Why do we not learn English after all these years?

What am I doing wrong? You may ask yourself like some of my students do, and then, as they come to me - After all these years of study, why don't I feel confident about my English?

Some are unhappy about their listening skills. ' I understand everything the teacher says in the classroom, but when I have to speak English with native speakers, I almost don't get anything they say.' or ' I got everything right in the listening exercise from the course book, but then, couldn't catch a word of the movie without subtitles.' or even ' Native speakers speak really fast. It's impossible.' Did it hit home? Probably yes, and it's OK. Those are very common feelings learners have. And there are reasons behind all this frustration.

1. We are not autonomous learners, or, at least, we are oftentimes not trained to be.

Meaning: Do you (really) know what to do outside the classroom to improve your listening skills? And do you really think listening to songs or watch youtube videos is enough? If it was none of these complaints would exist.

We, as English learners need to be better guided to diagnose precisely what our weaknesses are and work on them. Listening to songs in English is fun, but too general. Doesn't work on its own.

2. Course books do not mirror real life.

Meaning: Even the best course books will not have authentic materials (materials not designed for the English classroom). So, am I saying using coursebooks is not good? Absolutely not. They help, but we should be using real life listening and reading materials in the classroom, so that you are more prepared to have a real interaction with English speaking environments.

3. Too much grammar's gonna rot your soul.

Meaning: Maybe I was a little too dramatic (it's from a song by the way - Mika, Lollipop), but this needs close attention.This means that grammatical rules of thumb and too much focus on grammar structures is not necessarily going to make you speak the language. We should approach 2nd language learning a little bit less grammatically and a lot more lexically, in other words, we should give much more importance to lexical chunks - (fixed expressions, collocations, etc) that we actually do. + Vocabulary and not as isolated words: stretches of language like: by the way, at the end of the day, long story short - these phrases will make you more fluent and you'll definitely sound more natural.

4. Finally: you don't have to sound British or American.

What does that mean anyway? In the city of London there are many different accents, let alone in the whole country. And why would you want to sound something that you're not? We're NEVER going to be native speakers of English. We're from other countries: native speakers of Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, |talian, Japanese, etc...and we should take pride in it.

Focus on pronunciation? By all means, yes! I love working with it. But focus on the things that matter. The sounds that, if mispronounced, will make communication difficult. English has become an international language. It belongs to us all! YAY! Celebrate it. Celebrate yourself, your culture, your accent. Work on sounds that are difficult for you. Oh, and lots (LOTS OF) connected speech (the mysterious disappearing sounds in fast speech).

If any of these things made sense to you and you're interested in learning about them, stay tuned. I'll be posting some tips on how to improve your skills by yourself and, of course, you're always welcome to book a class so we can work on the things you can't! =)