my english journey essay

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My English language journey – Jose’s story

About my English language journey

I found similarities between English and Spanish

During these last 6 months in London, in order to enhance my English, not only did I discover the huge wealth of English grammar, but I also found out a large number of similarities between English and Spanish. This helped to encourage my learning. For instance, no sooner had I arrived at the Heathrow airport than I listened to a native speaker talking with his friend, stated “to strike while the iron is hot”. I still have to recognise I did not understand at that moment what the meaning was.  Having learned this meaning, I gathered that both English and Spanish speakers are prone to use proverbs or sayings to emphasise our ideas.

Looking back on previous years, many memories come to my mind, for example, I felt an inferiority complex owing to not being able to overcome my fears to speak and listen to English language well enough, despite being acceptable at English grammar. It was absolutely frustrating and dispiriting being unable to engage in meaningful conversations, namely at the dinning table of my house, where I live with a native speaker. However, little by little, I was getting used to it and as the saying goes “practice makes perfect”.

Most inspiring place in London

Eternally grateful to my school

Should I be eternally grateful with another fact of priceless value in my learning, it will be my English school, The English Studio. There are several reasons I am grateful. Firstly, most of their teachers are willing to share their knowledge and experience in a friendly, warm and clear way. Besides, they promote the respect of religious freedom and freedom of speech. Secondly, students from other countries can swap information about our nations and learn more about our cultures. Finally, the multiple social events organised by the school helped improve in my English skills considerably.

In conclusion, as Gandhi once said “Be the change you want to see in the world”, and as far as I am concerned, this journey is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that has changed lots of aspects of my life. In addition to this, learning English would allow me to reach one of my biggest long time goals, which is to be able to give speeches in international medical conferences.

Nevertheless, it is unreasonable to expect to be perfect so soon, even though I am on the right path and I am hugely grateful for the opportunities that London opened for me.  Long Live London!

José Carlos Alvarez Payares

Jak se stát krásnou živou ženou? Nebo – co je stejné v mužském porozumění – jak se stát centy milenců? Všechno je jednoduché. Musíte se ponořit – ani pod přikrývkou, ale v mozku – a zvážit skryté pod tloušťkou části vody ledovce. Pokud víte, co se mu líbí, je čas zjistit, čeho se bojí a co je váhavě řečeno.

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• What I read

My Story of Learning English: 7 Unforgettable Lessons

“Don't watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going”. Sam Levenson

Learning English nowadays is not an option if you want to comfortably fit in and enjoy the globalized era we live in.

I use English every day, and I simply can’t imagine not being able to speak it.

The truth is, however, that English and I have not always gotten along.

In fact, things were quite tough at the beginning.

I struggled a lot, but I had a vision. A clear vision of myself speaking English in the future. That vision never faltered.

Like a climber, who doesn’t see the peak of the mountain but knows it is there, still wrapped in the clouds, and all he needs to do is keep going.

Today, I would like to talk about my English-learning struggles, how I persevered past them, and what I have learned from the process. I’ll also tell you how you can benefit from all this, too.

A Language Which Would Not Fit in My Head

Susan, my English teacher, could not believe her ears.

I had just pronounced the word “enough” as “inaug”. Ouch.

I had been learning English for almost two years in middle school, but despite my efforts, I was still having a hard time with it.

The English lessons I had at school didn’t help much. In fact, I dare say they were probably the biggest source of my frustration.

I felt somehow betrayed by them. By the whole schooling process, really.

School was supposed to be the place where I would learn stuff, right?

But it wasn’t.

I had a teacher who spoke English with a very thick Italian accent, and his classes were a relentless series of boring texts to read and useless grammar patterns to drill.

I felt like I was going around in circles and not learning much.

My pronunciation was atrocious, the tenses confused me, and phrasal verbs gave me a headache.

Despite all this, there was a silver lining.

Even though English frustrated me to no end, the idea of learning it still excited me.

I wanted to learn and be like an American.

And I fantasized about having an American girlfriend.

I couldn’t see my future, then, but somehow I knew it would someday become a reality.

Let me tell you how it all happened.

1. Learn Every Day

I mean it. It’s the only way you are going to make it happen. In fact, if there is a secret to learning English —actually, any language—quickly, here it is:

Learn every day .

Regularity is what creates momentum, and momentum is what accelerates learning.

I call it “The Law of Language Accumulation”.

Imagine spending 30 minutes learning English every single day for one whole year.

“Only 30 minutes? That’s not that much”, you might think.

