Why learning English is so difficult.

I have to be honest I'm a native English speaker I teach English and I firmly believe that the English language can be really really stupid and I know that sounds harsh but let me explain if you're learning English and you find the English language difficult you find that sometimes it doesn't make any sense you're confused you're frustrated then I want to tell you that there's a good chance the problem is not you because the English language is difficult it can be really confusing and honestly it can be stupid there are times when things just don't

make sense so in today's video I'm going to talk to you about why English can be so difficult and I also want to give you some good news so stay till the end of the video because I'm going to give you some good news which will hopefully help motivate you and encourage you to learn English now one thing that happens when students first start learning English maybe you can relate to this maybe this is something that happened to you too but a lot of students find English easy at the beginning they find it simple they

find it not as complicated as some other languages and this is true at the beginning English is actually quite basic we only have one definite article we don't have any gender we don't have masculine or feminine nouns we have one word we have the one word for everything the and the simple tenses in English not the complicated tenses which you learn later but the basic tenses like the present simple past simple they're simple I did you did he did we did they did it's all the same and a lot of languages at the beginning you

have to memorize a lot when you get more advanced in English so maybe you get to the B2 or the C1 level you start to realize that things get a lot more difficult and this is where the challenge begins it seems like every rule you've learned in the past has an exception so you have to relearn things you have to learn them again and this is one of the difficult things about English it's a bit deceiving because at the beginning it seems to be quite easy but the more advanced you get the more you realize

that oh there's a lot more to this language than I expected now one of the most difficult things about English is spelling and pronunciation and unfortunately English can be really really challenging when it comes to these two areas now whenever you learn a new word it's not enough just to learn the word because if you look at a word it's impossible to know the pronunciation just by looking at the spelling because there are so many different ways of pronouncing things in English you actually need to learn the pron iation at the same time you learn

the word so whenever you learn a new word go to Google go to Bing go to any of these translation sites type the word in and then press the play button there's always a play button so you can actually hear how the word is pronounced so you're not only learning the word you're not only learning the definition but you're also learning the pronunciation at the same time it's really going to save you a lot of time and a lot of effort so you don't have to go back and learn the pronunciation again so whenever you

learn something new you learn a new word you learn a new phrase always look up the pronunciation and learn the correct pronunciation at the same time now why is English spelling and pronunciation so complicated and confusing well there's actually a historical reason for this so 500 years ago in the past We spelled words similarly to the way we do today but we pronounced them completely differently and what happened and this is completely normal this is completely natural is we changed our pronounciation over the years but we changed our pronunciation and not our spelling so our

spelling is like this oldfashioned reflection of iation but our pronunciation is now modern so there's this gap between pronunciation and spelling today and that's why English can be so difficult because we haven't updated our spelling a lot of languages have but English has never done this and it's one of the things that I don't like about the language now as I mentioned earlier it's also true that every rule in English has an ception and this is something that can be very frustrating because the only way to learn these exceptions is to memorize them to learn

them individually and to memorize them so as you get more advanced in English you will have to spend a lot of time memorizing rules but also exceptions memorizing spelling memorizing pronunciation memorizing tenses irregular verbs all that stuff now I mentioned earlier that I did have some good news so yes it can be very very confusing it can be frustrating to learn all these rules to learn all these exceptions but the good news is that as I said before basic English is relatively simple you don't need to speak perfectly to express your ideas and to get

your thoughts across to the other person now if you've watched my other videos or maybe you're a student of mine you'll know that I often say that the purpose of language is not Perfection it's communication so when you speak when you learn a language your priority needs to be communicating getting your ideas to the other person and you can do this without being perfect it's okay to make mistakes everybody makes mistakes even native speakers so don't wait to start speaking don't wait until some magical moment where suddenly you're going to be perfect or suddenly you're

going to be able to speak without making any mistakes cuz that's never going to happen it's it's impossible you will make mistakes but there's nothing wrong with that now that's not to say that you shouldn't improve your spelling that you shouldn't improve Pro your pronunciation your grammar or that you shouldn't learn these rules and these exceptions because you absolutely should and honestly you need to if you want to become truly fluent if you want to improve your writing if you want to improve your English generally but that shouldn't stop you from communicating right now that

shouldn't stop you from expressing yourself and expressing your ideas in English ideally you should be communicating in English every day you should be speaking you should be writing you should be doing something productive in English and at the same time not instead of speaking but at the same time simultaneously you should also be working to improve your spelling your pronunciation your grammar learning the rules learning the exception at the same time not instead or not replacing speaking it's something that should happen at the same time and that's the important thing that's the thing that I

want you to take away from this video yes English can be difficult English can be stupid and I think it is stupid sometimes but unfortunately that's just the way it is there's no getting around that and as I said the good news is that you can still use the language you can still speak you can still communicate even if you don't speak perfectly even if you don't have perfect spelling even if you don't have perfect pronunciation eventually the more you practice the more you speak the more you study the rules the more you study these

exceptions the better your English will become the more confident you will feel but it's a journey it's a process it's not something that happens overnight so start speaking English today not next week not next month but today learn the rules yes learn the exceptions but don't focus on them focus on speaking anyways that's it for today's video if you made it this far and you found the lesson useful make sure to leave a like and let me know in the comments what you find most difficult about English and so you don't miss any future lessons

from me don't forget to subscribe to English at the ready here on YouTube and you can also check out the link in the description below to learn more about how I can help you improve your English hope you have a wonderful day and I'll see you in the next lesson