How did you learn English? (As foreign language )

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pawelk1986
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15 Jan 2015, 9:40 am

I learned at school, but it started early when TVP Polish State TV aired this :D




And this one too :D

BTW does into does not sound similar to you :-) ?



Jules_Bonnot_1912
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15 Jan 2015, 11:29 am

When I was little there was a tv show called 'the seventh key', which was an actual English course. I always remember the tune: Herb Alpert - A taste of honey ...

Besides that we always had the radio on and most songs were English. And of course at school. I remember I was always asking my older sister, while watching the Dutch equivalent of Top Of The Pops, what they were singing about ... she couldn't tell. So I was happy to learn English in school.
And also being on forums for years did/does help ...


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Kiriae
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15 Jan 2015, 12:56 pm

I started in school at age 10 or so (in 4th grade if I recall correctly) but I was obsessed with Beetle Juice cartoon on English Cartoon Network when I was 8 so you could say I learned some before. Apparently I was understanding everything from the cartoon despite not knowing even a single English word and having noone to teach me back then.

However my real understanding of English started when I was 15 and got into MMO games. Thanks to them I jumped from 2 to 5 (grades in Polish schools are from 1-6, 6 is the best but you must be a real savant to get 6, 1 is the worst and makes you repeat a year) within a half of year without realizing it. Thats the power of special interest. I needed to use English in my games so I started to understand English out of blue. :lol:



pawelk1986
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15 Jan 2015, 1:26 pm

Kiriae wrote:
I started in school at age 10 or so (in 4th grade if I recall correctly) but I was obsessed with Beetle Juice cartoon on English Cartoon Network when I was 8 so you could say I learned some before. Apparently I was understanding everything from the cartoon despite not knowing even a single English word and having noone to teach me back then.

However my real understanding of English started when I was 15 and got into MMO games. Thanks to them I jumped from 2 to 5 (grades in Polish schools are from 1-6, 6 is the best but you must be a real savant to get 6, 1 is the worst and makes you repeat a year) within a half of year without realizing it. Thats the power of special interest. I needed to use English in my games so I started to understand English out of blue. :lol:


I see you are Polish like me :-)
So you must watched mazzy too :-)



Kiriae
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15 Jan 2015, 3:37 pm

pawelk1986 wrote:
I see you are Polish like me :-)
So you must watched mazzy too :-)

I don't recall watching it. Was it a part of morning TV on TVP1 or TVP2? I never liked those kindergarten shows.



pawelk1986
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15 Jan 2015, 3:54 pm

Kiriae wrote:
pawelk1986 wrote:
I see you are Polish like me :-)
So you must watched mazzy too :-)

I don't recall watching it. Was it a part of morning TV on TVP1 or TVP2? I never liked those kindergarten shows.


It was on TVP but i don't remember with one :-)
It was early 90's



Kiriae
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15 Jan 2015, 5:47 pm

pawelk1986 wrote:
It was on TVP but i don't remember with one :-)
It was early 90's

I'm from the end of 1988 and to be honest I don't remember much from before being 6-7 year old. Just a few memories, and none of them involves watching TV.



YourMajesty
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15 Jan 2015, 5:52 pm

By tv. If you hear ''I love you'', ''how are you'', ''let's go home'' etc etc enough you begin to notice patterns, not even consciously but especially a child can learn quickly that way. School never really taught me much; what came after tv was the occasional game ('melee') and plenty of websites and books.


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Tollorin
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17 Jan 2015, 11:55 pm

It begun with school in 4th grade, but with EP it was the subject in which I sucked the most. I got better thanks to playing Final Fantasy IX with a dictionary (As the North-American version was only in english.), but it was after I ended school. Later english dubs of anime on television also helped.



pawelk1986
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18 Jan 2015, 4:31 pm

I think that Muzzy II intro to I episode is from Star Trek



izzeme
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19 Jan 2015, 9:29 am

a lot from TV at first; i was early to learn to read (before school taught me), and i watched discovery and national geographic a lot (when the shows were still interresting). those were in english and subbed to my mother tongue. that is how i learned to understand (and, by extention of muscle memory, speak) english. becouse my mother tongue has simular script and vowals to english, i was able to read decently by reading the words out-loud, phonetically.

this resulted in the interesting situation that i spoke, read and even slightly wrote english by the time school started teaching me to read in my mothers tongue...

i honed my skills later on by gaming, both offline at first, later progressing into online and MMO (text-only first, later i started using voice chat).

this way i have grown to be fully bi-lingual, and i even think in english, just as my internal dialogue