But 30 minutes of learning done every day for an entire year is actually quite a big deal .

Imagine learning from the 1st of January till the 31st of December 2019.

Doing the math, it would come out to 30 minutes x 365 days. In total, that’s 10,950 minutes, or just under 183 hours.

So here’s the thing: whatever you do, stick to it.

Learn every day for a minimum of 30 minutes. Some days you’ll do a little more, some days you’ll do a little less, but that doesn’t matter. Just keep learning every day, and whatever you do, don’t break the cycle.

If you need a reminder, take a post-it and write a message to yourself. Something that you’ll see every day that will remind you to sit down, focus, and learn.

Even simple messages like “Learn!” or “English today!” can do wonders.

So get in the habit of sitting down and learning.

If you don’t feel like doing it, start anyway. Just for two minutes.

You’ll notice that you’ll very quickly get into the flow of learning, and you won’t want to stop once the two minutes are up. This is because starting is the most difficult part of the process. Continuing is much easier, once you’ve already gained some momentum.

If you overcome that natural unwillingness to learn for the first few days, you will get momentum, and from there, nothing will stop you from learning English and speaking it fluently.

2. Tackle Pronunciation from the Very Beginning

If there is one piece of advice I really feel can make a difference is this: if you want to learn to speak English well, start working on its phonetics from the very beginning .

As I said before, back when I started, my American English pronunciation was atrocious.

To my credit, English pronunciation is a really tough nut to crack for native Italian speakers, both in terms of pronunciation (how we produce the single sounds) and intonation (how we utter entire sentences).

As an Italian, I didn’t understand why certain groups of vowels would be pronounced that differently from word to word.

“Ough” of “enough” would pronounced like “uff”, but the same “ou” in “cough”, or “tough” sounded quite different, even from one another.

I couldn’t even tell the difference between lax and tense vowels, such as “beet” and “bit”. Or long and short.

I was lucky though, because I never really developed bad habits in English. Not because I was good at it, but because I hardly ever spoke the language in class.

So, when Susan started giving me lessons, I had all the time in the world to work on my pronunciation.

And so I did.

I read texts out loud (affiliate), spoke to her, and received corrections. Then, I started speaking English to myself in my alone time. And I absorbed every single correction like a sponge.

Over time, things got better and better.

Here’s my advice.

Start working on phonetics from the beginning. Choose a specific accent within the English world (American, British, Australian, etc.) and stay consistent. And get interested.

Don’t be scared of new sounds—welcome them!

This is how you will eventually learn to sound like a native speaker: by embracing a different reality and making it part of who you are.

3. Learn Holistically

I see every language as a living organism with four fundamental moving components: reading, listening, speaking and writing. Every single part counts.

If you think about it, when you say that you “speak” a foreign language, most people take for granted that you can also read, write, and understand language that is spoken to you.

This is how we all acquire our native languages. When we get out of our mother’s womb, we first hear, then utter the first few words, and then later learn to read and write.

However, when we learn a foreign language, the way we learn is not set in stone. Things are fuzzier, less defined. Most often than not, we tend to develop some skills better than others. Maybe we learn to read well, but end up speaking poorly. Or we speak well, but have horrible spelling.

This is like going to the gym and only training your arms, or just your legs. If you do this, your muscles will not grow at the same speed, nor in even amounts.

That’s how some  gym-goers end up with big biceps and thin legs. They look uneven, and off-balance. The same thing happens in language learning.

Developing all the 4 main skills harmoniously is all the more important with English. In fact, English has a very difficult spelling and a complex phonetic system.

Reading and writing from the very beginning will help you understand and absorb the spelling system, will help you read and speak better, and you will be able to reap countless other benefits.

Remember that every skill you develop reinforces the other three.

This does not mean that you have to spend an equal amount of time every day developing each skill, but that you develop all of them on a weekly basis.

So, make a solid weekly plan, and make sure that you tackle all the 4 skills over the course of a week.

And there is an easy, cheap and extremely fun way in which you can develop listening AND reading comprehension at the same time.

4. Watch a Lot of Movies with Subtitles 

If I told you that there are widely available learning tools that can expose you to real, authentic English, and help you have lots of fun doing it, would you believe me?

Well, there are.

They’re called movies!

I still remember that soon after I started lessons with Susan, she would bring one different American movie every week, which I avidly watched and rewatched as often as I could.

Watching a lot of American movies allowed me, first and foremost, to improve my listening comprehension. It also helped me dramatically improve my vocabulary.

