Monday, April 14, 2008

How to Improve English Skills

When students learn the English language, they want to be able to communicate with native speakers. That is, they must be able to listen, to speak, to read and to write with them. To master these four skills efficiently, they cannot rely on only Thai teachers teaching English and many things should be done in order to improve their English skills. Therefore, in my opinion, there are three guidelines for any student who wants to achieve these goals. They are--studying English with native speakers of English, devoting much time and effort on learning and understanding all systems of rules, and practicing using them very often in the daily life conversation.

As for the first guideline, it will be very lucky if any student has a good start learning English with the native speakers, since he or she can have early opportunity to listen and to speak the correct accents. Otherwise, his or her accents will be influenced by the mother tongue or the Thai language. Therefore, good model is necessary for his or her imitation. In case that there is no chance to have a native speaker, that person must listen to the conversations from the tapes with the scripts everyday. When the time passes by, that person can gradually pick up correct pronunciations, words, phrases and sentences.

As for the second guideline, that person must spend time and effort on learning and memorizing all kinds of rules so that that person knows the content of the English language. This includes the understanding the English phonological system, morphological system and the grammatical systems. To master all of these aspects, it is very time-consuming and it requires regular attention so that this knowledge is developed unconsciously. That person should spend much time on reading available textbooks and materials in addition to learning from the native speakers.

As for the last guideline, that person should learn the usages parts of the rules. This part will be concerned with the cultural aspects of the English language. That person must learn how to select pronunciations of words and phrases to agree with the context or how to select pronunciations of words and phrases to agree with the context or how to select pronunciations of words and phrases to agree with the context or how to write a word or a phrase in a particular context. That is, that person must understand different types of usages. Moreover, if that person can understand what he or she speak, how to speak and practice speaking regularly between friends or among friends, finally that person will develop his of her communicative skills and he or she will be able to speak with native speakers when the opportunity comes.

The above paragraph describe the three guidelines that a person should do in order to improve his or her English skills. The first is that the person should learn the correct accents from the native speakers. The second is that the person must spend time and effect in acquiring the content of the English language. The last is that the person must practice using the four skills as much as possible.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing this post. Many people have master degree in English Literature but they don't have English Language skills for jobs .

Unknown said...

There would favorably be more of the possible prospects and guides for the students to regard about and surely for the future these would even proved to be much better. semicolon checker