How to learn English well

read a book in English for an hour every day, analyzing the grammar in sentences and looking up words in an English dictionary listen to an audiobook or other recording in English, stopp[r]

How to learn English Motivation: Become a person who likes to learn English Dictionary: Get a good English dictionary No mistakes: Avoid mistakes Try to use correct English from the beginning Pronunciation: Learn to pronounce English sounds Learn to understand phonetic transcription and the phonetic alphabet Input: Get English into your head by reading and listening to lots of English sentences o Reading o Movies o Adventure games SuperMemo is a computer program that you can use to learn English We have used it for years and it has helped us a lot What is necessary to learn English well? Learning English requires action You may know all the learning tips, but if you don't start doing things, you will achieve nothing The fact is, if you want to learn to speak English well, you must change your life Here are some examples of things you will have to do:       read a book in English for an hour every day, analyzing the grammar in sentences and looking up words in an English dictionary listen to an audiobook or other recording in English, stopping it frequently, trying to understand what is being said, and trying to imitate the speaker's pronunciation spend your afternoon practicing the pronunciation of the English "r" sound carefully write an e-mail message in English, using a dictionary or a Web search every 20 seconds to make sure every word is correct, and taking minutes to write one sentence think about an English sentence you've read, wondering if it could say "a" instead of "the" in the sentence, and trying to find similar sentences on the Web to find out the answer walk down the street and build simple English sentences in your head (talking to yourself in English about the things you see around you) What kind of person would all these crazy things? Only one kind The kind of person who enjoys doing them If you want to learn to speak English well, you're going to have to become that person You cannot hate doing these things Have you ever heard of a person who became successful by doing something he hated? The problem with learning and teaching English as a foreign language is that all English learners want to speak English well; however, most learners don't want to spend time on learning English on their own (Which is probably why they sign up for English classes and hope their teacher will force knowledge into their heads.) This lack of motivation means that learners basically don't spend their own time on learning English, and if they do, they don't it regularly For example, a typical learner might study English phrasal verbs for 12 hours before an English exam However, he will not read a book in English for 30 minutes every day He just doesn't feel that learning English is pleasant enough, so he will only it if he has to The problem is that a huge one-time effort gives you nothing, while small, everyday activities will give you a lot If you are one of those learners and don't feel like practicing the pronunciation of the "r" sound or thinking about English sentences every day, we have news for you: You're going to have to make yourself want to these things In other words, you'll have to work on your motivation Fortunately, there are proven techniques to help you with that Typical learner vs motivated learner Paula is a typical learner of English with a generally low level of motivation She has occasional moments of high motivation — like the day before her English test or that time when she couldn't communicate with a foreign customer who called her at work These kind of situations make her think "I've got to something about my English!" However, they happen very rarely — less than once a month So even if she studies quite intensively (e.g for two whole days before an exam), the results are poor, because she forgets 90% of the things she learned within a month This is no surprise: The way human memory works, you need to review things all the time; otherwise you just forget them Now let's look at a different English learner: Judy Judy reads a special novel for English learners (written in simplified English) almost every day for 30 minutes She bought an English-English dictionary and uses it to look up English words whenever she doesn't understand a sentence in her book It was hard to study regularly at the beginning: Reading books and using a dictionary were not "normal activities" for her And every English sentence was a challenge But now, after only two weeks, she can read much faster While reading, she often sees words that she has learned in the past two weeks When she recognizes such a word, she doesn't have to look it up in a dictionary and she knows she has made good progress Judy feels she has learned a lot of English recently, and she is eager to learn more Every day, she looks forward to reading her book The book gives her the chance to use what she has learned (enjoy her progress) and to learn even more Because she reads regularly, she forgets little and her vocabulary keeps growing Judy is on the right track She will soon be able to read English-language newspapers and other resources written for native speakers Enjoyment leads to better memory If you enjoy learning English, you will spend more time on it, and you will it regularly A high level of motivation will also give you another advantage It will be easier for you to memorize new words and grammar structures The reason is that the brain easily remembers information on a subject that you like (For example, some people like history and know everything about World War II If you told a "normal person" to memorize all these facts, they could never it.) So enjoyment of learning gives you double benefits Improving your motivation for learning English In this article, we share our techniques for improving your motivation for learning English as a foreign language We used them all the time when we were learning English and we still use them when we need to boost our motivation in areas other than English Imagine yourself in the future Imagine you can talk to native speakers just like you talk in your first language Imagine other people wanting to speak English as well as you Imagine the possibility of writing e-mail to people from all over the world It is helpful to read an article about the advantages of knowing English well There are two such articles on Antimoon: Why learn English and English makes you feel good You should know that it is possible to learn English really well Just look at other people who have done it Remember that you are already good You already know some English (you're reading an article in English right now) That's a big success! Now it's time for more successes Time to start using powerful methods of effective learning Time to gain an impressive knowledge of English Remember there is a lot that you don't know You are good, but your English probably isn't perfect You probably can't understand English-language TV, read books in English, talk to native speakers easily, write letters without mistakes, etc You should never think your English is perfect Even if you are the best student in your class, always try to find your weak areas and work on them When you've learned to speak English well, your problems will be quite small: punctuation, rarely used grammar structures, rare words, understanding "street language" Right now, your problems are probably more basic: mistakes in pronunciation, small vocabulary, grammar problems with the present perfect tense and conditional structures Use your English whenever you can This is very, very important The more you use English, the more you will want to learn it Because English is so popular, you can use it everywhere You can use Google to find English-language websites with interesting information, you can watch American cartoons, you can play adventure games on your computer, you can read interesting books in English, or you can other things that we write about If you these things, you will not only have fun and learn English If you see that a new English word lets you understand your favorite TV show (or communicate with people, or beat a computer game), you will want to learn more words So you will learn English more, use it more, learn it more, use it more If you also use effective learning methods, your English will grow faster than you can imagine Talk to people about English This is a very simple method, but it is very effective Here's how it works: You usually talk about things which interest you But the opposite is true, too If you start talking about a boring subject, you will begin to get interested in it Imagine you are studying a subject that you hate You are bored and tired, but you have to pass the test tomorrow If there are people near you, you have two options: you can tell everybody how much you are suffering or you can tell those people about the things you've learned If you choose the first option, you will only feel worse If you choose the second option, and start a conversation on the "boring" subject, you will begin to look at it in a totally different way Suddenly it will become a subject worth talking about — therefore, an interesting subject How can you begin such a conversation? If you're studying English, you can surprise another person by talking to him/her in English Say (in English): Hi, I'm studying English and I hate it Or you can say (in your first language): Hey, I've learned 50 English words today Do you know what's the English word for ? If there are no people near you, you can telephone or send an e-mail message to your friend What will your friends say? Probably they won't be very interested, but it doesn't matter! The important thing is this: After talking about English, you will study it with much more passion Try it Find a friend who is learning English If you can find a friend who is learning English and is on a similar level of skill, you will be in an excellent situation:    you will have someone to talk about English with These conversations will increase your interest in English, as explained in the previous section learning English will be easier, because you will be able to discuss your problems with your friend you will study English more, because you will want to be better than your friend :-) You should meet your friend regularly Ideally, he/she should live near you, or go to the same school as you If you absolutely can't find anybody willing to learn English with you, you can try to find somebody by e-mail This is a worse solution: your conversations will probably be less frequent, and it is difficult to compete with someone who you don't know well Spend some money on learning English If you spend your money on something, you will want to use it For example, if you buy an expensive tennis racket, you will probably go out and play tennis every day This rule is also true for learning English If you want to increase your desire to learn English, buy a new dictionary, an interesting English-language book, Englishlanguage cable TV, etc The idea is simple: You paid for it, so you will want to use it, and you will improve your English There is a problem with this method It only works for a short time You usually lose your desire to learn English after a few days To keep learning, you would have to buy something every week! However, this method is helpful, because it gives you an impulse to start learning For example, if you buy a dictionary of phrasal verbs, you will probably learn some words from it Then you should try to use them For example, write an e-mail message with these words This will increase your motivation (as explained before), and you will learn more Read Unlimited Power by Anthony Robbins Anthony Robbins' book Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement gives excellent advice on how to achieve any kind of goal This book has changed the lives of many people, so you might want to take a look at it Remember that learning English requires action We have said this many times One small action is more powerful than reading hundreds of articles Yes, we know it is very hard to things, even if they are good for us We humans are lazy creatures That is why not many people speak English well Still, we hope you can the things we talk about in our English learning method — not only read about them You will be successful only if you change something about your life Don't put it off Begin now Why you need a good English dictionary If you get a good English dictionary, you will be better than 90% of English learners It's unbelievable, but most people (even people who want to learn English very much) simply go to a bookstore and buy the first dictionary they see That is a big mistake! A bad dictionary will give you problems sooner or later — maybe in two months, maybe in one year — and you will have to buy a good one anyway! Isn't it better to buy a good dictionary the first time? Getting a good English dictionary is important because:    A good dictionary will be your guide to English It will teach you new words, how to pronounce them, and how to use them It will help you understand English texts Successful English learners use their dictionaries all the time: when reading books, at English classes, when writing e-mail, when doing homework, when surfing the Web It is an easy first step in your English-learning program — you only need to spend a little money (much less than you would pay for an English course) Once you've made the first step, it will be easier for you to the rest It requires spending money Yes, this is a good thing :-) Spending some of your money on learning English will give you an impulse to keep learning and work towards your goal of mastering English How to buy a good English dictionary Related Pages Example sentences, pictures, useful and simple definitions in dictionaries An English dictionary is the most important thing you will need when learning English A good dictionary will help you learn hundreds of new words, improve your pronunciation and grammar You can read more about why it is important to get a good English dictionary in another article English-English dictionaries When you think of a dictionary, you usually think of a bilingual dictionary For example, an English-German dictionary or a French-English dictionary There is also another kind of dictionary: an English-English (monolingual) dictionary Such a dictionary is written only in English English words are not translated, but they are defined or explained in English For example, if you look up the word criticize in an English-English dictionary, you will read something like this: to criticize = to say negative things about; to talk about the mistakes of Why English-English dictionaries are better than bilingual dictionaries:   English definitions are real English phrases with grammar and words If you read them regularly, you will automatically memorize the grammar and words English definitions let you learn more You will often look up a word because it was part of the definition for another word For example, if you look up the word naughty, you will read: If you say that a child is naughty, you think that he or she is behaving badly or is disobedient [Collins COBUILD English Dictionary] If you don't know the words disobedient and behave, you will have to look them up So instead of one word, you will have learned three words! Don't be afraid of using an English-English dictionary If you can understand this article, you can definitely understand the definitions in an English-English dictionary Dictionaries for learners and for native speakers There are two kinds of English-English dictionaries: dictionaries for learners and dictionaries for native speakers Dictionaries for native speakers are used by Americans, Britons, etc to look up very difficult words, such as tintinnabulation Dictionaries for learners are used by people who are learning English as a second language Dictionaries for native speakers usually have more words than dictionaries for learners, but the definitions are complicated, and there are fewer example sentences Therefore your first dictionary should be a dictionary for learners Later, you will need other dictionaries — for example, a dictionary of phrasal verbs and a big dictionary for native speakers Software dictionaries If possible, get a software dictionary instead of a paper one Here are some reasons why:   Quick searching Software dictionaries let you look up words very quickly Typing a word on your keyboard is much, much faster than turning pages in a large, heavy book Easy copying If you're making your own SuperMemo collection for learning English, you can select whole sentences and definitions in the dictionary, and copy them to your new items   Recordings In many software dictionaries, you can listen to recordings which show you how to pronounce a word Recordings cannot replace phonetic transcriptions (see below), but they are certainly a useful feature More information/clearer layout Paper dictionaries have limited space, which is why they are printed in a small font and the layout is very crowded A computer dictionary has more space, so it can give more information (e.g more example sentences) or it can present the same information in a clearer way (bigger font, blank lines, etc.) Why is quick searching so important? Because if you want to learn English well, you should look up lots of words, and a paper dictionary discourages you from that You want to look up a word, you look at the huge book with 1500 pages, think "Ah, never mind", and you never learn that word With a software dictionary, once you see how easy it is, you will start looking up hundreds of words every week And your English will get a huge boost Note: The advice in this article applies to both book dictionaries and to software dictionaries However, the quality of a software dictionary also depends on other features (e.g ease-of-use, software speed), which are not discussed here Phonetic transcription for every word A good dictionary must give phonetic transcription for every word Phonetic transcription tells you how to pronounce a word Without it, you can't say the word properly — you can only read it or write it The transcription should be based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which is the main phonetic alphabet used all over the world Here is what IPA-based phonetic transcription looks like: [Longman Active Study Dictionary of English] Here, the phonetic transcription is marked in yellow It tells you that image is pronounced like this (sound recording in wav format) Many dictionaries (especially ones published in the US) use their own phonetic symbols (and not IPA symbols) These are a little hard to use, and we not recommend them to beginners Some dictionaries give phonetic transcription only for "the most difficult words" (usually less than 5% of all words) Such dictionaries are almost useless to learners, because all English words are difficult if you are not a native speaker We not recommend them If you want to check if a dictionary uses IPA-based transcription, look at the pronunciation symbols used in the dictionary and compare them with the IPA symbols in our table of phonetic symbols Example sentences for every word A good dictionary must give example sentences for every word Example sentences are English sentences which contain the word Some dictionaries give them after the definition of a word Example sentences are marked in yellow in this picture: [Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture] Example sentences are not just helpful — they are actually more important than definitions While a definition tells you the meaning of a word and (sometimes) gives you some grammatical information, example sentences have at least three advantages: They let you check if you've understood the definition correctly The meaning of a word can become much clearer if you read a few sentences with the word They show you how to use a word in sentences Many words "go with" certain grammar structures (e.g important is often used in the phrase "It is important to ") or words (e.g weather goes with forecast and not e.g prediction) Example sentences present this information in a clear way You can easily imitate them to make your own natural sentences They program your brain to produce correct English sentences If you read an English sentence, there is a good chance that it will stay in your head, and that you will be able to build a similar sentence (or part of a sentence) to express your thoughts another day So the more English sentences you read, the more you can produce (Read more about why example sentences are so important) Other things to look for      Simple definitions The definitions should be easy to understand If something can be simple, it should be simple See example of a simple dictionary definition Useful definitions If possible, the definitions should tell you how to use the word Generally, longer definitions are better, because they give more information See example of a useful dictionary definition Both British and American English Your dictionary should have both British and American words Also, both British and American pronunciation should be given, because both are used in today's world Phrasal verbs and idioms There are special dictionaries for these, but every English dictionary should have the most common phrasal verbs and idioms Pictures Sometimes you can understand a picture better than a definition See this example How many and how big? It is a good idea to have at least two dictionaries: a large one (about this size) to use at home, and a small (pocket) one to carry with you For example, you can bring your small dictionary to English classes It is an even better idea to have at least two large dictionaries What for? Well, it's about example sentences Two example sentences are better than one; four are better than two With more examples, you have a more complete picture of how a word is used and you can express more in English yourself Recommended English dictionaries for learners For your first learner's dictionary, we recommend the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary (our review of this dictionary) It's a large dictionary with IPA-based phonetic transcriptions and great example sentences for every word But the best thing are the definitions: they are very friendly, and they really tell you how to use a word The CD-ROM (included with the book) allows easy and fast searching, and also includes a Wordbank with lots of additional example sentences You can buy the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary at Elearnaid in hardcover ($37) and paperback ($28) Both include the software version of the dictionary on CD-ROM For a small dictionary that you can take everywhere you go, we recommend the Oxford Learner's Pocket Dictionary It is very small (it will fit in your palm), but has a lot of information You can get the dictionary from Amazon.co.uk Example sentences in dictionaries: More important than definitions In an English dictionary, example sentences are even more important than definitions A definition does one job: it tells you what a word means Example sentences, on the other hand, perform at least three tasks: They let you check if you've understood the definition correctly They show you how to use a word in sentences — how to connect it with other words and with grammar structures They program your brain to produce correct English sentences Understanding meanings After reading the definition of a word, you can read the example sentences which contain the word If you can understand them, you know you've understood the definition correctly For example, it is nice to read that surpass means "to go beyond in amount, quality or degree", but it is even nicer to see an example: The results surpassed all our expectations You'll probably agree that after seeing the sentence, the meaning of the word surpass becomes much clearer and easier to remember Sometimes a definition is so complicated that the example sentences are your only hope Consider this definition from the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's Dictionary, an otherwise fine product: "That part or proportion consists of that thing"? Yeah, whatever Let's see the example sentence, which makes things a lot clearer: Grammar and usage A definition tells you what a word means, i.e it helps you understand the word when you see it However, the meaning is only half of the picture In language, there are not only meanings, but also grammar and collocations Some words simply "go with" other words     For example, the verb to suffer goes with the preposition from (as in "Alice suffers from insomnia"), and not with some other preposition Lethal and mortal both mean "deadly", but we only talk about a lethal injection, not a mortal one The adjective major has the same meaning as important, but it must come before a noun (as in "Drug abuse is a major problem" or "Religion has played a major role in the history of mankind"), so it would be wrong to say "It is major to remember people's birthdays" Danger (definition: "the possibility of something bad happening") is often used with in ("Our lives are in danger"), with of ("The building is in danger of collapsing"), or with a that-clause ("There's a danger that the plan will fail") Such information is often not found in the definition, and you need to read the example sentences to learn how to connect a word with other words to produce correct sentences But — you might say — most dictionaries for English learners include grammar/usage information in the definitions You would be right, of course For example, the entry for suffer might include the label +from; or major might be labeled with something like ADJ + N to show that the adjective must come before a noun However, such "codes" can be tricky to interpret A person who only knows that suffer means "to feel pain" and goes with the preposition from may produce the perfectly logical sentence "I suffer from doing homework" rather than "I suffer when I have to homework" It is also easier to remember one or two example phrases (e.g major problem, to play a major role) than to remember the abstract rule that "major has to be followed by a noun" Brain programming When you speak your native language, you don't have to think about grammar rules to produce a sentence; phrases just appear in your mind and they are all correct You don't have to be especially intelligent or have an exceptionally good memory to speak your native language without mistakes This is possible because the brain contains a special language module The module collects sentences from your environment, and imitates them and re-combines them to produce new sentences This is exactly how you learned to speak as a child: you listened to your parents and other people around you, and then you were able to imitate those sentences You learn a foreign language in the same way As you hear (or read) more and more correct English sentences, your language module gets more and more information, and you can express more and more in English Antimoon calls this learning by input Stephen Krashen calls it the Natural Method Now you see why it is a good idea to read the example sentences when you look up a word in a dictionary For each sentence you read, there is a good chance that it will appear in your head when you need it, and that you will be able to re-use it (or part of it) to produce your own correct sentence One more example We have said that example sentences give important grammar/usage information and program your brain to produce its own sentences Let's see one more example of how this works Suppose we look up the word shroud in a dictionary and find this definition: [Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture] Great, so now we know what shroud means It means "to cover and hide" We even know that we usually use shroud in the passive voice with the preposition in But can we really use the word shroud, i.e can we make our own sentences with it? For example, you could say "I was hidden in the corner" — but would it be OK to say "I was shrouded in the corner"? Or, you could say that "The street was covered in darkness" — but could you say "The street was shrouded in darkness" instead? Well, we don't know that All we know is, shroud is probably NOT used in the same way as cover and hide, but the definition does not say in what situations (contexts) it IS used So after seeing the definition, we know what shroud means, but we still can't anything useful with it Now let's read the definition with example sentences: What these examples tell us? They tell us many things:    We usually say that something is shrouded in something, and not, for example, that something shrouds something (We could have learned this from the definition, which says (in) usually pass., but examples are nicer than codes.) Both physical (hills) and nonphysical (affair) things can be shrouded in something Things can be shrouded in mist or shrouded in mystery "Shrouded in the corner" will probably sound strange to native speakers With this information, you are finally prepared to use the word shroud in speaking or writing For example, you can imitate the example sentences and say "The negotiations are shrouded in mystery" or "The street was shrouded in fog" This imitation can happen consciously (if you look at the examples while writing your own sentence) or in the magical "learning by input" way (if, say, in a week, you're writing a composition and the phrase "shrouded in something" appears in your head because you have seen the phrase before in the example sentences) Final advice First, make sure your dictionary has lots of example sentences Better yet, use two or more dictionaries The next time you look up a word in a dictionary, and you want to use that word in your own speech or writing, concentrate on the example sentences — maybe even try to memorize them You will not only learn incredibly useful information on the word's usage; you will program your brain to produce similar sentences You'll be surprised at how much your brain can if you feed it with enough input Getting a good English dictionary You need a good English dictionary An English dictionary is the most important thing that you will need when learning English Successful English learners use their dictionaries all the time — that's how they learn to use new words How to buy a good English dictionary? It has to be an English-English dictionary It must give phonetic transcriptions (pronunciations) for every word It must give example sentences for every word It should be a software dictionary Example sentences: more important than definitions: If you want to improve your speaking/writing ability, read the example sentences in your dictionary They show you how to use a word and they program your brain with correct English Reviews of good dictionaries      Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary (4th edition) — It's very easy to learn English from this dictionary, because it is full of real sentences from English books, newspapers, recordings, etc Even the definitions are full sentences Includes the CD-ROM (see below) Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary CD-ROM — included with the paper version Same friendly definitions and great example sentences, but you can look them up much faster than in the huge book The CD also has a Wordbank with even more example sentences However, it doesn't include phonetic transcriptions (it only has audio recordings) Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary CD-ROM — a very comprehensive dictionary of American English with phonetic transcriptions and American recordings Complements the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's CD-ROM nicely Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary (16th edition) with CD-ROM — a good source of pronunciations that are not included in general English dictionaries, e.g pronunciations of people's names, geographical names, company names, and inflected forms of words The CD version has great British recordings, pronunciation exercises, and a Sound Search feature Also read: Why publishers are unable to develop a really good software dictionary in the "Other articles" section Review of the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary example page example page (180k GIF files) The Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary (4th edition) is the latest dictionary for learners from HarperCollins Publishers The previous (third) edition of this dictionary (published in 2001) was titled "Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary" and the second edition (1995) simply "Collins COBUILD English Dictionary" There are important differences between the current edition and the previous one In this review, we will often write "CCED" instead of the dictionary's long name The basics     The CCED is an English-English (monolingual) dictionary, so it is written only in English Beginners may be afraid of this, but we think that learners should begin to use an English-English dictionary as early as possible If you can understand this article, we think you should use a monolingual dictionary It has example sentences for almost every meaning of every word Example sentences are the most important thing in a dictionary for learners, because they show you how to use a word It has phonetic transcriptions, so you can read how to pronounce every word The transcriptions are based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) — the most popular phonetic alphabet in the world It is a software dictionary as well as a paper one — a CD-ROM is included with the book In conclusion, the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary has all the necessary features of a dictionary for the serious learner Now let's see what is special about this dictionary A corpus-based dictionary The name COBUILD stands for "Collins Birmingham University International Language Database" It means that the dictionary is based on a "corpus"— a collection of British and American newspapers, books, TV programs, real-life conversations, etc The editors analyzed the corpus with a computer, getting useful information about the English language This method has serious advantages (more on that below), and the latest dictionaries from other big publishers (like Longman and Oxford) are now based on a corpus, too Full-sentence definitions Probably the most interesting thing about the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary are its definitions They are full sentences, not phrases For example: If something comes to fruition, it starts to succeed and produce the results that were intended or hoped for Because this definition is a full sentence, it gives you a lot of information It shows that fruition is usually used in the phrase "come to fruition" How did the editors know that? They used a computer to analyze the COBUILD corpus What does this information give you? You can easily build your own correct sentences with the word For example, you can say "His hopes finally came to fruition" or "Will my plan ever come to fruition?" Look at a typical definition of fruition in a dictionary which doesn't have full-sentence definitions: fruition = the realization of something that was desired or hoped for After reading this definition, you might use the word fruition in incorrect ways You might think it is correct to say "What about your fruition?" or "Is this book your greatest fruition?" But both sentences are bad English Look at another definition from the CCED and compare it with a definition from the the Oxford Wordpower Dictionary: When a dog wags its tail, it repeatedly waves its tail from side to side [CCED] wag = to shake up and down or move from side to side [Oxford Wordpower] The first definition tells you that the word wag is often used to talk about a dog The second definition does not tell you that It is too general Besides, you can probably see that the CCED's definition is easier to understand The definitions in the CCED not simply tell you what a word means, they tell you how to use it — in what phrases, in what grammar structures, in what context At the same time, you can understand them easily The definitions are also very "natural" They are sentences that could be said by your English teacher or any native speaker of English Having this dictionary almost feels like having a native speaker friend to answer your questions about English We encourage you to look at other examples of definitions from the CCED with our comments Example sentences Our rule for dictionaries is: The more example sentences, the better The Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary has at least one example sentence for almost every meaning of every word The number of examples per definition is about the same as in other modern dictionaries for learners The interesting thing is how these examples were chosen For example, to choose the example sentences for the verb play, the editors used a computer to search the corpus and find all the sentences with the word play The results showed that people often use play in phrases like "play an important role in something" and "play an active part in something" So there should be at least one example sentence which has the word play in such a phrase Thanks to this kind of corpus research, the example sentences in the CCED show how a word is really used by speakers of English They are not invented by an editor; they are natural Just like the definitions, the examples focus on the most important phrases, grammar structures, contexts, etc which contain the word Pronunciations Phonetic transcriptions in the CCED are based on A C Gimson's phonemic system, which uses symbols of the IPA to represent English phonemes Gimson's system was first used in 1967 in the English Pronouncing Dictionary, and is now used by most dictionary publishers      Like most new dictionaries, the CCED uses a couple useful (non-phonemic) symbols not used by Gimson: and For an explanation of these symbols, refer to our phonetic chart Unfortunately, this edition of the CCED ignores the fact that vowels like , , and are often pronounced like For example, this goes for the in admonish and admit, the in possible and private, the in careful In all these cases, the CCED simply omits the " " version, which is the standard in normal speech If you followed the transcriptions in the CCED, your pronunciation of some words would sound quite unnatural In some cases, the CCED takes the "no " policy to the extreme Who pronounces adventure and advance with an at the beginning? The CCED shows stress by underlining the stressed syllable(s); other dictionaries use the apostrophe The COBUILD way is easier to read and more intuitive The dictionary tries to represent both British and American English with one transcription The transcriptions use mostly British phoneme symbols and the dictionary gives rules for "converting" these symbols into American sounds For example, it explains that all symbols are really in American English We think this is a sensible system, because it results in short, readable transcriptions (In fact, we use it ourselves in our phonetic chart and our PerfectPronunciation product.) Here are example transcriptions from the CCED and what they mean in British and American English: word CCED transcr British American pot go fair near lure barn mothe r bird Note: Phonetic transcriptions are not included on the CD-ROM Word frequency and the grammar column The dictionary gives information on word frequency The most frequently used English words are labeled with to "diamonds" ( to ) These are words which occur most frequently in the COBUILD corpus Grammatical information — for example, whether a noun is countable or uncountable — is given in a separate column (see picture to the right) It is not mixed with the definition, as in most dictionaries Because of this, the definitions are easier to read "Access to English" section see entire page (170k GIF file) The CCED has a 30-page "Access to English" section which provides useful example sentences and phrases that you can "steal" when writing essays, giving presentations, telephoning, writing business correspondence, and applying for a job (there is a chapter for each of these activities) Reading such sentences is a great way to build your English writing/speaking skills in a short time Note: The "Access to English"section is not included on the CD-ROM Our personal experience We first saw the CCED (the 2nd edition) in 1999, when only the paper version was available We immediately felt it was something special Normally, we use only software dictionaries, but we started using the paper COBUILD dictionary, because we liked the contents so much Today, we still like learning with the dictionary very much When we need to look up a word, it helps us understand it and use it in our own sentences Often, we look up one word, and then we feel like reading another one — the definitions and examples are so nice Sometimes, we even like to read the CCED just like a book Conclusions When you look up a word in a dictionary, you should be interested in what the word means But you should also ask the question "What can I with it?" The CCED answers this question very well by giving the most important phrases and grammar structures containing the word — both in the definition and example sentences Together, the definition and the example sentences give you an almost complete picture of how a word is used in the English language After you read them, the word is usually "yours" — you can use it easily in your own sentences Example pages and prices You can look at two example pages (first page, second page) from this dictionary (Warning: large GIF files, about 180 KB each) You can get the following versions of the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary, 4th edition:     Hardcover + CD — buy from Elearnaid ($26) or Amazon.co.uk ($42) Paperback + CD — buy from Elearnaid ($19) or Amazon.co.uk ($22) CD only — buy from Elearnaid ($10) — Available at a great price We only recommend this version if you have another dictionary with phonetic transcriptions (the CD does not have transcriptions) Resource Pack on CD (includes dictionary, thesaurus, grammar and usage) — buy from Elearnaid ($29) — We only recommend this version if you have another dictionary with phonetic transcriptions (the CD does not have transcriptions) Shipping information: Elearnaid's shipping charges are lower than Amazon's if you live in America, Asia or Eastern Europe If you live in Western Europe, Amazon's shipping will be cheaper by about $4 and the delivery will be somewhat faster Warning: Elearnaid does not ship to a few countries, e.g Poland and India See our review of the CD-ROM >> We would like to thank Maree Airlie and Jennifer Kidd of HarperCollins Publishers for providing copies of the 3rd and 4th editions of the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary Review of the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary CD-ROM enlarge screenshot This review describes the 4th edition of the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary CD-ROM (published in late 2003) If you have the 3rd edition (2001), check out what's new in this edition << See our review of the book The content We love software dictionaries, so we were very excited to learn about the software version of the excellent Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary from HarperCollins Publishers As we expected, the CD-ROM has the same great definitions and example sentences as the paper edition You can read more about them in our review of the book version Here, we'll just quote part of it: When you look up a word in a dictionary, you should be interested in what the word means But you should also ask the question "What can I with it?" The [Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary] answers this question very well by giving the most important phrases and grammar structures containing the word — both in the definition and example sentences Together, the definition and the example sentences give you an almost complete picture of how a word is used in the English language The CD-ROM also contains a "Wordbank" — a collection of sentences from Englishlanguage books, articles, conversations, etc The Wordbank is part of the "Bank of English", a much larger collection which HarperCollins used to create the definitions and choose the example sentences in the dictionary The Wordbank is a very useful thing It gives you lots of example sentences, and, if you are a reader of Antimoon, you should know that example sentences are the proper way to learn English words The Wordbank is especially helpful when the dictionary doesn't explain a word, or when it doesn't give enough example sentences For example, the dictionary does not explain weltanschauung, but we found a nice example sentence in the Wordbank (see picture to the right) The CD-only version (called the "Resource Pack") also contains the Collins COBUILD Guide to English Usage, the Collins COBUILD English Grammar, and a thesaurus No phonetic transcriptions The software does not contain phonetic transcriptions (unlike the book version) The editors thought that if the dictionary has recordings, phonetic transcriptions are unnecessary Big mistake! There are three reasons why we think removing the transcripton was a bad move:    Your ears are not perfect Even if the dictionary has high-quality recordings, it is always good to see all the sounds in a word Sometimes you hear a "t"; then somebody tells you it should be a "d", and then you start hearing a "d" Recordings are never perfect The ones in CCED are of a high quality, but it's still difficult to recognize the sounds in some words For example, here is the recording for the word back Not very clear, is it? Phonetic transcription (/ /) is always clear, because it represents each English sound with a different symbol In order to listen to a recording, you have to turn on your computer's speakers Then you have to press a key (Ctrl+W) or click an icon in the program window This is too much work if you want to look up something fast If the dictionary had phonetic transcriptions, you could just quickly read it Because there are no phonetic transcriptions, the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary CD-ROM cannot be your only dictionary You will have to use another software dictionary (or the paper version of the CCED) to learn pronunciation (You should use many dictionaries anyway, so this is not a huge problem.) Recordings The software has British audio recordings for all words American recordings are available only for some words, for example: lieutenant, resource, advertisement, dog, new, flashlight Here are some words for which only a British recording is available (even though all these words are pronounced differently in American English): car, heart, fire, hour, hair, near, lot, claw, more, lure, turn, forget, castle, fast We liked one thing about the recordings: You can listen to all the forms of a word (only in British English) For example, in the page for open there is a recording for open, but also for opens, opening, and opened Many learners pronounce such inflected forms incorrectly, so the recordings can be helpful The software lets you record your own speech and compare it with the recordings This is a helpful feature, because it lets some learners notice the mistakes they make in pronunciation Of course, because the dictionary contains so few American recordings, the feature will be useful mostly for learners of British English Looking up words Some CD-ROM dictionaries have complicated graphical interfaces, which are difficult to learn and to use (The idea is that customers want "multimedia", and a simple Windows interface is not multimedia enough.) Fortunately, the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's Dictionary CD-ROM is different There are no colorful animations — just a small, fast, reliable, easy-to-use interface, which supports the main function of a dictonary: looking up words The software lets you look up words really quickly You can simply type a word and press Enter You never have to press an additional key beforehand With most dictionaries, you have to press a key every time you want to look up a word When you look up a lot of English words, it really is a problem However, the search does not always work well For example, if you try to look up the phrase "fall to pieces", the dictionary will show the page for the word fall The page has explanations of 21 meanings of the word and you have to find the right meaning yourself ("fall to pieces" is number 20) The dictionary has a nice feature called "full-text search" It searches for a word or phrase in all the parts of the CD-ROM: the entries, definitions and examples in the dictionary, the Wordbank, the Collins English Usage, etc Install to hard drive The setup program has an "install to hard drive" option In our opinion, the option is necessary for every serious learner Here's why: If you want to learn a lot of words, looking them up should be easy If it's too hard, you will ignore many words because you will be scared of the time and effort (paper dictionaries are scary like that) This means that your dictionary should be quickly available You should be able to look up a word in a few seconds An application on a CD is not "quickly available", because:   It takes time to insert the CD into your CD-ROM drive Even when it's inserted, a CD works more slowly than a hard drive So if you want to use your dictionary comfortably, you need to have it on your hard drive Many dictionaries are quite difficult to install to the hard drive (often you have to edit the Windows registry), but the CCED CD-ROM makes it all easy by having a special option in the setup Poor copying & pasting You cannot select part of a page (for example, one definition or one example sentence) and copy it to another program When you're making a SuperMemo item, you have to copy the entire page with the option "Copy entry" If a word has 100 meanings, you have to copy 400 lines of text Then you have to erase 399 lines to leave only the one that you want We don't know if this is a programming error or some kind of copy protection Maybe HarperCollins did not want people to copy their definitions? Bugs There is only one annoying bug in the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary Under Windows XP, there is a 5-second pause when you first try to play a recording Afterwards, all recordings play immediately Otherwise, the software is fast and reliable Conclusions We recommend the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary CDROM In our opinion, it is a good software English dictionary for learners The content is excellent — great example sentences and definitions from the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary plus the Wordbank with even more examples The program's interface is quite good, so you can look up English words quickly and pleasantly The CCED CD-ROM is a source of super-friendly and super-clear definitions and example sentences, but not of phonetic transcriptions If you're learning English pronunciation, you will also need another software dictionary with transcriptions (or the book version of the CCED) Prices You can get the following versions of the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary, 4th edition:     Hardcover + CD — buy from Elearnaid ($26) or Amazon.co.uk ($42) Paperback + CD — buy from Elearnaid ($19) or Amazon.co.uk ($22) CD only — buy from Elearnaid ($10) — Available at a great price We only recommend this version if you have another dictionary with phonetic transcriptions (the CD does not have transcriptions) Resource Pack on CD (includes dictionary, thesaurus, grammar and usage) — buy from Elearnaid ($29) — We only recommend this version if you have another dictionary with phonetic transcriptions (the CD does not have transcriptions) Shipping information: Elearnaid's shipping charges are lower than Amazon's if you live in America, Asia or Eastern Europe If you live in Western Europe, Amazon's shipping will be cheaper by about $4 and the delivery will be somewhat faster Warning: Elearnaid does not ship to a few countries, e.g Poland and India We would like to thank Maree Airlie and Jennifer Kidd of HarperCollins Publishers for providing copies of the 3rd and 4th editions of the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary Review of the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary CD-ROM Content enlarge screenshot The Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary CD-ROM (RHWUD) contains the 1999 edition of the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, one of the two largest and most authoritative dictionaries of American English (the other is the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary) It does not contain the Random House Thesaurus This review covers the software (CD-ROM) version of the RHWUD, not the book version, which is big, heavy, harder to read, and slower to use Definitions The RHWUD is an English-English (monolingual) dictionary designed mainly for native speakers This means that it doesn't try to give simple and friendly definitions like a learner's dictionary Instead, it sticks to a rather dry lexicographic style: tenacious = holding fast; characterized by keeping a firm hold (often fol by of): a tenacious grip on my arm; tenacious of old habits bask = to lie in or be exposed to a pleasant warmth: to bask in the sunshine Example sentences There are far fewer example sentences in the RHWUD than in a learner's dictionary When I looked up 22 intermediate/advanced words chosen randomly from a book, the RHWUD had 3.2 example sentences per word There were, on average, 8.5 meanings for each of the 22 words, which means that less than in meanings had an example sentence For the same sample, the COBUILD Advanced Learner's Dictionary had example sentences per word, 3.5 meanings per word, and almost example sentences per meaning Being a dictionary for native speakers, the RHWUD has twice as many meanings as the COBUILD, but each meaning has times fewer example sentences Phonetic transcriptions The RHWUD provides phonetic transcriptions for practically all words There are no transcriptions of compound words like fish stick or unanticipated, but this is no big problem, as you can look up fish, stick, and anticipated instead The dictionary includes transcriptions of proper names such as McNaughton, Gynergen or San Rafael, and even Latin phrases like mirabile dictu Instead of the IPA, the dictionary uses its own system of phonetic transcription If you are familiar with the basics of English pronunciation, you should have no problem learning it — for example, by listening to the recordings and comparing them with the transcriptions or by looking up simple words for which you know the transcription (e.g go, run, bed, now) It's worth remembering that the dictionary has its own transcription conventions, some of which are less precise than those used in other dictionaries For instance, any and near are both transcribed with the "ee" vowel (as in keep), even though in speech they each sound a bit different Similarly, tourist is transcribed with the "oo" vowel (book) Stress is marked by placing an apostrophe after, not before he stressed syllable Recordings Wherever it gives phonetic transcriptions, the RHWUD also provides recordings (listen to a sample in mp3 format) For words with two or more alternative transcriptions, the recording is usually provided only for the most popular alternative All the words are pronounced by professional speakers, and match the transcriptions perfectly, even for difficult foreign entries like Ludwig Wittgenstein (listen) The dictionary does not confuse you by showing you one thing, and playing another The only problem is that the technical quality of the recordings is average — probably because the software uses an old sound compression technology Software quality The dictionary offers an "install to hard drive" option (you have to select "Custom Installation" during the setup process), which allows you to use the software without the CD in the drive The RHWUD starts up very quickly and works fast The user interface is good, except for a few flaws One problem is that before you can start typing a word, you have to click on the search box and erase its contents (i.e the previous word you looked up) By contrast, in the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's dictionary, you can just start typing without thinking about the search box A more annoying problem is that the dictionary does not support mousewheel scrolling or realtime scrolling When you want to scroll down in the definition window, you have to use the slider on the right side, and the window is scrolled only when you release the mouse button (not at the same time as you move the slider) I like the fact that you can browse through all the entries in the dictionary by scrolling a list (here realtime scrolling works) The process is similar to leafing through a book and enables you to learn completely random words just for fun The RHWUD fails most frequently of all the dictionaries I have used You can expect a crash once every 100-200 words you look up On one unlucky computer I tested the RHWUD on, the dictionary seemed to crash once every 30-50 words Generally, it is not the most stable piece of software and you'll have to get used to restarting it occasionally Do you need this dictionary? If you are an English learner, I not recommend the RHWUD as your primary dictionary, even though I learned English from a similar software dictionary myself Today, you can get CD-ROM dictionaries with many more example sentences and nicer definitions (e.g the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's Dictionary or the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English) However, a large dictionary like the RHWUD can be very useful as your second dictionary:  Because it is so huge, it contains things that are not found in a learner's dictionary These include: o advanced words: diathesis, lathwork, fender bender, highfaluting o meanings: arbor in the mechanical sense o phrasal verbs: kick back, hike up o cultural entries: City of Brotherly Love, Garden State, AAA, John Fitzgerald Kennedy o encyclopedic entries: Godel's incompleteness theorem, MAO inhibitor, Pensacola Bay o idioms: push up daisies, put the screws on Each of these advanced words, phrases and meanings occurs rarely, but you will always come across a few of them when reading any text in English — it's guaranteed   The RHWUD is a reliable source of American pronunciations, both phonetic transcriptions and recordings If you are learning American English and use the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary on CD (which does not have phonetic transcriptions or American recordings), a dictionary like the RHWUD is absolutely necessary .And, of course, two dictionaries are better than one, because they give you a lot more example sentences than just one dictionary In conclusion, the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary CD-ROM is highly recommended for learners of American English who already have a good learner's dictionary The RHWUD or the online Merriam-Webster? Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (m-w.com) There is a free online dictionary at Merriam-Webster's site (m-w.com), which has about the same number of words as the RHWUD However, I still think it is a good idea to pay $3.25 + shipping and get the RHWUD Here's why:      The RHWUD works faster You don't have to wait for the page to load Recordings are played instantly The relative slowness of m-w.com discourages you from looking up words, which is not good when you want to learn as many words as you can The RHWUD has a much clearer layout See right for an example entry (go) in both dictionaries The RHWUD presents all the meanings on one page On m-w.com, it's not enough to type in rack — you have to choose between rack[1,noun], rack[2,intransitive verb], rack[3,noun], rack[4,verb] or one of five other subentries This slows you down and requires you to make a decision before you can look up a word M-w.com sometimes gives too many alternative pronunciations, e.g pronunciations used in some regions of the US, but not in "standard American English" One example is catch, which is transcribed [k@tS | ketS] Another is actor, which, according to m-w.com, can be pronounced ['@k tor] in addition to the standard ['@k t r] This may mislead learners who are trying to learn American English as spoken on television Both dictionaries have about the same number of example sentences In a sample of 22 words, RHWUD had 3.2 example per word, while m-w.com had examples in the dictionary and 1.4 examples in the thesaurus (3.4 in total)   However, the RHWUD has examples for almost every phrasal verb (e.g keep at, run down) and idiom M-w.com has very few examples for such entries Examples on m-w.com are often very brief (e.g jam his hat on) The RHWUD usually uses full sentence examples (e.g He jammed his hat on and stalked out of the room.) The definitions in the RHWUD are a bit easier to understand than on mw.com Buying information You can buy the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary CD-ROM from Elearnaid for $7.00 (the shipping cost is between $7 and $14, depending on where you live) Thanks to Bernard Littman (Elearnaid) for providing a review copy of the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary CD-ROM Learn English without mistakes You can damage your English by writing and speaking Your grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation can get worse because of practice When you speak or write and you make mistakes, you teach yourself bad habits These bad habits may be difficult to eliminate The solution is simple: Avoid mistakes! Try to say or write only correct English sentences How can you avoid making mistakes?    Study pronunciation (all the English sounds and at least basic English words) before you open your mouth Get lots of English sentences into your head (by reading and listening) before you open your mouth or write in English To avoid mistakes, you need to follow good examples When you speak or write, be careful, slow, and use simple language You can damage your English by writing and speaking How practice can damage your English If you ask "How can I learn to speak English better?", many people will tell you "Practice, practice, practice" "Speak and write in English whenever you can" — they will say All English classes are full of activities which involve speaking and writing You produce sentences when you an exercise in your textbook, when your teacher makes you speak in class, or when you have to write a composition All these activities are supposed to help you with your English We agree that practice can be very useful It's even necessary to learn English well So what's the problem? The problem is that for many learners, "speaking"or "writing" means "making a lot of mistakes" Some people make a mistake in every sentence! If you don't make many mistakes, then you can speak or write in English and it can only help But if you make many mistakes, then every time you write or speak, you reinforce your mistakes As you write or speak, you repeat your mistakes constantly and your incorrect habits become stronger Imagine this situation: You are writing an e-mail message in English Your English is not perfect and you want to write the message quickly You write (incorrectly): "I want speak English." When you write a sentence, you also read it So the incorrect sentence goes into your head The next time you write a message, you will be more likely to write "I want finish" or "I want be happy" Why? Because "I want speak English" is fresh in your head — you've just used it! And when you write "I want <do something>" the second time, you've got a "bad habit", or a reinforced mistake Now you see our point? You write — you make mistakes — those mistakes become your habit, they become your way of writing in English So, the more you write, the worse your English becomes Stop making mistakes! We have said that you need practice to learn English We have also said that when you practice, you reinforce your mistakes Michal suggests a simple solution to this paradox: Never make mistakes! Here is what he says: It is close to the truth that I have never written an incorrect English sentence I knew many grammatical structures and I used only those that I knew My sentences were similar to sentences which I knew to be correct I followed good examples, so all my sentences were good In the beginning, I could write only very simple sentences, but all the simple sentences were correct Then as I advanced, I added more and more complicated structures, and again all my sentences were correct Because of this approach, I was never reinforcing bad habits I never had any bad habits! From the beginning, I copied only correct sentences With every sentence that I wrote, I reinforced my good habits You can speak and write with almost no mistakes, too You may be thinking "But practice makes perfect!" If you make many mistakes, speaking and writing is not the way to eliminate them! On the contrary, it reinforces them, as we have shown earlier in this article You have to realize that speaking does not improve your grammar or your vocabulary It's really very simple Can you learn a new word from yourself? If you don't know how to say "Good bye" in English, can you invent it by yourself? No, you can't You can only learn it by reading or listening to English Or take a language you don't know (e.g Latin) Now try to learn Latin by speaking it right now Come on, speak Latin! Don't be shy Practice makes perfect! — Obviously, you can't Why? Because you need to see some example Latin sentences first We hope we have shown that the main way to learn a language is to read and listen to sentences in that language So what should you if you can't help but make mistakes in your English sentences? If you make mistakes, that means you don't know how to say things in English You need to learn how to say them You won't learn that by speaking or writing You must read and listen to correct English sentences You can speak and write later — when you can already build correct English sentences and want to improve your fluency (your speed) "I'll get better by practicing, because my teacher corrects my mistakes!" Perhaps you can benefit from corrections if you get a few corrections per week But when there are many mistakes, you become unable to concentrate on them If a teacher returns your composition with 20 corrected mistakes, how many of these corrections can you keep in your mind? Besides, your teacher is not always there What if you're writing an e-mail message on your own or talking to someone else? Other people usually ignore your mistakes, and even your teacher does not point out all of them The conclusion would be that fighting your mistakes is not easy, so it's better to avoid making mistakes altogether "But if I'm afraid to make a mistake, I will never open my mouth!" First, try to be more careful by using the rules of error-free speaking If you still make a lot of mistakes (= more than mistake every sentences), or if you find that the rules are killing your motivation, you probably shouldn't open your mouth just now Instead, try to get more input by reading and listening in English "But you can't learn anything without mistakes!" True, but believe us — you can learn English with almost no mistakes How? You can fill your brain with correct sentences and imitate them You can simply follow good examples If you write or say sentences that are similar to correct English sentences (from a book, a dictionary, or heard from a native speaker), then it is very hard to make a mistake! "Can I ever make a mistake on purpose?" Yes Sometimes you can say or write something which you think is wrong You can it if you want to learn how to say something in English For example, if you are talking to a native speaker, you can this: Say "I'm not sure how to say this in English, but " and then say your sentence (which is probably wrong) The other person can tell you how to say it in English correctly Learn the correct way to say the sentence Notice that this technique is only safe if:    you know that you are saying something which may be wrong you are sure that the other person will correct you if you make a mistake you use it only occasionally Mistakes and pronunciation We've explained how speaking and writing with mistakes can damage your grammar and vocabulary But the same can happen to your pronunciation Suppose you are talking to someone in English You don't know how to pronounce a word, so you say it in your own way Then, you become used to this incorrect pronunciation You pronounce the word incorrectly again and again You've gotten yourself a bad pronunciation habit In our opinion, pronunciation should be the first thing that you learn about English If you anything else, it will usually involve speaking (Notice that even if you're reading a book, you're often pronouncing the sentences aloud or in your head.) That means you will be speaking with bad pronunciation and you will be teaching yourself bad habits So if you really want to avoid mistakes, you must study English pronunciation before you anything else, and especially before you open your mouth When you open your mouth, you should know how to pronounce everything you are saying How to avoid making mistakes in English Learners make mistakes and reinforce them because they produce sentences 1) too carelessly or 2) too early You will avoid mistakes if you follow a couple of rules: Rules of error-free speaking and writing Use simple language Some beginners try to build very complicated sentences with things like the present perfect tense or conditionals They make horrible mistakes Don't this! If you've just started to speak or write in English, you should say what you can say (simple sentences that you have seen many times) — not what you want to say (complicated sentences) You may feel you're talking like a child or that you are not expressing your thoughts, but don't worry about it Right now, your task is not to express your thoughts freely; your task is to learn the language Be slow and careful In the beginning, you should write very slowly If you need hours to write an e-mail message with 10 correct sentences, that's okay That's how long it should take if you're just starting to write Why should it take so long? Because you should read your sentences many times, looking for mistakes You should correct your own sentences frequently You should check if your sentences are correct by using a dictionary and the Web And you should look for example sentences to imitate When you're speaking, it's okay to build a sentence for some time in your head before you open your mouth If you're not sure how to say something, don't say it If you can't say something correctly, it's almost always better not to say it You don't want to teach yourself the wrong way to say it You can try to look for the correct sentence in a dictionary or on the Web (see next point), but when speaking, usually you don't have time for that So it's a good idea to say something else — something that you know is correct It can even be something on a different subject When writing, always look things up Whenever you're not sure how to use a word, look it up in a good dictionary to find example sentences with it When you've written something, and you are not sure if it's correct, search for it on the Web with Google If many pages contain your phrase, then it is probably correct Dictionaries and Google should be your everyday tools, and you should use them even many times in one sentence (especially if you've just begun writing in English) See this forum topic for more information on using Google when writing Know where you can screw up Sometimes learners don't even realize how different English is from their native language When speaking, they translate word for word from their native language, and they think their sentences are okay When reading or listening in English, pay close attention to things like word order, articles, prepositions, and tenses Compare sentences in English with equivalent sentences in your native language Notice the differences in words and in word order This will make you more careful when speaking in the foreign language, because you will realize which parts of your sentences can be wrong and should be double-checked "Will I ever be fluent if I speak so slowly and carefully?" Don't worry about fluency Fluency is easy to achieve by simply talking If you practice speaking, you will be able to speak faster and faster In high school, Tom achieved pretty good fluency in a month by talking to his English teacher (a native speaker) about two hours a week That's only hours of talking In our opinion, it is much better to be slow and correct than be fluent and make a lot of mistakes Why? Because if you are slow and correct, you can easily improve your speed and become fluent and correct But if you are fluent and make a lot of mistakes, it is not so easy to remove your mistakes and become fluent and correct Tom's experience with error-free writing I recently started learning German I wanted to start writing e-mails in German as soon as possible, but I didn't want to make mistakes and teach myself bad habits I wrote my first e-mails in German after reading just one short (40-page) book for learners written in simple German, a few e-mail messages from a German friend, and after using my very small SuperMemo collection for a few months And my e-mails in German had almost no mistakes How was that possible — writing correct sentences after getting so little input? First, my e-mails contained very simple sentences But the most important thing was my research: I looked for example sentences on the Web and in dictionaries For example, I knew that the German word for use was benutzen, but I didn't know how to use it in a sentence like "Which program you use to copy CDs?" Often, I had an idea how something might be done in German, but I wasn't sure if my idea was correct In such situations, I looked for the answer on the Web or in my dictionaries I spent a lot of time on each sentence It took me more than an hour to write my first message, which contained only a few German sentences The writing process was long and it took much effort, but it was fun The experience was very motivating and it made me even more interested in German Perhaps one of the reasons why it was so enjoyable was that I knew I was building correct sentences Don't speak or write too early If you follow the above rules and still make a lot of mistakes when speaking (= more than mistake every sentences), you should probably switch to writing for a while Consider the following guidelines: First write, then speak Writing is easier than speaking because: 1) you don't need to have good pronunciation (but you need good spelling), 2) you can write very slowly and nobody will mind, 3) you can use dictionaries, the Web, etc So, it's a good idea to practice writing first until you can build correct sentences quickly enough for speaking Don't speak until you've learned to pronounce English sounds You need to be able to pronounce all the English vowels and consonants in a clear way before you speak If you don't, you will get used to bad pronunciation Don't say a word if you don't know how to pronounce it In other words, you need to know the pronunciation of all the words that you use If you don't, you will be making pronunciation mistakes and teaching yourself bad habits If you make more than mistake every sentences when writing in the slow and careful way described above, you should probably stop writing for some time and concentrate on reading and listening Remember that you should first get lots of English sentences into your head, then build your own sentences Your main activity should be reading and listening to English — and the reason is that you need good examples to follow before you can build your own sentences The more sentences your brain absorbs, the more you can express in English If you don't see/hear enough correct, natural English sentences, you will not know how to say things in English So you will be inventing your own language And you will be making mistakes What happens in English classes The recommended order in the Antimoon learning method is: Pronunciation - Input (reading and listening) - Writing - Speaking Unfortunately, something completely different happens in English classes Almost no courses teach you pronunciation at the beginning Few teachers give you enough "input" Instead, they force you to speak and write — asking you questions, telling you to grammar exercises or writing assignments In a way, they force you to make mistakes and create bad habits Learning English pronunciation Why should you study English pronunciation? Because pronunciation is the biggest thing that people notice about your English You should study it even if you think you can already communicate in English How to learn English pronunciation? You will need to: Learn to pronounce every English sound correctly The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet are shown in our table You can listen to recorded examples of each sound Understand phonetic transcription — the system for writing the pronunciation of English words Phonetic transcription is usually written in the International Phonetic Alphabet Learn the pronunciation of every English word that you use You can find phonetic transcriptions of words in good English dictionaries It might be a good idea to use PerfectPronunciation — Antimoon's English pronunciation software which teaches you the pronunciation of the most frequently used English words with phonetic transcriptions and audio recordings What is good English pronunciation? There are three levels of English pronunciation Your pronunciation is good if it is understandable and pleasant We created the ASCII Phonetic Alphabet because the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet are difficult to type on computers The ASCII Phonetic Alphabet uses only symbols which you can find on your computer's keyboard Demonstration of phonetic transcription: Listen to recordings and read the transcriptions Articles related to pronunciation in the "Other articles" section:  "You are a foreigner, therefore you will always have a foreign accent" Why you should study English pronunciation First impressions Pronunciation is definitely the biggest thing that people notice when you are speaking English Let us tell you a personal anecdote about this: We once went to a conversation class taught by native speakers (Americans) Before the class started, the teacher said to us: "So, you speak good English?" Tom replied "We think so", and the guy said "It sure sounds like you do" Notice that we just said three words, and the teacher could already tell if our English was good or bad Why did the teacher think our English was good? Because of the difficult words we used? No Because we used advanced grammar structures? No It was our pronunciation When you meet a person, and you just say a sentence or two, you think they will notice your poor vocabulary or bad grammar? Probably not But they will notice if your pronunciation is good or bad If your pronunciation is poor, they will immediately think about you as "the guy/girl who speaks bad English" Your pronunciation creates the first impression you make Communication Good pronunciation should be one of the first things that you learn in English You can live without advanced vocabulary — you can use simple words to say what you want to say You can live without advanced grammar — you can use simple grammar structures instead But there is no such thing as "simple pronunciation" If you don't have good pronunciation, you have bad pronunciation And the results of bad pronunciation are tragic Even if you use great vocabulary and grammar, people may simply not understand what you want to say For example, if you pronounce sleep like this, and not like that, or if you pronounce ghost like this instead of this, native speakers will have serious problems understanding you! In our opinion, you should know how to say English sounds like the ee in sleep or the o in ghost, before you even learn words like sleep and ghost Here is another anecdote about this After coming back from a vacation in the USA, a friend of Tom's said: "Whenever I spoke to a person in America, they kept asking me "What? What?" I would repeat my sentence again and again Finally they would say "Ah-ha!" and then say my sentence, using exactly my words! It was very humiliating I knew my words and grammar were good, but nobody would understand me, just because of my pronunciation I am very motivated to learn English now." Can you communicate in English? Almost all English learners say "I don't need to study pronunciation I just want to communicate in English." Many of them think that they can communicate in English because they can communicate with their teacher and other students Do not make this mistake! You have to remember that:   Your teacher has been listening to bad English for years He or she can understand it much more easily than the average person Other students are usually from the same country as you Therefore, they speak English like you and they make the same mistakes So it is easy for them to understand you The only true test is: Go to America or Britain and try to talk to "normal people" — a clerk at a supermarket, a bus driver, etc If they can understand you, then you can say that you can communicate in English Unfortunately, many learners ignore pronunciation They can communicate in class, so they think that they are good enough After a few years they go to England or the USA and nobody understands what they are saying Remember Tom's friend who went on vacation to America and couldn't communicate? He was the best student in his English class Michal wrote a short story about people living on two islands where English is spoken The story is for those who say: "I don't need to learn pronunciation because I only want to communicate." Communication is not enough If you can communicate in English with people from other countries, congratulations! It's a big achievement But it may not be enough If you are at Level of pronunciation skill, your English is understandable, but you have a strong foreign accent which is unpleasant for other people We have already said that your pronunciation is important because it makes your first impression This is certainly true — nobody will say that you speak good English if you have a strong foreign accent But there is more If you have a pleasant accent, people will simply enjoy talking to you They will want to spend time with you On the other hand, if your accent is bad, people may be even avoiding you (consciously or unconsciously) The good news is that you can work on your pronunciation until you speak "understandable and pleasant English" (we simply call it good pronunciation) For example, you can learn the sounds of English, listen to recordings, watch Englishlanguage television, etc But first you have to realize there is a problem! Most English learners don't Michal wrote a short story to help learners understand this problem How to learn English pronunciation Learn the sounds of English English uses different sounds than other languages For example, the first sound in the word thin and the first sound in the word away are never heard in many languages Therefore, you have to: know all the English sounds listen to how they sound in real words and sentences practice your pronunciation — listen to English words and sentences, and try to repeat them as well as you can It's not so important to spend a lot of time practicing; it's more important to it regularly Many learners find that just starting to pay attention to pronunciation helps them improve a great deal It is a good idea to try to imitate English words whenever you're listening to anything in English (watching TV, watching a movie, etc.) You should also try to pronounce English words whenever you're somewhere alone with a little time to spare, e.g while waiting for the bus, taking a shower, or surfing the Web Once your mouth and tongue get used to the new sounds, you will not find them difficult at all You will need at least some talent for imitating sounds (for instance, if you can imitate people in your own language, it should be easy for you to "do" English pronunciation) However, if you don't have these skills, you can achieve a lot with persistence and a little technology One helpful technique is to record your voice and compare it with the correct pronunciation This way, you can see where your pronunciation is different from the original and you can gradually make it more native-like Oh, and one more thing: Don't let other people tell you that "since you are a foreigner, you will always have a foreign accent" Learn the pronunciation of English words Reading an English word does not tell you how it is pronounced For example, the words no and both end in the letter o However, no is pronounced like this, and is pronounced like that This means that, generally, you have to learn the pronunciation of every word that you're going to use How can you learn the pronunciation of an English word? You can look it up in a dictionary and read about how it is pronounced Dictionaries tell you about pronunciation through a special system called phonetic transcription Phonetic transcriptions are written in a phonetic alphabet The most popular phonetic alphabet is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) Antimoon has also created the ASCII Phonetic Alphabet, which is suitable for typing on a computer Antimoon's software, PerfectPronunciation, helps you learn the pronunciations of the most important English words It lets you record your voice and compare it with the correct pronunciation Because it contains phonetic transcriptions and audio recordings, it can also teach you how to read phonetic transcriptions Choose American or British pronunciation (or both) Different kinds of English have different pronunciation For example, the pronunciation (the accent) in British English is different from the pronunciation in American English You have a choice between British English and American English, because these are the most important kinds of English in the world Which one should you choose? Probably the kind that you like the most Whether you choose British or American pronunciation, people will understand you wherever you go Of course, you don't have to decide: you can learn to speak both kinds of English Learn