Englishour's Blog

The ups and downs of language learning

It is exciting to be able to speak another language. It can of course be frustrating too. Not being able to articulate what you want or how you feel or what your opinion is on something can feel terrible. Being with a group of native speakers and not being able to follow the group conversation can leave you feeling alone.

Many years ago, when I arrived in Spain for a year of teaching English, this was exactly how I felt. When I arrived, my Spanish was nil. I didn’t even know the word for ‘hello’. I had a little Spanish/English dictionary and a notebook, and I started to learn words and phrases, as I needed them. If I were going food shopping, for example, I would pre-learn the words which I anticipated I would need for my shopping expedition. Leaving my house, I would be repeating the words for ‘bread’ and tomato’ and ‘pork chop’ as I wandered down the street surrounded by signs and people I didn’t understand.

I lived in a small flat with two Spanish guys who didn’t speak a word of English. It was perfect for me to immerse myself in Spanish. For the first couple of months we were like three mime artists in the kitchen, acting out what we were going to cook, flapping our arms to show the rent was due and whatever other messages they needed to pass to me or I to them. At that time, I used to go home for lunch every day and sitting opposite Miguel, I would have conversations with him in my broken language but I was only half sure what we were talking about. But every one seeped in somehow and slowly my brain was accepting this new form of communication.

Then I got really lucky. One evening (still early in my time there) while waiting for a friend outside her school (she was teaching an English class) I was watching a television match in a shop window. There was another guy there also watching the match, and it turned out that he was waiting for his girlfriend who was inside and was one of my friend’s students. We started talking in the usual mime/stone age man-type language, and when they came out we all went for a beer together. This marked the beginning of my friendship with Emilio and Maria Jose.

Every Friday they invited me out with their large group of friends. I remember the first ten minutes always going well, everybody sober, talking slowly to me and me listening intently, trying to follow the conversation. Then the beers kept coming and the conversation got faster and more garbled. People would look at me and see that I didn’t understand and would stop the group to bring me up to date but I hated that as I felt that I was ruining the dynamic of the group. I felt lonely. I was surrounded by friends, but they were friends who I couldn’t really communicate with apart from smiles and a nodding of my head.

I returned to Ireland for Christmas and when I went back in early January, something strange happened to me. I started to understand! It was if my absence for a couple of weeks had given my brain the time to digest all the backlog of new language I had, and it was now able to run past my lips with a degree of fluidity. Words I heard or read began to have meaning and I felt that I was no longer a beginner, but someone on a higher rung of the language ladder.

Breaking through this barrier felt so good. I still had many problems understanding and expressing myself of course, but this was peppered with the joy of catching a word or a difficult expression which I actually understood! I began to feel that their language was now also becoming my language. It was something we shared rather than something that separated us.

This experience informs what I do today in my English classes. I feel that the job of the English teacher is to empower the learner. To give the learner ‘bullets’ for their ‘language gun’. I know the joy of being able to express oneself beautifully in another language and to be able to understand subtlety coming from someone else’s lips. When that happens, all the frustration and loneliness suffered at the beginning becomes worth it.

Phrasal verbs - they're easy!

The following has been adapted from an article which first appeared in issue 62 of English Teaching Professional, a magazine aimed at teachers of English

Phrasal verbs? They’re easy!

If I were to ask you what you think of phrasal verbs you will most likely respond with something like ‘Phrasal verbs are impossible!’

But why is this? And why is this fear of phrasal verbs peculiar to learners of English? We native speakers have no problem understanding them at all! There are, of course, areas of English where I have plenty of difficulty, but as far as phrasal verbs are concerned, I think I can safely say that I understand all of them. If you are a native speaker of English, ask yourself these two questions:

1 Do you know every word in English?

2 Do you know every phrasal verb in English?

The answer to the first question has to be a resounding ‘no’. Of course you don’t! Unless, that is, you spend your days learning the dictionary off by heart. But what about the second question? Do you know every phrasal verb? The answer is yes, you do. And this is a truly amazing fact!

But what if English is your second language? Do you know every phrasal verb? Probably not. But there are paths to understanding.

