The three most common grievances I have heard from my students are:
However, they say they can easily understand English, and they know WHAT to say. But when it comes to expressing it in English they fold up.
I’ll say if you know what to say, you are among the extremely intelligent group of people. You have more than half of your work done for you.
Before I start on the above points I’d like to make a few things clear:
I’ll give you an example:
One of my students, Arvind Thareja, showed me a sentence his boss had said:
All English learniages are hanky-pankying with person’s money.
That poor man was trying to say that all English institutes were cheating people of their money and not teaching them English.
Arvind was already so impressed by his boss’s English that he wanted to speak like him! His pet observation was:
My boss’s English is so great that sometimes I don’t understand a word!
Stunned by the revelation that his boss was speaking nonsense, he completed 5 levels in a record 3 months. And when I met him after three months of his leaving my classes, he had acquired the structure and vocabulary of an advanced speaker. He just applied the principles of self learning we teach in the class.
Incidentally, you don’t have to come to the class forever to learn English. There are ways you can learn a language yourself. Get the principles right. They work on it yourself. We teach that in the class.
3. English is a lot different from your native or first language in a variety of ways, like:
A story goes that General Motors car, Chevy Nova, did not sell well in Spanish speaking countries because no va in Spanish means ‘no go’! But, apparently this isn’t true. However, people in French Canada don’t want to drive a Lacrosse because it refers to a slang term for masturbation! Check this site for the full story:
https://jalopnik.com/urban-legends-the-chevy-nova-169401
I won’t quote because I don’t remember where I read it.
So, for instance, if people say we don’t sell no milk instead of we don’t sell milk, it is accepted with a smile as a ‘kind of dialect’!
Here’s another example, again, I don’t remember where I saw it, and so, I can’t quote:
The reported speech has different forms that are more acceptable today than say, 30 years ago.
Direct speech:
Kiara: “I love that song!”
Reported speech:
Kiara said she loved that song. (Standard English)
Kiara went, “I love that song!”
Kiara was like, “I love that song!”
Kiara was all, “I love that song!”
What I’m trying to tell you is, don’t get frustrated. Don’t aim for the so-called sophisticated English – even that is considered just a dialect! Some even say the English spoken by the BBC anchors is not sacrosanct. Just a dialect! A Canadian I met said BBC English is just pretentious – la-di-dah- and that the Canadian English was the real deal!
So, just remember this:
All you need to be able to do is to get your point across. The use of language ends when you get the feedback that your point has been understood they way you intended it to be. Period.
So, is English a lazy language, spoken by lethargic people? Not at all! It is a language that is the liveliest, most dynamic, adaptable, and musical language currently in use across the world.
Okay, maybe I have laid it on a bit thick, but then you get what I’m trying to say, don’t you?
With just 5 vowels and 20 vowel sounds, it is really confusing. Who would imagine cough, bough, rough, through could all have different vowel sounds? I borrowed this from the comedy serial I Love Lucy.
Then you have the dropped letter menace. Why can’t you say chocolate instead of choklit? You drop the second vowel sound and the last one is a schwa.
Oh, the dreaded schwa again! You end up saying veji-table and not the sweet-sounding vegetable. Because your native speaker could ask you, “Sorry, which table?”
I bought this.
Or
I would have bought this.
They say both the sentences in the same length of time!
So, now, let’s look at these complaints: