To learn English quickly, we need to understand what English is. What is it made of? What are its ingredients?
It turns out that English only has three ingredients.
The 3 Ingredients to Learn English
- Vocabulary – or words
- Grammar – or rules
- Pronunciation – or sounds
Let’s look a little closer at each of these parts.
Words
When learning English you will need to know the types of words. There are only eight types of words, they are as follows:
There are only eight word types. No more. And this brings me to my first tip.
Tip 1: Understand word types
It’s critical that when you look at a word in a sentence you can understand what type of word it is.
What type of word is this: boy
It’s a noun.
What type of word is this: he
It’s a pronoun.
What type of word is this: tall
It’s an adjective!
What type of word is this: slowly
It’s an adverb.
What type of word is this: ate
It’s a verb.
What type of word is this: from
It’s a preposition!
What type of word is this: and
It’s a conjunction.
And finally, what type of word is this: the
It’s an article.
Okay, so we’ve looked at how to learn English words, let’s now look at how to learn English grammar…
A great guide to master common English words
Grammar
So, once you have the words you then need to learn how to change the words to be grammatically accurate.
In English there are a few basic rules:
Nouns can show one (boy) or more than one (boyS). This is called ‘plurality’, which means more than one. Does your language do this?
Pronouns can be masculine (he), feminine (she) or neuter (it). Does your language do this?
Adjectives can be regular (young), comparative (younger) or superlative (youngest). Does your language do this?
Prepositions show location, movement or time: in, on, at. Does your language have prepositions?
Conjunctions join ideas: and, or, but, yet, so. How does your language join ideas?
And Articles show specificity: a boy vs. the boy. Does your language have articles? Some done!
Verbs can change a lot to show when! eat, ate, will eat, was eating etc.
My second tip for you is…
Tip #2: Concentrate on the most common verbs
Every sentence in English has a verb, so verbs are common and there are 13 different types. Start with these three verbs because they make up 50% of usage – they are the most common.
They are:
Present simple: eats
Past simple: ate
Present perfect: has eaten
These three verbs are used all the time. In contrast, we hardly ever say “had eaten” (past prefect) or “have been eating” (present perfect continuous).
So, that’s grammar. Let’s finally look at:
Sounds
Learning English is not complete until you can speak, listen and understand it.
To speak and listen you need to know all the sounds of English.
In English there are 44 individual sounds you need to make and understand: p, d, k etc. and there are 144 ‘consonant clusters’ where two or three individual sounds join together like spl or tr or cl
Tip #3: Concentrate on the sounds NOT found in your first language
So, there’s 188 sounds in English but, of course, your language shares many of these sounds. So in total so you only need to to learn about 30 or 40 of them because, as I said, your first language will have already have them and you can already say them perfectly.
Let’s recap…
Recap
English has three ingredients
- Words
- Rules
- Sounds
If you want to learn English fast, then…
Understand the 8 word types
Concentrate on the present simple, past simple and present perfect verbs
Focus on sounds NOT found in your native language
That’s it! That’s the fastest way to improve your English.
Jay
