How you can learn English The traditional way is to take classes at a school. One-on-one (one teacher and one student) tutoring is more effective than sitting in a class with other students.Even better than that is to visit USA or England. Then you will hear English everywhere you go. My suggestion is to make friends with a native speaker and talk as much as you can with her or him. You can also hire a teacher on this website. If you have CD's you can do a lot of listening at first. Make sure you do passive listening as well as active listening (See my notebook entries about this). If you only do active listening you will not get good pronunciation. Follow the natural way by first listening, then speaking, then reading and finally writing.

Ten Levels of Language Skill I created a ten level scale for assessing a person's language skill in English or any other language. I use schools to further clarify but remember many adults fit into the elemetary school level and there are rare examples of child geniuses who fit into the university level. Level 10 great writers poets and other word masters Level 9 same as level 8 with additional proficiency such as great speaker Level 8 professional with greatly increased active vocabulary Level 7 professional with large passive vocabulary Level 6 advanced level, ready for university studies, can pass TOEFL Level 5 2nd intermediate level, laborers, high school students Level 4 1st intermediate level Level 3 beginner level 3 elementary school Level 2 beg. level 2 500 word vocabulary some communication possible Level 1 absolute beginner very limited vocabulary cannot communicate Some comments: the percentage of the population that fit into any level can be represented on a graph showing a modified Bell curve. This to say that the great majority will fall within the 3rd 4th and 5th levels..yes even adults. The transition to a higher level can be difficult or easy or impossible, depending on several factors. This is a subject for another notebook entry!

About myself and my teaching I am a retired college professor. I taught in a small college in Japan and at a community college in Sweden. I am a volunteer ESL teacher here in the US for 5 years. I am writing a book about how to learn a language and how to teach a language. This book has many innovative ideas. The ideas come from my 25 years of experience teaching English to foreigners, here and in other countries. I created a system from this experience and I call it NLLS, Natural Language Learning System. I love teaching and helping people to learn English. When I get a new student, I ask "what are your goals?". Does you want to learn conversational English, write better reports, improve pronunciation? After I know the goals I diagnose the student. What areas need immediate improvement? What needs longer treatment? There are two types of goals. Long-term goals that are successfully accomplished after months of study and short term goals that are successfully accomplished after each lesson. Long term goals take you on a journey that finally gets you to your destination. Short term goals bulid confidence and help to keep away the urge to quit. The problem of confidence! Some students have little confidence in their ability to learn a language. This causes a psychological block that hinders learning. My job is to remove this block. I have several effecient techniques for this task. If you have no physical disablities (deafness etc) you can learn quickly. The NLLS is an accelerated version of the natural way we all learn our native tongues. Taking advantage of the way we humans were designed to learn languages gives the learner a great advantage. Let's learn English the natural way!! John

Why is English spelling so difficult? The short and long answers! This is a question my students often ask when they are learning to read and write English. The short answer is that there are several languages mixed in to it, each with its own spelling conventions. The long answer follows. The original people of the British isles were the celts. Their languages are very different from the first invaders and colonists, the ancient Romans who spoke Latin. Then the Roman empire begin to crumble. The barbarians were attacking Rome! Roman soldiers who defended the Roman colonists from the war-like celts had to return home to Rome. The Roman colonists hired mercenaries (soldiers for hire) to protect them. Bad idea. About 500 AD the Jutes, The Angles and the Saxons (all from what is now Germany) came and instead of defending the colonists they took England from the Romans. The core of the English language is the Germanic languages of the Angles the Saxons and the Jutes. The Latin and Celtic words from this time can mostly be found in place names. Then another important group of invaders came and became residents. These were the Scandinavians. The Vikings began to raid the east of England in the 800's but soon stayed. They added their words to the mix. The last group of important invaders became the lords of much of England after the famous battle in 1066. They were the Normans. They spoke a kind of old French. During the 17th century The vogue was to use Latin words so many were "Englishized" and added to the mix. When England became a world empire in the 18th and 19th centuries many new worlds came from India, the far east and from all over the world. All these languages had different spelling conventions so theis is why English spelling is such a mess!

