English Language | Spoken English Course in Urdu and Hindi

Tips and Techniques to Learn English

Knowing how to channelise your learning is what will help you with your English language learning process. Here are a few tips on how you can prioritise and focus in the best way possible.

• If you are learning the English language for the very first time, begin with the alphabets, vowels, consonants and syllables.

  • The English language has 26 alphabets.

  • There are 5 vowels in the English language – a, e, i, o and u.

  • All the other 21 alphabets come under the category of consonants.

  • A syllable is a combination of a vowel and consonant sound, and they are of four main types – monosyllabic words (1 syllable – e.g., dog), disyllabic words (2 syllables – e.g., table, where ‘ta’ and ‘ble’ are the two syllables), trisyllabic words (3 syllables – e.g., custody, where ‘cus’, ‘to’ and ‘dy’ are the three syllables), and polysyllabic words (4 or more syllables – e.g., hospitality, where ‘hos’, ‘pi’, ‘ta’, ‘li’ and ‘ty’ are the different syllables).

• Once you know the alphabet, syllables and words, you can slowly start reading simple sentences and paragraphs.

• The next main component you have to look at is speech sounds and symbols. There are 44 speech symbols in the English language. They are also called phonetic symbols and are used in what’s called phonetic transcription, which helps you pronounce words accurately and perfectly.

  • Among the 44 speech sounds, 24 of them are consonant sounds, and the remaining 20 are vowel sounds.

  • Vowel sounds are further classified into 12 vowels and 8 diphthongs (combined vowel sounds).

• Once you are familiar with these, you can start learning the various grammatical components. Again, there is an order or rather a pattern in which you can organise your grammar learning.

  • You have a good range of vocabulary; that means you know a set of words, and you know what they refer to. What’s next?

  • You can start with parts of speech. Knowing the parts of speech will help you learn the function of words; where and how to use them. There are 8 main parts of speech, namely nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections.

  • When you are sure about every part of speech, its function and usage, you can move on to the sentence structure, which explains where each part of speech can be placed in a sentence. There are 5 main components in a sentence – subject, verb, object, complement and adjunct (SVOCA). You can structure the sentences in various patterns like SV, SVO, SVOC, SVOA, ASVO, ASVC, etc.

  • Types of sentences is a topic you can look into once you are done with sentence structure. There are 4 types of sentences – assertive or declarative sentences, interrogative sentences, exclamatory sentences and imperative sentences. As far as sentence types are concerned, there are 3 main types – simple sentences, compound sentences and complex sentences.

  • Tenses should be the next in line. This is one of the most important topics in English grammar. Without proper knowledge of tenses, you will not be able to communicate in a meaningful and sensible manner. There are 3 tenses – Present, Past and Future; further divided into 12 tense forms (Simple, Continuous, Perfect and Perfect Continuous forms in each tense).

  • Active Voice and Passive Voice, Figures of Speech, Idioms, Phrases and Clauses are topics that can be learnt a little later as these components are used to modify and garnish your language.

• As you work with these grammar topics, try reading short stories, descriptive/informative write-ups, and newspaper articles and make attempts to identify the different grammatical components you have learnt so far. Check for the parts of speech, identify their function, find out the sentence pattern used, determine the tense and try changing it to different tenses to see how the meaning will change.

• Work on reading passages and try answering questions to check how much you understand.

Course Outline Summaries

1. Grammar

• Parts of Speech

• Type of sentences

2. Phrases, small sentences, daily routine talk

3. Vocabulary

4. Tenses

5. Conversation