How to Learn the English Language – Six Steps
How to Learn the English Language – Six Steps
Students who want to work in any field in their own countries or abroad need to learn English language, which is one of the most important factors that can make or break their careers.
By Rakesh Raman
Rakesh Raman
Today, there is no denying the fact that the world has become a global village where geographical demarcations have already faded, paving the way for a digitally connected universe.
And if you want to survive in the connected world where information bytes are crisscrossing at the speed of your thoughts, you must learn the communication protocols that would ensure your survival in the cyberspace and, thus, in the world where you breathe and exist.
While there are many forms of communication channels – including traditional and digital – a common string that binds all of them is English – the English language.
That’s because English is a global lingua franca used in almost 60 countries of the world as their main language. Many of these countries – such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – are in the developed parts of the world.
Obviously, if you want to keep any relations – economic, political, trade, cultural, et al. – with all these developed nations of the world, the use of English is inevitable for you.
The need to learn English is more pronounced today for students and professionals in the underdeveloped countries like India because such countries are heavily dependent on affluent nations for their economic development and to explore the job opportunities for their professionals.
Students who want to work in any field in their own countries or abroad need to learn English language, which is one of the most important factors that can make or break their careers.
However, the trouble is that the method of English language teaching in poor countries like India is so archaic (and mostly wrong) that most students are not able use the learning to progress in their careers despite having diplomas and degrees in their academic streams. Moreover, there is an acute shortage of teachers who could teach the correct and modern English to students.
English Language Structure
True, it is not a walk in the park to teach or learn contemporary English. But one must make a serious attempt – at least – for attempt is more important than achievement.
So, let’s make the attempt. Although I have explained the macro nuances of English language in the Kidcomm sections of this site, here I am going to provide more handholding to teachers as well as students who want to learn English in a systematic way.
The idea is not to repeat the contents of a English guidebook. However, the information and tips that I provide here will help the learners understand various subtleties of the language quickly.
Let’s begin with the English language structure. Here we will chalk out various steps of learning English – right from alphabet to the creation of content.
Step 1. I assume that the people who are reading this lesson are already familiar with the English alphabet – A to Z and a to z. So, I must not worry much about these 26 letters.
Step 2. And if you can read, write, and speak all of these letters easily, the next step is to use the alphabet to form words. While the English language has over a million words, it won’t be possible to know all of them.
You can, however, begin by learning words in different categories – like the names of body parts, fruit names, relations, names of your household items, colors, weathers, days of a week, months of a year, and so on. And you can enhance your vocabulary gradually.
Step 3. The knowledge of words will help you construct sentences. But here’s a rub. Sentences are formed not only with words, but they also contain numbers, symbols, and punctuation marks. You need not worry, though. If you follow a systematic learning approach, you will soon learn about all the components of a sentence.
Step 4. Sentences will take you a step closer to your milestone, as you can use sentences to make paragraphs that contain sentences about a single topic within a bigger write-up. Most learners think that paragraphs should have a collection of sentences. But you can always have a single-sentence paragraph depending on the context of your subject.
Step 5. When you put all your paragraphs in a cohesive sequence that depicts the flow of your thoughts, your write-up is ready for consumption. You can now share it with your target consumers or readers. This write-up can be an essay, an event report, your opinion on an issue, or a detailed treatise.
Step 6. Your English learning is not complete if you can’t create content for your target audience. This is the most difficult step in the entire learning lifecycle. It can take a few years to a few decades to learn different aspects of content creation. But don’t lose heart. English learning is a womb-to-tomb activity, as the language is constantly evolving to satisfy the changing needs of information consumers.
Your final destination will be to apply your English language skills to create engaging content to woo your target audience.
That’s all for now. I will soon be back with the next lesson in our English learning series. Stay tuned.
Note: We follow such modern English language skills development methodologies under our Constructive Education Framework (CEF), which is being used for students of our RMN Foundation schools.
By Rakesh Raman, the managing editor of RMN Company