Pass the TOEFL ! Many students need to pass the TOEFL to start studying in a college or university. Some have failed it two or three times, even after taking expensive preparation courses designed to help them pass it. In my long experience teaching students and adult professionals who need to pass this important test I have learned several things that ensure their success. Here are three very important points to consider; 1. Is the applicant's level high enough? On my scale (that I have devised ) from 1 to 10 ( ten being the highest) the applicant needs to have at least a level 4 to succeed after 4 weeks intensive study. 2. Commitment The applicant needs to be committed to succeed. Half-hearted efforts will not work. 3. Good teacher plus homework The applicant needs a good teacher who knows the way and needs to do homework to suppliment the teacher's guidance. See my notebook entry "The principle of the spear" for details. I have helped many to pass the TOEFL iBT after 4 weeks of intensive study. None of them have ever failed this test when all three above points were satisfied. JOHN

A simple way to double your vocabulary Most people learn new words one at a time. They choose a new word and then memorize its meaning. Now here is a big "secret"! You can double your learning process, learn twice as many words if you follow this advice! Learn new words in pairs. The brain can see the pair as a single word and thus you save time and energy this way. You do not "see" the words as two separate items but as one. Now for the practical application. You choose a word and then add to it on your flashcard (See my entry on flashcards) and a second word that is: a word with the opposite meaning (antonym) a word that has a similar or same meaning (synonym) or a word that has some sort of connection to it. Separate the two words by a slashes (/) and look at them as "'a single word'". I will give examples of these three types of word pairs. opposite good /bad, slow /fast, same or similar talky /loquacious, scarlet /red connection train /ticket, husband /wife Try it and see how fast you will learn ! Hope this helps, John

bored/boring If I had one penny for how many times I heard foreign students use these two words I could retire comfortably. Let's look at the meanings of these two sentences. "I am bored" This means that I have nothing interesting to do and I dfo not like it. "I am boring" This means I make others bored! Like the tiresome professor with his long and uninteresting lecture that makes his students fall asleep. In my long experience teaching English in Japan and Sweden I remember that many times students say I am boring when they mean that they are bored! John

the value of a native-speaker as a teacher A native-speaker is the best choice as a teacher. Of course, there are various quality levels with native speakers... some NS s (native speakers) are uneducated, speak difficult dialects or use too much slang, etc., but this is a subject for another entry. I can illustrate the value of a NS this way. Have you ever used a copying machine? Have you ever noticed how the copy of the original is slightly worse than the original. Now copy the copy. What does that do? Yes, the copy of the copy is even worse. Now apply this analogy to the teacher whose native language is not the target language he/she is teaching. He will be teaching his "version" of English to his students! The results will be a further deterioration in the students speech. This explains why many students of English living in other countries have such difficulties in listening comprehension and pronunciation. John

What are flash cards and how to use them What are flash cards? They are small cards used to increase your vocabulary. You can buy them in a set or you can make your own with index cards (12.5 cm x 7.5cm). On one side you write an English word and on the opposite side you write the same word in your own language. If I am from Sweden and want to learn English I would write on one side "to teach" and on the other side "att undervisa". The plan to inmcrease you vocabulary with the cards Make a plan to spend ten minutes every day to learn five or ten new words. That would be 35 or 50 new words a week. At the end of the week you review all the new words of that week to "keep " the words in your memory permanently. How to use them There are three exercises that you do with the cards and you should do them one after the other in the correct sequence like this; First you look at the English word and say it aloud and turn over the card and say the word in your own language aloud. After you have done this you should then look at your five or ten cards again. Look at the English word and without looking at the back of the card say the word in your own language. Those you know you put in a pile on your left. Those you do not yet know put on your right. Concentrate on the right "I do not Know" pile until you know them all. look at the English word asnd say it aloud then turn over the card and say the word in your own language. The next step is to reverse the procedure and look at the word in your own language first and say it in English. Choosing the words you need. If you make your own cards you should choose carefully the words you need. This is a topic for another notebook entry!