Mistakes in learning English

By Azys Syaiful Anwar

Some foreign language learners say that learning English is very difficult. They find that English has very different structure than either mother tongue or their second language. Besides, to speak English, they also need to master how to pronounce English word. Since the learners are accustomed to speak their daily language (for example, Indonesian) with its dialect, they may find difficulties to speak in English accent.

Moreover, the low motivation of learning English is also big barrier of mastering English. Motivation is a kind of individual aspects which still can be influenced even from the some external factors, such as our friends, books, and other resources. If people having low motivation or considered as unconfident people, they will find many problems.

Pessimistic or having low motivation in learning English are kind of inhibiting factor which must be ignored. Pessimistic will lead us to the failure. Furthermore, anxiety will bring us to make many mistakes. However, for some learners, they may not able to get rid from that feeling. Then, they start to make mistakes.

Here are some mistakes that they may make:

1.      Trying to make it perfect.

There is Indonesian proverb says “tak ada gading yang tak retak” (there is no elephant ivory which isn’t cracked). It means that everything must not be perfect. So, why must be afraid to make mistakes while learning?

In speaking a language, some people may make some mistakes, even when you speak your own mother tongue. I think you have ever made mistake in speaking a word in your native (for example, Indonesian). Mistakes will be the most common thing in the learning process and with some practices we can try to minimize the mistakes.

2.      Comparing our language

Some learner may compare their English to their friend who is better in English, or even to the native speaker. It lead them to use more difficult words, and try to construct difficult sentences, but what will actually happen is that they just speak confusing sentences.

To avoid this mistake, people need to aware that they speak their English. So, they need to be confident with their own English. People can use simple English sentences to communicate. As long as you understand the conversation and they do either, it can be very good communication.

3.      Translating words

Vocabulary is the basic need of mastering language. However, some people may use memorizing method in acquiring new vocabulary. They spend many times to translate a word rather than trying to paraphrase it.

Paraphrasing is the activity of understanding a word by guessing from the context. It’s doesn’t matter if we don’t get the exact meaning of the sentence. We just need to get the point and it will make us to be able to understand a sentences.

People can use thesaurus to get a word meaning. Through thesaurus, people will get the similar word of the word they don’t understand. Once they know a word meaning, they will also get the other varieties of that word.