English Language Laboratory

Learn English Through Pictures

Category: English Language Laboratory

English Language Laboratory

  • Suffering From Anglo Mania? Here’s The Cure

    Anglo mania is the most dangerous disease most English learners suffer from. How to cure this malady and what is the highly effective drug to cure this? You can solve this problem by yourself. Sit comfortably and meditate on you own language and how you learnt it when you were a baby. Can you remember the method you used to learn your mother tongue? Do all the other people who use your mother tongue speak in the same manner or differently? Do people in different localities use it differently? Are there some differences in writing and speaking? Are there standards such as polite, common and vulgar in your language use? Is your grammar very complicated or simple? If you find answers to these questions apply them to English, too.

    English is another language used by people living in many parts of the world. It is not a super language used by super class of people as most of you think it is. Even, in the United Kingdom, it is spoken differently. British English, Scottish English Wales English and Irish English slightly differ in usage. British English, American English and Australian English also differ slightly. But you think these slight differences as very great differences. Don’t run away with these false and foolish ideas. We have internationally accepted Standard English. If you learn Standard English, you can communicate perfectly well with anybody who lives in any part of the globe in English without any fear if he knows English. Don’t be afraid and get trembled when somebody start to talk to you in English. Be calm and listen carefully and answer with the words you know.

    If you are suffering from Anglo mania, start learning English through pictures. That is the only medicine to cure it.

  • Why Learning English Through Pictures?

    Language learning is purely a personal affair. One can never master a second language unless one tries to compare and contrast it with one’s mother tongue. That is the secret of mastering a second language. If approach in the right way, it is extremely easy to learn English. This article is mostly intended for those who have been confused and perplexed by teachers and text book writers, and who are struggling hard to learn English for IELTS and TOEFL.

    Before we begin to learn a second language, we must think about how we started learning our mother tongue. From the very moment an infant’s eye and ear start functioning, it begins to record in its memory all the people, animals and things it sees and all the sounds it hears. Gradually the baby understands the relations between picture and sound as it hears the same sound repeatedly used to indicate the same person by elders. The baby always sees its mother and hears the sound ‘Mom’ or whatever sound uttered to indicate mother and understands the relation between picture and sound. That is the starting point of our learning process. Picture comes first and sound follows. Sound is the shadow of the picture. No picture, no shadow.

    You have learnt all the words in your mother tongue indicating relatives in the family. Now draw a family tree and try to use the following words.

    Husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, parents, children, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, cousin brother, cousin sister, grandfather, grandmother, grandson, granddaughter, grandparents grandchildren, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, (If you have such relatives use these words too.) great grandfather, great grandmother, great grandson, great granddaughter, step father, step mother, step son, step daughter

    So, start learning English through pictures.

  • Learn English Through Pictures

    Have you ever peeped into your mind? Do you see your mind as a dense jungle of words or as a huge album of pictures? In fact your mind is a wonderful universe of your own which nobody else can enter unless you invite. How can you invite one to enter your universe unless you have words? Words are the keys to open the doors of your mind. With each word you utter you open a door to your listener and he sees some part of your universe.

    Have you ever thought that the words you use create pictures in other people’s minds? How do words come to you to express your thoughts if there were no pictures in your mind? First, you see a person, an animal or a thing, then, you learn the name. As soon as you learn the name, it hides itself behind the picture of the person, the animal or the thing you saw. Whenever you hear the word or see the word the picture appears in your mind’s eye and whenever you want to say something pictures followed by words emerge.

    Learn English through pictures

    Once you understand this truth about learning languages, you can find the correct path to learn ENGLISH. Start learning English through pictures. Look at a picture and then learn to read it using words. Don’t try to memorize words. Just remember the picture and word together. Words cannot survive without pictures. The more words you have, the better you can express your thoughts. Then, you can open all the doors of your universe and invite others to come and see your own wonderful creations. That is what great writers do by creating master pieces with words. Learning English through pictures is the one and only method of successful Learning.

  • English for IELTS or TOEFL

    TOEFL and IELTS are the two biggest standardized tests of the English language. These tests assess your reading, listening, speaking and writing skills. This article is a brief introduction about learning English for IELTS or TOEFL.

    The eye (physical eye and mind’s eye) plays a major role in your English language learning process. Eye contact processes ideas unit by unit, helps to break sentences in correct places and to use stress on words which we wish to focus on before we begin to write or speak. When learning English for IELTS or TOEFL, your reading, listening and understanding skills should be brought to perfection.

    As you read a sentence, the picture drawn by its words should appear to your mental eye. A complete sentence is a perfect picture. If you are unable to see this mental picture or get an unclear picture, you won’t be able to give the correct answer to the question set to test you English language skills. To have a perfect picture, you must be able to break a sentence into component units. This is highly important in speaking.