about both American and British pronunciation Even if you choose to speak one kind of English, you should learn about both kinds Let's suppose you want to speak pure British English You don't want to have an American accent at all Should you pay attention to the American pronunciations in your dictionary? We believe you should You may want to speak British English, but you will hear some American English, too You may go see an American movie, visit the United States, have an American teacher, etc You may want to speak only British English, but you need to understand both British and American English Also, consider what happens if you (a student of British English) hear a new English word from an American? You may learn the American pronunciation of the word And you may start using that pronunciation in your own speech So your British English will no longer be pure For example, if you hear the word nuke on American TV, it will be pronounced [nu:k] If, all your life, you have been reading only British phonetic transcriptions, you will not know that many words which have the sound [ju:] in British English, have [u:] in American English So you will probably learn that nuke is pronounced [nu:k] But if you learn it like this, you will make your pronunciation "wrong", because a Briton would pronounce the word [nju:k] Of course, the same advice is true if you're learning American English In such a case, you should be interested in both British and American pronunciations, too (This topic has been discussed in the Forum.) The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet This table contains all the sounds (phonemes) used in the English language For each sound, it gives:  The symbol in the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), as used in phonetic transcriptions in modern dictionaries for English learners — that is, A C Gimson's phonemic system with a few additional symbols The table represents British and American phonemes with one symbol One symbol can mean two different phonemes in American and British English See the footnotes for British-only and American-only symbols   Two English words which use the sound The underline shows where the sound is heard The links labeled Amer and Brit play sound recordings (in mp3 format) where the words are pronounced in American and British English The British version is given only where it is very different from the American version If you would like to print the table, use the pretty printable version consonants IPA vowels IPA words listen words listen bad, lab Amer did, lady Amer cup, luck Amer find, if Amer arm, father Amer / Brit give, flag Amer cat, black Amer how, hello Amer met, bed Amer yes, yellow Amer away, cinema Amer cat, back Amer turn, learn Amer / Brit leg, little Amer hit, sitting Amer man, lemon Amer see, heat Amer no, ten Amer hot, rock Amer / Brit sing, finger Amer call, four Amer / Brit pet, map Amer put, could Amer red, try Amer blue, food Amer sun, miss Amer five, eye Amer she, crash Amer now, out Amer tea, getting Amer go, home Amer where, air Amer / Brit think, both Amer say, eight Amer this, mother Amer near, here Amer / Brit voice, five Amer boy, join Amer wet, window Amer zoo, lazy Amer pure, tourist Amer / Brit check, church Amer pleasure, vision Amer just, large Amer The phoneme is sometimes written as (do not confuse with ) in American sources to show that in AmE, the pronunciation falls between and In and , the is not pronounced in BrE, unless the sound comes before a vowel (as in answering, answer it) In AmE, the is always pronounced, and the sounds are sometimes written as and In AmE, is pronounced instead of This is so obvious that we don't need to provide separate transcriptions for AmE and BrE Many Americans pronounce ( ) and has been traditionally written as appropriate for both BrE or AmE in the same way in British sources Today, is probably more In , the is not pronounced in BrE, unless the sound comes before a vowel (as in dearest, dear Ann) In AmE, the is always pronounced, and the sounds are often written as ( ) special symbols IPA what it means The apostrophe symbol ( ) is used to show word stress Usually, it is placed before the stressed syllable in a word For example, / / is pronounced like this, and / / like that Word stress is explained in our article about phonetic transcription is not a sound — it is a short way of saying that an is pronounced only in American English For example, if you write that the pronunciation of bar is / /, you mean that it is / / in American English, and / / in British English However, in BrE, will be heard if is followed by a vowel For example, far gone is pronounced / / in BrE, but far out is pronounced / / ("medium i") means that you can pronounce or or something in between — a sound that is short like but sounds like Examples: very / /, create / /, previous / /, ability / / ("syllabic l") shows that the consonant is pronounced as a separate syllable (it sounds like vowel) Examples: little / /, uncle / / Instead of the symbol, some dictionaries use / / or / / ("syllabic n") shows that the consonant is pronounced as a separate syllable (it sounds like a vowel) Examples: written / /, listen / / Instead of the symbol, some dictionaries use or What this page actually presents This page contains symbols used in phonetic transcriptions in modern dictionaries for English learners It does not list all the possible sounds that exist in English For example, it does not list the "regular t" (heard in this pronunciation of letter) and the "flap t" (heard in this one) separately It groups them under a single (In other words, it groups a number of sounds under a single "phoneme" To understand how sounds are grouped into phonemes, read the article on phonemic transcription.) Even though dictionaries represent each phoneme with one symbol of the IPA, you should remember that one phoneme can actually correspond to many IPA symbols For example, the phoneme in pin would be phonetically written with the IPA symbol , because it is pronounced with aspiration (breathing) In spin, the same phoneme would be written with a simple (no aspiration) Similarly, the "regular t" and the "flap t" have separate IPA symbols — and , respectively In other words, this page does not list all the possible IPA symbols that describe English speech Also note that the IPA contains symbols for many languages — not only English The ASCII Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet is very popular, but there is a big problem with this alphabet: the IPA symbols are difficult to type on computers Because of this, we've created the ASCII Phonetic Alphabet It uses only symbols which you can type on your computer's keyboard Learning to pronounce the sounds We offer software (PerfectPronunciation) which teaches learners to pronounce the most frequently used English words It lets you listen to examples of English sounds, practice your pronunciation, and review your knowledge PerfectPronunciation uses the ASCII Phonetic Alphabet Subscribe to get an e-mail when we publish a new update Introduction to phonetic transcription Related Pages Demonstration of phonetic transcription With phonetic transcriptions, dictionaries tell you about the pronunciation of words Phonetic transcription is necessary, because the spelling of a word does not tell you how you should pronounce it Phonetic transcriptions are usually written in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), in which each English sound has a special symbol For example, the phonetic transcription of no is , and the transcription of is (In spelling, these words are similar They both end in the letter o But their phonetic transcriptions are different, because they are pronounced differently.) Phonetic transcription is usually given in brackets, like this: / sometimes like this: [ ], [ ] /, / /; or In a dictionary, it looks like this: [Longman Active Study Dictionary of English] (By the way, not all dictionaries give the pronunciations of words If you are serious about learning English, you should buy a dictionary which has this information.) The International Phonetic Alphabet Take a look at our table with all the IPA symbols used in phonetic transcriptions in English dictionaries Word stress When a word has many syllables, one of them is always pronounced more strongly This is called word stress, and we say that the syllable is stressed For example, in the word become, the stressed syllable is come If the stressed syllable was be, become would be pronounced like this Dictionaries tell you which syllable is stressed The most popular system is to put an apostrophe ( ) before the stressed syllable in the phonetic transcription of the word For example, the transcription for become is / / If a word has only one syllable (for example: pen, house), the syllable is always stressed Dictionaries usually not put an apostrophe before the only syllable So they don't write / / — they simply write / / Some dictionaries use other systems for showing word stress For example, they may put an apostrophe after the stressed syllable, or they may underline the stressed syllable A demonstration Have a look at our demonstration of the phonetic transcription system You can read the transcriptions of some English words and listen to their pronunciations at the same time Phonemic transcription The most common type of phonetic transcription is called phonemic transcription This is the type that we discuss on Antimoon and that is used in dictionaries How does phonemic transcription work? Suppose we have two different English sounds Should we give them separate symbols in transcriptions? In phonemic transcription, the answer is "yes" only if there is an English word where saying one sound instead of another changes the meaning   For example, saying "d" instead of "t" in the word bet changes the meaning (the word becomes bed), therefore we use separate symbols for "d" and "t" in phonemic transcriptions We say that "t" and "d" are two different phonemes The "flap t" (in this pronunciation of the word letter) and the regular "t" (in this one) are two very different sounds However, there are no English words where saying the "flap t" instead of the regular "t" (or the other way around) changes the meaning Therefore, in phonemic transcription, we use the same symbol for the "flap t" and the regular "t" (We say that the "flap t" and "regular t" are the same phoneme.) (More examples in our article on phonemic transcription.) A C Gimson's system The most popular system of phonemic transcription was created by A C Gimson It is used (with certain small changes) in nearly all dictionaries published in Britain It is also used on Antimoon Gimson's system uses symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent phonemes Of course, some phonemes can be pronounced in many ways (as explained above), and therefore could be written with many IPA symbols For example, the "t" phoneme can be spoken like the "regular t" (IPA symbol ) or like the "flap t" (IPA symbol ) In such cases, A C Gimson simply chose one of the possible IPA symbols Thus, the "t" phoneme is represented by the symbol In addition to Gimson's symbols, recent dictionaries use the following additional (non-phonemic) symbols in transcriptions: , , , , and Representing American English Gimson's system was created with British pronunciation in mind However, it can also be used to describe American pronunciation There are two basic ways to this:  Separate transcriptions for British and American English, for example: dot BrE / farm BrE / go BrE / mothe r BrE / /, AmE / / /, AmE / /, AmE / / / /, AmE / / (or / /)   (This system is used e.g in the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary and the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English) One transcription for both British and American English This is done by using mostly British phoneme symbols plus the symbol dot / farm / go / mothe r  / / / / / In this system, transcriptions are shorter, but the reader must know that, in American English, changes to and changes to This system is used e.g in the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary and on Antimoon Some dictionaries use something in between these two extremes, giving separate American transcriptions for some words, but not for others For example, the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary gives separate AmE/BrE transcriptions, except when the word ends in "Narrow" phonetic transcription The other type of phonetic transcription is much more detailed than phonemic transcription In "narrow transcription", we use different symbols e.g for:     the "p" sound in pin and spin (the first is accompanied by more breathing) the "w" sound in wet and twice (the first is voiced, the second is not) the "u" sound in this pronunciation of flu and this one (the second has a longer "u" sound) the "flap t" and the regular "t" (the first is voiced and "flapped"; in narrow transcription it is usually denoted as ) "Narrow" transcription also uses symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet However, it uses more symbols than Gimson's phonemic transcription "Narrow" transcription is mainly used by phoneticians and is not covered on Antimoon PerfectPronunciation more screenshots PerfectPronunciation is a computer program for learning English pronunciation, developed by Antimoon It contains 500 exercises which teach you to pronounce the 500 most frequently used English words properly Benefits When used regularly, PerfectPronunciation can help you:       Speak English with more confidence You won't have to worry about how to say words like century and although You will simply know how to pronounce them correctly Start noticing other people's mistakes in pronunciation (for example, in English classes) Learn the answers to many questions about English pronunciation, for example: How to pronounce development? Is the "oo" in the words foot and food pronounced in the same way? Does law sound like low? Learn phonetic transcription — the system for writing down the pronunciations of English words used by teachers, pronunciation experts, and English dictionaries Speak more clearly and be understood by others Practice in your home as often as you want — without other people listening Features        500 exercises teach you to say properly the most frequently used English words 564 high-quality audio recordings with American English pronunciation Clearly shows you all the sounds in a word through written pronunciations (phonetic transcriptions); information about word stress (accent) is also included Phonetic transcriptions cover all ways to pronounce a word, including British English pronunciation Special notes explain various issues of English pronunciation Helps you review what you have learned with advanced SuperMemo technology; keeps the pronunciations in your head Saves your time; "knows" which exercises you will soon forget and helps you review them — and doesn't waste your time with exercises you remember well   Record your own voice and compare it with the correct pronunciation until you finally reach the perfect pronunciation Includes a phonetic reference — a guide to all English sounds with over 100 recorded words How an exercise works PerfectPronunciation consists of 500 pronunciation exercises Each exercise works like this: First, PerfectPronunciation shows you an English word (for example, scheme) You try to say the word properly You click a button and PerfectPronunciation plays a recording with the correct pronunciation It also shows you the written pronunciation (phonetic transcription) of the word — so you can clearly see each sound in the word! You compare your answer with the correct answer and you give yourself a grade between (very bad) and (very good) This grade is used by PerfectPronunciation to decide how well you remember the exercise (see below) How reviews work Many other English learning programs only teach you once, and then let you forget everything PerfectPronunciation is different It actually helps you keep your knowledge in your memory To so, it uses SuperMemo technology (SuperMemo is short for Super Memory) The SuperMemo technology is the result of scientific research into human memory It has won many awards and has been used for learning since the 1980s When you run PerfectPronunciation on a given day, it first gives you some "old" exercises to review — these are exercises that you have done before The program asks you to review them so that you don't forget them The interesting thing is that PerfectPronunciation chooses these "old" exercises in an intelligent way Because you grade yourself at each exercise, PerfectPronunciation can look at your grades and calculate which exercises you will soon forget It then asks you to review only these "poorly remembered" exercises As a result, you never waste time on exercises you remember well Instead of reviewing all the exercises, you only have to review a few exercises which are hard to remember It may sound simple, but PerfectPronunciation actually builds a complicated mathematical model of your memory and updates it with each exercise you The two most important facts about the review system used in PerfectPronunciation are:   Whenever you run PerfectPronunciation, it has some exercises for you — and those are exercises which you need to review In a way, PerfectPronunciation is like a good teacher who knows which exercises you should You can keep all the pronunciations in your memory, but you only have to spend a little time every day on reviews Buy PerfectPronunciation You can order the following versions of Antimoon PerfectPronunciation:   CD version ($47.95) — The price already includes the shipping cost Before you get your CD by postal mail, you can download PerfectPronunciation and start using it immediately To order the CD version, click the above link and then add "eCD" to your cart Downloadable version ($34.95) — Exactly the same as the CD version The only difference is that you have to download it yourself No CD will be shipped The download is about MB Users of SuperMemo 2000/2002/2004/2006: You can download PerfectPronunciation as a SuperMemo collection ($32.95) which will work with your version of SuperMemo The download size is about MB Customers in the European Union: Please read this important buying information More information   Example screenshots from PerfectPronunciation User guide for PerfectPronunciation What is good English pronunciation? Related Pages Why you should study English pronunciation There are three levels of English pronunciation:    Level 1: People often don't understand what you want to say You use the wrong sounds in English words (example) Level 2: People understand what you want to say, but it is unpleasant to listen to you (example) Level 3: People understand you, and your English is pleasant to listen to (example one, example two) Level will be called good pronunciation Notice that good pronunciation is not "perfect American or British accent" You don't have to sound like the Queen of England or the President of the United States of America Why not? Because there are many regional kinds of English In England, people from Newcastle speak English differently from people in London In America, people from New York City, California, and Texas each have their own pronunciation So it is no problem if you have your own accent But your accent must be close to the standards (American and British English) What does it mean? Turn on your TV and watch channels like CNN International, NBC, EuroNews, BBC, or Sky News You will hear many different people (news anchors, reporters, etc.) from Germany, France, and other non-English-speaking countries They all have good accents — easy to understand and pleasant The rule is: If you are close to the standard, you can always communicate, and your English will be pleasant If you are far from the standard, sometimes you won't communicate successfully The ASCII Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet is very popular, but there is a big problem with this alphabet: the IPA symbols are difficult to type on computers You can it, but you need special fonts and special software This is very inconvenient Therefore, when you want to write English sounds in computer documents, or in email messages, or in SuperMemo collections, it is better to use a phonetic alphabet which doesn't use strange symbols like or , but uses regular symbols like Z or @ instead We have created such an alphabet We've named it the ASCII Phonetic Alphabet, because the letters and symbols displayed by computers are called ASCII characters (By the way, "ASCII" is pronounced ['@s ki:].) Here is a table with all the symbols of the ASCII Phonetic Alphabet A special printable version is also available vowels IPA ASCII examples consonants listen IPA ASCII examples listen ^ cup, luck Amer b bad, lab Amer a: arm, father Amer / Brit d did, lady Amer @ cat, black Amer f find, if Amer e met, bed Amer g give, flag Amer away, cinema Amer h how, hello Amer e:(r) turn, learn Amer / Brit j yes, yellow Amer i hit, sitting Amer k cat, back Amer i: see, heat Amer l leg, little Amer o hot, rock Amer / Brit m man, lemon Amer o: call, four Amer / Brit n no, ten Amer u put, could Amer N sing, finger Amer consonants IPA ASCII vowels IPA ASCII examples listen examples listen p pet, map Amer r red, try Amer u: blue, food Amer s sun, miss Amer five, eye Amer S she, crash Amer au now, out Amer t tea, getting Amer Ou go, home Amer tS check, church Amer e (r) where, air Amer / Brit th think, both Amer ei say, eight Amer TH this, mother Amer i (r) near, here Amer / Brit v voice, five Amer oi boy, join Amer w wet, window Amer u (r) pure, tourist Amer / Brit z zoo, lazy Amer Z pleasure, vision