On top of all that, I got exposed to how native speakers interact, speak, and make gestures—something you can’t do while listening to podcasts or the radio.

Honestly, the benefits of watching movies in English are countless.

And if you learn how to properly watch movies to learn foreign languages , well, then, bingo.

So, this is an activity I highly recommend.

As soon as you reach a decent level in English, make sure that you watch at least one English movie every week, possibly with English subtitles.

Don’t forget to also jot down which movies you watched, and when you watched them, too. Keeping track of what you do is essential for your motivation.

Let me explain further:

5. Keep a Logbook

When you are developing your English skills, it’s natural to ask yourself if you’re actually making any progress.

To detect your progress in English, you’ll need to measure it.

But the question is, how do you do it?

There are a lot of possibilities, but the most obvious method that comes to mind is saving and collecting words.

All you need to do is count how many words you’ve learned, and write them down somewhere.

But the truth is, measuring language skills is not always that straightforward.

There is so much more to language knowledge than just words.

Here’s the thing:

You might not measure language growth directly, but you can do it indirectly.

Keep a logbook.

That’s right!

By keeping a logbook, you get into the habit of tracking everything you do. You track what you do, how you do it, and how long you do it for.

With the logbook, you are building momentum, keeping yourself accountable, and making sure you stay on track. For greater accountability, you can even share your logbook with others.

Believe me, keeping a logbook can make a huge difference in your learning.

So, make sure that every time you finish something, you jot it down in your logbook. It only takes a minute to do so, and looking back at what you have done will give you an incredible feeling of accomplishment over time.

Then, the moment will come in which you won’t even need your logbook at all.

Let’s examine this moment, and see what it means for you as an English learner.

6. Move from Studying to Using the Language

These days, speaking English has become second nature to me.

I use English every single day, for many different reasons. Plus, I read books (affiliate), listen to music, and watch TV, YouTube videos, and documentaries.

I speak English both in real life and on the Internet.

I write emails, and articles. Make presentations.

I think, and even dream in English.

In other words, English has become a fixture in my life and lifestyle.

In every language learner’s path, there comes the magical moment when you stop seeing a language as something to deliberately study, and you start simply using it because it is part of your life and who you are.

This is not to say that you will ever stop learning. Learning never really stops, even at the advanced level.

This moment I’m talking about is simply a huge paradigm shift. It will eventually happen, if you work hard enough.

From that moment on, things will be much easier and smoother.

It’s a major breakthrough.

There is not a specific moment when that happens. It just happens.

But in order to make it happen, you need English to be part of your life.

And one major factor is surrounding yourself with native speakers of English.

7. Develop Friendships and Relationships with English Speakers

I keep saying it, and I won’t change my mind: the best resource to learn a new language is people .

The languages I speak extremely well are not the languages I studied the most. They are the languages I lived the most.

That’s why speaking on Skype every once in a while or chatting through some app is not enough. You need to live situations, see faces and smiles, and hear laughter and other reactions.

You need people.

Over a long period of time, having one good friend to eat, drink, laugh, and generally hang out with can really help take your English to a whole new level.

I have countless foreign friends, but some are more special and close than others.

When I met Garrett, an American from Philadelphia, he was living in Rome. We started hanging out, and spent countless hours together. That was an invaluable experience to learn how Americans live their language and in this world. Priceless.

A friend talks to you.

Listens to you.

Corrects you.

Smiles with you.

I like thinking that the side of the personality that we develop in a foreign language is partially shaped and sculpted by the native speakers who surround us, and the choices we make in life.

My English has been shaped by Garrett, Susan, and all the rest of the valuable people I’ve met along the journey.

I am grateful to them for being my friends, and I always will be.

So, if you don’t have friends yet, make sure to get out there and make an effort to get to know someone. You can go to local bars for language exchanges with native English speakers, search on the Internet, and even ask friends to introduce you to English speakers they know.

Ultimately, you want to aim for a long-lasting, solid friendship, because that is what helps you grow, both as a person and as an English learner.

Oh, and it goes without saying, having a foreign partner and developing a relationship with them is as amazing way to make your language skills more authentic.

Time to Live Your English Story

So there you have it.

Do you want to learn English to a near-native level?

Get to it! Learn enthusiastically for a long period of time.

Learn every day, and be proactive. Keep track of what you do.

Diversify your activities. Make sure you read, listen, speak and write on a weekly basis.

And then make English an integral part of your life.

You can make ton of incredible friends, and you—yes, you —can even find love.

