There are no people who are incapable of foreign languages. Any person at any age is capable of learning - if only he had the motivation and the right methodology. Is it the teacher's fault? Parents often worry: their child gets C grades in English, is he probably not good at languages? But most often it is not the student who is to blame for failures, but the teacher. Or even the parents themselves. Explains Lyudmila FOMENKO, head teacher of the BKC-Internatonal House foreign language school: - Each of us has our own characteristics. Someone better...

There are no people who are incapable of foreign languages. Any person at any age is capable of learning - if only he had the motivation and the right methodology.

Is it the teacher's fault?

Parents often worry: their child gets C grades in English, is he probably not good at languages? But most often it is not the student who is to blame for failures, but the teacher. Or even the parents themselves.

Lyudmila FOMENKO, head teacher of the BKC-Internatonal House foreign language school, explains:

Each of us has our own characteristics. Some people perceive information better by ear, others have a better developed visual memory. Therefore, we can talk about a difficult perception of some aspect of the language: some people have difficulty understanding speech by ear, others have problems with writing. But everyone can be trained. After all, any person, having found himself in a foreign country, one way or another begins to speak a previously unfamiliar language. The most important thing is motivation.

A student’s opinion about his own “mediocrity” is most often based on complexes that arose during the learning process (perhaps he studied in a group of more capable students, or he was constantly scolded for mistakes, or a foreigner did not understand a couple of times). If the teacher speaks about the child’s inability to learn languages, then the student has nothing to do with it at all. Most likely, the teacher tested the student’s knowledge poorly and ends up teaching him the wrong thing.

Praise your child more often

We should not forget that both children and adults have a “material accumulation barrier” when learning a foreign language. For the first few months, the little student takes a passive position, absorbing knowledge. An interesting parallel: from birth until about three years of age, a child practically does not speak his native language, but, being in his environment, he absorbs information.

What to do if a child already has such a complex?

Sometimes just praising him is enough. Very often children are afraid to speak because they are afraid of making a mistake, because they will be scolded for it! Our approach is the opposite: make mistakes, we will correct them and learn together.

Everyone, especially children, has their own characteristics, strengths and weak sides. If a person studies poorly, it is not because he is stupid, incapable or bad, but because the teacher did not find an approach to this student.

How to choose the “right” language courses

1. Determine why you need a language. In other words, we need a school that teaches using communicative methods. If you read and translate, it is more logical to turn to the traditional method. Pay attention to the length of the course that the school offers (usually to achieve good level“from scratch” requires 1000 or more academic hours).

2. Do not focus only on the proximity of the school to your home and do not be tempted by discounts. The main thing a good school spends money on is qualified teachers.

3. All school teachers must be highly qualified, ideally a teaching certificate or diploma.

4. Schools with Teacher Training (teacher training center) have a greater opportunity to raise quality specialists and provide good knowledge.

5. Courses that are part of international organizations or where teachers undergo internships abroad are much more credible.

Yulia SMIRNOVA [email protected]

Everyone has dreamed of a way to learn English where you can learn English language not teaching grammar, writing exercises, reading a large number of English textbooks. That is, so that all new information is recorded in our memory as on a hard drive or flash drive. The truth is healthy, today you wanted to learn 1000 new words in English, read it once and you’re done, you’ve already learned them.

But, unfortunately, we do not yet know such a method of accelerated learning of the English language. But there is a proven method. All you have to do is turn on an English-language radio station and listen. For example, you are cooking or having breakfast at home, play something in English in the background. You can put on an interesting audio book in English, or turn on a foreign channel on TV. The main thing is that you should always speak English.

Walk along the road, listen to music on your player or mobile phone. You will notice that after a while with such passive learning of the English language. Your English will become much better.

You will better perceive English-speaking speech by ear, you will be able to speak with foreigners and not ask them several times “Excuse me, what did you say?” since you will clearly hear what your interlocutor said and your interlocutor will be pleased that you understand him and do not ask him again with every question.

Agree, it’s not a bad result to not learn English, but only to passively listen to English speech every day. Of course, if you want to know English perfectly, read well, write and speak English correctly, then this method of learning English alone will not be enough for you. With this method, you improve your listening comprehension of English speech, plus expand your vocabulary.

Therefore, if it is not enough for you to just understand English, then you need to use active methods of learning English. You will have to do written exercises, learn spoken dialogues, practice speaking, and study English grammar. An acquaintance of mine flew to the USA for the third time under the Work and Travel program to work as a bartender for the summer.