Native speakers know without knowing

How is it that native speakers understand every phrasal verb there is? Did they learn them at school? No. I certainly don’t remember ever studying phrasal verbs at school. In fact, if I say phrasal verb to a non-teaching (but native speaker) friend of mine today, the chances are they won’t know what I’m talking about. And yet, they know them all. They have never been taught them, they may not even know they exist, and yet they know them all! So why is this?

A picture is better than a thousand words

The answer is to do with something I call ‘imaging’. Let’s take some common nouns, like apple, table and jacket. When I say these words, an image forms in your head, which corresponds to the word you hear. I say apple and you see the fruit. I say table and you see a wooden thing with four legs. When you are presented with these words, you are able to ‘translate’ the English word to fit the image in your head. By translating, and using the familiar pictures you have, you learn the language. The word is a label for the image, which the word represents.

However, we don’t all think the same …

If I were to ask you what your image is of, let’s say, up, the answer would probably be an arrow pointing upwards. If I ask you what down means, the image you would now have is of an arrow pointing downwards, and so on. What I am saying is that learners of English (unfortunately) have an incomplete picture of prepositions. You see them only as arrows pointing in different directions. Native speakers also see this, of course, but the difference is that we also see something else.

If I say, for example, It’s up to you, where’s the arrow? Where’s the direction? There isn’t one. But there is an image. In Englishour, we show this ‘other image’ to you, and when you see it, you wil have the same insight into this type of language as we do! We make phrasal verbs (and idiomatic language in general) easy to learn.

Common threads

So what is this difference between the way that native speakers see prepositions and the way you do? In a nutshell, it’s emotion, or if not emotion, it’s a keyword. The keyword describes the thread which links all of the verbs with the same preposition. It’s different for each preposition and we must look at each one separately. First, consider the following:

The bottle is on the table.

The film went on and on.

He went on and on at me.

If you translate these three sentences into another language, they would probably have nothing at all in common. They represent three entirely different and unrelated ideas. But look at how we form these apparently unrelated ideas in English. Each of them uses the word on. So rather than saying they are three different ideas, why not say that they are exactly the same? And indeed, they are! There is a common thread in the above sentences.

In Englishour, we show you the thread, and you will understand the verbs, as opposed to merely learning them. Look at the sentence The film went on and on. What do you understand? I understand it was a very long film, but not a long good film. It was long and boring. All of this information is coming from on and on. The preposition is transmitting much more information to me than just ‘arrows’! There is connotation and emotional meaning. For you to understand the verb, you must be able to connect with it!

We don’t all take after our parents

When I explain to my learners what phrasal verbs are, I use sex to sell the idea (cheap, I know, but it’s effective in a funny way). Think of your own existence, and the fact that you are here as a result of your father ‘meeting’ your mother. Are you a photocopy of your father or of your mother? No, of course not. You are a new unique individual person, but a product of your parents nonetheless. Phrasal verbs are the very same. Like a father and mother, a verb and a preposition can come together and produce a new unique distinct verb. Just like hydrogen and oxygen form a new compound, water, the verb and preposition form a new verb, a phrasal verb, and if the original verb used is not a verb of movement, then the phrasal verb will have a new meaning.

Movement is arrows

Verbs of movement are simply verbs which describe movement of some sort, like to walk, to run, to drive, to climb, to dance, to climb, to fly and to swim. If you put these verbs beside a preposition the result is directly translatable and very easy for the learner to understand. For example:

I went across the river.

I walked up the stairs

I drove down the hill.

I ran though the park.

All of these sentences translate directly into other languages. The preposition in each is like an arrow. It represents a direction, a movement. However, what if the verbs are not verbs of movement? For example:

I gave up smoking last week.

He hit on a great idea for making extra cash.

I can see through that guy. He’s a liar!

He got me back yesterday.

I’m really into this music.

In these examples, what do the words up, on, through, back and into mean? Can we image them using arrows? Are they about direction? In my opinion, they are not. They are, however, something concrete, and something easily understandable to native speakers.

Image is everything

As I have said, native English speakers have a strong image for each preposition, and I don’t mean just arrows or directions. These images have been created in their heads over the years, meaning they really understand the prepositions, both literally (direction) and metaphorically. Therefore, when you see a new phrasal verb, one which you have never seen or heard before, so long as it is in a context, you will automatically understand it.

