How I Learned English

A/N: Hi! Sorry for the hiatus, I almost forgot I had a blog site. So, to make up for that, I will be posting some topics tonight (and try to publish at least one topic every week). Just scroll down for tips.

Many people have asked me, "how did you learn English?" And tons of other questions, while basically all of them have the exact same meaning like the question I just mentioned. I can never seem to answer it properly, but I'll try to explain in this article.

Source: https://youtube.com/

Before my parents met, my dad worked with people from all around the world. But he really counted on this one client of his, and her name was Madam. Madam lived in Hawaii, so obviously she speaks English. And you should know by now, English is an international language used everywhere.

Every day and night, dad would get phone calls; mostly from Madam. Since I was born until a few months ago, I'd always hear him speak in English on the phone. That's a start.

Next, when I was young, I was only allowed to watch TV shows that are in English, or a silent/pantomime type of show. As I grew older, I always ask my parents to enable English subtitles for me to learn new words with it's spelling. This is also a major giveaway for me.

I will not forget to mention that I've been a gamer girl, way before pre-k. The games are always in English. From console to iPad/tablet and even PC games, never have I seen a game in Bahasa. And then I found the game Minecraft. It taught me more than I would've imagined. First I played the Pocket Edition game with my best friend, and because she was doing YouTube she often communicates with her other friends through Skype, and sometimes I join too.

In 5th grade on her birthday, she got the PC version and I (also did) got it as an extra gift from her father. We eventually split to different servers depending on our interests, but we're still best friends forever (tmi, I know). And the more people I meet, the less sleep I get. I always stay up at night so I can audio/video Skype with my friends. That's where I mostly learn grammar and pronunciation.

I also watch a lot, I mean, A LOT of YouTube videos. In what language? English. Duh.

And last but not least, school and books. Most schools have English classes, whether it's two or three times a week. I'm starting to see how those classes influence my vocab. I used to hate English classes because my selfish little brain thinks I'm the best.

Our teacher always ask if there are any difficult words if we're given/reading a text, and to be honest, I'm quite selfish for always answering with a no if I do say so myself because in the end, there may be two or three. I'm grateful the teacher is nice enough to translate it for us if we can't find it in the dictionary.

About the books, most of them are knowledge books like wikipedias, so far two English novels, and my two 2013 Minecraft Handbooks (click here for the updated edition).

I have no idea why I wrote this but I don't have any other things to talk about. If you've read this far, thank you. It means so much.

So here are some tips to improve your English.

- Read. Read books in English, even your English textbook is okay to start with. E-books are also nice if you're mobile-phone-addicted. If you don't understand a word or a sentence or a whole paragraph, try asking someone like a teacher or browse on the internet, but even better is to find it in the dictionary.

- Speak. Try speaking in English. If you don't know how to pronounce something, you can click here and type the word/sentence/paragraph you can't read, and click on the loud speaker button after you click enter/translate. It'll pronounce the word for you.

- Listen. Watch YouTube or just listen to songs in English and look for the lyrics. They are helpful. Especially TV shows with English dubbing and subtitles.

- (For gamers) play games that are in English. 90% of Indonesian gamers learn English from games they play.

I guess that's all I have for you on this Monday night, I hope you find it helpful. Don't forget to share my blog posts on your social medias!