08/01/2021
7 SECRETS for ESL Learners đź’Ś
One of my new year’s resolutions is to ask myself every morning, “What will I pay attention to today?” Is what I’m focusing on moving my life forward in some way? I have lots of goal to achieve this year, one of them is to obtain one more Cambridge Certificate and a new qualification. I know that learning a language can be a frustrating experience at times, that’s why I’d love to share with you 7 tips that can significantly help you learn English in a more effective way. Recently I’ve read an ebook written by Josef Essberger, the founder of EnglishClub. I found those 7 secrets that Josef had pointed out in his book very useful, as that’s exactly what I usually advise my students to do when learning the language!
đź“ŚSecret #1: Learn about Word Stress
Word Stress is golden key number ONE for speaking and understanding English.
Word Stress is very important. This is one of the best ways for you to understand spoken English—especially English spoken fast.
What is Word Stress?
Take 3 words:
photograph,
photographer,
photographic, for example.
Do they sound the same when spoken? No! They sound very different, because one syllable in each word is "stressed" (stronger than the others).
PHOtograph
phoTOgrapher
photoGRAPHic
If you use Word Stress in your speech, you will instantly and automatically improve your pronunciation and your comprehension.
đź“ŚSecret #2: Sentence Stress
Sentence Stress is golden key number two for speaking and understanding English. With Sentence Stress, some words in a sentence are “stressed” (loud) and other words are weak (quiet). Look at the following sentence:
We want to go.
Do we say every word with the same stress or force? No! We make the important words big and the unimportant words small. What are the important words in this sentence? Yes, you're right: WANT and GO.
We WANT to GO.
We WANT to GO to WORK.
We DON'T WANT to GO to WORK.
We DON'T WANT to GO to WORK at NIGHT.