虽说身边有很多外语说的好的朋友，但是能用多种语言流利对话的在我们身边并不常见。

生活中一旦听到某人说两种以上的语言，我就很羡慕甚至还有点儿嫉妒，毕竟在大多数人眼里单单是学英文就用尽了力气。

我们常常觉得，能说几种语言的人有着我们没有的天赋，事实是这样吗？还是他们找到了一个好的学习方法？抱着这个疑问，今天我终于抓到一只活的问了问。

温馨提示：文章略长且全英，喜欢的朋友可以慢慢阅读收藏起来慢慢阅读，英文水平有限阅读不了的朋友可以长篇复制去翻译，文中学习建议绝对是干货

分享者介绍 👇

故事开始

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Before I get into details about how I went from Hugo to Boss in English, let me briefly summarize what you need to do to learn English well:

- Be patient. It does not happen over night.

- Be constant. Keep working on it. Study a little bit every day. This is better than studying for 5 hours on one day.

- Get classes if you need to learn the basics of English and to improve your vocabulary.

- Put yourself in the right atmosphere to learn. Get people around you with whom to practice English. Get out of your comfort zone!

- Make it fun. Combine English with your passions. In the story you can find out how I did it. You can copy it or find your own way.

- Make mistakes. Don’t be shy, it is part of the process. No one will judge you negatively if you make mistakes. When I talk Chinese nearly everything I say is wrong, but people appreciate my effort.

     Learning English is a hot topic. We all need it, we all want it. We wish it could happen over night but it never does. Learning a language is hard and long work…so you better make it fun. 

  In today’s article I want to give you some advice on how you can find motivation to learn English and what methods worked the best for me. I will therefore tell you how I went from terribly bad to proficient in English.

 My story begins when I was 12 years old. First year of English at school. I was a disaster. I had no clue what my teacher was saying, I had no idea what was happening around me. I felt lost and desolated all the time. I mechanically repeated the questions the teacher asked me. “Matthias, how are you?” would my teacher ask. And I, with all the fear of making a mistake and get laughed about, would stupidly repeat “Matthias, how are you?”. The teacher would then scold me for not studying and call my parents for private talks. I was ashamed and scared every time my teacher would walk in the class.

    The truth is that my classmates had studied English the previous 5 years of school. I did not. They were having conversations with the teacher, I was struggling to put three words in a logical sense.

   I needed help! It had to come from outside. My teacher had a program to follow and “I am 12 years old” was definitely not on that list. She had no time to waste on my stupid brain. “Get him classes” she said. And so I did. I was lucky that my grandmother was a retired English teacher. So, after the first year was over and I had an insufficient grade in English, I went to her every day. We would study for 1 hour and then have lunch. We rode two books; “the friendly giant” and a book about a kid growing up, getting his first spots and trying to approach the girl he likes. How cute from my grandmother to choose books like that. Even tough I think back with joy and thankfulness for my dear grandma, I remember how hard it was to sit on the table while my friends were playing outside enjoying the Summer.

  But after 3 months of Summer break I had my reward. School started again and suddenly I was able to follow English classes. My teacher was impressed, my parents were and I was. I thanked my grandma profoundly taking her out for dinner and buying her flowers. Then we stopped the English lessons. I was now able to keep pace with the other students and didn’t need extra homework. I still went to my grandma once a week to have lunch with her and talk about more philosophical topics.

Until my graduation from high school, I have always been an average English student (while terrible in most other subjects). I was not particularly good nor bad. I was simply “as good as all the others”. Thus not good. I was able to talk about simple things, write a silly essay for English tests and survive when travelling abroad. That’s it and this is what school prepares us for. It is not enough for a job but at least it is something. Later in life we can build upon it.

    And this is what happened to me. I decided to study abroad and went to Vienna. I was finally in a world famous city. People from all the continents come to visit the beautiful castles, taste the sweet marzipan and listen to the symphonies of Mozart. I found myself surrounded with people who didn’t speak my own language. First I panicked. What to do? Should I dance? Play charade? Hide in a corner? Then, with all rationality, I started talking in English. Not well, but ok. It was enough to make myself understand. And it was fun. I could understand stories from South American people…how amazing is that? I have never been there, yet I met so many people from there who told me stories that I have pictured it in my mind. And I could tell them about Italy. So many of them had Italian blood and were absolutely interested about my stories. Where my grandparents came from, why I left my country, if I miss my food?

    It was a great opportunity to finally practice English. The truth is, that until I stood in my comfortable home, spent time with the good old friends, saw the same places every day, nothing had ever motivated me to learn and practice English. I needed to get out of my comfort zone. I needed to encounter people who did not speak my same language. I needed to feel lost! Only then my brain was ready to accept the challenge. And so I did. 

   I created a plan. It began with my guitar. I was playing Italian songs and decided to switch to English 70s and 80s rock songs. I would learn the guitar chords and lyrics and write down the words I did not understand. What a difference that made!!! I would not even read the words often, just sometimes when I felt really bored I would pick up the notebook and repeat. But it put my brain in learning mode. And I had combined it with fun. Additionally I would repeat the world when singing…so they would stick in my mind for ever.

    But everything we enjoy sooner or later becomes boring. I guess it is part of human nature. It happened to my passion for the guitar and was replaced by video games. “League of Legends” infected my brain like a virus. I would wake up in the morning, turn on the computer, get online and fight till night. I would study for university when exams were due, but that was not too often. I had to rethink my English improvement method. By that time - I was 23 - I was still meeting people from all corners of the world and speak English. I also needed to learn scientific texts written in English, for my University. My English was now pretty good but when the sky is the limit, there is plenty to improve!

    I redefined my strategy. I decided that I wanted to learn English while playing video games. So I had to change my strategy. I figured out that I could listen to Youtube videos of great personalities while slaughtering enemies on the mid lane of the LOL arena. Elon Musk, Obama, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Neil Armstrong and many more were whispering in my ears about their ideals, success secrets, wishes, desires and fears while I was ranking up to diamond.

    I honestly recommend you this method if your English is already good enough to understand an interview or speech. You will learn many specific words and broaden your horizons widely. It will also improve your pronunciation.

    Finally I graduated from university with a good English knowledge, came to China and now I write my own classes about the most different subjects I can think about. I teach great people from all different working spheres. I try to make them have fun and find those subjects they are most interested in.

    听到他的回答我明白了这一点。他们不是天才， 也没有学习语言的捷径。只是找到了享受学习这一过程的方式以及如何将语言学习从一项枯燥的学科转变为一项你每天都喜欢做的有趣活动。

    如果你不喜欢死记硬背单词， 那你可以撸剧看字幕增加词汇量，可以加入语言学习社区找到有趣学习内容，和有趣的人聊天交流， 你可以自己对着镜子描述你的周末计划等等，这就是多语言者学习语言的方式，并且这种方法对每个想要学习语言的人来说，同样适用。

    如果你也曾试着学习一门语言， 然后你因为觉得它太难了，或觉得自己没有语言天赋而放弃了， 再试试吧。 或许你离熟练的说一门语言只差一种合适的，让你乐在其中的方法。

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