Way to learn english for a non-english ?

[Ds]

Well, what do you plan to learn?
Honestly, I see more Hispanic folk learn their trade/job 'english' words, and go from there.

 

[Conscious-signal-447]

Hello,

for my first topic on this forum, I would like to ask a question that I consider "useful". How would you, an English speaker, recommend a non-English speaker to speak and write/read English? Reading and writing is my main concern at the moment as I don't have much opportunity to interact with people other than at work. I would like to be able to read English and speak in a forum without using automatic translators that I'm sure distort a lot of what I want to say in the first place and distort the English pages to my original language with a lot of nonsense. Beyond the social aspect, I would like to know more English because I think it is a career boost because all the best documentation on all areas of life are in English.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated, this topic comes from a 20 year old Frenchman who has not been very attentive at school but wants to

The most accessible thing I can think of would be to find an English show on Netflix or something that captures your attention or that you always wanted to watch and watch it with the English subtitles turned on. (For now, I would avoid shows like Outlander or Bridgerton that have people speaking English with heavy accents…this is just a suggestion though, if it captured your attention then just go for it)
The next one would be to go to a second hand store or library and get English kids books starting with the ones you feel like you understand 80% already of when you read them. When you can understand 100% of what you are reading, move up to the next grade level.
Third is what you are doing- participating in English online forums.
Fourth, are you Quebecois? If so there are programs sponsored by the Quebec/federal government to support bilingualism. Class room style learning is a bit of a drag but it can be really helpful to meet other people who are just learning as well and learn together.
I did Katimavik when I graduated high school back in 2007. We had 3 Quebecois in our house and by the end of the 9 month program they had intermediate English speaking/reading/writing skills. That was from full immersion in every sense of the word but it worked. The Anglophones (term for people who speak English as their first language) learned conversational French. I don’t know if Katmavik would be an option for you, but you might want to look into it if you are Quebecois. Good luck with your learning, I hope it brings you new opportunities.

 

[Jerry Atrick]

I'm already in Mexico which is why I need to learn the language. When I decided to come here I stupidly assumed that when almost everybody under 50 speaks some English in Europe, the neighbour of the states couldn't be worse...... Well, assumed too fast. They have an English school in every second street, it's the most abundant thing next to police, but nobody actually speaks it, specially not the people working in shops, restaurants, police, even doctors know just the very basics. Thought for doctorate you'd need English.

I am much much better in understanding than speaking myself and better with written than spoken but still too n00b to watch movies, I grew lazy with learning because it's so frustrating, I don't know how much is condition and how much conditioning. Need to source some stims, gas adult ADD diagnosis even before the dissociatives but these years exacerbated my attention deficit.

Yeah, Spanish is quite different than German and English, will need to exercise verbs.. Hated that already with French in school.

I don't know where in MX you are located but there are schools/colleges there that help English speakers learn Mexican Spanish. When I was attending university here in the states, I studied abroad for a summer in Cuernavaca, state of Morelos, Mexico. It's like 50 miles south of Mexico City. I attended a school there called El Centro Bilingue, which was pretty much all American college students there with the intention of learning or honing their Spanish skills. I know there are other language schools but that is the one I attended.

They had a history class taught in English so you could easily learn tons of history about Mexico and Mesoamerica, from pre-Columbian through the present day. All the other courses were in Spanish only but they taught from beginner level through intermediate and advanced. When I went I was already pretty advanced so most of my classes were conversational because I already knew how to conjugate verbs and tons of nouns. They tested each of us upon arrival in order to determine placement. I have been studying the language since middle school, two years in high school, and was a Spanish minor in undergrad.

If you go to the movie theaters in Mexico and watch American movies, they will be in English but have Spanish subtitles. It helps if you already know some Spanish to keep up. I watched Gladiator when I was down there plus a couple of others.