Learning English

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. So wrote Mark Twain, and it’s an important point: writers should say exactly what they mean: coming close isn’t good enough. To choose the right word, though, a writer has to know his possibilities. A healthy and ever-growing vocabulary is a must for writers. Vocabulary study has probably been part of our school life for years. It doesn’t end with graduation, however; you’ll be meeting and learning new words for the rest of your life. They won’t be coming at your vocabulary lists, but they’ll be coming at you just the same. How, then, do you make yourself as tuned in as possible to the torrent of new words you will encounter? It helps to be aware of context clues and roots.

When you were a baby, how did you learn your native language? How did you learn the meanings of the words you heard? You didn’t look them up in a baby’s first dictionary. You learned your language from context – the situations in which words were used. Sometimes context clues were straightforward. When your father handed you a cookie and said, “Cookie”, you made the connection fairly quickly. Other clues were more subtle. When your mother smiled, hugged herself, and cheerfully said, “I feel terrific”. You inferred that terrific meant good. When she moaned, and said, “I feel miserable”, you began to figure out what miserable meant. You didn’t need to know that word comes from Latin miserabilis, meaning pitiable. You are still using clues to learn new words. Now, in addition to words you hear you can find meanings by observing the contexts of words you read. Rarely does a word stand alone. There are usually surrounding words to help you out.

When you start learning English you acquire a new mode of life. You start doing crazy things, like speaking to yourself aloud, spending your evening reading a dictionary, hunting for interesting phrases with the purpose of accumulating your vocabulary, trying to recollect them all at once or jotting them down in your diary not to forget. It is an exciting feeling of a new start and of future perspectives a good command of English opens before you.

By setting out on a journey to new and exciting achievements a learner has to distinguish what ways will be better to choose for reaching his goal relatively quickly and efficiently.

Linguists and methodologists described many efficient strategies of English language learning. Many of them proved to be highly efficient and brought really amazing results in testing.