Overcoming Difficulties in Learning English

English isn’t often considered the most difficult language in the world, nevertheless, there is a bunch of pitfalls you can face on your way of learning the language. Needless to say, your background, level of mastering other languages and other input data do count a lot. Depending on this, English may seem to you more or less complicated to be proficient in, and, of course, it’s sometimes difficult to guess what exactly your next stumbling point will be like. That being said, let’s still concentrate on most frequent hardships you may encounter. Except that, you may choose to avoid hardships altogether, with the aid of Paper4college.

Spelling

English spelling is a nightmare, and this famous phrase about Manchester and Liverpool, when you hear one word but (some rules applied!) write another one is, of course, a sort of exaggeration, but it makes us set sights on ways of grasping regularities, and that is really a hard thing to do.

Pronunciation

With historic peculiarities dating back to Old and Middle English, English pronunciation is not something easy to handle. Diphthongs and triphthongs are likely to strike an awe into your immature linguistic soul, as well as lots of other irregularities and illogical oddities you will surely come across.

Grammar

English grammar abounds in peculiarities, but the enviably logical structure of many morphological systems, and especially verb tenses, makes it quite accessible for hacking it from within. And don’t forget about the absence of cases and genders that definitely makes your life easier!

Vocabulary

The English language nowadays resembles an advanced game engine thanks to which you are able to create the world at your convenience, and this world is flexible like never before. So, the best tip for learning would be working with different “vocabularies in use” without forgetting the media, as media coin the new words and expressions that testify themselves to this flexibility. Without any doubt, that is emblematic of the English usage today.

Balancing Between Descriptivism and Prescriptivism

“Overcome” may be a good word, but “face” is even better. And on no account we should use “avoid” instead of them when talking about difficulties! The logic is simple: if you need to avoid something, you concentrate on simpler things, on things you can tackle easily, avoiding then the harder ones again.  

On the other hand, “overcome” and “face” connote the encounter, the conflict between your initial skills, your readiness to grasp something to a certain extent, and the hard, but rewarding reality. With tons of life hacks all around us, and everyone’s striving to master the language without home tasks, phonetics intricacies or even grammar subtle details, right learning experience becomes something of a must.

And “right” means meaningful and mature, that’s why finding a balance between correct but a bit abstract usage and all-pervading expertise, on the one hand, and real-life implementation, on the other hand, can be considered “right” approach. Finally, the opposition between prescriptivists and descriptivists seems eternal and behemoth in its scope with descriptivists clearly losing clout (see the famous interview of David Foster Wallace and Bryan Garner for this).