Learning Conversational English

Nowadays conversational English is a necessity. It doesn’t matter where you live or who you are, you have to know English. If you are unable to communicate with other people from all over the World in English, I will give you some tips about how to improve your English skills. First of all you have to decide why do you need to know English.

Most people who learn English have the same goal – they want to be able to communicate and have conversations with wide range of people in English. There are three types of language – “Textbook English”, “Written English” and “Real English”. If your goal is to become better at speaking with real people, you have to forget for a while about first two types of English. In fact the first type - textbook English you must forget forever. The biggest problem is that most people and students are learning only the first two types of English and does not spend enough time on the third type. You don’t have to make the same mistake! Concentrate on listening and speaking practice first. Do it every day and you will learn the real English.

Then and only then you can start to work on your written English, which is more complicated and takes more time to learn. That’s is exactly what happened with your native language. First you learned to understand, then you learned to speak, then you learned to write and finally you learned to write well. Only when you are able to understand what other people say, and speak clearly enough that people can understand you, you can start to work on your grammar skills.

I can give you a simple example why learning conversational English before you start to work on your grammar skills is better. A simple example is baby. How babies start to learn language? By listening to their parents and trying to tell something to them. And only when they are able to do that, they attend schools and start to learn grammar and other more difficult things.

So, apparently you should do the same to learn a new language. Listen as much as possible and try to say something. And do not be afraid of making mistakes. Mistakes are one of the best way to learn and remember something. Also if you think that you don’t have a time to learn even conversational English, it can’t true! All you need is a iPod or mp3 player and audio record with English lessons. You can listen to it anytime anywhere, when you have a little bit of free time. It’s a good way to begin to learn conversational English.