Learning and using English

English is taught state-wide in every school in the Czech Republic, although few years ago there was the possibility to choose between English of German language. Children in my country mostly get to know English on the primary school in the 3rd grade. Only in few cases learn the language earlier. In the 3rd- 5th grade pupils mostly learn the basic grammar and they are not speaking much. They learn how to translate word or easy sentences and I remember that in my old primary school we were even learning already the 2nd column of the verbs, which means past tense.

In higher grades, which is 6th- 9th, children learn more and more grammar, mostly the new tenses or conditionals. They learn past and future tenses and the 1st conditional. We also had on my primary school two conversation lessons from the 8th grade. We were speaking more but not enough.

Then I started attending this grammar school, but this high school is more focused on other subject than languages and I actually didn’t learn here much. I learnt a lot of new vocabulary, but no speaking in normal English lessons and the grammar which we were learning was mostly the same like in the primary school.

Now, how to improve the language, when school is not enough? I think, that the thing everybody can do, is to listen to the music. Everybody likes music and if you listen a music from English author and if you want to know, what is the song about, you can translate the lyric and you learn by that.

Really helpful is reading books in foreign language. I have learnt so many new words and set phrases and I got to understand the grammar more. At first you might not understand the book much, but after few pages it’s getting better.

Some people for example attend English courses. They can choose lesson where they can talk or courses which is more focused on grammar and you also choose the level. If you are good, you can also pass some of the international exams like FCE or CIA.

The other possibilities to improve the foreign language is for example visiting another country or even study there, or try to write in English, there are really many possibilities.

In my own case, I have learnt English the most thanks to computer games. They are mostly all in English and when I played online games I came in touch with people from another countries, which mostly knew English, even though they weren’t from there. I also used to speak with them through Skype or TeamSpeak and this is how I have learn to speak. It took just a month to get used to the conversation in English and I finally learnt to speak freely.

Structure:

• Starting with English, first years on primary schools
• Higher grades of primary schools
• High schools
• Music
• Reading books
• Courses, exams
• Travelling, studying abroad
• Me myself: computer games, speaking through the internet