- Most of us are familiar with this awkward moment when we are asked how to get to the Kremlin, and neither 10 years of English lessons at school, nor 5 years at the university help us say something more than «London is the capital of Great Britain». The problem is that we don’t have the skills to speak.
- If you want to learn how to swim, there is no point watching other people do it, you have to go and try to swim yourself. If you want to learn to drive, you must get behind the wheel. The same goes for acquisition of speaking skills. To put it simply, if you want to speak, you know what you need to do.
- The question then arises, «How do I speak English if I can’t?» It looks like a vicious circle, although even children find a way out with ease. They listen to their parents, imitate their intonation, and start speaking their native language in a natural way. By the time they start going to school, they speak pretty well, although they have no idea, that they can use a lot of tenses, clauses and that «moloko» is spelled with «o».
- Most conversational English courses are based on so–called natural method. Students are not allowed to use their native language since the very first lesson. Every lesson is in English only.
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Why mustn’t students translate everything into their native language?
- Firstly, the brain works in a completely different way. It uses all means necessary to express a thought in English. We experience tip-of-the-tongue moments every day when speaking a native language, and when we can’t retrieve a necessary word from the memory we just find a synonym, or a way to explain the word. We do this instinctively without even thinking. However, when speaking a foreign language, we are used to translating, which requires twice as much effort. Conversational English courses form a habit of «thinking in English».
- Secondly, the English language is very different from Russian — phrasal verbs, twelve tenses, articles. This complicated grammar stuff confuses Russian speakers very much. If someone wonders how you spent your last vacation, you don’t have an imaginary ticker to read from. Some images, memories, thoughts appear, which you code into Russian words. The point of natural method is to teach you to code this information without using a native language. The way of speaking thought-native language-English should be shortened to thought-English.
- Finally, there are ambiguous words, which are a problem in many languages. For instance a Russian word reshit’ is used in two different meanings: 1) make a decision (whether you should spend money on a new Iphone for yourself or on something nice for your wife); 2) come up with a solution (for a math problem or a conflict caused by buying the Iphone instead of a present). So, you see — there is only one Russian word for two completely different English words. A speaker may be confused if these words are used incorrectly.
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What are some of other principles of natural method?
- Frequent repetition. All new words, expressions, grammar rules and structures should be trained or repeated several times in a row. Take look forward to doing something, for instance. Literal translation is completely useless in this case. Do you think it means «to see something in front of you»? Yeah, right! In fact, it means «to be eager to do something». More than that, after to there should be either a noun (I am really looking forward to my vacation), or a verb with –ing ending (Jim is looking forward to buying a new apartment). Getting used to this takes a lot of time and training. A teacher asks every student a question using this expression, a student answers, and no matter if there was a mistake or not, the teacher repeats the right answer once, and then, the whole group repeats the phrase five times all together. It’s absolutely fine for students to make mistakes.
If you want to learn how to swim, there is no point watching other people do it, you have to try to swim yourself. The same goes for acquisition of speaking skills.
- The same goes for music, for example. The first time you try to strum a guitar chord it is extremely difficult to make it sound right. You may not hold the strings tight enough, or if you do, your fingers hurt really badly at the beginning. Making both hands work in sync with each other may be another difficulty. However the results get better as long as you train regularly. The muscles in the mouth are the same as the ones in hands, so you just have to train them to pronounce new sounds. After such training you just won’t have the heart to say something in a way different from the one you had trained. Also, frequent repetition helps you to memorize things easier and better because if you heard something only once and never used it since, you brain will erase this information pretty fast.
- Conversational English courses do not include writing during lessons. Although 80% of all people think of themselves as visual learners («how can memorize and say something if I don’t know how it’s written?»), it is strictly prohibited to write anything during lessons. The English language is notorious because of its reading rules, or rather because of how useless they are. You will only make things worse if you spend a lot of time trying to learn them. Choir [ˈkwaɪər] and aisle [aɪl] are perfect examples that prove this point. That’s why it’s way easier to hear a new word first, repeat and use it a lot of times, and see it written only a lot later. By that time you’ll get used to the only possible way of pronunciation.
- Conversational English method works with people who have never studied English before just as well as with the ones who have, but in a traditional way. If you are a beginner, this method will help you start speaking a completely new language in a very short time without learning a lot of boring grammar rules. And those, who are familiar with the rules, will finally have a chance to use their knowledge in real practice.