The importance of learning English these days

To begin with, I’d like to say that in Shakespeare’s time English considered to be a “provincial language of secondary importance”. But nowadays it has got the world’s status. In fact, English has become the most important language in politics, science, trade and cultural relations. Moreover, in the number of countries it is used as one of the official languages or at least it is spoken as a second one. Even more widely English is used for communication across frontiers, listening to broadcasts, reading foreign books and newspapers, in commerce and international tourism. Besides, English is associated with technological and economic development of the great manufacturing countries.

Let’s now analyze why it is so important to learn English. Well, as we all know, today one of the most burning problems for young specialists all over the world is getting a good and well-paid job. Usually it requires at least knowledge of one or sometimes several foreign languages. The more languages you know the bigger amount of information you can obtain, and the more educated and intelligent you are. Just imagine, if you have a good command of the English and Russian languages you’re capable of getting more than 70% of world’s information. And isn’t it pleasant to go to any country and be able to understand what is going on around you and to communicate with new people? Personally I think that knowing at least of one foreign language has a formative function, as it makes it possible to know various ways of thinking. Furthermore, it gives you an opportunity to become acquainted with a new culture and thus to enrich your knowledge.

However, English is not a simple language to learn. It only may seem easy in the beginning, but actually, to speak English fluently one must overcome numerous difficulties. Firstly, there’s a great problem of spelling and of a large number of exceptions to every rule. Thus, the bridge between basic knowledge and mastery takes a lot of efforts and a long time to cross. Generally speaking, there’re several main techniques that one should apply to learn English. These are listening, speaking and certainly writing. Through watching TV, listening to the radio and records you memorize more and more words and expressions that have been unknown to you before. Besides, you train your ear and memory, improve and correct the pronunciation. While speaking you develop the ability to communicate thoughts and express your feelings to other people. It’s for sure that there would be no progress in studying without regular reading. It is best to start with special texts in textbooks and only after that you may get down to reading literature in original to enrich your vocabulary. Writing is also a vital part of learning the language, because writing exercises, letters, essays are very helpful to memorize the spelling of words. In my opinion, applying all four techniques one can achieve good results in learning English, and I’m sure it will give them great satisfaction.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1611