In China tens of millions of people are learning English. Almost no one would doubt the necessity of learning a foreign language, as society develops. However, how we should learn the language, as it has always been, seems still a big issue for many people. They’re trying very hard to find a short cut to their destination. Some of them spare no efforts to try out the famous learning methods, hoping that after several months of hard work, they would finally reach the goal they have been seeking for so long. Unfortunately, few people have achieved their desired results to the best of my knowledge.

Being a teacher, I get asked that a lot. Frankly, I’m in no position to answer that big question. My English is far from satisfactory, leaving a lot to be desired. I’m a learner myself, actually. However, I’d like to share my personal opinions with you guys here. Hopefully, we can get a deeper more insightful understanding of how a foreign language should be learnt.

First of all, I believe there’s no short cut or quick method that can truly help you in this regard. There’re numerous ways and some of them might work well on you, but you still have to go step by step towards your goal. Therefore, you may as well drop the myth that you’ll have a good command of English over a course of six months or just overnight. The earlier you give up that idea, the better. Trust me that if anyone or any advertisement claims they can help you conquer English within six or even three months, they’re lying for sure.

For those who are already in senior high or above, I’d like to give them three-word suggestion: Foundation, Exposure and Habit, FEH for short. By foundation I mean that we have to lay a solid foundation in the early stage of your learning process. Then how should we do exactly? My answer is to choose a set of textbooks and master it. A good set of textbooks is a complicated system consisting of vocabulary grammar and cultural information, all combined in the form of dialogs, reading passages and various exercises. If you work hard enough and finally make it, you’ll have an academic base from which you can reach out for higher goals and get closer to your dreams. Among other things, being able to judge and pronounce a new word correctly is of great importance at the beginning. You’ll also have to learn to guess the meaning of a certain word according to the context or with the help of a dictionary. At the end of this stage, you’ll possibly have a brief network of grammar and a basic but efficient vocabulary.

The second step is to expose yourself to the language as much as possible. For example, you can read novels, listen to news or watch movies. In today’s day and age, there must be something that can serve your purposes. The truth is what you learned before is what we call school English, not real English. I mean there’s a huge difference between the language you seem to be so familiar with and the one actually used by native speakers in their daily life. Through this process you could internalize the grammar you learned and make the vocabulary active. To be a good learner, we have to gain enough input and on top of that, learn to output, learn to express ourselves in English at the same time. The key, as I see it, is to go as you climb up a ladder. You’ll fall if you take two or more rungs at a time.

Nothing can last long without fun involved. Language learning can be and should be fun. Once you have fun in the learning process and begin to appreciate the beauty of the language, you’re on the fast lane of progress. Gradually and hopefully English will be part of your life. You’ll probably feel something missing in your life if you don’t get to the language or have the chance to use the language. Learning a foreign language is all about forming a brand-new habit---- A habit of using the language as well as a habit of thinking and expressing yourself in the language.