Let’s go back in time to when the native English speaker was a baby, being fed by its mother. As the mother spoon-feeds the baby, she says about the spoon ‘and it goes up and in, and it goes up and in’ and as the baby hears the words and sees the movement of the spoon, the language begins to develop. The baby begins to understand that up means é and in means î. Just as in other languages. Now imagine that it’s three years later and the mother is busy in the kitchen preparing dinner, but tonight she’s late. Her guests are arriving in 20 minutes, she’s still cooking and she’s still not dressed! Our three-year-old native English speaker is playing on the kitchen floor:

Child: Look, Mummy! Look at me!

Mother: Sshhhh, not now, Mummy’s busy.

Child: Mummy, Mummy, look at me!

Mother: SSSHHHH! NOT NOW!

Child: MUMMY, MUMMY LOOK AT ME!

Mother: SHUT UP!

Suddenly up has a new meaning for the child. It’s not aé anymore! It now means Stop! Of course context is all important. If someone tells the child to go up the stairs, it knows it’s about direction, because up has appeared with a verb of movement, but now it knows that there are other possibilities besides direction. Later in school, the child will learn that the Coca-Cola© company was set up in 1886 and this obviously means started. And so it continues. Native speakers are never taught about phrasal verbs, but they do learn them. What is important to remember is that phrasal verbs are not random. For example, up has a very specific meaning and this does not change! In fact, I believe that every preposition has fixed, concrete meanings

So, in conclusion, even though they seem to be random and illogical, phrasal verbs do actually follow rules. In Englishour we will show you these rules, which are absolutely unique to us. If you study in Englishour and in the future you are asked what you think about phrasal verbs, you will say ‘Phrasal verbs? They’re easy!’

About reading

We are so excited here in Englishour to offer you the chance to learn real spoken English in our fantastic city centre location. Englishour was born out of our desire to help you improve your English. Below are some ideas for you to improve independently, through READING:

“I try to remember words but I always forget”

“I want my English to improve but when I get home I am so tired I can’t open a book!” “I don’t have time to study”

“I have been living here for three years and my English today is exactly the same as it was two years ago!”

These are the type of things which learners of English are saying every day. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions and so it would seem is the road to English fluency. We always intend to study. We intend to spend a few hours meditating on the words which we briefly learnt but which we have already forgotten. We intend to, we intend to, we intend to! The problem is we don’t.

But I want to. I really want to learn English!

So what can we do to improve our vocabulary? We are busy, we are tired, we are obliged to earn a living. Most of the time, we forget the limits of our language abilities and become apathetic but then sometimes, maybe listening to a friend who has a really high level of English, or making a mistake in our job because we misunderstood, brings it all back and we regret the thousands of empty hours we had when we did nothing. ‘Oh I wish I had studied more!’Promises are then sincerely made, but yet again not kept. A horrible cycle is created where we loath ourselves for not doing more but at the same time feel powerless not knowing in what direction to go.

I just want a simple instruction. Everything is too complicated!

People from universities who have been studying linguistics and conducting surveys and experiments offer many ways of improving your language. They tend to be long complicated lists. They require a lot of time and effort. They don’t understand that coming off a ten hour shift, nobody wants to do anything that requires more energy than lifting up the remote control of the television. Well here’s a suggestion. It does require you to lift something, but just one little thing. A book. Or perhaps a magazine, or a newspaper. Because here is the simple instruction you have been looking for:

Read for pleasure

The only questions are WHAT do you read and WHEN do you read? Let’s first look at the WHAT:

Read what you want to read is the simple answer. Read what you find interesting. If it’s a novel pick your favourite genre. Don’t read what you think you should read but rather what you want to read. If novels about serial killers are what you enjoy in your language then read a novel about serial killers in English. Likewise if you like reading gossip magazines, then read gossip! People associate learning English with ‘studying’ and ‘studying’ with classic books. Fine if you like them, but if you don’t, then don’t read them! Read what you want to read!

“I once tried to read a book in English but it was very difficult”.

