Language Should Feel Natural and Comfortable

“It feels uncomfortable in my mouth - like a suit that doesn’t quite fit properly.”

I found this great quote whilst doing The British Council's FutureLearn MOOC Exploring English. It's from an Italian student and it sums up the problem that people have when trying to use a second language - it just doesn't feel right!

When we speak our language should feel natural and comfortable. It should be part of us. The reason that it does with our mother tongue is that we are pretty much always repeating ourselves. We use words and phrases we are very familiar with most of the time, and we use grammatical structures that we have been repeating since we learnt them early on in primary school.

In my opinion, this makes a very good case for using repetition as a learning strategy for a new language. Practicing a grammatical structure over and over can make it become so familiar that we never have to think about the grammar rule that is being applied.

Classroom practice and doing workbooks and worksheets are one way to go. But they do seem limited - in time for classrooms, and in space for workbooks and worksheets.

This is why I believe that apps are a really good tool to fix common mistakes and to create correct grammatical usage. An app can have hundreds of practice questions on the same grammatical structure and can be used anywhere, anytime.

If you use an app to practice regularly you will get rid of those 'little' problems that get in your way of good communication. Native speakers hear mistakes because they are not what they are expecting and this can be distracting. If you start correcting mistakes in your English pretty soon that 'suit' will start to feel like it fits and is part of you!

Big Tick makes apps for this purpose. You can find them on iTunes for the iPhone and iPad and Android for phones and tablets.