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Students
Welcome, students! Whether you are current students of mine or not, this page has something for you. If you are in one of my classes, this is where you will find help with your homework. If you’re studying with someone else – or even taking a break from learning English right now – you should still be able to learn something by reading what I’ve published for my current students here. Your teacher can help if you don’t understand something.
The most frequent question I am asked about language learning is: How long does it take, followed by: Which language is hardest to learn. The answers to both questions relate to a single fact, expressed in a common English saying: You get out what you put in. In other words, you will learn as much as you make the effort to learn. This is true of almost everything in life; we master skills slowly, bit by bit, not all at once. Patience is thus the key to language learning. You have spoken something else all your life; speaking English will take some time to get used to!
As far as how long it will take to learn English, that depends on both how hard you work and how much you want to learn – in both senses. If your goal is to speak and write like an educated native speaker about your age, you’re in for a long learning process. But if your desire to learn is sufficient, you won’t mind this, and will in fact welcome every chance you get to practice using English, even going out of your way to do so whenever and wherever you can. I know you’re busy, but if you really want to learn English, you will “find time,” or even “make” time to work on it. That work can even be playful; next time you rent a movie, listen to the English soundtrack. Going out to dinner? Instead of the local restaurant where everyone speaks your first language, try one where you will be “forced” to order in English! This is what I have done since 1991 in my effort to acquire Vietnamese. I’ll probably never know as many words as someone who grew up in Vietnam, but I’m not afraid to open my mouth anymore. What’s more, I can usually understand most of what people say to me in Vietnamese. This did not happen magically; I had to expose myself to the language on a regular basis, even before I could make out very much of what was being said at all. I had to rely on context, tone of voice and other nonverbal cues to make sense of what I was hearing and reading, sometimes even resorting to
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