A lot of people are always asking, "How do I improve my English?" There are many possible answers, but here are just a few pieces of advice.
Be responsible for your own learning
Sure you have teachers, reading materials, and websites to help you with your English, but who is really responsible for making sure you learn English well? Nobody but you. Make sure you are the one who is taking charge of your own learning. There is a good article about the subject on the 5 Minute English website. It's at www.5minuteenglish.com/articles. Check it out.
Immerse yourself in English as much as possible
Immerse means to be surrounded by something. If you are immersed in English, it is all around you. Of course this isn't always possible, but you can do some things to surround yourself in English from time to time.
Listen to the radio in English. If there are no English radio stations where you live, listen to one on the internet.
Watch TV and movies in English. If you have English channels on your TV, watch them. If they have subtitles (the words written in your language) underneath the picture, see if they can be turned off. Some people even tape paper across the bottom of the screen so they can't see the words. Most DVD's are great because you can choose the language you want to hear.
Speak English to your friends. Get a conversation buddy (friend) and speak in English as much as possible. If it is a person whose native language is the same as your own, you may feel silly speaking in English at first. But don't worry. Continue to do it and it will become more natural to you. Finding friends whose native language is English is even better. Ask your friend to correct you when needed.
Study or travel to an English-speaking country. Of course the best way to immerse yourself in the English language is to live in an all English environment. You'll find yourself surrounded with the language everywhere you turn. It can be a more difficult and expensive choice, but you may find it to be a very valuable and helpful experience.
Other ideas. Take an English class, join an English group, find a tutor, read English magazines. Do whatever you can to immerse yourself in the language.
Monitor yourself
This means to pay attention to how you use English. Think (a little) about how you are going to say something before it comes out of your mouth. But don't think about all of the problems you have in English at the same time. Just choose something your know you are having difficulty with and work on using it correctly. For example, if you know that you have problems remembering to use a, an, and the, spend a few days trying to put them into sentences as you speak. Don't worry about anything else. Concentrate on that. When you feel that you are improving, choose something else to work on. Just keep trying and little by little, your English will get better.
Teaching grammar is an essential part of school education or adult learning. Without good grammar, spoken or written words lose much of their meaning and most of their value. Grammar is a very important thing to get right, and teachers should take extra care to impart proper grammar to all their students. Sadly, grammar is often seen as a difficult and boring subject and one popular method of teaching is to just repeat the correct grammar for a certain situation over and over until it is memorised and able to be repeated, like a parrot. This is dull for both teachers and students, and often only results in the students being able to repeat what they have learned, rather than resulting in a complete understanding that can be applied to all situations.
English grammar is very complex, and all its intricacies cannot truly be learned by rote, they must be really understood – and understanding is most easily achieved when students are engaged, interested and having fun during a lesson. To make sure you’re covering all the necessary topics with your students, you could check out the Grammar Boost lesson plans here.
Word puzzles are a useful and interactive method whereby students can learn all sorts of important parts of English grammar. They can be used to encourage students to identify and understand various parts of a sentence; grammatical concepts like synonyms, tenses and conjugations; or incorrectly used grammar. Word puzzles such as crosswords are easily modified to suit all age and skill levels and introduce an element of fun competition into the learning process, so they can be invaluable in forging a full and lasting understanding of English grammar.
In summation, all education depends on a foundation of good grammar. If students cannot understand grammar, they will struggle to read, write or speak clearly in any other area of education, from maths and science to history or geography. Good language is the base on which all other education has to stand. Teachers can use a variety of ways to make their grammar lessons memorable and enjoyable for students. Students who enjoy their lessons will pay closer attention, and you will then have an easier time while teaching. This is why great lessons are important for everyone involved, and why you should take the time to ensure you are teaching grammar in the best and most engaging way for the skill level and requirements of your individual students.
To what extent Oscar Wilde’sThe Importance of Being Ernestcriticizes the aristocracy
The social
atmosphere of the late Victorian age was extremely conservative and restricted
under the control of royal family. Based on this atmosphere, the aristocrats
obtained fruitful privileges; certain worldview, value system and lifestyle for
this class were created and formed through the consensus of their performances
in daily life like behaviors, manners, tastes and so on. In the eyes of Wilde,
those features of aristocracy were quite defects, which were totally unnatural.
Since the huge repression from the authority, he chose to use this decent work The
Importance of Being Ernest as his
voice to criticize those defects of the aristocratic class in a satirical
tone and let people awake of the true colors of those mincing people. To a great
extent, his exquisite characterization in this work
reflects the criticisms towards the aristocracy in various aspects from their
surface to morality.