Amer dZ just, large Amer special symbols IPA ASCII what it means ' ' is placed before the stressed syllable in a word For example, ['kon tr@kt] is pronounced like this, and [k n 'tr@kt] like that (r) [ka:(r)] means [ka:r] in American English, and [ka:] in British English i(:) i(:) means i: or i or something in between Examples: very ['ve ri(:)], ability [ 'bi li ti(:)], previous ['pri: vi(:) s] l .l shows that the consonant l is pronounced as a syllable (it sounds like a vowel) Examples: little ['li t.l], uncle ['^N k.l] n .n shows that the consonant n is pronounced as a syllable Examples: written ['ri t.n], listen ['li s.n] Demonstration of phonetic transcription This page shows you how to read and write the phonetic transcriptions of English words Dictionaries use phonetic transcriptions to tell you how you should pronounce words All the transcriptions on this page are written in the phonemic system used in most dictionaries for English learners They use symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) All the pronunciations are written with "universal" (BritishAmerican) symbols, but are spoken in American English For example, their is transcribed as / /, and the sound is heard in the recording For more information, look at the table with English sounds and IPA symbols Instructions: Play the sound samples (mp3 files, about 80 KB each), listen to the words, and read the transcriptions Listen to these words Listen to these words that however difficult another you again which world their area about psychology photo course should company people under also problem between never many service thicker something child place hear point system provide group large number general Listen to these words Listen to these words always head next information quick question nervous business local power during change although move who book example development rather young social national write water percent yet guest perhaps both until every control month include important Listen to these words allow stand believe Listen to these words person once idea character result happen friend carry awful early view himself xerox report political law ghost modest police lose position industry major build language international else yeah center enough calm color lure knife Input - getting English into your head What is input and why you need it? Input is a short word for "English sentences that you read or listen to" When you read and listen to English sentences, parts of the sentences stay in your memory, which lets you build similar sentences yourself Input — not speaking, writing or grammar tests — is what you need to use English grammar and vocabulary like a native speaker You shouldn't learn English by grammar rules because grammar rules are difficult to memorize and because building sentences by using grammar rules is very slow You can't use English fluently if you have to think about grammar rules Why your input should be fun: Thrilling, enjoyable and/or funny content is the key to your progress Reading is easier than listening: You can get input in only two ways: reading and listening, and reading is easier than listening, because: (1) You can see the spelling of all the words, so you can look them up in a dictionary, and (2) When reading, you can always stop to think and look things up With listening, this is not always possible The power of reading — two cases: These two stories of people who learned English well by reading show what can happen to your English if you get lots of input Great output skills without output practice? Richard Boydell's example shows that to learn good output skills, you may not need output practice at all You can get English input in many different ways:    Reading in English gives you easy input (easier than listening) When reading, pay attention to new words, phrases, and grammar patterns o Why you need to start reading on your own o How to read English texts if you want to improve your English o What to read Watching movies in English gives you spoken English input and helps you learn informal English vocabulary You will often have problems understanding movies; we present a few techniques to help you with that Adventure games are computer games where you control a character who talks to other characters They give you lots of spoken English input and are fun to play Besides, good dictionaries give you input in the form of example sentences By reading the sentences, you can learn how to use a word SuperMemo gives you regular input and helps you keep it in your head — if you add sentences to your items Input — the only way to learn English What is input? Input is a short word for "sentences that you read and listen to" Input is the opposite of output, which means "producing sentences by speaking and writing" The model of language learning Have you ever wondered how it is possible that you can speak your native language so easily? You want to say something (express some meaning) and correct phrases and sentences just come to you Most of this process is unconscious: something just appears in your head You can say it or not, but you don't know where it came from This model explains how this is possible: You get input — you read and listen to sentences in some language If you understand these sentences, they are stored in your brain More specifically, they are stored in the part of your brain responsible for language When you want to say or write something in that language (when you want to produce output), your brain can look for a sentence that you have heard or read before — a sentence that matches the meaning you want to express Then, it imitates the sentence (produces the same sentence or a similar one) and you say your "own" sentence in the language This process is unconscious: the brain does it automatically Comments on the model Of course, this model is very simple The brain doesn't really look for whole sentences, but rather for parts of sentences (phrases) It can build very complicated and long sentences from these parts So it doesn't just "imitate" one sentence at a time It uses many sentences at the same time to build original sentences For example, it "knows" that it can take one word in a sentence it has heard and substitute another word (an equivalent one) for it For example, if it has heard "The cat is under the table", it can easily produce "The dog is under the table" or "The book is under the chair." (if it has also heard and understood the nouns dog, book, and chair) It can substitute more than one word, as in "The cat is under the big black table" The brain can also more advanced transformations If you give the brain these three sentences, I like golf I like fishing for salmon Golf is relaxing it can produce this: Fishing for salmon is relaxing Here, a noun phrase with a gerund ("fishing for salmon") was substituted for a regular noun (golf) As a result, we got an original sentence which doesn't look too similar to any of the three input sentences But these considerations don't change the most important fact: The brain needs input The more correct and understandable sentences it gets, the more sentences it can imitate and the better it gets at making its own sentences By the way, the language learning model described above is basically the "comprehension hypothesis" (or "input hypothesis") by professor Stephen Krashen (University of Southern California) and is part of his "natural approach" to language learning The model describes the process of a child learning its first (native) language The child listens to its parents and other people The child's brain collects sentences and gets better and better at producing its own sentences By the age of 5, the child can already speak quite fluently But the same model works for learning a foreign language In fact, we think it is the only way to learn a language well What the model means for language learners Here's what's important in the model from the point of view of foreign language learning:  The brain produces sentences based on the sentences it has seen or heard (input) So the way to improve is to feed your brain with a lot of input — correct and understandable sentences (written or spoken) Before you can start speaking and writing in a foreign language, your brain must get enough correct sentences in that language   Output (speaking and writing) is less important It is not the way to improve your language skills In fact, you should remember that you can damage your English through early and careless output Also, it may be possible to develop great output skills without output practice! You don't need grammar rules You learned your first language without studying tenses or prepositions You can learn a foreign language in that way, too How input can change your English If you read a few books in English, you will see that your English has become better You will start using new vocabulary and grammar in your school compositions and email messages You will be surprised, but English phrases will just come to you when you are writing or speaking! Things like the past simple tense and how to use the word "since" will become part of you You will use them automatically, without thinking Correct phrases will just appear in your head It will be easy to use English, because your brain will only be repeating the things that it has seen many times By reading a book in English, you have given your brain thousands of English sentences They are part of you now How can you make a mistake and say "I feeled bad", if you have seen the correct phrase ("I felt bad") 50 times in the last book you've read? You simply cannot make that mistake anymore You will surely notice an improvement at your next English test For example, in multiple choice questions, you will "feel" which is the correct answer You may not know "why" it is correct (you will not be able to give a rule for it), but you will know it is correct You will know because you will have read it many times This is true for all words and grammar structures If you read in English, you can forget about grammar rules Throw away your grammar book! You don't need to know the rules for the present perfect tense You don't even have to know the name "present perfect tense" Instead, read a few books in English, and soon you will feel that "I have seen Paul yesterday" is wrong, and "I saw Paul yesterday" is correct It will simply sound wrong How? Simple Your brain has seen the second kind of sentence 192 times, and the first kind times Do you know what is the difference between a learner and a native speaker? The native speaker "feels" what is correct He can tell that a sentence sounds either good or bad (unnatural) and he doesn't need to use grammar rules for that He can it because he has heard and read lots of English sentences in his life This is the only difference between a learner and a native speaker — the amount of input You can be like a native speaker if you get lots of input, too Here are a few words from Tom: I'll never forget the first time that I opened Michael Swan's Practical English Usage (an English grammar/usage reference book) It was at the end of high school and I was already very good at English The book was full of English grammar and usage problems like "when should you use below and when under?" and "what sort of things can you express with the word must?" For each problem, there were example sentences (showing the correct and incorrect way to say something) and rules such as "Use under when something is covered or hidden by what is over it, and when things are touching" I browsed through the book, looking at page after page When looking at an incorrect example, I'd think "Of course that's wrong; it sounds awful" When looking at a rule, I'd think "Oh, I didn't know there was a rule for that" Page after page, I had the impression that I didn't know any rules in the book, and I didn't need them! (And I couldn't learn all of them even if I wanted to.) I could just look at a sentence and tell if it sounded good or not I was like a native speaker of English By reading books, watching TV, listening to recordings, etc I had gotten lots of input and developed an English intuition There are many examples of people who have become close to native speakers because of intensive input — for example, Michal, Tom, and the other authors in the Successful English learners section You can read about two interesting cases from a scientific article by Stephen Krashen Why you shouldn't learn English by grammar rules In this article, we present an example of learning based on grammar rules Then we explain why we think this way of learning is much less effective than input-based learning Example of learning by grammar rules Here is an excerpt from a modern ESL textbook ("Workout Advanced" by Paul Radley and Kathy Burke, published by Nelson English Language Teaching) The textbook was used in an English class Tom attended at a language school in England Unit Grammar: Adjectives When two or more adjectives are used before a noun, the adjectives follow a certain order: opinion adjectives: general/specific descriptive adjectives: size/age/shape/colour/nationality/material Example: They bought a lovely, stylish, large, old, rectangular, brown, English oak table Unit Practice (next page) Use the adjectives in the correct order before each noun to make noun phrases Example: beach — white, sandy, soft > a soft, white, sandy beach hotel — modern, large, expensive climate — sunny, warm, Mediterranean water — blue, clear, clean restaurant — international, open-air, clean rooms — spacious, comfortable, twin-bedded The textbook presents a grammar rule for ordering adjectives ("size/age/shape/colour/nationality/material") Then it gives only two examples After that, you are expected to an exercise Obviously, you cannot the exercise using your intuition (what intuition can you get from seeing only two examples?) The textbook wants you to use the grammar rule You are supposed to classify the adjectives into one of the groups ("size", "age", etc.), and then put them in order according to the rule In other words, you are supposed to: recall the rule ("size - age - shape - color - nationality - material") for every adjective, answer the question "Is it an adjective of size, age, shape, color, nationality, or material?" order the adjectives according to the rule Now imagine doing all these things whenever you're writing or saying a sentence with or more adjectives Can you guess how much time it would take you to build the sentence? Is there another way? Yes, there is You can learn by input You can read a lot of sentences with adjectives and get a natural, intuitive knowledge of adjective order Instead of memorizing the rule and using it to build sentences, you can get correct sentences into your head and your brain will imitate them The "input way" is easier and it lets you speak and write faster Of course, learning by input is not effortless You have to spend a lot of time reading and listening to English However, if you learn e.g by reading a book that you like, it can give you pleasure and motivation Grammar rules vs input — summary Learning with grammar rules has two important disadvantages:   Memory effort It is difficult to memorize a grammar rule The process is highly artificial; it is like memorizing a poem It is much easier to read some example sentences and let your brain the rest Time You need a lot of time to use a grammar rule You have to remember it, you have to see if it can be used in your sentence, then you have to build the sentence according to the rule Writing a sentence with grammar rules is like solving a mathematical equation If you use grammar rules often, you can't speak or write in English fluently Can grammar rules be useful? Yes, they can For example, if you don't hear (or read) some word or grammar pattern frequently, it may be hard to acquire a natural, intuitive knowledge of it For example, it may be hard to acquire an intuitive knowledge of the future perfect tense (a grammar structure used e.g in this sentence: "By 2050, life in Europe will have changed.") just by reading books in English, because the future perfect occurs relatively rarely in books If you want to use the future perfect in your own sentences, you can memorize a rule for it The rule will tell you when to use the future perfect and how to use it correctly In a similar way, you can memorize other rules or definitions of words which are used rarely So you could substitute grammar rules for intuition The problem with this method is that you can't remember too many rules (memory limit) Also, it would slow you down if you had to use many rules when speaking or writing (time limit) Therefore, most of your knowledge must be intuitive (based on input) Grammar rules may be useful for using rare words and grammar patterns, but we think there is a better way You can build your intuition "the input way" for every rare grammar pattern How? You can artificially increase the frequency with which you see that grammar pattern For example, if you don't see the future perfect often, you can add 20 example sentences with the future perfect to your SuperMemo collection SuperMemo will make you repeat the sentences regularly, and so will help you to build an intuitive knowledge of the future perfect Stop asking people to tell you grammar rules Many learners have a strange habit When somebody (e.g a teacher) tells them the correct way to say something in English ("We say big red car.") or corrects their mistake ("You can't say red big car"), they like to ask "why?" However, the question "why?" has no real answer When asking the question, learners want to hear a grammar rule (e.g "We say big red car because adjectives of size come before adjectives of color") But the rule is not the reason why we don't say "red big car" The rule is only a description of native speakers' habits It was invented by some linguist who simply noticed that native speakers never say "red big car" or "white small house" In other words, it is not true that native speakers say "big red car" because they know the rule and follow it It's the other way around The size-color rule exists because native speakers say "big red car" Native speakers are the ones who create the language Grammar rules only follow native speakers' habits We think that it doesn't make much sense to ask the question "why is that sentence correct, and not the other one?" The only good answer to that question would be "Because native speakers say that sentence, and not the other one." Instead of wondering "why?", simply learn the correct way You don't have to care that a linguist wrote a rule for it Follow native speakers, not grammar rules Why your input should be fun Regularity Reading a boring text for the sake of learning English is not a good idea When you so, you're not just reading a boring text — you're reading a boring text that's hard to understand Nobody's going to put up with that sort of torture for very long You can go like that for a few days, if you're highly motivated, but not for a month And you don't need a way to learn English for just a few days You've already studied English for a few days on a couple occasions and you probably know these irregular, one-time efforts don't work You need to make a permanent change to your lifestyle to ensure steady improvement That is why you need super-fun, thrilling and funny sources of English Your sources should be so cool that you will look forward to reading, watching or listening to them You need something that will make you get your English input and develop your English every day Which sources of English are super-fun? The answer will be different for every learner For example, I like watching The Simpsons and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, movies by the Coen brothers, the music of R.E.M and Pink Floyd, popular science books, LucasArts adventure games, Joel on Software, and The Onion, among other things Dedication Suppose you're a big fan of The Matrix (If you're not a big fan of The Matrix, insert the name of your favorite movie.) When watching The Matrix, you can learn much more English than if you watched some random movie you don't care about    You are more likely to watch the movie scene-by-scene, listening carefully to every line (or reading it, if you have a version with subtitles) and thinking about how it is phrased You are more likely to look up difficult phrases in a dictionary and add them to your SuperMemo collection You are more likely to practice your pronunciation by imitating lines said by your favorite characters (for example, Morpheus's "Unfortunately, no one can be told what The Matrix is.")  