Improving English as a native speaker - Page 4

CharlieMurphy

United States22895 Posts

November 20 2010 07:14 GMT

#61

Definitely find myself looking up words multiple times for definitions and spelling. It took me like 25 years to to get the first word in this post correct every time.

I still struggle with words i've written, typed, and looked up tens of times.

Railxp

Hong Kong1313 Posts

November 20 2010 07:32 GMT

#62

i would suggest posting more frequently and paying attention on reviewing and refining your posts. Posting on forums force you to make one point in a concise manner in a limited amount of words. Try to use new vocabulary on forums will make it into a game so that it wont be such a chore. Furthermore, this practice will also help refine your thinking and have the double benefit of upping the average posting quality on team liquid. Win win for all.

Chocobo

United States1108 Posts

November 20 2010 07:56 GMT

#63

Definitely read a lot of books. There are so many words you'll come across that you just don't see every day... I don't know where I would have learned them anywhere else.

Aside from that, umm... I'd recommend looking up words/phrases that you use but don't fully understand. There are quite a few people who just repeat what they hear without even understanding the words they are saying.

Examples: "should of" instead of should have, "for all intensive purposes" instead of for all intents and purposes (a phrase that sucks and shouldn't be used anyway), "wah-lah" instead of voila, and so on.

elkram

United States221 Posts

November 20 2010 07:57 GMT

#64

I would say it depends. One (<== damn you english teacher) has to make a distinction between spoken and written language. According to most linguists, any sort of spoken language/dialect is valid. However, if one is talking about written language, one has to make an effort to read, not just newspaper articles, but books. However, reading is a nice way to start. As you can see, I have trouble with starting my sentences with "however," but I know that is because I don't read enough and through reading I can get more variety in making contradictory sentences. Even starting a sentence off with "but" (yes it is allowed in some circumstances) can spice up sentence variety and make for a more interesting post. Overall though, if you are having trouble with vocabulary, try and look up words and then immediately find ways to use them. For example I didn't know what the word byzantine meant, as in "That is a byzantine plot." So I went to dictionary.com, looked up the definition and immediately put it in my own words. So now, instead of saying something is byzantine and being confused by what I just said, I understand that in essence what I said was that something was complex (definition of byzantine, outside of the empire definition). It makes new vocabulary words much easier to use.

PS You really only use big diction if simple words don't quite "fit" or you want to feel esoteric.

Ordained

United States779 Posts

November 20 2010 08:09 GMT

#65

Books, read lots and lots of books. You will see words you have never even heard of and find new uses for old words.

Books will increase your vocab and get you all the sexy librarian ladies.

3clipse

Canada2555 Posts

November 20 2010 09:00 GMT

#66

Read a lot. Watch news networks that don't dumb down their broadcasting (I've found English News>Canadian News>US News). Converse with articulate people.

Starfox

Austria699 Posts

November 20 2010 12:47 GMT

#67

On November 19 2010 23:02 pred470r wrote:
Listen to a lot of metal, the songs usually have a lot of words in them and that's how I remember certain words and meanings.

you mean like:
Hamster, a dentist, hard porn, steven seagull, warrior, this rifle?

Slayer91

Ireland23335 Posts

November 20 2010 13:07 GMT

#68

On November 20 2010 07:32 T0fuuu wrote:

Show nested quote +

Ouch? What do you read? It sounds pretty boring if there are no "broken rules" in it. I suppose if the only thing you read is business papers or journals then everything would be all correct.

Stupid assumption. Proper grammar is necessary in order to make one's reading experience as clear and as enjoyable as possible. Your sentences in the other post read very awkwardly. Any good writer will have near perfect grammar and the part of the editors job is to insure EVERY SENTENCE is perfect grammar.

"boring" writing tones (informative) and grammar are totally unrelated.

Snuggles

United States1865 Posts

November 20 2010 13:26 GMT

#69

I used to enjoy reading a lot, but that was when in High School when I had classmates who would readily lend me books once in a while or make good recommendations. Nowadays I occasionally learn some new vocabulary from reading articles online, but that's no where as good as reading a good book.

Avaloch

241 Posts

November 20 2010 13:27 GMT

#70

I think some people did mention songs as an avenue to learn new words and I think that's fairly accurate. I do actually learn some new words that way.

A good way to learn more words, in my opinion, is to read reputable publications and newspapers. Coming across new words in those publications and subsequently finding out about them is good.

