008 01:00:42 GMT

Well, in my class of English litterature, a couple of year ago, I saw a documentary made by CBC and ABC showing how spelling of a lot of words changed within the community of the settlers of the Thirteen Colonies in 18th century (1700 to 1800 for those "uneducated" american :P lol i'm gonna be shot for this... lol). It is actually common that spelling and pronounciation of words in a colony change from the way they are in their mother-country (I've been to Australia in 2000 for the Olympics and had to re-learn English...) It's only because languages evolve and geographical and social component enrich it differently from place to place. Americans eat french fries, Englishs eat chips, and Frenchs eat "patates frites" ("patates" = potatoes, "frites" = fries, French sintax is simply inverted in English)(please note that in French there no allusion to the... French part of the thing...). Same phenomenon occured in New-France; we Quebecer (your French-Canadians neighbours) have often some trouble understanding the languages our French "cousins" speak,(opposite is true as well...)

Anonymous
I think that "favourite" is the Canadian way of spelling and and "favorite" is the American way. :P

Er... and yes most Canadians use "favourite" (the British way) because they have been parts of the British Empire for longer than Americans.

Thanks for having read this little History and Social Sciences class!

Re: What makes English so difficult to learn?

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:34:01 GMT

Hello, another English teacher here. I have been teaching English in China for about 2 and a half years now and also speak fluent French, decent Spanish and am learning Chinese (not as hard as you may think once you get the hang of those tones, easy grammar). Now I'll start off by saying that English seems to be an incredibly easy language to communicate with (and by this I mean to give the general idea of what you're trying to say). However, if you want to learn English like a native speaker then it's a completely different story. The pronunciation CAN be difficult to learn depending on your native language and also the age you attempt to learn it at. Training your tongue and mouth to move the same way a native speaker does can be difficult to do, especially if you're like many of my students who got their start at an older age or didn't have good teachers. I've also noticed that my younger students are able to mimic my speech much easier than the older ones speaking, both of whom are studying at the same level. I started learning French when I was 4 years old (Quebec French, I'm Canadian) and because of the quality of my teachers and my young age I was able to become quite good with my pronunciation. With my Chinese because I'm learning from scratch from native speakers my pronunciation is also decent (notice I said decent, not great, although when speaking Chinese I'm always understood). Native language has a lot to do with it too as the sounds you use in one language may be very different for another. I've taught in both the north and south of China and find that the people all have the same problems. Chinese people have problems with s (they often pronounce it as a sh sound) and with closing their mouth for the letter m ("sometimes" is a nightmare for them and they often say it like "suntine"). L and R can also be troublesome. One can't forget sentence stress as well as well as linking words together to make it go smoothly.

The vocabulary can also be a pain. Someone here mentioned 150,000 words in the English language but the number is actually much higher. The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition) contains over 600,000 definitions. Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged contains 475,000 main headwords and it is believed the language grows by 25,000 words a year. Don't believe me, check Wikipedia. There's also the difference in spelling and vocabulary between the different forms of English. British English and American English use different words and the words that are the same can be spelled differently. American English and Canadian English essentially share the same vocabulary to a large degree but the spelling of Canadian English in many ways is closer to British English. British English is pretty much the English form most Asian and European countries will learn but American pop culture will also have an influence, not to mention the American economy and it's impact. This can all be very confusing. To the person saying they are tired of using "well" as in "well, then..." there are many substitutes you could use.

The grammar is also a nuisance. It's not the hardest of things but certainly isn't the easiest. Sure French has a gender attached to all of it's nouns (which I hated when learning it), but English still has more exceptions to it's rules that need to me memorized. So many even native speakers have trouble with it. A language like Chinese that may seem hard to speak actually has very simple grammar. For example if you wanted to ask someone where they are you would say "ni zai na li" or simply "ni zai nar" (you where?). To ask a question in Chinese you merely ad "ma" to the end of a statement. "Ta hui shuo zhongwen" is "he/she speaks Chinese whereas "ta hui shuo zhongwen ma" is "does he/she speak Chinese?". Also in Chinese as there are no forms of he or she.

It's impossible to say which language is easy and which is hard when compared to each other because there are so many things that need to be taken into consideration. Let's just say that English has it's easy parts and it's ridiculously difficult parts as well. Speaking at a native speaker level can be done and I know people who have done this, but it takes a lot of hard work, good instruction, and a good learning atmosphere. I hope all that made sense, I stumbled onto this site a 2 in the morning and am quite tired.

Is Anybody interested in a "penfriend" Email friend?

Mark09 — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 13:05:28 GMT

Hi my name is Mark and i want to learn English I'm currently doing a course and i need to lean it ,if anyone wants to learn German instead i will help you and correct you in you're spelling or grammar .You can email me marcuo09@yahoo.de

Thank you Mark

Re: Hi friend, please help me correct this paragraph.

Goodman — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:29:09 GMT

Quangtrungvtv wrote:
Day by day, I learn english very hard , I find every method and everyone could help me learn . I go to night class everyday expect sunday evening . I joint English forum and find many friend help me . I always try my best to learn english but I had some difficult are : the fisrt conditional, second conditional, third conditional, and passive form , If some in English forum explane those , I am very thanks. And remember check all sentences I wrote here. Thanks my friends.