I have detailed all these techniques and tips and more in an extensive course on how to improve your English , feel free to check it out if you want to have a deeper understanding of how I have taken English to the next level.

Written by Luca Lampariello

You may also like, from frustrated to fluent: 3 big lessons learning greek, questions and answers about language learning (and me), critics, haters and cynics: the ugly side of language learning.

I have been studying Portuguêse for 4 years and 7 months and been to Brasil 14 times but I can’t converse or read in Portuguêse yet or even order food at restaurants. I translate everything. I study every day and speak and write to my Brasilian girlfriend every day. I watch movies and videos and have teachers but I can’t understand the videos except for an occasional word that I usually have to translate. My classes have all been in English because I can’t understand the teachers. Any ideas how I can learn without translating or learn with translating instead of not learning? Thanks

Hi Patrick!

Thanks for the comment.

You have to stop translating because, at this point, it does more harm than good.

You have to immerse yourself in the language, listening, reading speaking and writing WITHOUT resorting to English.

For each skill you have to develop a strategy where your brain does not resort to the usual brain patterns that are now wired to your way of tackling Portuguese.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to explain all this in a written comment, and that’s why people take specific training sessions with me to address this or other problems.

Feel free to contact me if you need a more in-depth, specific approach to this problem.

I started using flashcards (Anki or whatever) with no native language (predominately pictures) and I found it really helped. It really did skip the intermediate step of meaning > native language > learning language. All the words and phrases you know you can still make flashcards of them. If it’s easy, just click easy on Anki or whatever you use. When you see a flashcard of “Katze” (cat), you want to imagine the image/feeling of a cat, not think of the English word. This way you are learning to go directly from the foreign language > meaning directly. Hope this helps.

interesting ! Thanks for information !

You are most welcome! =) L

Hello Luca Lampariello. Thank you for sharing your journey. You have always been very straightforward, fair and humble. Congratulations.

I’ve been practicing English every single day since 2014. Today I’m quite comfortable in almost all skills. However, when it comes about movies, I still struggle a lot. If I’m watching them with my headphones, it feels like, an increase of 20% or 30% in my listening skills. If I’m not listening this way, and let’s say, if the speakers are behind of the TV or if we’re in a rowdy room, or maybe in a friend’s house, it is nearly impossible to enjoy the movie. I’ll have to be very focused on and extremely tuned, otherwise, I’ll miss lots of things.

I understand that’s normal and the answer is probably anticlimactic, as being something like you just need more practice. But on the other hand, listening had been my foundation, I would listen to podcast and youtube videos every single day. I don’t really understand how I can feel so confident and understanding almost 90-100% in these platforms but having an enormous drop in movies.

I’m considering to quit my podcasts and youtube and start practicing only with movies. Do you think this is a good approach? What makes me hesitant is the fact that even if it is a movie with a lot conversation, there will be lots of breaks. In contrast to podcasts, the intensity of conversations tends to be higher. It is pretty much 1:30-2 hours of straight speaking, therefore, I have felt that I had consumed more information in this way. In other words, more exposed, more vocab, more grammar patterns and etc.

Like Luca said, you have to immerse yourself completely in English, if you want to watch Tv comfortably. It may be very hard doing it alone, It rather requires being among natives all time and change your mind on other language .

Do you think I should learn English by reading books or hire a tutor?

Hello Luca, how can I buy that English course?

There are some really good tips here, especially about watching movies in the language you are learning.

I never thought of that and am now going to do it while I learn to speak French.

One thing you have written incorrectly is this sentence:

” “Ough” of “enough” would pronounced like “uff”, but the same “ou” in “cough”, or “tough” sounded quite different, even from one another.”

The “ough” in both enough and tough are the same sound. The “uff” sound you describe.

I think you meant to use either the word “trough”, which has an “off” sound, or the word “thought”, which has an “ort” sound.

I actually think that “ough” demonstrates more than anything else how difficult English is, primarily because it has borrowed words from so many other languages.

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Very sustantial and helpfil post! I am currently doing my research and this would really help me. May I know the date you posted this? Thanks!

Very substantial and helpful post! I am currently doing my research and this would really help me. May I know the date you posted this? Thanks!

awesome notes!

Totally useful! I couldn’t agree more with these practical yet amazing tips. I’ll leave a link that will also help you in your language learning. Hope you visit this site! https://www.justlearn.com

You can also try TUTOROO. They have native English language tutors and speakers that you can hire to learn the English language easier and effectively. You can choose your own tutor from their page and you can inquire directly with them about the classes. Check out their website for more information. Hope this helps!

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