He knows English well and speaks it fluently. And one day we were driving in the car and I asked him. Seryoga, how do you know English so well? To which he replied, I don’t know, since childhood I watched cartoons in English. After which I asked him again: Is that all? Haven't you taken English courses? He answered then: no, I just watched cartoons, listened to foreign music, now I constantly watch TV series, all in English.

From this example we can conclude that it is possible to learn English without studying. All you have to do is immerse yourself in the English language environment. And then you won’t have to sit all day long over English textbooks. I hope that each of you will be able to speak English in a year, we will try to help you with this.

How to learn English - THE EASIEST WAY

FITNESS FOR EARS

Now let's try to explain how your ears can be trained to perceive the tones inherent in foreign languages. But before that, you must know why the ear cannot hear certain tones. This happens because two tiny muscles in the middle ear—the tensor malleus and the tensor stapes—are not ready to focus on sounds that are rarely used in our native language. The goal of the method is to “teach” the muscles to work with these sounds.

Professor Tomatis has invented a unique method to help achieve this. In a simplified version, this can be represented as follows: You are listening to a sound of a frequency that you objectively hear poorly or not at all. This sound switches on and off continuously, causing the middle ear muscles to tense and relax, respectively. As a result, the muscles become “trained”, tuned to the sound of a certain frequency, and you begin to hear a sound that you had not previously perceived.

FEATURES OF A SYLLABLE.

Foreign languages ​​not only differ in the frequencies they use, but also in the length of their syllables. Their correct pronunciation in the tense structure is one of the most important factors for learning foreign speech. Often you need to learn, for example, to pronounce syllables faster than in your native language. In addition, according to Tomatis, your ears should learn to perceive them faster. All this is achieved through this method.

LINGUISTIC REVIVAL.

A foreign language is much more than just new words. We must also learn in what cases to use certain words, what needs to be emphasized especially, in what rhythm to speak, etc. All this is called the structure of the language. Professor Tomatis has developed a method that helps you master the structure of the language much faster.

Above we have already talked about the expression “mother tongue”, emphasizing the importance of the word “language”. It has long been known that the structure of our native language is laid down in us in the womb - during the last five months we hear her voice. Although in utero the child hears his mother’s voice somewhat differently than in reality. The whole point is that the mother's voice passes to the child through amniotic fluid, which play the role of a sound filter. This filter allows only high-frequency sounds, more than 8 thousand Hz, to pass through, which form the very structure of our “native language” in us.

Using the Tomatis method, we can model this process: if you listen to a text in a foreign language, passed through an 8000 Hz filter, then you get a text similar to what you heard in utero. When learning according to the Tomatis method, after several hours of listening to such a text, lower frequencies are gradually added, i.e. there is a “birth” of a new language, which will be perceived by you as laid down in utero.

LEADING EAR

We all know that there are people with a dominant right hand, and there is one on the left. But few people know that we all also have a dominant ear. Some of us hear primarily with our right ear, while others hear primarily with our left. Professor Tomatis discovered that right-eared people perceive information better and are better adapted in life. It is especially preferable to have a right dominant ear if you want to learn foreign languages. The fact is that the right ear is connected to the left hemisphere of the brain, where the center of speech and language abilities is located. If you listen more with your left ear, then the information first goes to the right hemisphere and then to the left hemisphere, which takes much longer. In addition, after going through such a difficult route, the sounds are slightly distorted, especially high-frequency sounds. The Tomatis Method allows anyone to make the right ear dominant. This happens as follows: while listening, the device forces your right ear to work more intensely.

KUMEN EXPERIMENT.

In 1976, the effectiveness of the Tomatis method was tested at a school in Koumen, Belgium. For the study, 30 high school students were taken and divided into 2 groups. All students were approximately the same level of “listening” ability. They all spoke French, and none of them knew English. The first group was taught English according to the regular secondary school curriculum for a full school year. Another group studied according to the regular high school curriculum for 6 months and at the same time according to the Tomatis method for 3 months. At the end of the academic year, all students were tested by an independent teacher for their understanding of spoken English as well as pronunciation. The group that studied according to the Tomatis method clearly outperformed the group that learned the language according to the regular school curriculum. After the school holidays, the two groups were tested again and this difference became even more pronounced. The Tomatis group retained the knowledge they acquired during the school year, while the regular program group forgot much of what they had learned.

We studied English at school, we studied it at universities, we studied it for more than ten years (and what years!), but do we know it? The question seems to be rhetorical. For many graduates, the “speaking” remains at the “Elementary” level, that is, within the framework of the dialogue “How much time?” - “Six watch” - “So much?” - “Whom how...” “Maybe something should be corrected at the conservatory?” Zhvanetsky once used to say. I don’t know what about the conservatory, but one thing is obvious - everyone should have their own way of mastering foreign languages, their own Basurman Tao. I'll tell you about mine.

