Things to Avoid when Learning English

Admin / 2019-12-18 / 3 min read

Learn the mistakes and make changes to improve your English! Here are the 5 major things to avoid when learning English

1.Translating everything with Google Translate

Google Translate may help you a lot when you are at the beginning of your English learning journey. It could help you expand your vocabulary range faster. But once you have started to get a basic understanding of the English vocabulary and language rules, you should start to abandon this method.

Getting too comfortable of using translators might hamper your learning process as you will tend to rely on these tools when you find difficulties in understanding a conversation or an article. When you have trouble understanding a sentence, you could start from the words in the sentence that you already know the meaning of and try to build an understanding from there. 

2.Replacing difficult words with easier ones

When you come across a strange new word, don’t try to neglect it and use the word that is more familiar to you instead. Note down the word that you just found and try to use it whenever you get a chance. This technique is not only useful to build your vocabulary, but it will also help make your communication skills more impressive.

3.Being afraid to make mistakes!

Some of you may get cold sweat when you have to reply to an email in English, or when a tourist approaches you to ask for directions. Avoiding these situations won’t get your English anywhere.

There is no other way around this but to increase your confidence. Start to apply what you have learned into your daily life and don't think too much on avoiding mistakes. Always remember that you are in the middle of a learning process and making mistakes is part of the journey. The important thing is whether you can successfully learn from your mistakes or not.

4.Thinking that you will pronounce words incorrectly

If you feel that pronouncing an English word is difficult, you are not alone. It may be possible that you are mispronouncing the words that you already frequently use. This is common because the pronunciation and grammar of English are fairly strange. The pronunciation of "ough" in though, trough, plough, and cough are quite different.

The trick you can follow to start addressing this issue is by identifying the phonetic rules that you have the most difficulty with. Look for as many words as you can with this particular phonetics character and practice pronouncing these words. Repetition is the key to overcoming this problem because you need to train your muscle memory to get used to the phonetic pattern.

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