Tips to master your English

Skills Improvement Tips

1. daily exercise to increase your English vocabulary

Although you may be undertaking a formal course at an English language school, Australia offers many informal and spontaneous opportunities to increase your vocabulary. By taking advantage of the formal education, as well as a range of different exercises available to you, it is possible to effectively and rapidly increase your English vocabulary.
Online tools
In this technologically advanced age, we are spoilt for choice when it comes to online learning opportunities. While face-to-face education — such as the kind delivered in a formal English course (Melbourne and other Australian cities offer an impressive range of quality courses) — is usually the most effective way to increase your command of the language and English vocabulary, this can be positively supplemented with online activities.

Eight Advantages of Studying English

It is little wonder that so many students, both international and local, choose to study English courses. Proficient and skilled use of the English language can enhance career prospects, allow you to achieve success in business and can open up many opportunities when you choose to study with a credible English school.
While there are many good reasons to study English, here we provide an overview of eight of the most important advantages of studying English:

#1: Without question, English is one of the most widely spoken languages. English is used in many parts of the world and is often the language that is common to people who have a first language other than English.

#2: When it comes to business and matters of trade, the English language tends to be the common currency. By studying English through a respected English school, you can expect to be able to conduct business transactions, write and respond to documents such as: emails, memos, contracts, agreements and reports and possibly pursue a career in business.

#3: Arguably the greatest advantage of studying English is that your career prospects and employment opportunities can vastly increase. People who can speak English fluently (possibly together with a first language) are highly sought after by companies of many types, including international companies. When seeking work, proficiency and confidence in speaking and understanding English can put you at a distinct advantage.

#4: With the world becoming so much closer and more connected, opportunities to travel and explore different parts of the world are more available and, as a result of having studied English, travellers are better able to communicate. In so many parts of the world, English is the common language that is spoken and when you have a command of the English language, travelling and interacting with people of different nationalities can become easier and more enjoyable.

#5: In terms of academia, English is the language most commonly spoken by academics worldwide. Of course, some important research and work occurs in all countries and in a variety of languages, but the vast majority tends to have been conducted, composed and published with the English language as its basis. Academics and scholars that have some knowledge of English frequently find that sharing their ideas and findings with their peers globally is more readily facilitated by their mastery of the English language.
#6: Technology is vital and significant in the day and age in which we live. English is very often the language used for many software programs and for those that are technologically minded and ambitious, the study of English can provide them with useful benefits and knowledge.

#7: Australia has many English schools that are renowned for their success in teaching students’ English and the quality and range of the English courses that they provide. Successful English schools and colleges tend to offer great value for money and support structures to assist students to learn effectively and grow in knowledge, skills and confidence. When you do choose to study English, your education is an investment and it is incredibly important that you derive exceptional value for your money.

#8: English courses are available and specifically tailored for people of varying levels of English proficiency and for those who wish to study English for different purposes. For example, some may want to undertake a very general English course, whereas others may wish to study English in relation to business or for academic purposes.
Through the study of English, a range of advantages are available. Quality courses offer candidates the opportunity to improve job prospects, the capacity to communicate with others and access to information right across the world.

English as a Global Language

For more than half a century, immigrants from the Indian subcontinent and the West Indies have added variety and diversity to the rich patchwork of accents and dialects spoken in the UK. British colonisers originally exported the language to all four corners of the globe and migration in the 1950s brought altered forms of English back to these shores. Since that time, especially in urban areas, speakers of Asian and Caribbean descent have blended their mother tongue speech patterns with existing local dialects producing wonderful new varieties of English, such as London Jamaican or Bradford Asian English. Standard British English has also been enriched by an explosion of new terms, such as balti (a dish invented in the West Midlands and defined by a word that would refer to a 'bucket' rather than food to most South Asians outside the UK) and bhangra (traditional Punjabi music mixed with reggae and hip-hop).
The recordings on this site of speakers from minority ethnic backgrounds include a range of speakers. You can hear speakers whose speech is heavily influenced by their racial background, alongside those whose speech reveals nothing of their family background and some who are ranged somewhere in between. There are also a set of audio clips that shed light on some of the more recognisable features of Asian English and Caribbean English.

Slang

As with the Anglo-Saxon and Norman settlers of centuries past, the languages spoken by today’s ethnic communities have begun to have an impact on the everyday spoken English of other communities. For instance, many young people, regardless of their ethnic background, now use the black slang terms, nang (‘cool,’) and diss (‘insult’ — from ‘disrespecting’) or words derived from Hindi and Urdu, such as chuddies (‘underpants’) or desi (‘typically Asian’). Many also use the all-purpose tag-question, innit — as in statements such as you’re weird, innit. This feature has been variously ascribed to the British Caribbean community or the British Asian community, although it is also part of a more native British tradition - in dialects in the West Country and Wales, for instance — which might explain why it appears to have spread so rapidly among young speakers everywhere.

Original influences from overseas

The English Language can be traced back to the mixture of Anglo-Saxon dialects that came to these shores 1500 years ago. Since then it has been played with, altered and transported around the world in many different forms. The language we now recognise as English first became the dominant language in Great Britain during the Middle Ages, and in Ireland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From there it has been exported in the mouths of colonists and settlers to all four corners of the globe. ‘International English’, ‘World English’ or ‘Global English’ are terms used to describe a type of ‘General English’ that has, over the course of the twentieth century, become a worldwide means of communication.