BottleAbuser

Korea (South)1888 Posts

November 20 2010 13:49 GMT

#71

I hate dictionaries. I've learned the meanings of maybe 100 English words from a dictionary in my whole life, the rest (I'm guessing) from context.

red_b

United States1267 Posts

November 20 2010 14:27 GMT

#72

if you really want to get better at english learn latin.

yes I know that english is still a germanic language but there is no better way to learn the interaction of words than to learn latin.

also, focus on specificity. nothing pisses me off as much as reading something that says "all" or "no" or "always" or "never" when it's self-evident that there are exceptions. that's more important in graded work than anything else but I have noticed that there is a big issue with that in many people's writing.

EyeballKid

6 Posts

November 20 2010 15:15 GMT

#73

Read authors with large vocabularies. J.M. Coetzee is a good example.

Twistacles

Canada1327 Posts

November 20 2010 15:36 GMT

#74

Reading books, obviously. When you encounter a new word, whip out a dictionary and make sure you know the meaning so you can re-use it appropriately.

Nouar

France3270 Posts

November 20 2010 18:14 GMT

#75

Try Terry Pratchett

rAize-

Germany75 Posts

November 20 2010 18:41 GMT

#76

As everyone said, reading will improve your language. But do not listent to people who recommend books to you, go to a library of a book shop and just take a book that interests you, I never liked reading until I discovered some really tense thriller book, those books are my thing and thats how I improve my language ( German ) !

OOl

United States65 Posts

November 20 2010 18:41 GMT

#77

In my opinion, reading is the best way to learn new words in english. I have a pretty decent vocabulary myself but I'm deaf so I commonly mispronounce words or neglect to use the full extent of my vocabulary in conversation because I'm not sure of the way to pronounce certain words. If you really want to learn a lot of new words, I'd suggest reading a dense book and actually read it out loud to yourself! you probably should do that in your room alone or something because of how annoying that would be for others but it's a fantastic way to get words down.

lastGuerilla

Poland3 Posts

November 20 2010 18:50 GMT

#78

I'm from Poland. My way to improve vocabulary is to read very difficult articles on internet and play a lot of RPG games with subtitles on (also reading sci-fi books) . The most important thing is to have strong will to learn and kind of plan how it's going to look like after 1 year. I hope that helps.

divinesage

Singapore649 Posts

November 20 2010 19:03 GMT

#79

I've been trying to improve my English as well (I'm a native English speaker). Problem is that I can't articulate things, or pen things down as eloquently as others. Reading definitely helps, but I'm sure there's a limit to it as different people have different writing styles, you'd have to personalise your own writing style eventually, and making that sound eloquent is the hard part.

Swagga

Canada49 Posts

November 20 2010 19:26 GMT

#80

I immigrated to Canada from Korea at the age of 7. In the early years in Canada, i grew up in a Caucasian/Polish-majority community and i spoke fluent English by 2nd year because i was young. Then i went to an IB high school which consisted of 40% Asian, 40% Southern Asian and like 20% Caucasians so i had the experience of observing people who were trying to learn English.

The best way to learn English in my opinion is by hanging out with friends that speak English. There are many Koreans/Chinese that are only friends with their own race, which is understandable, but they have major problems with English. Even the hardcore "fobs" that has been in Canada for over 3 years have issues with English since their friends are like them as well. If you hang out with your country of origin crowd only, you exclude most of the other population from your group, thereby reducing chances of close friends from other backgrounds, whereas if you know English, you can be friends with virtually anyone in Canada.

I would say watching TV would be the second best option because it allows you to learn the casual conversation vocabs. My one friend is like half-fob, and also has a small vocab pool even though he was in Canada for 6 years. It's quite embarrassing that he does not even know some of the most commonly used words/phrases and it's sad that he doesn't even know who people like Justin Bieber, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus are. He only listens to Korean music and hang out with too many Korean fobs. TV is good for word choice learning because the things people say on TV shows especially comedy are perfect sentences to say during conversations, so it improves word choices greatly. Plus, comedy could be enjoyable.

What i wouldn't really recommend is gaming because i tried to improve my french through games and it didn't work out too well because the internet uses so much slang and short forms that you're just completely lost and kids on games rarely use vocabs that are useful in real life. Anyways, gaming wouldn't improve speaking at all. I am above average at writing/reading french, but when it comes to speaking it, i wouldn't survive a day in Paris.

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