Learning English - indrasentosa.com

Since this is unofficial blog, I would like to share my personal experience in learning English. Whatever you think about this writing, my purpose is just to share what I know about English, hopefully this article can give a good motivation for people who’re interested in English.

Despite my little knowledge about English, in spite of my awareness about my bad English, I’m going to share a tip in learning English. Let me begin my step!

How to be able to speak in English? That’s really a common question most people ask when they realize that with English they can get some great goals. Anyway I’m not going to tell you about how important English is, because I know that you all know more than I do.

Learning English like a Baby

by Indra Sentosa

English is a language. Like other languages, whether Indonesian, Arabic, German, or our mother tongue, the best way in learning English is by imitating people speak. Believe or not, agree or not we have learned our mother tongue on this way. No one can speak when they are a newborn baby. They even don’t know how to call their parents at first. But how can newborn babies finally speak perfectly when they grow up?

I never learn how to speak in my mother tongue. Nor my mom and my dad told me how to speak for the first time. They just let me imitate their language. So, everybody can’t deny that they have learned languages by imitating people around them. They learn from listening.

If we can speak our mother tongue without learning on purpose, why we can’t speak English after a long time we have been spending to learn English in formal way? We come to schools, universities, courses to learn English, but we get nothing. The answer is simple, it’s because we never apply a newborn baby’s way in speaking. We just don’t know how to learn language. We just don’t know how to change our old way in learning English. Start to imitate people speak in their language!

What Should We Do to Imitate Native Speakers?

If we live in non English-Speaking-Country, like Indonesia, sure we have rare chance to learn English by imitating people around us. So what to do? Never mind, as growing technology has reached everybody in the world, we can use it as a means of learning English. For instance there are lots of English audio files available on the Internet. We can get it to support our activity in learning spoken English. One of the best sources for this purpose is VOA Special English (http://voaspecialenglish.com). From that site we can access and download MP3 files of English. That way, we can learn English by listening and imitating how they use their language.

How About If We Face Difficulties In Listening?

Yeah, sometimes listening can make us frustrated in learning if we can’t catch what the speakers say. Fortunately VOA Special English audio files come with transcripts too. So, while listening, we can learn the correct spelling as well. I can guaranty this site can be a good start for you in applying your excellent way in learning English. Speakers speak very clearly, hence we can get used to the real pronunciations. It’s better than just taking your local English teacher as a model. How good their English is, they remain non native speakers who sometimes pronounce words improperly.

One more added value, VOA Special English is designed on purpose for English learners. They speak more slowly than the normal speech. It really helps us, new English learners.

Let’s imitate their way in speaking!