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englishteacher24/7
United States
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Flossy,
You "hit the nail on the head" (were successful in being correct), this is why if you study only textbook English and communicate with native English speakers, you will not understand a lot of what they say. They will understand you completely, however, you may not understand them. In everyday life, we don't speak 100% textbook English, it's good if your career is professional writing, however, understanding how it's spoken is most important if your goal is to understand and speak fluent everyday English. For example, let's say two young people witness a very nice car driving by and one person comments to the other, "Wow, that was a bad car!" and the other would say, "Yes, it was really cool!" What is your interpretation of this conversation? Would you think the first person said the car was no good because it was bad? No, according to textbook English bad means "not good" or "poor" so you may conclude that the car was a "bad car." However, in everyday American English, bad (slang) can mean: good, extraordinary, or superb, it depends on the context spoken. Therefore, in this context, the first person meant it was a good, superb-looking car! The second person agreed and added it was "cool," not cold temperature but cool means being rated as a high status car according to young people. This example would be everyday slang which I don't write much about, however, for the example sake, it gets the point across. To learn everyday American English, you would have to live in the United States and make it a point of study when you hear the phrases spoken, or you would need a native English teacher to teach you and point you in the direction of good study materials on the subject. In my experience in working with foreigners who live in the United States, their assessment of native English speakers is that we talk too fast and they don't have a clue what was spoken, even after studying English for many years. Why is this? A normal 5 year old who just starts kindergarten can speak and understand English fluently? In addition, they have achieved this level without studying any formal instruction on grammar or vocabulary. Based on this reality, it is clear that studying grammar and vocabulary words is not how children learn English. Children learn by having someone tell them in words or a phrase and relating it to action. For example, if a child is walking toward an area where the parent don't want them to be, the parent will shout: "STOP!" The child will understand after a few times that the parent don't want them to go any further, but to stop. The child didn't have to go to a dictionary and look up the word "STOP" and to say, oh, stop means "to halt the movement or progress of" (Webster Dictionary). The child will almost automatically associated the word Stop, with stopping movement. Therefore, for students of English I would recommend to imitate the learning process of a child and decrease time and money spent on grammar and textbook English and increase learning by obtaining good materials on phrases, reading simple English books, writing and speaking as much as possible. Also one other thing I want to express: STOP BEING AFRAID TO WRITE BECAUSE IT'S NOT PERFECT ENGLISH, JUST WRITE, WRITE, WRITE, and when you find some English person to proof read your writing, do so and correct. There is an American saying that goes like this: "The door of success is entered through the hallway of failure!" This means you cannot be successful without having failure! I have already accepted many friends who are my students and I help them one-on-one, I can still accept some more students, after that, I won't be able to have time to help everyone directly. It's my pleasure to serve you to learn English!
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