Independent study of English

Contents

How to force yourself to study English on your own? Paradoxically, but children manage to do the right thing easier than adults. The reason lies in the fact that the elder can force the child, so to speak, to put pressure on him with authority. For an adult, as an established personality, authorities, on the contrary, are contraindicated - he tries to act contrary to them, demonstrating his independence. Therefore, it remains to rely on one's own consciousness and internal motivation . This is where the difficulties begin: how to overcome laziness and start learning English?

Before you start, think about the pleasant: what format of communication do you like best? It is communication, because learning a language is pure communication. In a group or face to face? Directly face to face or via the Internet? Friendly or formal-learning atmosphere of the class? In the process of planning, you will psychologically tune in to real classes, and not to their possibility in the distant future.

In psychology, there is such a thing as "activation energy". Its meaning lies in the presence of an initial emotional charge in a person to perform an activity. Moreover, the amount of this energy directly depends on the very nature of the activity.

Activation energy. To read a book, you do not need to set yourself up and prepare for a long time - just sit back and read. On the other hand, to go to the gym, you need to pack a uniform, get to the club, and return home. How to force yourself to learn English on your own ?

To start English classes, you need to choose the right time in advance, arrange with a tutor or sign up for courses, buy educational literature and sometimes pass preliminary testing. Forcing yourself to go through all this is not always easy. But on the other hand, think: you perform the same operations every day, but only under different circumstances. You make an appointment with the doctor in advance, choose clothes for your vacation, gather employees for a meeting, choose a suitable cafe or restaurant for a banquet, fill out questionnaires and forms in beauty salons, banks, travel agencies, and so on. So, strictly speaking, in the case of the English language, nothing new or frightening is happening, and this needs to be hammered into one's head in order to remove the psychological barrier.

But what if you are going with the spirit to study English on your own?Practice shows that a very small percentage of self-taught in situations of real communication behaves confidently in linguistic and psychological terms. Inflated ideas about their level. Indeed, the level is revealed during interaction, and in the case of self-learning, it is not discussed. Therefore, you don’t even need to force yourself or set yourself up to vigil over textbooks. Take advantage of the reading situation: just sit comfortably in front of the computer, go to a couple of English-language press sites, read the current news. Do you have an online dictionary handy? Fine! In parallel, check unfamiliar phrases. Again, this activity is no different from your daily activities (except for working with a dictionary :-): for sure, when you check your e-mail every morning, you look at the news and go to your favorite sites.

At the beginning of this article, we talked about how laziness is one of the main obstacles to learning English. However, let's ask the main question: why is a person lazy to do what is useful to him, necessary, even profitable? Here again an analogy comes to the rescue: why do children not like to do their homework? Because they require hard work of thought, because during homework the child is left alone and he does not have the opportunity to communicate with friends. Why don't men like to clean houses? Because that's what women are for, and because free time shouldn't be wasted on physical exertion.

From these examples it can be seen that the root of laziness is the negative feelings associated with this or that occupation. So make learning English on your own a positive experience. Some tips can help with this:

  • Learn English with the online English tutorial learnathome.ru . Try online video tutorials , activation energy is required at a minimum, because it's fun.
  • study the language for as long as your attention can stand. Fixed classes of 60 or 90 minutes are no help here. As soon as you notice that you have lost interest or concentration, stop immediately. This can happen in half an hour, and after 2.
  • Select educational material on topics that interest you in everyday life: love music - watch music videos in English ; you like to follow the lives of celebrities - read the tabloids and other press about them in a foreign language.
  • Language classes should not completely “tighten” your body and spirit: you can chew something, drink tea or coffee, do the “scissors” exercise with your feet or have fun in some other way during this.
  • If you have English-speaking friends, try to spend at least 5 minutes of your usual conversations in the language with them. You will like it, we guarantee!

And do not forget that it is possible to learn English on your own!