No problem. In every big bookshop you can find something called a graded reader. It’s a book. It’s perhaps a novel but it has been especially written at a specific level of English. You can find graded readers from elementary to advanced. Just pick a book at your level and off you go!

“I don’t like books. I never read them in ANY language”

Again, this is not a problem. Reading books is only one form of reading. Below are some other sources of language which you could use:

Subtitles on the TV Newspapers The internet

Noticeboards around you instructions

The ‘help’ section in your computer Road signs

Fashion magazines Manuals for electrical goods

The back of your breakfast cereal box Junk mail

Anywhere you can see words!

So look around you and start reading. Once you begin, you will meet an unfamiliar word. You could:

- reach for your dictionary. This will give you the meaning but you may not remember it. Also you may not have a dictionary. Instead, look at the words around the mystery word. This is called CONTEXT. In English, context is ALL IMPORTANT. Often you can understand the word from the context. For example if I invent a word…binooby. Binooby does not exist in English. It means nothing. But if I give it a context, you can give it a meaning.

I went to the bank because I needed some binooby.

If you keep eating so much you’ll become binooby!

From the first context, binooby would seem to mean money. From the second it seems to mean fat. I only know this from context. English words have a cameleon-like way about them. In one sentence they have one meaning, in another sentence they can mean something different. For example:

I drew a picture of a house.

Ireland drew with Brazil.

Can you guess what drew means in the second sentence? It means ‘equaled’. The final score was even, the same. THEREFORE

You always need context when remembering a word!

When you meet a new word, write it down, and also the context you saw it in. Then put the piece of paper on the fridge or in your purse. Look at it as often as possible and USE IT as often as possible. Slowly you will build your vocabulary and find that you CAN remember new words! Now go out, start reading something you enjoy and before you know it you will have increased your vocabulary. Good luck!

FAQ’s in spoken English.

Q. How can I improve my spoken English?

A. Speak! Seriously. Many learners simply do not practise and therefore their spoken English stays static. It does not improve. You cannot learn to speak a language in silence.

Because there is so much in the English language, the best thing to do is approach it from a ‘micro’ point of view. This means that you focus on ONE structure or word in a particular day, but use it as often as you can in real situations.

Also, keep returning to language you have already learnt. Learning a language is, is essence, a memory game.

Q. I have been studying English for ten years but when I go to an English speaking country I understand nothing!

A. There are many reasons why learners believe they cannot understand. It could be speed at which the speaker is speaking, backround noise, strange accents or difficult conversation themes. Although the above reasons certainly play a large part in comprehension, the biggest factor has to be that the speakers are using DIFFICULT WORDS.

When the language is easy, the learner can follow even when it is noisy or the speaker is speaking fast. If, however, the words are ‘difficult’, the learner will not understand even in an ideal location and at a slow pace.

Q. Alright, but which language is ‘difficult’?

A. Difficult language is the language which you cannot translate literally. This could be, for example, idioms (expressions) which do not make sense in other languages, or alternatively, phrasal verbs.

Q. I have heard of phrasal verbs. What exactly are they?

A. A phrasal verb is a verb with a preposition. The problem is that where prepositions usually denote place or direction (I went up the stairs), phrasal verbs have a different meaning, which is not related to direction (I gave up smoking). Therefore they cannot be translated literally which can be difficult for the learner.

Q. So are you saying that phrasal verbs are difficult to learn?

A. Definitely not! They are actually very easy. The trick is to understand the preposition. Instead of denoting a simple direction, the preposition offers an image. Like the word table offers an image of that wooden thing you eat your dinner on, words like up, on, in and out offer images too, which are more than just directions. If you can see the image, you can see the verb.

When you see the verb you will understand it, not just LEARN it, but really UNDERSTAND it!

Q. That sounds fantastic. What should I do to learn these phrasal verbs?

A. For a start, try to notice prepositions in language you see around you. Look at the covers of magazines or advertisements on the street. Notice these small words. They really are everywhere! The next stage is to contact Englishour and we’ll get on with learning how phrasal verbs actually work. It’s up to you!

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Englishour's Blog

The ups and downs of language learning

Phrasal verbs - they're easy!

About reading

FAQ’s in spoken English.