Where did we all go wrong in learning English?

 By the time we have reached  2021, we all know that English has become a powerful tool which has captured the entire world. So, as Sri Lankans, we were under the colonial empire that ruled us for many many decades. This resulted in an inevitable Sri Lankan society that believed English as a powerful weapon to climb up the social ladder. 

BUT, even though we so badly need to learn this language how many of Sri Lankans have been fully successful in achieving a good command of English? I think it will be a very small percentage. 

So where did we go wrong? 

I believe, and also there is evidence to say that Sri Lankans treated English as a subject and not a language from the very beginning. A language cannot be learnt like a subject by only giving it two periods for a day.  and also the other whole issue is that, the Sri Lankan syllabus of English, mostly focuses on writing, reading and grammar. The local exam papers are also all about reading and writing with grammar. But where is the spoken language? A language is not reading or writing. There are tribes that do not have an alphabet for themselves, they do not write or read, but, their language is considered a language. 

FACT: out of the 7000 languages we have in the world, only half of them have a written form. 

This proves that for a language to be a language the speech system is necessary before the writing system becomes a necessity. 

This is exactly where we went wrong. How many people speak English in an English classroom or lesson? Nobody. Not even the teachers do sometimes. The speaking aspect is what should be focused on before writing. So I strongly believe that if our country's children had the opportunity to speak and listen to this language, it wouldn't be such a mysterious and difficult language, We have made it difficult by our own mistake

The best way to learn a language is by living among the native speakers of that language. But as it is not practically achievable, these are some methods we can use

1. Watching movies, series with English subtitles first and then without them

2. Reading books, articles, blogs, magazines (anything you can find - even if you don't understand much of it

3.  Using an online or a portable dictionary often

4. Speaking with a friend ( or to yourself if it works for you)

5. Keeping your shame aside and talking even with mistakes

So these are some ways we can use to develop

our language.