How can I learn basic English?
The easiest way to learn basic English is to take an English course. These days, everyone wants to learn English. You’ll find a huge variety of English courses in schools near where you live, online, and abroad. It will take you about 70 hours of instruction to learn basic English (level A1 on the CEFR), so if you take a beginner class that meets once a week, it will take you a year to master some basic English. Or you could do the same in about a month on an English course abroad.
The main skills you will learn when studying basic English are:
- Introducing yourself and telling where you’re from
- Talking about your family
- Ordering food at a restaurant
- Describing your habits and hobbies
- Giving directions
- Talking about the weather
- Buying things in a store
It’s easy to begin stringing words together to make comprehensible sentences in English. With no gendered nouns or adjectives, verbs that hardly need conjugation in the present tense (“I have, you have, they have, we have”), and lots of ambient exposure to the language through TV and advertising, most students find learning basic English is more fun than they expected.
The advantage of taking an English course to learn basic English rather than trying to study entire on your own is that in an English course, the teacher will help you get off on the right foot. It’s complicated to approach a brand new language alone. Most people have lots of questions. The pronunciation won’t be obvious. Getting a little basic English under your belt with the guidance of an English teacher will make you much more autonomous going forward if you decide to study alone.