Have you ever met a person who can read but cannot speak? Not a deaf-mute, an ordinary person. If you haven't seen it, go to the mirror. Here is a subject who reads English fairly well, at least understands the news, listens to audio books and watches movies, but cannot pronounce anything other than “hi”. And you are not alone. Almost all of us here are like that.

By studying written English, we limit ourselves to a small sphere of life, but by studying spoken English, we open up access to a boundless ocean of live communication. It would seem an obvious idea. But from school we are taught a written language, which, naturally, no one speaks, because it is impossible by definition.

How did you learn your first, native language? First they listened, then they learned to speak, only then - to read, and at the very end - to write. You will not teach your children to read first and then speak. So why do we learn our second language backwards? We’ve been studying hard for a long time, but we can’t learn it? Try it differently and you will succeed.

This is quite easy to do if you follow a certain pattern and follow simple rules:
. learn not words, but entire phrases;
. do not cram grammatical rules, forget about them altogether, grammar should be learned intuitively;
. listen, listen, listen - immerse yourself in the language environment;
. take your time and listen to each recording many times until you begin to understand it completely.

First, let's start with goal setting. Target- speak English fluently, automatically and fluently. The period is six months, no more and no less. During this time, don't even try to speak English. You can repeat phrases, you need to answer questions, but under no circumstances speak on your own. In six months everything will happen by itself, and it’s a wonderful feeling. Don't rush him. Motivation- As often as possible, imagine yourself as a person who already speaks the language. Model the future in the present tense as if it has already happened. You speak English fluently. What kind of job do you want to get? Which country are you going to? What films do you want to watch without translation? Who can you talk to on Skype now? If you dream correctly, then the dream comes true.

We said above that to overcome the language barrier you need to act according to a certain scheme. Let's look at this in more detail. You need to exercise every day, without a break. Think of it as a brain exercise. It will be hard at first, but then it will go by itself. We will divide the daily training into four blocks, which we will call “Morning”, “Day”, “Evening” and “Night”. (You can study at any time, the main thing is to follow the sequence of blocks, start with “Morning” and end with “Night”).

Morning
We learn twenty English phrases. Not words! Entire phrase. Where can I get phrases? For example, here http://www.eslgold.com/speaking/phrases.html. Or here http://www.englishspeak.com/ru/english-phrases.cfm. This is a start. In the future, we will select phrases ourselves.

You can teach in different ways. You can make cards from cardboard. On one side there is an English phrase, on the other there is a translation. You can simply write down phrases in a table in Worde. Or you can download a special program for creating and organizing maps. There are many such programs: Learn Words, Anki, Language Memory Bomber, Rembom, Lex!, FVords and so on.

Links where you can download programs for working with maps:
http://eugeniavlasova.com/archives/zhizn_v_linukse/anki_programma_dlya_zapominaniya_slov.html;
http://vgasoft.spb.ru/; http://www.learnwords.ru/; http://www.bombina.com/s1_rembom.htm.
By learning phrases, you remember the meanings of words in their natural environment - in context. In addition, you automatically learn the rules of grammar.

Important point: Once you have memorized a phrase, imagine a situation in which you might use it. Replay this scene in your head, get into character. Language teachers call this stage “phrase activation.”

Day
We listen to podcasts - small radio programs that anyone can record and post online. There are special podcasts for English language learners.

One of the best sites for such podcasts is http://www.eslpod.com. Why one of the best? The authors of the podcasts are professional language teachers. They know how to speak so that they are understood. With feeling, with sense, with arrangement, explaining unfamiliar words and repeating basic phrases several times. In a word, like with children. And this is very important. If you listen to a text in which you understand 40-50% of the meaning, you will very soon lose interest and motivation. Listening to a text in which almost everything is clear is much more useful. To make the task easier, the site has transcripts of the podcasts. Each podcast is about 20 minutes long. There are over 700 podcasts in total. We work according to the following scheme - we listen to the recording five times, while simultaneously following the transcript with our eyes, five times simply by ear.
At the same time, we mark for ourselves the phrases we especially liked in the transcript. We will teach them tomorrow morning.

Of course, ESLPod.com isn't the only source for educational podcasts.
There is another wonderful site - EffortlessEnglish.com. Website creator A.G. Hoge has developed his own system for teaching English effortlessly, based on listening and analyzing real dialogues. In addition, Hoge maintains his own video blog, recordings from which can be used as training material. The author speaks very clearly, we see his facial expressions, gestures, the work of the organs of articulation, all this makes it extremely easy to understand.
The hardest part of our training is coming to an end. Coming...