·Shallowness
of the aristocracy
Shallowness
seemed to be the surface of the aristocracy, like their behaviors and tastes,
which could be presented through both the depiction of their lifestyle and
their value of judgment. In this play, Wilde always depicted the idle lifestyle
of the aristocracy in great detail, like “playing the piano, visiting their
scandalous neighbors, gossiping about their scandalous neighbors, eating
gorgeous cucumber sandwiches and making up lies to avoid dining with their
relatives such items on their daily to-do list.”(Shmoop, 2015) In their daily
life, they spent time on those useless things instead of being utilitarian. The
depiction in this play was done in a satirical
tone to show the absurdity of that age. The shallowness can also be presented
in their value of judgment, which is that “Appearance was everything, and style
was much more important than substance” (CliffNotes, Van). In the third act of
this play, when Gwendolen tried to let Cecily accept Algernon’s apology, she
said: “True. In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital
thing” (Reidhead, 2230).The voice and
attitude of the characters could reflect the Shallowness of aristocracy, which
was only focusing on the surface of things, even people.
·Hypocrisy of the aristocracy
We could say that shallowness was
their surface, then hypocrisy of the aristocracy was their characteristic or
personality, which worked as the most important element for creating the dramatic
conflicts. “The Victorian gentlemen maintained double identities and ladies were
snobbish and affected under the garb of dignity” (Hazra, 2013). In the first act of this play, Algernon was
advocating the benefits of “having a Bunbury” and both Algernon and Jack were
acting as “bunburists” for their own purposes; even though Jack wasn’t an
aristocrat, he was still acting in an aristocratic way. In the second act, “Jack
rounded out the deception with costumes and props, and he did his best to
convince the family he was in mourning. He was acting hypocritically” (Sparknotes,
Editors). And Algernon was even a better bunburist, and he used the good excuse
of Bunbury’s sickness and came to Cecily as her uncle “Earnest” for the
engagement. The two ladies were also hypocritical in some ways. Both Gwendolen and Cecily claimed that
they only wanted to marry a man whose name was Earnest but when they knew that
the real names of their “Earnest” were Algernon and Jack, they still chose to
forgive the lie. The reason was that things they actually loved were what they
needed—money or aristocratic title. During their oral fighting, they were
always admiring themselves and pretending to be the most excellent women so that
they could win. Even Cecily wrote an affected and sentimental dairy to deceive herself
about her romantic relationship with Earnest as the evidence. The aristocracy were
pretending in every moment and we could not find their real emotion and
thoughts directly. And through the plot, even though the characters found out
the clues for others’ hypocrisy, like Lady Bracknell’s sarcastic words towards
“the sick Bunbury”, they still used aristocratic ways to react with each other
without revealing the truth. Wilde depicted it in a natural way to criticize
that hypocrisy was almost the mainstream trait among the aristocracy.
·Absurdity:
The identification and morality of the aristocracy
This play showed the absurdity of
both the aristocracy and society in the late Victorian age through paradoxes.
As mentioned, the aristocracy had shallowness and hypocrisy as the surface and
personality. Wilde also alluded to their aristocratic value system behind those
features. And it came from the identification of aristocracy in that age, which
was their specific identification of being “earnest”. “The word ‘earnest’ in this play comprised
two different but related ideas: the notion of false truth and the notion of
false morality, or moralism” (Sparknotes, Editors). The false truth was Jack’s lot; he didn’t know
the truth that when he was pretending to be Earnest, he was at the most earnest
moment. The absurdity was ingenious enough to present the distorted morality of
the aristocracy. Wilde used the paradox that the real “earnestness” was not the
moment the aristocrats claimed to be but the moment that they thought were not earnest. “The characters
who embrace triviality and wickedness are the ones who may have the greatest
chance of attaining seriousness and virtue.” (Sparknotes, Editors) Wilde gave
his criticism in a paradoxical way to show how willingly the aristocracy was
shaped by their morality without the doubt of its credibility. Even if some of
them were not aristocracy, like Jack, but he still used the criteria to
identify himself and pursue it. In this paradox, if somebody wants to escape
from something, he shouldn’t still use the same value to evaluate it. Algernon
was aware of the fake surface of his counterpart but he still lacked the awareness
of the moral barriers in his class. Wilde’s characterization was successful to show
the twisted identification and morality of the aristocracy from the blind
pursuit of middle class people and different voices coming from themselves.
Wilde’s satirical criticism in this play subtly
invoked people’s healthy dislike of the kind of stereotypical aristocrats in the
Victorian age. The progress of the society wasn’t going on as smoothly as its
surface; the social problems still lied there. People were not enlightened
enough to dump the blind pursuit of the aristocratic title. He tried to lead
people to a new stage of worldview, which is a more modern one without those
pedantic clichés and classifications. Even though his work was not perceived as
an influential and groundbreaking literature work in that time, with the
thriving of the modernism, Wilde’s work echoes more reflective notions.