    If you break the part of a sentence in wrong places, the examiner will grade your performance very poor. Most students preparing for IELTS and TOEFL never pay any attention to this. Isn’t it absurd to break sentences in the manner of ‘ This is my…..book and….. that is my…..pen..’ ‘ Then I….. went to the…. railway station to… see my… friend off.’ They should be read or spoken as,’This is….my book…and…. that is…. my pen. ‘ Then…. I went…. to the railway station.. to see… my friend off.’ It is not correct to use a preposition and article together without a noun. But we commonly hear sound units like ‘in the’, ‘on the’, ‘ at the’, ‘under the’, ‘over the’ etc. So don’t use this kind of English for IELTS or TOEFL.

  • Learning English Grammar Articles

    Whenever we open our eyes, we see uncountable number of things around us. We see from tiny grains of sand to giant stars, from dew drops to vast sea, from tiny bugs to huge whales.

    We have given names to all living and nonliving things for our convenience to recognize them. Seeing things and recognizing things are quite different. We need to know the name of a thing to recognize it but to know the name is irrelevant with a thing to see. In communication nomenclature is a must. Nobody can communicate without knowing names of things, living or nonliving. In perfect communication we have to express whether the thing we mention is define or not. To solve this problem we use three tiny words called ‘Articles’. They are ‘A’, ‘An’ and ‘The’.

    Do you know how to use these tiny little words? It is very easy to understand. If you see something unique or special, use ‘The’ before the noun. We use ‘The’ with singular nouns as well as plural nouns if unique. If a thing is one out of many common ones, use ‘A’ before the noun to show it is ‘One’ out of many. When you find it difficult to pronouns ‘A’ with nouns beginning with vowel sounds, use ‘An’ instead of ‘A’ giving the same meaning. Don’t use Articles with plural nouns if the noun is not defined.

    Try naming the major parts of your body. ‘The head’, ‘The body’, ‘An arm’, ‘An arm’, ‘The arms’, ‘A leg’, ‘A leg’, ‘The legs’. When you say, ‘The arms’ learn to pronouns it correctly. Pronounce ‘The’ as ‘Thi’.

    Once you learn this simple thing, you will be able to read the world as you see it. You can learn English articles further, at the English Language Laboratory.

  • Learn English Nouns Online

    In our universe, we only see matter and actions. The combination of matter in different quantities has made all fauna such as man, animals, reptiles and birds, then, flora such as trees, plants and creepers, next, things such as soil, sand, rock, planets and stars. So we have named them to recognize them. (In English Grammar names are called Nouns)

    Just sitting comfortably in your living room, you can see mentally if you know the names of all these things. Your vocabulary of names does wonders in this manner. If you don’t know the name of an animal when you see one you have never seen before, you have to ask somebody who knows the name of that animal. If you don’t learn the name of that animal and if you want to tell somebody about the animal you saw, even with hundreds of words you will not be able to give an exact picture of that particular animal. This is why we must learn the names of whatever we see.

    Begin your English language learning by keeping this in mind. Start to learn English nouns for whatever you see. Human learning always begins with learning nouns. First, learn the names of the parts of your body. If you go on collecting new words for the parts of your body, you will be surprised to see what a wonderful creation, the human body is. So improve your vocabulary of names and see what a wonderful and beautiful universe we live in.

  • Learning English Sentence Construction

    A single word is a simple picture. A phrase is an unfinished picture. A sentence is a complete picture giving the reader a clear thought and some feeling conveyed through words. Read the following words, phrases and sentences given.

    Box

    The box

    on the box

    In the box

    The cat is in the box.

    There is a cobra in the box.

    Whenever you want to make a sentence, create a complete picture in your mind using words, and phrases and idiomatic expressions. In the last sentence given above an idiomatic expression has been used. When you want to introduce an unknown person, an animal or a thing, begin your sentence with ‘There is a/an ..’. If the noun is in the plural form, use ‘There are ….’. Now, read the world using this expression and extend your sentence adding prepositional phrases as given above. This should be the beginning of your English sentence construction.

    The next step is easier than you think it is. Learn as many action words as possible by observing the actions of people and animals. Man – sitting, standing, walking, running, jogging, marching, squatting, leaning, resting, panting, coughing, sneezing, crying, going, coming, leaving, arriving, returning, limping, loitering,  smiling, laughing, bathing, swimming etc. Dog – barking, growling, howling, whining, yelping, whimpering, lying, sleeping etc. All these action words are called intransitive verbs in English grammar because they can give complete pictures by themselves.

    Now, continue your sentence construction process with the following patterns

    There is a girl at the bus stop. She is smiling.

    There is a dog near the bus stop. It is sleeping.

    By this way you simply understand what Present Continuous Tense is. Continue means going on. Present Continuous means the action we see is going on and we are not interested about the beginning or the end of the action but only interested about what is happening at this present moment. Here you need to learn the following Pronouns in making these sentences.

       Third Person Singular           Third Person Plural

Man, boy, child etc. - He      Men, boys, children etc.  – They
Woman, girl etc.  - She        Women, girls etc.  – They
Dog, cat, bird etc.  - It      Dogs, cats, birds etc.  - They
Tree, flower etc.  - It        Trees, flowers etc.  – They

Man and woman, girls and boys etc. – They

    Now read whatever you see around you using the two sentence patterns given above as the first step of English sentence construction.