I used to be quite mediocre at English and i didn't like my English classes nor found them interesting whatsoever.
Until i reached high school and got that one teacher who made her classes engaging. It peaked my interest, so i started reading fanfictions in English (i got this idea because i was already reading some in my own language anyway), and, with the help of a dictionary, i slowly ended up incorporating more and more vocabulary all while having fun, and that's how i mainly learned the language.
Once i got good enough at reading, i then started to watch videos and let's play as well to help with my hearing comprehension.
And it worked!
After barely two years, i went from very average to one of the top three of my class. cx
I'm very grateful to that teacher, even though i unfortunately was never able to tell her so. Thanks to my improving level in the language, i was able to expand my horizons, talk to some awesome fellow artists and people from other countries, have access to a crap ton of online resources to learn things on my own and what not.
The only area where i'm weaker is to actually speak the language, as i have much less practice and don't have people to speak it with.
Now, i've even started picking up fanfiction writing (in English!) as another hobby.
Writing in my secondary language can be tricky at times, but it's a fun and challenging exercice to do, and i'm hoping to get better at it with time, just like i did with drawing. :]
I used to be quite mediocre at English and i didn't like my English classes nor found them interesting whatsoever.
Until i reached high school and got that one teacher who made her classes engaging. It peaked my interest, so i started reading fanfictions in English (i got this idea because i was already reading some in my own language anyway), and, with the help of a dictionary, i slowly ended up incorporating more and more vocabulary all while having fun, and that's how i mainly learned the language.
Once i got good enough at reading, i then started to watch videos and let's play as well to help with my hearing comprehension.
And it worked!
After barely two years, i went from very average to one of the top three of my class. cx
I'm very grateful to that teacher, even though i unfortunately was never able to tell her so. Thanks to my improving level in the language, i was able to expand my horizons, talk to some awesome fellow artists and people from other countries, have access to a crap ton of online resources to learn things on my own and what not.
The only area where i'm weaker is to actually speak the language, as i have much less practice and don't have people to speak it with.
Now, i've even started picking up fanfiction writing (in English!) as another hobby.
Writing in my secondary language can be tricky at times, but it's a fun and challenging exercice to do, and i'm hoping to get better at it with time, just like i did with drawing. :]
interesting to see how it happened with non-native English speakers... As someone with it as a first language, it's always fun to hear how people learned it. It also makes learning a new language seem a lot easier than it really is, or maybe it's just Latin-derived languages that are hard as all fudge...
interesting to see how it happened with non-native English speakers... As someone with it as a first language, it's always fun to hear how people learned it. It also makes learning a new language seem a lot easier than it really is, or maybe it's just Latin-derived languages that are hard as all fudge...
A Thai here, my first experience with English started since kindergarten. At that age, mainly it was about familiarize the children with English alphabet and learned easy words. I think somewhat intermediate grammar wasn't introduced until grade 3 or 4? And would you believe I was once an idiot kid who failed miserably using there is / there are to distinguish singular/plural? XD I always put plural nouns with 's' at the end to 'there is' because my logic was 'match the S's!'
Anyway, I may as well add that I was quite privileged. My parents were able to afford VHS of dozens of Disney cartoons, Tom and Jerry, Bug Bunny, etc. so I watched those cartoons straight in English since I can remember. Still, it was a long, long way before I can finally watch them and thoroughly understand the speeches and various written texts in the story.
The major positive change was when I was in grade 6. What happened was I began listening to western music and I was hooked to a band from Denmark (but all their songs are in English), to the point I bought a cassette and read through all the lyrics with dictionary in hands. From there onward it was quite confusing because I was introduced to MTV and internet started being accessible not long after. So I was that whiz kid in class who knew loads of English vocabs but my grammar was still wobble. Seriously, I didn't even understand how to use perfect tense structure even after graduating high school!
After that, mainly by using internet daily, English has sort of become my second language.
A Thai here, my first experience with English started since kindergarten. At that age, mainly it was about familiarize the children with English alphabet and learned easy words. I think somewhat intermediate grammar wasn't introduced until grade 3 or 4? And would you believe I was once an idiot kid who failed miserably using there is / there are to distinguish singular/plural? XD I always put plural nouns with 's' at the end to 'there is' because my logic was 'match the S's!'
Anyway, I may as well add that I was quite privileged. My parents were able to afford VHS of dozens of Disney cartoons, Tom and Jerry, Bug Bunny, etc. so I watched those cartoons straight in English since I can remember. Still, it was a long, long way before I can finally watch them and thoroughly understand the speeches and various written texts in the story.
The major positive change was when I was in grade 6. What happened was I began listening to western music and I was hooked to a band from Denmark (but all their songs are in English), to the point I bought a cassette and read through all the lyrics with dictionary in hands. From there onward it was quite confusing because I was introduced to MTV and internet started being accessible not long after. So I was that whiz kid in class who knew loads of English vocabs but my grammar was still wobble. Seriously, I didn't even understand how to use perfect tense structure even after graduating high school!