…evening
At the end of the day we will watch the series in English. Finding and downloading it is not a problem. The problem is to choose one that you can watch without translation. I advise you to start with Extr@English. This is a British youth series about two girls renting an apartment in London, their neighbor Nick and a young Argentinean Hector, who comes to visit them. Hector speaks terrible English and everyone drills him. Fun, joyful, youthful. Thirty 20-minute episodes have it all: shopping, job search, travel, holidays, creativity, meeting friends, weddings and kung fu. The series is really funny and understandable. It is very important that it comes with full transcripts of all episodes, comprehension exercises, Russian and English subtitles. We work with the series in the same way as with podcasts: first we watch with a transcript (or with English subtitles), then without it. It’s better not to include Russian subtitles, get used to understanding without translation, especially since in the series it’s easy to do this based on the behavior of the actors.
Don't forget to keep track of the phrases you'd like to learn. The scheme is simple: you heard a cool phrase, pressed pause, and copied the phrase from the transcript onto a card. This is for the morning.
Of course, you can choose another series. There is a torrent site - http://www.mininova.org, where you can find films, TV series and information in any language. One of the best resources where you can find subtitles for TV series is http://www.tvsubtitles.net/, where subtitles are collected in many languages. You can wander around there and at the same time see which TV series have subtitles. If after watching the series you still have some strength left, then you can read at night.

Night
I recommend - English Reading Club. This is a series of CDs with works of English literature of varying degrees of complexity. The book can be “swallowed” different ways: just listen, listen and watch a slide show, listen and watch a slide show with subtitles, read a book and listen to the narrator's voice, and finally just read. There is no translation, and rightly so. You try to understand a word while remaining in the context of one language. If it doesn’t quite work out, you can turn to the English explanatory dictionary (attached to the course), where, with the help of definitions and synonyms, you will find the elusive meaning. Believe me, it's much more efficient than search in the English-Russian dictionary. You must learn to think in the language, mixing Russian and English words, you are only making life more difficult for your brain. By the way, this is exactly how they teach in Romano-Germanic departments.
What books come with the course, you ask? I could, of course, say: “What difference does it make, comrade? Did you come here to learn a language or read books?”, but I won’t say. My set included: The Stranger, Room 13 and Other Ghost Stories, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Riders of the Purple Sage. Each book came with a set of exercises that allowed you to independently assess whether you understood everything well. My criterion for successful learning is this: if you can retell the contents of the book in detail and interestingly to a random fellow traveler on the Liverpool-Manchester train, then consider that you have passed the exam.

English has become an international language due to its relative simplicity and logical construction of phrases. It is not surprising that in our country schoolchildren begin to learn it almost from the first grade. If you are no longer a schoolchild, but at one time you studied at school, say, German, which you happily forgot six months after leaving school, then you will probably need to learn at least the basic and basic concepts, the most frequently used words and phrases. For example, such as “exit”, “entrance”, “call”, “police”, “hotel”, etc. They will be very useful to you when you find yourself abroad. And knowing what parts of the body are called in English can even save your life.

Here, for example, is such an unpleasant, but quite possible situation: you received an injury to any part of the body or saw someone get it. The injury is serious enough that you call ambulance. But, without knowing how to tell which specific part of the body is injured, you will not be able to explain over the phone what exactly happened and what help you need.

Let's look at the main parts of the human body and their names in English. These should include, firstly, the head. In English it would be "head". The transcription (pronunciation) of this word, if written in international format, will look like this: . You can completely simplify the task and write the same transcription in Russian symbols, but you should keep in mind that in this case the pronunciation will only be approximately correct, since many sounds of the English language are completely alien to Russian, therefore, reliably depicting them using Russian symbols will be very difficult . So, the word “head” is pronounced [head], and the sound “e” should sound drawn out.

Basic parts of the human body in English

Similarly, using Russian and international transcription, we will write down other parts of the body.

