Learning English Good

Many Americans will be the first to bring up the topic of non-English speakers in the United States. Many believe that if you are coming to this country you could at least learn the language. As shown in, “Learning English Good” by Elyssa this may not always be the easiest task and that some of the blame for this should be put on all English speaking people in the US. While it is not the responsibility of America to teach these foreign people English we must understand that English is an extremely complicated language with many variations created by us. We are constantly shortening words to minimize the words we have to speak; many also have the habit of slurring words together. This slurring is not usually purposeful it is just a way that we have come to speak. There is a great use of slang in all parts of the US, as in many other countries, but this is a trait that makes it difficult for students to learn and use English. Many ESL students also may find it difficult to adapt depending on the region they are in because of the varying dialect in the United States. Stresses and emphasis’s on certain words can easily lead to a great misunderstanding of a certain word or sentence that is written the same way, but means something completely different. Another attribute of English that makes it difficult to learn is the order in which words are placed in sentences. There are only certain rules for sentence composition, but beyond these rules English speakers have added new ones. There are many sentences that make perfect sense, but because of the order in which they are written or expressed they are said to be wrong.
This article has given me a new perspective in which I can now more clearly see the difficulties of adapting to a new language, especially one so difficult as English. People may spend many years attempting to learn a language but the transition from their native language is not always such an easy one because of the vast differences in languages.