(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
Loading ...9 months of school
Since I moved to U.S. 4 years ago this is the first time I feel my English is getting bad. When I got in here I went to school for 9 months to learn English then I took two more different courses to get better. After all these stuff I thought I still was not ready to talk to people.
After I leave school my grammar was very good however I wasn’t able to talk to people, that probably happened because I’m shy and I didn’t want to fail. I didn’t want to look bad in front of people I didn’t know.
Most of the time my brain created the right sentence but when I spoke the words kind of changed the order and the people I was speaking to got totally confused.
Then one day I read an article that said “Speak Up! Lose your fear of speak to people”, in that article the writer explained how to talk to people even though you don’t know all the words. He said that if you wait until you master the grammar to talk to someone you’ll die and this time will never come. He also gives advice on how useful can be watch TV News and TV series to learn words and slang.
After I read that article I realized that I was wasting my time in books and I had to go out and speak to people. It was not an easy task but I did. It helped me a lot to improve my English. I still have to improve a lot.
Another barrier I had when I was trying to learn was that in my first two years in U.S. I mostly worked with people that speak Portuguese and Spanish. I learned Spanish first than I learned English. The only good thing about it was that I was able to pick up girls who speak Spanish, other than that Spanish didn’t help me at all.
In one hand It’s so comfortable to speak our native language(Portuguese in my case) in a foreign country, on the other hand if you do that very often you won’t be able to learn and master the foreign language and it’ll be a big barrier to be a successful person.
If you are learning a new language never give up. Remember that everything takes time and a lot of hard work.
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11 Comments Received
August 28th, 2008 @3:22 am
yup…you are right…
never give up to learn anything..
August 29th, 2008 @11:11 am
It sure is a different experience when you apply what you have learned in real life situations. Just keep on practicing… I am sure you will be speaking English fluently soon. Cheers!
August 30th, 2008 @5:24 am
Yeah… in the past I thought that my English was good but now, some people saying that I have problems with my grammar. Thus, I try to blog everyday and hoping that I can improve my grammar and vocab. Reading blogs improve my English too.
September 1st, 2008 @3:28 pm
Hi!
I read on the topic you wrote about you learning English language.
You know, you have a great blog and I find that it is quite well-written. In fact, recently when you posted regarding Brazil and football etc. I shared and posted your URL to my friends and relatives male especially. My nephew wrote back to thank me and said that it is a great and interesting blog. So do not worry about your grammer so much, you did well and you are quite creative too. I wish you well and keep on writing because it will help improve beside talking to people. I agree with you 100 percent to watch TV news and some English programmes on aire will help to improve. In fact, I advised my local students here to do the same. I told them to read daily newspapers, watch TV English programmes and talk to friends in English Language, just try even though they are not fluent now. Beside all these, I advised them to build up words/more on vocabulary and check the meaning. You see .. I am not a teacher by profession but I teach English Language to some local students here in my new area, Marang, Terengganu - East Coast of Malaysia since most of them here are very poor in the language.
In fact, there are a few blogs which guide us in this language, I will check and come back to let you have the URL of such blogs. So far, I know I have saved one blog in my feed of the same nature.
Do not worry and keep up the good work. Don’t forget to visit my blog @ http://lilyarbee.blogspot.com/
Bye from Malaysia
Lily Arbee
September 1st, 2008 @5:07 pm
Don’t feel so bad. I’m from the U.S., live in Japan, and use English all the time and my own English is getting worse.
September 1st, 2008 @9:19 pm
I can’t disagree enough especially for us whose second language is English (or third…) I taught English as a Second language and the major challenge we face is the usage of English language after the teaching session. It takes a lot of self-discipline to have use English even when with peers who spoke your first language but it pays a lot to speak the language you’re learning than unlearning it after the teaching session:) Yes, we don’t have to give up in this learning quest:)
September 2nd, 2008 @12:19 am
This is a great way to learn. Plus, most people aren’t that great with grammar. I’m one of them.
Anyhow, remember as a child when you were first learning to speak your natural language? It wasn’t as if you were able to form sentences and paragraphs right off the bat. 
Anything new takes time. Good Luck in your endeavors! 
September 2nd, 2008 @12:23 am
I think my english bad both grammar and speaking. But i just write my blog in English no matter how hard and maybe some out US or Europe friends will lough reading my english hahaha.
September 2nd, 2008 @7:14 am
Hang in there, President Bush is still working on it too. I expect he is a slow learner though!
September 2nd, 2008 @10:56 am
Thanks everybody for all the comments. I appreciate a lot and hope you come back!
September 10th, 2008 @5:52 pm
I lived in Spain for two years in the early nineties. In order to learn the language, I enrolled in an institute, but frankly I learned the most by dating Spanish women. Don’t give up the reading, writing, TV, or movies; but if you’re single, try to find yourself an American girlfriend. That’ll keep you talking in English!
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