In the course of mentoring many students to learn English, I realise that the key is to focus on learning basic sentences. Most of the new language learners focus too much on learning too many words. They think that learning more words and more complicated words will make them better in a language. That’s wrong. Some even think that writing in a flowery style or complicated style makes them a pro! Wrong! When you focus too much on advanced words, your mind space gets wasted on storing those words. You have less space for useful things. Also, focusing on forming complicated sentences without forming basic sentences leads to a situation where all their sentences are wrong, although complex! This is like bad cooking.. You may have cooked an elaborate 4 course meal, but everything is badly cooked. It is better to properly cook a simple 1 dish, instead of cooking 4 dishes that are all badly made.
So where do you start? Time to unlearn. Go back to the basics. Start learning very basic short sentences.
Start from the first person – that is YOU! Examples: I am having my breakfast. I am living here. I will be going to school. Do this for a month.
Try making every possible sentence about you. Start writing daily evening journal where you write what happened with you during the entire day.
Next step, repeat the same type of sentences with a friend. For example: my friend is going to school. My friend got me some gifts. Do this for a month.
Next step, repeat the same with many people. For example: My friends are going to school. Do this for a month.
Do not shift to advanced sentences. Just master these basic sentences. Just work on these for about 3 months and start reading some stories or novels. You’ll improve a lot!
