Is English an easy language to learn?

Hi

I have been studying English since I was ten years old, that is, for about 40 years.
I have always liked this language and considered it as important as my first language. Studying a foreign language is not so difficult as teaching it . The most important thing in learning English is to like it, to be really interested in what you learn.

Regards,

teia_petrescu said:

Hi

I have been studying English since I was ten years old, that is, for about 40 years.
I have always liked this language and considered it as important as my first language. Studying a foreign language is not so difficult as teaching it . The most important thing in learning English is to like it, to be really interested in what you learn.

Regards,

Click to expand...

As I can see we are the same age. The only difference is that you are still learning English and I'm both teaching and learning.;-) Cheers!

Harry Smith said:

As I can see we are the same age. The only difference is that you are still learning English and I'm both teaching and learning.;-) Cheers!

Click to expand...

Hi Harry

Yes, we are almost the same age and I have to add that I have been teaching English for about 12 years or more, as well.
Before that ,I was a secretary in a large company but I had to give up because I felt that it was not the right job for me, even if teaching does not mean a high salary. On the contrary, teachers are not well paid in my country and I think this is a general problem elsewhere, too.
As you can see I am both a teacher and a learner . One cannot be an ESL teacher without being a learner all the time.

I wish you A Happy New Year !

Best wishes,

teia_petrescu said:

Hi Harry

Yes, we are almost the same age and I have to add that I have been teaching English for about 12 years or more, as well.
Before that ,I was a secretary in a large company but I had to give up because I felt that it was not the right job for me, even if teaching does not mean a high salary. On the contrary, teachers are not well paid in my country and I think this is a general problem elsewhere, too.
As you can see I am both a teacher and a learner . One cannot be an ESL teacher without being a learner all the time.

I wish you A Happy New Year !

Best wishes,

Click to expand...

Thanks very much! I wish you a Happy New Year, too!

Tdol said:

We've no objection to other topics, but we've had enough trouble in the past with certain topics that get out of hand. Discussing other things is always a good way to practise, but some topics have a tendency to lead to trouble.

"learning English is much easier than mastering it"- I'll let you know when I've mastered it how difficult it is. ;-)

I agree with your point about exams. Unfortunately, we are so exam driven that a lot of teaching has become simply cramming for exams, but I'm afraid we're stuck with that. ;-(

Click to expand...

Let me know when you have mastered it. I'll be looking forward to hearing from you in "I don't know how many years".;-)

I think it is a bit hard to learn E

I don't think it's too hard to learn English. In Finland we start learning languages early (when we're 9 years old) and we take them "seriously" (maybe because Finnish is not an international language). We also get to choose what language we want to learn but the offered languages depend a lot on the school. Obviously smaller schools don't have resources to offer some not so "traditional" languages. My school offered at that time English, Swedish and German. Naturally I chose English like 95% of the students.
2 years later I started learning German which was a lot harder than English. I blame the tv. We get a lot of american/british shows here and they're never dubbed. So we hear "real" English every day.
Now I have an american boyfriend and I'm so happy that I get to practise with a native speaker.

Hey!
This is my first time top post any comment here and its my pleasure to be part of it. But my opinion about English learning is that its not very difficult language to be learn everyone can leanr it very easily in few months if something is required is simply the practise. My sincerely advice to all the leraner of English language is that don't ever give just practise it a lot. Anything could be hard my not impossible.So enjoy language as your mother tongue..;-) C Ya..

I won't dwell on the question about Is English hard to learn. Some people on this site have already given a thorough and accurate explanation.
Is is worth learning it ? question asked by an American native !!!
Oral deficiencies and lacks in English teaching was pointed out. I do agree with this point. Oral skills might be left aside . I 've noticed this shortcoming in our French methods. Not much stress upon pronunciation rules , phonology and a deep belief that living abroad can make one fluent and confident in his ability to speak. This is necessary but not sufficient.

What kind of English should be learnt and taught ?

I agree on this point . Sorry

Linguistically speaking all languages are equal (As Chomsky) asserted.
In the same way there is no "easy vocabulary" and "difficult vocabulary".
If you know it, it'll sounds easy and vice versa....this is relativity.

Hi friends,

I'm ishu, this is my first post and i would love to share my perception on English learning. As u can read, my english writing is not so good but i am trying to express my view as my level best. Few month ago, when I started concentrating on this subject, I was not able to learn this language. I couldn't even write a single line in English. In order to my lack of learning , I got ride by this subject. However, I was motivated a lot by my friends not to quit and work hard. English never been my cup of coffee, and I was aware of that. But somehow, I put efforts in learning and now, as per my opinion, I can write . Although, sometime I do some sill mistakes, but I believe that person can never learn without doing mistakes. And that makes me believe that I can learn and nothing is impossible. So, as per my experiance , whatever i had, I can say that English is not that much tough for those who learn it as a game.

Hi friends,:-D

I'm ishu, this is my first post and i would love to share my perception on English learning. As u can read, my English writing is not so good but i am trying to express my view as my level best. Few month ago, when I started concentrating on this subject, I was not able to learn this language. I couldn't even write a single line in English. In order to my lack of learning , I got ride by this subject. However, I was motivated a lot by my friends not to quit and work hard. English never been my cup of coffee, and I was aware of that. But somehow, I put efforts in learning and now, as per my opinion, I can write . Although, sometime I do some sill mistakes, but I believe that person can never learn without doing mistakes. And that makes me believe that I can learn and nothing is impossible. So, as per my experience , whatever i had, I can say that English is not that much tough for those who takes it as a game.:roll:

haiii....cant i join the speaking in english

I think it depends on the person who is learning the language if he finds it difficult to learn or not. As for me, I find it pretty average but sometimes it can also be difficult especially when I get confused.

Good Question.

I presume it's easy to learn to be able to communicate (as it's my mother tongue I didn't have to "learn" it.) ;-) However, when it comes to the written language...well that seems to be a different story. Most rules have one or more exceptions. 40 years ago when I arrived here in Munich the saying was "Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache":shock: At least, with German the rules apply! ... so I can't really agree with that! With English I seem to have spent a lot of my time during lessons over the past 25 years explaining "well.. yes that may be the rule but....... you just have to be flexible:lol:.
However, if this is difficult for the learner to be... then, no, it is NOT an easy language to learn.
For the "theoretical learner" perhaps, it's not so easy but the "practical learner" should be able to pick it up quite easily.
Whatever the solution - it's keeping thousands of us 'in work' and I hope the rest of you are enjoying teaching it as much as I am.

Keep smiling
razamataz

I can't say that English is an extremely easy language to learn, but I think it's not defenetly hard. It depends on the person, though. It depends on which is his maternal language, etc.
I find English quite easy, but I don't know if it's because I started to learn it at a very young age or because I love it, but even though, I think it's very easy to learn the English verbs (mainly you just have to remember a structure and then ad "s" on the third person singular and learn the past and participal. And that's all). I wouldn't really like to learn the Spanish verbs.... :roll: sometime even I myself (and many Spanish people!!!) have problems to know how to conjugate (¿?) a verb... and I've never liked to do it in French

I think you miss one more option.

* very easy
* easy
* average
* hard
* very hard
* fun :tick:

But I voted for average, for we haven't got fun in the choices yet. Learning English I think depends on the learner on how you view the language and on how far you would want to go deeper with the language. The deeper you go the harder it gets. But to sum it all up, I would say it's fun learning English.

so i think it belongs to thinking . maybe someone think learning Eng easilly cause they like to learn ENg well .