ABA Journal The digital English academy
Hello!
Remember we told you how important motivation is? Well, Alfred Mercier agrees with us.
Alfred Mercier was an American poet, writer and doctor. He was a big defendor of Creole literature and music – creole language is a natural language that has developed from mixing two others. In Mercier’s case, he was one of the many French speakers who lived in Louisiana, USA.
So, remember to have fun with learning English! Don’t get too obsessed with perfect pronunciation or perfect grammar. Of course these are important, but it’s also important to enjoy what you do. The more you enjoy learning English, the longer and better you will learn.
How can you have fun?
And, finally, remember that you can never say you “can’t speak English“! You have to say “I can’t speak English YET“
Songs? Movies? I wish I could… actually during my long years of intermittent studying (my case is a desperate case eh eh eh), for me these two activities were exactly the most difficult to realize. My teacher asked me for watching a film without looking at it, ‘only the sound’ she said; or without subtitles… I got angry and hated myself.. the same thing happened with the songs without reading the lyrics…a nightmare! And the worst thing is that the other students told me I was clever, the English tests were good, my IELTS was excellent, my American colleagues congratulated me on my good level…. that’s incredible, because I perfectly know that I can’t do these important activities: songs and movies. To have fun with learning is absolutely correct, but when we are in trouble it’s difficult to have fun, because we feel frustrated… my “YET” is an endless mantra isn’t it?
It is; that’s why we never stop learning. It can be very frustrating, I agree, but I also believe that each person finds a different way of learning English: one person maybe learns by listening to their favourite music, others prefer grammar books and some people can only learn by practicing with other English speakers. That’s the beauty; everyone is unique!
That’s a really inspirational quote! I’m a big fan of using cultural resources such as music and movies from an early stage. With the internet it’s a greater time than ever before for learning a language!
Thanks MovingOn 🙂