• 🔊 Listen to Body [‘bɔdɪ], [badi] - body
• 🔊 Listen to Shoulder - [‘ʃəuldə], [shaulde] - shoulder
• 🔊 Listen Arm - [ɑːm], [aam] - hand (from the shoulder to the fingertips)
• 🔊 Listen Hand - , [hand] - hand (brush)
• 🔊 Listen Elbow - [‘elbəu], [elbow] - elbow
• 🔊 Listen to Chest - [ʧest], [honest] - rib cage
• 🔊 Listen to Stomach - [‘stʌmək], [stamak] - belly, stomach
• 🔊 Listen to Back - [back] - back
• 🔊 Listen to Bottom - [‘bɔtəm], [botem] - back
• 🔊 Listen Thigh - [θaɪ], [sai] - thigh (the sound “s” is pronounced by pinching the tip of the tongue between the teeth, as a result it sounds like a cross between the sounds “s” and “f”)
• 🔊 Listen Leg - , [leg] - leg
• 🔊 Listen to Knee - , [nii] - knee
• 🔊 Listen Calf (calves) - , , [kaaf], [kaavz] - caviar (calves of the legs) (the pronunciation of the plural body part is given in the second brackets)
• 🔊 Listen Foot (feet) - , , [foot], [fiit] - foot (feet)
• 🔊 Listen to Ankle Ankle - [‘æŋkl], [enkl] - ankle (the sound “n” is pronounced “in the nose”, as if you have a cold)
• 🔊 Listen Heel - , [heel] - heel
• 🔊 Listen to Finger - [finge] - finger on hand
• 🔊 Listen to Fist - [fist] - fist
• 🔊 Listen Neck - [neck] - neck
• 🔊 Listen Palm - , [paam] - palm
• 🔊 Listen Toe - [tou] - toe
• 🔊 Listen to Waist - [waist] - waist

Knowing the names of the main parts of the human body, you will be able to communicate with, say, the same ambulance, find out what hurts the person, etc.

How to quickly learn the names of body parts in English?

You should try to teach them with the help of pictures, tongue twisters, and various sites where you can learn words. Remember how as a child you learned parts of the human body in your native language: mouth, ears, eyes, nose... Try to do the same now - point in the mirror at yourself or at the person with whom you are learning, and pronounce the parts of the body. This way they will be better remembered in the mind. In general, look for ways, fantasize, learn from someone else!

Description of a person's appearance in English..

Just as in the first case, for some reason you may need to describe the appearance of a person, and for this you also need to know the names of some parts of the body. But, a description of a person in English, as, in general, in any other language, can consist of several hundred different parameters and characteristics, so let’s consider what gives the most accurate and understandable description of a person’s appearance - his face. After all, sometimes it’s enough to say that someone has dark hair long hair, big nose and Brown eyes and everyone has already quite vividly imagined this person, right?

Parts of a human face in English

• 🔊 Listen to Cheek
• 🔊 Listen to Chin [chin] chin
• 🔊 Listen to Ear [ɪə(r)] [IA] ear
• 🔊 Listen to Eye [ay] eye
• 🔊 Listen to Eyebrows [ibrow] eyebrows
• 🔊 Listen to Eyelashes [aylash] eyelashes
• 🔊 Listen to Eyelid [ailid] eyelids
• 🔊 Listen to Face [face] face
• 🔊 Listen to Hair [hea] hair (at the end of a word, if you follow British pronunciation, there should be a faint [r] sound, pronounced as if you were not pronouncing the letter r; in American English there is no such sound)
• 🔊 Listen to Lips [lips] lips
• 🔊 Listen to Mouth [mauf] mouth (at the end - the same sound [s], at the same time similar to [f])
• 🔊 Listen to Nose [nose] nose
• 🔊 Listen to Nostril [ˈnɔstrɪl] [nostril] nostril
• 🔊 Listen to Pupil [ˈpjuːp(ə)l] [pupil] pupil
• 🔊 Listen Tooth / teeth [tus] [yew] tooth (teeth)

Interestingly, all parts of the face associated with the eyes (eyebrows, eyelashes, eyelids) have the word “eye” as a prefix in their name in English.

Example of using words in speech

Using words meaning parts of the face, you can construct something like this description of a person’s face:
He had beautiful blue eyes long eyelashes and thin brows. When his lips made a smile everyone could see his perfect white teeth. - He had wonderful Blue eyes, long eyelashes and thin eyebrows. When his lips smiled, everyone could see his perfect white teeth.

So you have studied the main parts of the human body that will help you describe it. Of course, you won’t be able to become a master of verbal description just like that, right off the bat—you learn a language over years. But these words will help you describe yourself or someone else in an emergency, simply explain to a passerby or a seller, and help your little son do his homework. In the end, the main thing is that the study of parts of the human body has begun. And to describe the pale pink color of the skin, high cheekbones, pleasant eye shape and long curly hair You can marry your girlfriend when you become more familiar with the language and devote more time to studying it. Learn, dare, master the English language - this is a wonderful choice! Good luck and patience!