I am glad I have come across your site. Now I know where to look for materials to use in the classroom.

Kelly Jason

---

I’ve bought the book advertised on your site and I should say, it really surpassed my expectations.

Tom Wallace

---

I will definitely visit your site again when I need to find explanations on the language issues.

Helena Yarowski

---

Learning a foreign language... where to start?

If you plan to start learning a foreign language, you should understand that language requires a lot of your attention and persistence. You cannot buy knowledge of a language in the shop and have it once and for ever. During our lives we are in the process of learning our native language and during our lives we also face some difficulties with it. So, it is quite natural when learning a foreign language we encounter some problems. The main thing is not to give up and gradually make progress in your studies.

You can be amazed by this fact, but nevertheless, according to the research, the people who learned a foreign language independently without teachers have better knowledge. So, instead of spending your money on courses; you’d better buy books, cassettes, CDs, or foreign films. The main issue when learning a language on your own is how efficiently to organize your studies. The following tips will help you organize your time.

First, write a plan of your learning activities. Define your tasks – do not include something unreal or too difficult to fulfill. Say, write a plan for your this month or even a week and specify your tasks for every day. For example today you are learning 20 new words. Tomorrow you are writing a letter to your business partner using a part of these words. In two days you will learn some song in this language. And in two weeks you will write an essay of 500 words. With such an approach you will be amazed with the results. Do not underestimate the abilities of your memory. All of us are born with the same memory capacity. The point is that some people have a better trained memory while others not. So, if your memory sometimes fails, you have to train it. Use special methods – either psychological or linguistic.

Second you should speak. Without speaking practice you will never master a language. Whenever you have an opportunity to speak - do not miss it. You cannot learn to swim without swimming, right? The same is with speaking.

Third - write. Write whatever you want, just practice expressing your thoughts in written form. It may be a letter to a native speaker. If you do not have such an opportunity, write for yourself. Keep a detailed diary of your daily routine.

Reading is also an important part of acquiring a proficiency in your target language. The best and the most useful is to read literature in the original. You can start with short stories, poems, and then you will notice that you quickly swallow 200 –page books.

And the last, but not the least: if you want to master a foreign language, say, Chinese or Russian, become a Chinese or Russian. You don‘t need a split personality, you just change the clothes of one language and cultural identity into the other. Language learning is not only about learning grammar rules and new vocabulary, it also suggests extending your horizons of world’s perception. Good luck.

Learning without thinking is labour lost;
thinking without learning is dangerous.

- a Chinese proverb