Ron's ESL Blogs

English is an international language. Most of the people use English to communiate, to solve problems around the world. So learning English is very urgent and essential.
All of us know what English is, but most of us don’t know how to learn English well. We always think that learning English is a tough work and very boring. However, in my eyes, learning English can be easy and interesting. Here are several ways of learning English:
First of all, be patient to listen to others. In our ordinary life, many people use English to chat with each other. At this momoent, we can let us be patient to listen. But it doesn’t mean that you can eavesdrop others’ private conversations. By the way, not only can you listen to others, but you can also can listen to the English radio program, such as FOX news.
Secondly, try our best to think with English. To be honest, it’s a little bit difficult to learn English this way, especially for us Chinese international students. But I think it is a very interesting way to learn English. Because only in this way can we do things like native American.
What’s more, watch Eglish movies or teleplay serires. I think this is the most interesting and the most popular way of English. However, we always watch the captions which use our native languages to print when we watch the movies or teleplay series. So most of us cannot promote our English this way. Therefore, we should keep ourselves not to watch the captions or just watch the English captions.
Furthermore, read more English books, magazines or newapapers. As we all know, reading is the most quickly way to promote our English. Because we can learn about the Grammar, pronunciation and the sentences from the passage when we do some reading on it.
Last but not least,try our best to use English to talk with each others. Only in this way can we promote our spoken Englsh. Because we can find out what problems we have by using English to have a conversation.
All in all, learning is not as difficult and boring as you think. In my words, there are three keys to learning English well–reading more, listening more and speaking more. And do not forget the most important thing when we are learning English–learning english helps me.

     When I was a child, I like learning English. The most influence person to me is my uncle. He is an English teacher. He is so nice to me and is my first teacher. Whether the students are good or bad, he is very patient with them. I think that a good teacher needs to have enthusiasm with what he’s teaching. I worked hard and talked to him frequently. There are several methods as follows that I learned.

    First, the basis of grammer and to remember lots of vocabulary is very important. He taught me with a grammer textbook and explained some of them. Mostly I felt it was boring and I can’t concentrate on my private English class. I tried to chat with him about the music or film. I wasted a lot of time doing something not to focus on English. It was my fault to miss the good chance to learn. 

    Second, I have to read different kinds of English book. It will strengthen my reading ability. The first book I have finished is a musician story. I’m interested in music. The story about musicians will attract me to start the first step. It spent me almost three months. I was glad to finishes the whole book, but I felt so tried as well.  

    Third, my uncle told me that I have to speak frequently. English is my second language, I need to have a good habit to speak more. If I haven’t a regular practice, I will forget quickly. I remember that he talked to me in English twice a week during the teenageer. I’m afraid to speak on first time. He was kind and helped me to talk more. The fact is that the more I was speaking, the better I would get it.

   Most of all, I have to learn English everyday. If I have enough diligence to finish the work on time every day, I have confidence to improve my English ability including reading, speaking, listening and writing. Besides, I hope that I have more chances to talk with others.

    Learning English is improtant. English is an international language, and people use it to communicate between countries in this modern world. I have started learning Englsih since I started to go to shool. I studied Englsih in Hong Kong. English is essential to learn, and it is also as important as Chinese.

    I have been learning English for 15 years. I didn’t realise English is very important for my life afterwards because I didn’t know I would come to the United States. In Hong Kong, I had English class every single day. English was very difficult for me because it is my secondary language, and the grammar and the sentence structure are totally different from my monther language. I used to learn English through doing a great deal of exercises. Teacher would give students lots of drills and exams to enhance the English standard in order that students get high score in the public exam. This is why I hated learning English. It was just a boring subject for me. I learnt it because I had to take those public examx. Learning English was not fun for me.

    Now, I am in America. English is not just a subject for me. It is a language I have to use it daily instead of Chinese. When I just got to America, I couldn’t understand what people were talking. I suddenly found that those years I had been learning English in Hong Kong was a waste. Since English is not my primary language, I didn’t speak and listen to it a lot. I just practiced reading and writing, so it was very difficult for me to hear it. Because of that, I tried to make myself to love English. I keep listening to teachers without daydreaming and talking to classmates in school. I read many English books, watched English TV and listen to radio. I tried to let myself speak English all the time. I have been keeping doing it until I get used to it and use it fluently.

    Although I cannot speak English like a native speaker, I have improved a lot already, much better than I just came to America. I love learning English now. It becomes more and more interesting. I keep speaking it every single day. I hope I would be able to speak English as fluent as Chinese.

There are many ways on learning English such attending school, buying English course, taking online classes, reading books and talking English frequenly. Learning English is a challenge for some people although to others it is easy to learn.

For me learning English is a challenge, because I’m a shy person to speak to others, when I speak English I get nervous and my tongue freezes then the pronunciation is different from the spelling also English is not my first language and learning a second language is not easy as it looks. These are some of the problems for me to learn English, but this time I’m very confident on myself to reach my goal on learning English that’s why I’m trying hard on it.

These are my ways to learn English, first of all I’m coming to school everyday, I pay attention in class, I’m doing my homework and the exercises in the book, also I’m reading books at home, listening to the radio and watching TV in English. Another thing that I’m doing is speaking a little more English with others.

Second I’m writing every day a short paragraph without worring about punctuation and spelling for me it is a way to help myself on how to write an essay. Another  thing that I’m doing is writing vocabulary words this way, I learn how to spell and the meaning of the word.

Third I download applications on my phone like grammar, how to pronounce the words, verbs, prepositions and more, also I’m studying on the web site the teacher gives us.

The most important to learn English is studying hard and be a fighter to achieve the goal of learning English.

Firstly, what do “stative” and “dynamic” mean?

Dynamic = moving or changing.

Stative = having a state, or existing.

Dynamic verbs are verbs that describe an action, not a state.

For example, “They are crossing the street.”

Stative verbs are verbs that describe a state, not an action.

For example, “I love the winter.”

Here are some more examples of dynamic verbs:
Take, break, eat, jump, work, find, buy, dance, fish

Here are some more examples of stative verbs:
Be, want, hate, know, own, sound, prefer, seem
Now, compare the following two passages.

The first passage uses only dynamic verbs, while the second one uses only stative verb:

1) “We are walking in the forest. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and we are having a good time.”

2) “I like the winter. The sun is in the sky, the birds seem to be on the trees, and we want to stay here forever.”

Note that the first passage describes actual actions, while the second passage really describes states.

Next time, we’ll see how you should properly use dynamic and stative verbs.

Click here to learn more on English verbs.