American English

The first permanent English-speaking colony was established in North America in the early 1600s. The Americans soon developed a form of English that differed in a number of ways from the language spoken back in The British Isles. In some cases older forms were retained — the way most Americans pronounce the <r> sound after a vowel in words like start, north, nurse and letter is probably very similar to pronunciation in 17th century England. Similarly, the distinction between past tense got and past participle gotten still exists in American English but has been lost in most dialects of the UK.
But the Americans also invented many new words to describe landscapes, wildlife, vegetation, food and lifestyles. Different pronunciations of existing words emerged as new settlers arrived from various parts of the UK and established settlements scattered along the East Coast and further inland. After the USA achieved independence from Great Britain in 1776 any sense of who ‘owned’ and set the ‘correct rules’ for the English Language became increasingly blurred. Different forces operating in the UK and in the USA influenced the emerging concept of a Standard English. The differences are perhaps first officially promoted in the spelling conventions proposed by Noah Webster in The American Spelling Book (1786) and subsequently adopted in his later work, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). Both of these publications were enormously successful and established spellings such as center and color and were therefore major steps towards scholarly acceptance that British English and American English were becoming distinct entities.

Influence of Empire

Meanwhile, elsewhere, the British Empire was expanding dramatically, and during the 1700s British English established footholds in parts of Africa, in India, Australia and New Zealand. The colonisation process in these countries varied. In Australia and New Zealand, European settlers quickly outnumbered the indigenous population and so English was established as the dominant language. In India and Africa, however, centuries of colonial rule saw English imposed as an administrative language, spoken as a mother tongue by colonial settlers from the UK, but in most cases as a second language by the local population.

English around the world

Like American English, English in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa has evolved such that they are distinct from British English. However, cultural and political ties have meant that until relatively recently British English has acted as the benchmark for representing ‘standardised’ English — spelling tends to adhere to British English conventions, for instance. Elsewhere in Africa and on the Indian subcontinent, English is still used as an official language in several countries, even though these countries are independent of British rule. However, English remains very much a second language for most people, used in administration, education and government and as a means of communicating between speakers of diverse languages. As with most of the Commonwealth, British English is the model on which, for instance, Indian English or Nigerian English is based. In the Caribbean and especially in Canada, however, historical links with the UK compete with geographical, cultural and economic ties with the USA, so that some aspects of the local varieties of English follow British norms and others reflect US usage.

An international language

English is also hugely important as an international language and plays an important part even in countries where the UK has historically had little influence. It is learnt as the principal foreign language in most schools in Western Europe. It is also an essential part of the curriculum in far-flung places like Japan and South Korea, and is increasingly seen as desirable by millions of speakers in China. Prior to WWII, most teaching of English as a foreign language used British English as its model, and textbooks and other educational resources were produced here in the UK for use overseas. This reflected the UK's cultural dominance and its perceived ‘ownership’ of the English Language. Since 1945, however, the increasing economic power of the USA and its unrivalled influence in popular culture has meant that American English has become the reference point for learners of English in places like Japan and even to a certain extent in some European countries. British English remains the model in most Commonwealth countries where English is learnt as a second language. However, as the history of English has shown, this situation may not last indefinitely. The increasing commercial and economic power of countries like India, for instance, might mean that Indian English will one day begin to have an impact beyond its own borders.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

  ENGLISH LANGUAGE 

English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now the most widely used language in the world. It is spoken as a first language by the majority populations of several sovereign states, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and a number of Caribbean nations. It is the third-most-common native language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. It is widely learned as a second language and is an official language of the European Union, many Commonwealth countries and the United Nations, as well as in many world organizations. English arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and what is now southeast Scotland. Following the extensive influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 17th century to the mid-20th century, through the British Empire, and also of the United States since the mid-20th century, it has been widely propagated around the world, becoming the leading language of international discourse and the linguafranca in many regions. Historically, English originated from the fusion of closely related dialects, now collectively termed Old English, which were brought to the eastern coast of Great Britain by Germanic settlers (Anglo-Saxons) by the 5th century – with the word English being derived from the name of the Angles,and ultimately from their ancestral region of Angel (in what is now Schleswig-Holstein). A significant number of English words are constructed on the basis of roots from Latin, because Latin in some form was the linguafranca of the Christian Church and of European intellectual life. The language was further influenced by the Old Norse language because of Viking invasions in the 9th and 10th centuries. The Norman conquest of England in the 11th century gave rise to heavy borrowings from Norman French, and vocabulary and spelling conventions began to give the appearance of a close relationship with Romance languages to what had then become Middle English. The Great Vowel Shift that began in the south of England in the 15th century is one of the historical events that mark the emergence of Modern English from Middle English. Owing to the assimilation of words from many other languages throughout history, modern English contains a very large vocabulary, with complex and irregular spelling, particularly of vowels. Modern English has not only assimilated words from other European languages, but from all over the world. The Oxford English Dictionary lists over 250,000 distinct words, not including many technical, scientific, and slang terms.