Hi Quangtrungvtv,

Here is what I see and my comment:

Some phrases you used either donât serve the purpose you have intended, or they are not properly used. There are obvious capitalization, punctuations and spelling errors. Here is how I would rewrite the paragraph to smooth out the tone and the rough edges:

Everyday, I try to learn and study English very hard. I have tried every method and people are very kind in helping me to learn. I attend night class every evening except Sunday. I frequently visit English forums and find many volunteers to help me. I am eager to learn but I have many difficulties to overcome. For examples, conditional usage and passive usage are some of the areas I need help on.

I am very thankful if anyone at the forum can explain the differences and please correct my sentences.

Thank you, my friends .

Re: How can i learn english well

Brunate — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:59:29 GMT

Try the website which I have made: Google "Josie's Poems". There are over 300 new poems with voice recordings. To read English and hear it at the same time is an excellent way to improve both your spelling, listening and pronunciation. I've written an article about how this helps ESL students both for this website and main ESL websites. I have been an ESL teacher. Rhyming poetry helps our own children and it will help anyone else wishing to learn English - and you'll have lots of fun at the same time. Josie Whitehead

Re: which are built of brick

Yoong Liat — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 03:57:29 GMT

Quangtrungvtv wrote:
I have too big ambition, so I feel difilcult to learn English?

I am too ambitious, so I feel it is difficult to learn English?

I think you're discouraged. You should read more books and refer to dictionaries more often. Be more careful with your spelling.

As Barbara said, you can improve with the help of the members here. One of the best gurus is Barbara.

Re: "Chat" phrases you hate

TammyBaby — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 05:27:02 GMT

Francesca wrote:
Of course Elfsleepy: www.thechatpage.com no cams, just people who want to meet friends from all over the world and learn English

I myself didn't find it a good one, Francesca! Last time I visisted there, there was a girl flirting a guy, and she kept talking all the time like "Hey, where r u? Do you hate me?", etc. Noone could chat there! It's hard to find a good chatroom! Native speakers are not interested in learning English, of course. They wanna talk, not teach. Unless they are very kind, they won't help you anything with your poor language. If you cannot understand them, they simply say bye (if they are polite) or stop chatting without saying anything (if they are not).

But if you simply go to a chatroom to learn English with people have the same purpose. They are (all) non-native speakers. Their English, even good, is not really natural. And you find that you don't want learn their English, anyway. Non-native speakers wanna seek native ones to practise English but sometimes, native speakers find that non-native ones seem to take advantages from them. And of course, they stop chatting! I've got several emails with resume/motivation letters attached from many non-speaking English countries, they ask me to correct them (even I'm not a native speaker!). Of course I don't have time to do that, unless they are from people I already had some chats with and I consider as friends. I can help if they ask me when chatting with me, but not a couple of long letters to check, even spelling mistakes. I get sick of them! I want to make friends, have some chit-chat, cultural exchanges... but NOT teaching English! My English is not that good!

So if you wanna talk with native speakers, try to improve your English by yourself first, so at least you can understand them in most of situations. They are willing to tell you what some slangs mean but not most of the time. I myself don't like the question "What does it mean?" all the time when I just use very simple English. When we go to a chatroom, just simply we want to have some gossips, to have fun. That's it! None wanna be an English teacher, neither do I. Teaching is some thing quite stressful, not that fun to do in free time. Anyway, best of luck for your English study! ^^

Cheers,
-Tammy

Re: I can teach people to learn spanish if you help me with English

Srewots — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 23:31:56 GMT

HI I'M BEN-CUDA AND IF YOU WANT TO LEARN ENGLISH I'M THE BEST PERSON TO TEACH IT TO YOU BECAUSE I'VE BEEN AWARDED MANY AWARDS FOR SPELLING BEES,CHALLENGE BOWLS,AND THE OCCASIONAL SPEED READING SO E-MAIL ME BACK IF YOU ARE INTERESTED,BECAUSE I WOULD BE EXSTADIC TO TEACH YOU.

Re: Do you want to learn English online?

Experienced_student — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 21:42:33 GMT

Learn any language online it is good as basics. I've done it as English is not my mother language. So I have improved my Grammar, spelling and writing. However I didn't find helpful the sw I used (can't say the name) for improving my pronunciation. Just my personal opinion.

Re: How to get rid of accent?

Englishuser — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:14:58 GMT

Hi kam,

i gotta say i've lost any hope to learn english...reading or hearing how others talk kinda depresses me cos i realize that i'm very bad at it, that i can't speak at all.

Your English is not as bad as you may think; judging by your written English you seem to know the language pretty well.

people make fun of me when i speak- my pronunciation is ridiculous

Who are these people?

i'm a self-study so it's much more difficult...because lots of times i have no clue whether i pronounce a word correctly or not.

It would be good for you to buy a good pronouncing dictionary or a good learner's dictionary where you could look up the pronunciation of unfamiliar words. Make sure you know the phonetics or the respelling system used in your dictionary.

plus i love english!

That's excellent! I hope you will never lose your interest in English!

talk with a friend from the states on yahoo every now and then...but i'm always scared to talk on the mic...so we type.

It would be very good for you to talk to this friend of yours. However, I do understand how you feel, and if I were you, I might start off listening to Americans talking in films, on the radio, and so on, and then imitate them. Later on, when you gain more confidence, you would feel at ease talking to native speakers.

wish me luck in my self-studying!

I wish you the best of luck! Remember: learning a language is never impossible - all you have to do is to study eagerly enough!

Englishuser