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nglish, for some Indonesians, is still something difficult to learn. Most of us had joined many kinds of English courses but still didn’t get the expected result. A few English courses guarantee that we can speak English fluently only in 3 or 6 months. If we can’t, they will pay our money back. Of course, this kind of ads is misleading. They just use some of us who want something instantly without hard working. We should know that all English pedagogues around the world won’t be courageous to give such guarantee because they knew that is impossible thing to do. Some of us may think that we are not talented in learning English. In facts, learning English is not concern with talent. As a proof, people who live in English as daily language area can use English easily although they don’t feel talented in English. Furthermore how do we know that we are not talented if we haven’t learnt it seriously?
Actually, there are two ways that we can do if we want to use English fluently. The first is joining English course. The second is learning English auto-didactically. Joining English course needs more cost to pay and it is not cheap. Fortunately we can be guided by the experts who understand how to learn English well and correctly. Our mistakes can be fixed so that we know which the fault that we have done is.
On the other hand, if we learn English auto-didactically, we can spend our money for other things. But we don’t have partner to correct our mistakes. The biggest difficulty that we will face is from where we should begin and what we should learn to be expert in English. The following are the alternative ways that we can conduct to start learning English auto-didactically.
In English, there are four basic skills that we should mastered, they are listening skill, speaking skill, reading skill, and writing skill. And for the supplementary skill is grammar skill and vocabulary skill. So, if we want to start learning English, we can start from those four skills and the additional skills.
We start from listening skill. The first media that we can use is learning English CD or cassette. Where we can get it? Of course, we can get it at the bookstore. Just follow the instructions and try to learn it seriously. If you think it is expensive, we can start listening to English radio or television. If it is also impossible to do, we can get it from internet. For example, we can visit BBC London site. This site has free listening skill facility complete with the listening transcript. Or we can use Google search engine facility, we just type for the keyword and we will find hundreds even thousands sites that contain free listening learning. There is nothing impossible in virtual world.
The other ways that I can suggest is by listening to English songs. While we are listening to the songs, we can learn how to pronounce the lyrics. The singer will guide us how to pronounce the words correctly. So, we know how a word is pronounced. The appropriate English songs are the songs which have distinct pronunciation, such as the songs of The Beatles, Bee Gees, Westlife, Michael Learn to Rock, and so on. We can get the songs and also the lyrics in the internet without paying them. It means we can get them free. Learning English by listening English songs will make us feel comfortable in learning English because there is no pressure. Besides that, we can enrich our vocabulary when we try to understand the meaning of the songs. This kind of learning way is better than memorizing 5 English words a day.
The next media that we can use to learn English easily is watching English movie. We can buy English movie DVD which completed by Indonesian subtitle or we can download the movies from internet freely. When we watch the movie at the first time, we should try to understand the story first by reading the subtitle. In the second watching, try to imitate the pronunciation of a word or a phrase or a sentence in the movie. But still use the subtitle to understand the meaning. For the third watching, try to understand the movie story without reading the subtitle.Of course, it needs time. But you have to believe that you will get listening training and speaking training at the same time.
From our discussion above, I can conclude that there many easy ways in learning English through media. If we want to use it, I’m sure we will get the best result. Nowadays, we have internet as learning media. So, use it. All we need is only high spirit and motivation. Keep trying and good luck!☺