After that, mainly by using internet daily, English has sort of become my second language.
video games!
back when i was a kid, Breath of Fire IV and Harvest Moon: Back to Nature landed in my hands. we don't have the luxury of bigger EU countries where we get localizations in our language, even to this day we just don't. it never was a problem with something like mario or spyro, but it sure was one when the game's progression is gated by text.
so it was the controller in one hand, a dictionary in other.
by the time we got english in school as an actual class i already knew a lot of miscallenious dictionary and the basics because of trying my hardest to play a full JRPG in a language i do not know. you can probably still find noteboosk of 6yo me trying to decipher the game and keeping notebooks full of notes of what each item is/ etc.
then the rest wasn't really picked up in school. we were introduced to the internet around the same time so it was the real teacher. ty folks from 2000's for tolerating my awful engrish, y'all were real ones.
funnily enough i learned german through anime dubs too at around the same age, years before german was plugged into class list. since watching german tv channels was the only option. i HAD to know what the funny pirates are doing or what is UP with the digimon children since my own country only dubbed merchandisable stuff like yugioh and pokemon.
video games!
back when i was a kid, Breath of Fire IV and Harvest Moon: Back to Nature landed in my hands. we don't have the luxury of bigger EU countries where we get localizations in our language, even to this day we just don't. it never was a problem with something like mario or spyro, but it sure was one when the game's progression is gated by text.
so it was the controller in one hand, a dictionary in other.
by the time we got english in school as an actual class i already knew a lot of miscallenious dictionary and the basics because of trying my hardest to play a full JRPG in a language i do not know. you can probably still find noteboosk of 6yo me trying to decipher the game and keeping notebooks full of notes of what each item is/ etc.
then the rest wasn't really picked up in school. we were introduced to the internet around the same time so it was the real teacher. ty folks from 2000's for tolerating my awful engrish, y'all were real ones.
funnily enough i learned german through anime dubs too at around the same age, years before german was plugged into class list. since watching german tv channels was the only option. i HAD to know what the funny pirates are doing or what is UP with the digimon children since my own country only dubbed merchandisable stuff like yugioh and pokemon.
My mom is an English teacher and she taught lessons while pregnant with me, so I have quite literally been learning it since before I was born. Her profession also means whatever English school she was working at let me have lessons for free, and that plus my love of videogames (which only started getting dubbed, or even translated, to Portuguese very recently) and general being on the internet means I learned very quickly.
Aaand I was lucky enough to study in a genuinely good school that taught English properly, which is... not as common as it should be here.
I kinda want to try learning another language at some point, but I don't know which one. I like a lot of languages, but none stand out as "that one!!" to me. I tried learning some Italian via Duolingo a while back, maybe I should give it another try.
By the way, LIBRAS huh? Hello, fellow brazilian :)
My mom is an English teacher and she taught lessons while pregnant with me, so I have quite literally been learning it since before I was born. Her profession also means whatever English school she was working at let me have lessons for free, and that plus my love of videogames (which only started getting dubbed, or even translated, to Portuguese very recently) and general being on the internet means I learned very quickly.
Aaand I was lucky enough to study in a genuinely good school that taught English properly, which is... not as common as it should be here.
I kinda want to try learning another language at some point, but I don't know which one. I like a lot of languages, but none stand out as "that one!!" to me. I tried learning some Italian via Duolingo a while back, maybe I should give it another try.
By the way, LIBRAS huh? Hello, fellow brazilian :)
i had english classes since elementary school and we had a lot of them (unlike most other schools in my country). i loved it a lot and it gave me a good jumpstart, but i really got into it when i got access to youtube and found out about letsplays. gaming helped also, i started playing games with original dub and learned by ear. then it escalated to cartoons and movies and books and fanfics and other types of youtube videos all in english, as a child i was in awe of the language that opened to me the door to so much content, i wanted to understand all of it. i still primarily watch and read everything in english, i even started to think in english sometimes, but that's a common thing among bilingual people i'm sure :D
i barely practice speaking it though and my grammar is so rusty, i have a lot of room for improvement. being able to undestand everything more or less is nice either way.
i had english classes since elementary school and we had a lot of them (unlike most other schools in my country). i loved it a lot and it gave me a good jumpstart, but i really got into it when i got access to youtube and found out about letsplays. gaming helped also, i started playing games with original dub and learned by ear. then it escalated to cartoons and movies and books and fanfics and other types of youtube videos all in english, as a child i was in awe of the language that opened to me the door to so much content, i wanted to understand all of it. i still primarily watch and read everything in english, i even started to think in english sometimes, but that's a common thing among bilingual people i'm sure :D
i barely practice speaking it though and my grammar is so rusty, i have a lot of room for improvement. being able to undestand everything more or less is nice either way.
markicha | she/her | +11 fr time
english is not my first language!
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i'll keep wishing for a world where you can be happy
Funny enough Pokemon. I hated English as a kid (its not my first language) but then I got my first pokemon game when I was 10 (Pokemon Pearl) and I was determined to play it without asking my older brother for help hahha! Now I love english and talk it more then my mother language haha!
Funny enough Pokemon. I hated English as a kid (its not my first language) but then I got my first pokemon game when I was 10 (Pokemon Pearl) and I was determined to play it without asking my older brother for help hahha! Now I love english and talk it more then my mother language haha!
I failed all my English classes in school. Deviantart and watching anime with English subs pulled me through eventually.
Fast forward and I live in the UK now and my English is good haha.
My native language is Dutch.
I failed all my English classes in school. Deviantart and watching anime with English subs pulled me through eventually.
Fast forward and I live in the UK now and my English is good haha.
My native language is Dutch.
[quote name="PixelSpiral" date="2023-01-25 01:00:47" ]
it just sort of Happened when i was 11. i assume internet exposure (in particular, also reading pokemon sites?? and likely other things????) but its a complete mystery to me. by the time i turned 12 (and also a month or so prior) i was already knowledgeable in it enough to watch english youtube videos
now i primarily think in english and just generally use it more than my first language (which i only use with my family and for other irl things at this point)
[/quote]
this
PixelSpiral wrote on 2023-01-25 01:00:47:
it just sort of Happened when i was 11. i assume internet exposure (in particular, also reading pokemon sites?? and likely other things????) but its a complete mystery to me. by the time i turned 12 (and also a month or so prior) i was already knowledgeable in it enough to watch english youtube videos
now i primarily think in english and just generally use it more than my first language (which i only use with my family and for other irl things at this point)
this