You are more likely to repeat your favorite lines to yourself, which means you'll be constantly reviewing the grammar and vocabulary contained in those lines Attitude to English Finally, fun input lets you change your attitude to English At first, you may think of learning English as a necessary evil — sort of like getting up and going to work every morning But when you find enjoyable English-language books, movies, TV shows, websites, etc., learning English will become a way to have fun every day by reading a funny book, watching a cool movie, or communicating with someone you like When this happens, you will find it easy to study English, even in ways which are not strictly "fun", such as reading about English grammar Content or form? Now you may have noticed that elsewhere on Antimoon I tell you to read with the goal of learning grammar and vocabulary I tell you to analyze the grammar in the sentences you read And now I seem to be telling you to read stuff because it is cool Of course, what I'm actually telling you is that you should read with both goals in mind More precisely, when starting reading, concentrate on how fun the content is (e.g how much you like the book) Starting is always the hardest part, which is why you will need compelling content to overcome your laziness However, once you start reading, your best to read for form Don't turn page after page in order to find out what happens next Instead, read as slowly as you can, thinking about the phrases and grammatical structures used Repeat them to yourself You want to learn some English, remember? What if you're a beginner? When you are a beginner, you have a small vocabulary In this state, reading books or watching movies is too difficult Even if your content is extremely fun, the number of unknown words may make it impossible to enjoy it You need input which will teach you new things, but not input in which everything is new Being a beginner, how can you take advantage of the benefits of fun input — regularity, dedication and improved attitude to English? The answer is "simplified books" These are popular books re-written in simple English especially for English learners Thousands of titles are available at various difficulty levels A well-known series is the Penguin Readers, available in bookstores worldwide I believe these books are the best way for a beginner to quickly develop his/her vocabulary and grammar skills First, you can choose something you will love, because thousands of titles are available Second, you will not get frustrated, because the number of new words and phrases will be limited If you read these books regularly using the "pause and think" method, the progress you can make is amazing Some fun input ideas English-language culture is extremely rich and very expansive, which, luckily for you, means that you should find it relatively easy to find enjoyable sources of input Here are some examples of content that you might possibly enjoy:              Books: Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code, Lord of the Rings, current bestsellers Simplified books (see above) E-mail messages from a native speaker you know Movies: The Matrix, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Shrek, current DVD bestsellers News: Google News, BBC, CNN, The Independent Movie reviews: Roger Ebert, IMDB Internet discussion: Antimoon Forum, Europa, Google Groups Adventure games: Grim Fandango, The Curse of Monkey Island TV shows: Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Saturday Night Live TV series: The Simpsons, Sex and the City, The X-Files The Good News Bible (written in simple English) Technology sites: Joel on Software, Tom's Hardware, Wired News, CNET, Ars Technica Humor sites: The Onion, Dilbert, Something Awful Reading is easier than listening Understanding spoken English is difficult for beginners If you want to listen to TV programs and movies, you need to know many English words (and their pronunciation) If your vocabulary is poor, you will never understand natural spoken English Often, you will not even know where one word ends, and the other begins Everything may sound like one long, strange word If you're talking to a person, they will probably repeat and explain things to you But this is a special situation Nobody will explain anything to you if you're watching TV or listening to a presentation In general, understanding spoken English is hard Listening to English is much more difficult than reading Of course, you need a good vocabulary to understand written English, too But reading is still easier than listening, because of these differences:  You have lots of time When reading, you can always stop and look up a difficult word in a dictionary With listening, this is not always possible You  can stop and rewind an audio recording or a taped movie, but the TV the movie theater, or a native speaker will not wait for you You know the spelling If you want to look up a word in a dictionary, you have to know what the word is In a book, the word is simply printed on the page In spoken English, a sentence is often spoken very quickly, and you don't know where the unknown word begins And even if you know where the word begins, you often don't know its spelling For example, if the unknown word sounds like this (which is transcribed [i'n@kt]), can you look it up? Not really Is it spelled inact or enact or something else? Should you look under I or E or another letter? An example Listen to this mp3 recording of Tim Berners-Lee talking about the new technology for the Web (Tim Berners-Lee is the person who created the World Wide Web.) Now try to write down all the words that you don't know Then look them up in a dictionary If you can't it, it's because:   The speaker is talking very fast If you don't understand part of the sentence, you may not know how many words the speaker said You don't know the spelling of the words that you didn't understand Now you can read the text of what Tim Berners-Lee said Look how easy it is to write down and look up all the difficult words They are simply there, you can read them as many times as you want, and you know their spelling The conclusion: you can't without reading Listening is great — for example, watching movies in English helps you to learn slang vocabulary, pronunciation, and intonation But if you are a beginner, you simply can't understand natural spoken English Reading is the best way to learn a lot of English words Only after you have learned a large vocabulary can you try to understand natural spoken language The power of reading — two cases In his article, The comprehension hypothesis and second language acquisition, Stephen Krashen (a famous expert on language learning) gives two cases of students who completely changed their English because of reading: The case of L This case was described in a paper by J Segal (Summer Daze, written in 1997), and then by Stephen Krashen We have shortened and simplified the original text L was a 17 year old student in Israel She spoke English at home with her parents, who were from South Africa But she had serious problems in English writing, especially in spelling, vocabulary and writing style Segal, who was L.'s teacher in grade 10, tried to help her in many ways: "Error correction was a total failure L tried correcting her own mistakes, tried process writing, and tried copying words correctly in her notebook Nothing worked L.'s compositions were poorly written and her vocabulary was small We discussed the format and ideas before writing We made little progress I gave L a list of five useful words to spell each week for weeks and tested her in a friendly way between classes L did well in the tests in the beginning, but after six weeks she started misspelling the words again." L.'s mother also got her a private teacher, but there was little improvement Segal also taught L in grade 11 At the beginning of the year, she assigned an essay "When I came to L.'s composition I stopped still I was looking at an almost perfect essay There were no spelling mistakes The structure was clear It was interesting and well-written Her vocabulary had improved I was surprised but at the same time uneasy " Segal discovered why L.'s English improved so much: She had started reading books in the summer L told her, "I never read much before but this summer I went to the library and I started reading and I just couldn't stop." L.'s English in grade 11 was excellent and she kept reading The case of Cohen This case was first described by Y Cohen in a paper titled How reading got me into trouble (1997) Beginning at age 12, Cohen went to an English-language school in Turkey During the first two years, there were intensive English classes, and after only two months, Cohen started to read in English " as many books in English as I could get I had a large library of English books at home I became a member of the local British Council's library and sometimes bought English books in bookstores By the first year of middle school I had become an enthusiastic reader of English." Because of her reading, an unpleasant thing happened to her in middle school: "I had a new English teacher who assigned us two compositions for homework The teacher returned them to me She was angry and she wanted to know who had helped me to write them They were my work I had not even used the dictionary She would not believe me She showed me a few underlined sentences and some vocabulary and asked me how I knew them; they were more advanced than the level of the class ( ) I felt sad I could not explain how I knew them I just did." Great output skills without output practice? In our opinion, input is the most important way to learn English In his book, "The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications", Stephen Krashen cites a fascinating example (originally described in Adrian Fourcin's 1975 article "Visual feedback and the acquisition of intonation"), which shows that it may be possible to learn great output skills by input alone (without producing any output) Richard Boydell was a disabled child who couldn't speak or write (most of his body was paralyzed) He was intelligent and he could understand other people When he was 30 years old, he got a special typewriter He could type on the typewriter with his feet In this way, he could communicate with others Here is what he wrote: I acquired an understanding of language by listening to those around me Later, thanks to my mother's tireless, patient work I began learning to read and so became familiar with written as well as spoken language As my interest developed, particularly in the field of science, I read books and listened to educational programs on radio and, later, television which were at a level that was normal, or sometimes rather above, for my age Also when people visited us I enjoyed listening to the conversation even though I could only play a passive role and could not take an active part in any discussion As well as reading books and listening to radio and television I read the newspaper every day to keep in touch with current events (from Fourcin's article, cited in Krashen's book) As you can see, Richard Boydell's writing was excellent, although he had never written anything before He could use advanced grammar and vocabulary, because he had been reading books, newspapers, listening to the radio and people's conversations It seems that input — and nothing more — gave him good English Why you need to start reading in English on your own Before you can start speaking and writing in English, you have to learn how things are said in English You this by reading and listening to correct English sentences of other people (ideally, native speakers) Reading and listening are both good ways to develop your English, but reading is usually much easier than listening for various reasons With the help of a good dictionary, you can understand English texts much more easily than, for example, English television or movies In this article, I will show why reading English texts on your own is the way to go The arguments will fall into three categories: Intensity, Motivation and Authenticity Intensity If you read a few books in English, you will see that your English has become better You will start using new vocabulary and grammar in your school compositions and email messages You will be surprised, but English phrases will just come to you when you are writing or speaking! Things like the past simple tense and how to use the word "since" will become part of you You will use them automatically, without thinking Correct phrases will just appear in your head It will be easy to use English, because your brain will only be repeating the things that it has seen many times By reading a book in English, you have given your brain thousands of English sentences They are part of you now How can you make a mistake and say "I feeled bad", if you have seen the correct phrase ("I felt bad") 250 times in the last book you've read? from our introduction to input You need 1000s of phrases to speak English fluently To be able to use thousands of phrases, you must read tens of thousands of phrases, because you will forget a lot of what you read If you just read when your teacher tells you to (e.g short articles per week in your English class), you are not going to make any progress At such a rate, even if you learn something one week, you will forget it next week You need to read, on average, at least a few pages per day For this, you need to take charge of your learning — get some books and start reading on your own If you don't believe that reading on your own will dramatically change your English, consider this: In a week, a typical intermediate English learner who attends hours of English classes learns maybe new words or phrases from reading pages in English plus another from other sources (listening, conversation with teacher) Sure, they write down more than this, but after a week they remember less than 50% of the knowledge If you read 20 pages per week (which is only per day), you will learn, mathematically, about 50 new words or phrases per week If you read 40 pages per week (6 per day), you will learn 100 new words or phrases per week As you see, it's not very hard to beat the average learner At pages per day, you're already learning 10 times faster Which means that you're learning in year what the average learner learns in 10 years I'm giving you all these numbers because I want you to realize one thing: If you have been an "average learner", you cannot even begin to imagine how quickly you can develop your English skills with a little work on your own The difference between readers and non-readers is that big (Take a minute to read the passage in the box to the right to see what I mean.) Motivation You need to start reading on your own not just because it is effective, but also because it is so damn motivating When you read on your own, you read something you chose yourself, something you really find interesting, rather than something your teacher told you to read As a result, you read much more willingly and spend more time on it If you choose texts which are interesting and fun (Harry Potter, an article about computers, sports news, movie reviews, e-mail messages from friends, an Internet forum on relationships — whatever fits your bill), reading will not be something you have to It will be something you want to Once you try it, you will probably be thankful that you can understand English and read such great stuff! Furthermore, when you read something that matters to you, you can remember much more For example, if you read an article your teacher gave you, you want to read it quickly and be done with it But if you read the lyrics of a new song by your favorite band, you're much more likely to repeat them to yourself and keep them in your memory — together with all the grammar and vocabulary A lot of people associate English with unpleasant things For example, they think "I must learn English or else I won't find a job" or "I must learn English or I won't get a passing grade" In their minds, studying English is something they have to do, even though they would rather not it — just like they would rather not have to go to school or work Those who read on their own think differently For them, English is something which helps them achieve their own goals, such as reading the latest book by Stephen King or talking to people from other countries in an online forum They are much more willing to spend time on English, even in ways which are not directly related to their interests, e.g learning with SuperMemo or asking grammar questions on discussion groups This shows that "free reading" improves your general motivation for English Authenticity I believe it's important to learn from real American and British sources instead of resources prepared especially for English learners If you see a phrase in a book or in a blog, you know it's really used in the English-speaking world By contrast, texts used in English classes often attempt to teach "proper" English, stripped of any informal expressions, such as crap, sucks or stuff Authors of such texts probably disapprove of such phrases and believe that learners don't need them But the fact is that most learners would choose relaxed, natural language — the language of regular educated Americans and Britons — over the stuffy standards of the proper-speaking "elite" Which is another reason why learners should go beyond English classes and start reading "real-life English" on their own How to read English texts if you want to improve your English Reading for content Normally, when reading a text, people use a strategy that I call "reading for content" The goal of this strategy is to get the main idea of the text as quickly as possible and with as little effort as possible To accomplish this goal, your brain will try to read as few words as possible and spend only a fraction of a second on each word For example, when reading the following passage, you don't really see it like this: Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal Here is a copy of the drawing In the book it said: "Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion." I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing To your brain, it looks more or less like this: Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal Here is a copy of the drawing In the book it said: "Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion." I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing Here are some characteristics of "reading for content":     Not seeing "grammar words" like a, the, in, of, through, that The eye only stops at content words (main nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) Not seeing word forms: Was it look or looked? Has looked or had looked? Not noticing the exact spelling It is well known that the brain recognizes whole words — it does not analyze them letter by letter Native speakers see the word piece all the time, but many of them still misspell it as peice, because the two spellings have similar shapes Ignoring difficult words that are not essential to understanding the meaning (here: primeval, constrictor) Who has the time to use a dictionary? An extreme example of "word blindness" is the rather well-known puzzle where you're asked to count how many times the letter F occurs in the following passage: FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS Click here for answer: Reading for content is a great, time-saving way to extract information from printed sources The problem is that you may not need the grammar words to understand a text, but you need them to produce a text So if you don't pay attention to things like articles and prepositions, you won't be able to use them correctly in your own sentences For example, here is a sentence from the opening paragraph of this article Most learners (except those who are proficient in English grammar or extremely observant) will probably find it difficult to fill in the blanks: To accomplish this goal, your brain will try to read as _ words as possible and spend only a fraction of _ second _ each word The above explains why some learners can read a 300-page book and still have problems with relatively basic grammar It also explains why articles and prepositions are among the hardest aspects of English to learn The conclusion for the English learner is that if you want to improve your production (output) skills, you will have to train yourself to notice grammar words Here's an illuminating passage posted by Maya l'abeille at the Antimoon Forum: I believe that seeing correct and typical English sentences helps a lot to learn how to use English properly It is also important to read and read again every structure that is new to you, so that you can remember them If you only read the book without taking any pause to think carefully about the "new" sentences, you will hardly remember any of them I've read all Harry Potter books straight myself, and when I opened them again, I realised I had viewed loads and loads of useful structures whithout remembering them - which was such a shame! I'm reading The Full Monty (Penguin Readers collection) using the "pause and think" method at present Now after a few days of daily reading, when I take a look at an English text, many structures are familiar to me - "hey, I remember reading this one in The Full Monty!" Therefore, I believe this method is efficient and I would advise it to all learners Sometimes, we don't realise how wealthy a single book can be - loads to learn just in one of them Pause and think I agree with Maya l'abeille about the "pause and think" method Here's the process that I recommend for dealing with sentences in texts: Stop at interesting (not obvious) things: a new word, how a word was used, a grammatical structure, a preposition, an article, a conjunction, the order of words, etc For example, spend a while to think about the fact that the sentence contains the preposition at, and not on Perhaps the sentence uses the present perfect tense where you would have expected the past simple Perhaps the word order is different than in your first language If the sentence contains a useful phrase, ask yourself: Could you produce a similar phrase yourself? Would you use the right tenses, articles and prepositions? Would you use the right word order? If you're not sure, practice saying a similar phrase aloud or in your mind The idea is to move the phrase to your "active vocabulary" If necessary, or if you feel like it, use your dictionary to find definitions of words in the sentence and get more example sentences This will help enrich your "feel" of the word If you use SuperMemo, consider adding the phrase to your collection (e.g as a sentence item) to make sure it will stay in your memory Of course, only useful phrases should be added If you don't like to stop reading (to look up a word in your dictionary or add a phrase to SuperMemo), you can write down all the interesting sentences, or you can underline them in the book with a pencil This way, you can handle these sentences later Another important piece of advice is that you don't have to use the above strategy all the time Reading in this mode can be quite exhausting, so don't it when you're tired after a long reading session Also, not try to give equal attention to every sentence Some sentences in books (e.g long poetic descriptions) not contain phrases or structures that are useful for building your own sentences Some characters in books use weird slang expressions which aren't very useful either Finally, the "pause and think" technique will not always make you remember the exact way to say something But perhaps you'll remember that this particular type of sentence is "weird"or "difficult"in English If you remember that, it will at least make you stop before you write that sentence, and look it up instead of making a careless mistake An example I'll now give you a short demonstration of the "pause and think" method Here are two English sentences and the thoughts I got when reading them: Former President Jimmy Carter will visit Venezuela next week to mediate talks between the government and its opposition, which have been locked in a power struggle since a failed coup  "Former President" — not "The former President", so I guess we say "President Carter" and not "The President Carter", even though we say "The President will something" when we don't mention his name  "to mediate talks" — not "to mediate in the talks" or something like that I wonder if that would be OK, too  "power struggle" — I think I've seen this phrase before  "since a failed coup" — so I can say "He's been paralyzed since an accident" (preposition use), not only "He's been paralyzed since an accident happened" (conjunction use)   "since a failed coup" — not "since the failed coup" The author does not assume we know about the coup "coup" — hey, I know this is pronounced [ku:]! Jennifer McCoy, of the Atlanta-based Carter Center, told reporters Saturday that Carter may be able to help break the political deadlock when he visits beginning July  "Jennifer McCoy of the Carter Center" — not "Jennifer McCoy from the Carter Center" (in Polish I would say from) So we'd say "John Brown of IBM", for example  "Atlanta-based" — another way of saying "based in Atlanta" Guess I could say I'm a "Wroclaw-based webmaster"  "told reporters Saturday" not "on Saturday" — seems we can skip the "on" sometimes "I met her Friday" would probably work as well as "I met her on Friday"  "told that Carter may be able" — not "told that Carter might be able" — lack of reported (indirect) speech And my English teacher taught me to say things like "She said she might stay" (not "She said she may stay")  "to help break the deadlock" — It looks like help can be used without an object (it does not say "to help Venezuelans break the deadlock"), and without to (it does not say "help to break the deadlock") This is different from some other verbs like force (we cannot say "The President will force break the deadlock", we must say "The President will force Venezuelans to break the deadlock.")  "when he visits" — not "when he will visit", even though it will be in the future I don't think I have ever seen will used in such a sentence  "to visit beginning July 6" — interesting structure — I would say "to visit on July 6", but here beginning replaces on This may be the first time that I've seen this phrase It may be some sort of news jargon Reading everywhere If you think you don't have time to read, try to carry a book with you everywhere you go That way, you can read when you're waiting in line, waiting for a bus, or even when walking (but make sure you don't walk into other people or vehicles) What to read   Something fun It needs to be so much fun that you will look forward to reading it every day It does not have to be intellectual, it does not have to improve your knowledge of science or history Remember: you want to convince yourself that reading in English is fun Don't feel guilty about reading comics, magazines, detective stories, romances, etc (related article by Stephen Krashen) Something challenging, but not too challenging What does it mean? There should be some words that you don't know, because you want to learn something However, there shouldn't be too many difficult words, because you don't want to use your dictionary 10 times in one sentence There's a simple rule here: If you're not enjoying the text, switch to an easier one   Something with the kind of sentences that you want to write or say yourself Want to learn to talk about computers in English? Read an English-language forum on computers When choosing a book, choose one with modern language and lots of dialogue If you read a book written in obsolete English with lots of literary descriptions, you won't be able to use too many of these phrases in your own sentences (unless you write books in English) You want useful sentences that you can imitate Start by reading a few books by the same author (or a few books on the same subject) Each author has his/her own vocabulary and grammar For example, when you read a book by Michael Crichton, you come across a lot of scientific vocabulary Afterwards, it is easier for you to read another Michael Crichton novel than to read a book by a different author When you read another book by the same author, you will notice that you understand it much more easily than the previous one, and you will feel great about your progress in English On the other hand, if you jump from author to author (or topic to topic), you will always be frustrated by unknown vocabulary and grammar, which is not healthy for your motivation (related article by Stephen Krashen) Some ideas Here are some ideas of texts that you can read in English:       Literature Whatever kind of books you like, you can read them in English Simplified books (e.g the Penguin Readers series) These are popular books, re-written in simple language for English learners They are just perfect for beginners and if I were to learn a new language, I would definitely use one of those They are available in different levels of difficulty — the simplest ones use only 200 basic English words Try the intermediate or advanced levels (over 1,000 words) — the lowest levels use so few words that they sound quite unnatural Science books If you are interested in science, you can get great science books written in English There are many famous English-speaking authors in many subjects, such as psychology, evolutionary biology, physics, or economics Textbooks If you're studying at a college and you use textbooks written by English-speaking authors, you can get the original English versions If you are learning a new computer language, you can use a book in English You will learn your subject and English at the same time Forums and blogs Forums, discussion groups and blogs are a unique source of written informal language Unlike other written sources, such as books or newspapers, they are very close to the way native speakers talk As such, they are an excellent source of input for English learners Ideally, stick to forums for native speakers and remember that many native speakers make spelling mistakes E-mail Like forums and blogs, e-mails from native speakers are a fantastic source of "everyday English", which is normally the kind of English you want to speak most of the time (except for some formal occasions) Communicating with a native speaker over e-mail gives you a lot of pleasure, as well as an opportunity to practice your writing skills  Software You can start using English versions of your operating system, your word processor, and other applications Watching movies in English English learners have a big advantage over learners of other languages: Hollywood is in America and it makes English-language movies So, if you know English and you like movies, why don't you watch movies in English? You can have fun and, at the same time, learn a lot of English Why watch movies in English If you are a fan of movies, you will notice that they are much better in the original Watching a dubbed film will never be as good as watching the original version Why? Because in the original version, the actor's voices are real Everything is just like the director imagined Learning English by watching movies is learning by input The learning process is similar First you get lots of correct English sentences into your head Then you can imitate them and you can make your own sentences And isn't that why you are learning English — to be able to make your own sentences? That is why watching movies (just like reading books) is such a great way to learn English (You can learn more about how getting correct sentences into your head improves your English in our introduction to input.) Of course, there are important differences between movies and books With books, you learn how native speakers write in English With movies, you learn how they speak English  You learn what words they use When speaking, native speakers use words and phrases that you often won't find in a book Spoken language is different from "book language" For example: Book: The price of five dollars was acceptable, and I decided to purchase it Spoken: It was, like, five bucks, so I was like "okay" In many movies, the dialog is like real spoken English Movies also let you learn informal and slang words which are not yet in English dictionaries For example, in a movie you might hear Give me the freaking keys!, but you won't find the word freaking in a dictionary  You learn how they say these words Movies let you improve your pronunciation, not only grammar and vocabulary If you listen to Americans or Britons speaking English, you can learn to speak like them  You learn to understand spoken language Movies are made for native speakers, not for learners of English So the actors talk fast, just like native speakers talk in real life How to learn as much as possible? The difficulty of watching movies You won't learn anything from the movie if you don't understand it You probably won't enjoy it, either :-( This is one big problem with movies: They are much more difficult to understand than books If you don't understand a word in a book, you can simply look it up in a dictionary, because the word is written there (you know its spelling) With a movie, you sometimes hear something, but you don't know what it is Sometimes you don't even know if you've heard one word or two There are other reasons why listening is more difficult than reading, and they all mean one thing: If you want to understand a movie, you have to know a lot of English words — and not only their spelling, but also their pronunciation You can greatly improve your vocabulary by reading books, looking up words in your dictionary, and repeating them with SuperMemo But even if you read 200 books in English, you would still not understand everything! There will always be some words that you didn't know before And some of the dialog will be spoken very quickly and unclearly (You should know that sometimes even Americans can't understand some of the dialog.) What to when you don't understand something If you are playing the movie from tape or DVD, you can stop it whenever you don't understand a sentence You can then play the sentence many times and perhaps you'll be able to understand all the words in the sentence If you still don't understand a word or two, you can try to look them up in a dictionary (which is not easy, because you have to guess their spelling!) Most DVDs let you turn on subtitles With subtitles, there is no problem with quick or unclear dialog — everything is just written on the screen It is also easy to look up difficult words in your dictionary, because you know their spelling The problem with subtitles is that they make you lazy — you stop listening and concentrate on reading This is not good if you want to exercise your listening skills Therefore, you should probably try to watch movies without subtitles Turn subtitles on only if you're having a hard time understanding the sentences in the movie, and it doesn't help when you listen to them repeatedly Movie guides There is a great alternative to subtitles ESLnotes.com is a website which has "guides" to popular movies A guide is a list of over 100 difficult sentences from a movie with explanations (Here is an example guide to The Graduate.) Now the most important thing: You first read the explanations; then you watch the movie So, when you're watching the film, you already know the necessary vocabulary! We think this is the best strategy for watching movies, because:   It feels great to understand a movie in the original! It's very, very motivating when you learn a word, and then the knowledge of the word lets you enjoy the movie It gives you a lot of pleasure — so you will want to learn more English vocabulary to understand even more You don't have to stop the movie (Or you have to stop it less frequently.) You can simply watch it and enjoy it A guide doesn't explain all the difficult sentences in the movie But the explanations in the guide should be enough to help you understand what's happening in the movie Learning techniques What else can you to learn from movies more effectively? The same things that you should when reading books: Pay attention to interesting things: new words, phrases, and grammar structures Use your dictionary to learn about these interesting things You can stop the movie to look up difficult words You can also write down all the interesting sentences, and look them up later But use your dictionary! Add these interesting things to SuperMemo If there is an ESLnotes guide to the movie, you can add all the sentences in the guide to your SuperMemo collection — before watching the film Later, you can also add the words that you have written down when watching the movie Where to get movies in English? Getting movies in English may be a problem if you are not in an English-speaking country Most stores will have only movies dubbed in the local language Dubbed movies help people who not know English, but if you are an English learner, they are your greatest enemy :-) How can you get original versions of movies? Here are some ideas that you can try:    Your cable or satellite TV may have movie channels in English (for example, HBO is a popular channel which shows a lot of movies; unfortunately, it is not free) You can buy DVDs or videotapes at Amazon.com (Or Amazon.co.uk, if you are in Europe.) However, the prices may be a problem You can buy your favorite movies on DVD or videotape But you can't buy every film that you want to see In some countries, movie theaters (cinemas) show films with subtitles in the local language (and not dubbed movies) It is a good idea to watch them, especially if you can avoid reading the subtitles :-) Learning English with adventure games What is an adventure game? An adventure game is a kind of computer game which is similar to a movie There is always a story and the main character (usually a person, such as a detective or a pirate) The difference is that you don't just watch — instead, you control the main character You use your mouse or keyboard, and your character moves around in the game world, looks at things, picks them up, uses them, and talks to other characters Your character also talks to you For example, when you tell him to look at something, he will tell you what he sees You can then use this information to decide what to next Anyone who played an adventure game knows that they are great fun But adventure games are also a great way to improve your English Why adventure games are good for your English When you play an adventure game:     You improve your understanding of spoken English In modern adventure games, you can hear all the characters speak real English The dialogue is easier to understand than in movies: it is slower, clearer, and you can usually stop the action and listen to a phrase again Therefore, playing an adventure game is excellent listening practice You gain a "grammar intuition" When you play an adventure game, you have contact with a large number of grammatically correct and natural English sentences These sentences are not only spoken (as on TV) In many adventure games you can also turn on subtitles If you do, you will hear the pronunciation and see the spelling at the same time The result? More will be left in your memory You improve your pronunciation Listening to good spoken English is always good for your pronunciation You increase your motivation When you play an adventure game, you are in a situation where knowing English makes you feel good It's simple If you can understand the dialogue, you know what is going on in the game This helps you solve the puzzles and understand the humor You have fun You give your brain a signal: "English gives me pleasure", and your motivation increases! How to use adventure games? When you're playing an adventure game, you learn some English even if you don't want to But of course you can learn even more if you try One useful technique when playing an adventure game is very simple: use a dictionary Pause the game frequently and look up new English words in a good dictionary for learners You will understand more of the game, and of course you will learn some English vocabulary If you are really motivated to learn English, you can write down all the new words Later, you can add these words to your SuperMemo collection so that you will remember them forever If you want to improve your pronunciation, pause the game frequently and try to repeat English sentences as well as you can This is a great pronunciation exercise, and it's much more interesting than exercises in textbooks Adventure games make it possible, because the pronunciation in those games is clearer than pronunciation in movies If you are especially interested in improving your understanding of spoken English, you can play the game without subtitles In order to play, you will have to understand spoken language At first, you will surely have problems, but you will become better and better Notice that when using this technique, it will be difficult to look up words in a dictionary, because you will not see the words on the screen — you will only hear them Recommended adventure games Which adventure game should you buy? The short answer is: Any game from LucasArts Entertainment You will get an intelligent story (more intelligent than most Hollywood movies), incredible humor, beautiful graphics, stirring music, and voices of talented actors LucasArts' adventure games create a true atmosphere They take you to another world — a world that you don't want to leave Here are the latest adventure games by LucasArts Entertainment They all have spoken dialogues, and you can also turn on subtitles    Grim Fandango Check out the official page or buy the game at Amazon.com (only if you live in the USA) or Amazon.co.uk (if you live in Europe) Curse of Monkey Island Check out the official page or buy the game at Amazon.com (only if you live in the USA) or Amazon.co.uk (if you live in Europe) Escape from Monkey Island Check out the official page or buy the game at Amazon.com (only if you live in the USA) or at Amazon.co.uk (if you live in Europe) SuperMemo and learning English What is SuperMemo and what can it give you? It is an advanced computer program which can help you build an impressive knowledge of English      How does it work? You add some knowledge to SuperMemo (e.g 100 English words), and every day you review part of the knowledge (e.g words) In the process, SuperMemo collects information about your memory Why is it good? 1) If you add something to SuperMemo, you will not forget it 2) You can keep a lot in your head, but very little work every day What are the results? SuperMemo can help you increase your vocabulary, improve your grammar, learn pronunciation, and be the best in your class! Getting SuperMemo is easy You can buy and download versions for Windows, the Pocket PC, and the Palm Pilot in just a few minutes It's easy to start learning When you buy SuperMemo, you get the Antimoon Starter Collection, which shows you how to add English words and phrases to SuperMemo You can also download ready-made knowledge collections for English learners Me and SuperMemo — Tom writes about his personal experience with SuperMemo — from 1993 to 2002 He talks about his motivation for using SuperMemo and his excellent results while learning English in high school Review of SuperMemo for Pocket PC — the easiest-to-use version of SuperMemo that lets you learn anywhere Unfortunately, adding words and sentences with the stylus will slow you down Using SuperMemo to learn English In this manual, you will learn how to use SuperMemo for learning English: Getting, installing and uninstalling SuperMemo Starting your first collection Memorizing and reviewing knowledge Making items for English learning Downloadable SuperMemo collections To start using SuperMemo immediately, you can buy and download SuperMemo collections for learning English: PerfectPronunciation is Antimoon's software for learning English pronunciation, which is based on SuperMemo technology It teaches you the pronunciation of the most frequently used English words In addition to the "standalone" version, PerfectPronunciation is also available as a SuperMemo collection compatible with SuperMemo 2000, 2002 and 2004 The SuperMemo Library has some collections for English learners We have looked at most of them, and chosen the best ones:     English Irregular Verbs (a bestseller) Business English Basic English Grammar Advanced English Grammar More collections are available