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I studied in Tamil medium. When I entered college, I could not speak a sentence in English. Here are the things that helped me. 1. Read Bible cover to cover ma
by jjude 9y ago
I studied in Tamil medium. When I entered college, I could not speak a sentence in English. Here are the things that helped me.
1. Read Bible cover to cover many time with a Tamil Bible side-by-side. I didn't understand many of the words / phrases. Still I kept reading as long as I understood the meaning.
2. In college we met every evening for prayer. I started sharing messages for few minutes. I made lot (a lot) of mistakes, but my friends helped me improve. Lot of folks made fun of me, but I still kept going because two of close friends kept encouraging me.
3. Watched Friends series with sub-titles. I didn't understand many of the dialogues because I lacked context. Still I would memorize sentences and repeat to myself.
4. Started writing a blog[]. The one I have currently is 2nd or 3rd one. In the first blog, I wrote primarily about what I knew well - SQL, Vantive etc. So the content was there, I had to only find ways to express it. Even now, I write about what I know or what I learn, so that makes it easier to blog.
: https://jjude.com https://jjude.com
5. When I read articles or books, I note down the sentences or phrases I like. I store them in Evernote and re-visit them often. I try to use them in some daily usage.
Next month I will deliver a keynote speech in Azure global bootcamp in my city (Chandigarh). From not able to speak a sentence in English to this, has been a long journey of frustration, encouragement, and satisfaction.
Good luck.
- chrstphrknwtn 9y agoReading the bible to learn English does not seem like a good idea. The English of the bible is not common everyday English that will be most useful for communicating with others today. Watching films or television in English, with subtitles in your native language is good advice.
- SimonDont 9y agoInteresting feedback, but the deed is already done. Also it worked well for him. Thus, I assume any method would be met with your derision. Not to mention there are natural english versions of the Bible, so you are casting that one.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tphan 9y agoMost people use modern English translations of the Bible.
- Bromskloss 9y agoIf anything, you might learn a _cooler_ English by reading the Bible! :-)
- stordoff 9y agoEven if you learn old English from that (rather than using a modern English translation), it'd still give you a good base (grammar etc.) for then understanding modern English. It might lead to learning a slightly odd/old variation of English, and might not be the most efficient route, but I can see it being effective for being able to understand English.
- Natsu 9y agoFor someone not from a Western culture, it will also help them understand a lot of cultural references that won't make much sense otherwise, like "seeing the handwriting on the wall."
- jogjayr 9y ago> "seeing the handwriting on the wall." I've known that phrase for...I don't even know how long. But I only learned yesterday that its origin was Biblical. I love how Dan Carlin says "mene mene tekel upharsin" and wanted to read more about it, and made that happy discovery.
- Natsu 9y agoAhh, but actually the 'u' at the start of the 4th word is how they wrote 'and' so it's not clear it would've been written on the wall :) Yeah, there are a lot of things like that which people have forgotten the origins of...
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Reading the bible to learn English does not seem like a good idea. The English of the bible is not common everyday English The degree to which that is true depends on the translation. The KJV is someone arcane, many others are not. And it's one of the easiest large written corpuses to get your hands on parallel (even if separately published) versions of the same source material in English and whatever language you are coming from, and having a large written parallel corpus to study is probably a very good tool for self-study.
- eric24234 9y agoLooking from your website you are obviously a religious person. But don't try to use this forum to spread your religion.