Essay from Diyora Umarkulova

Young Central Asian teen with long black hair and a lanyard around her neck and a pale blue tee shirt. She's outside by some park benches and a lawn and on a gravel path.
Diyora Umarkulova

My experience of learning English

In today’s world, knowledge of a second language is not an uncommon desire but rather a necessity. Being able to talk in another language opens up various possibilities. Learning new foreign languages becomes more and more important in these days. Since my childhood I tried to learn any foreign languages but my favourite one is English. It is one of the international languages, which is used around the world for business, trade, political and economic discussions as well as everyday conversations.

I have been learning English since 6th grade. In the beginning,  I thought English was a difficult language because of grammatical tricks. Fortunately,  I learned it very quickly, and I participated in competitions that are connected with English. When I graduated,  I entered the academic lyceum UzSWLU. I have studied there for two years,  and during my academic period at lyceum, I learned something new, and I was able to pass the CEFR and IELTS exams. Moreover, before taking the exams, I went to extracurricular activities in order to improve my English skills. I met new people who became guides in learning English. I was not limited to the tasks that were given at the training center, I studied at home, went to the mock exams, and practiced every day to improve my listening skills. Since I studied at the Lyceum of World Languages, we organized speaking clubs every week. During quarantine I could not attend courses, but during this difficult period we found a way to prepare for English exams. We arranged various conversational interviews using interactive applications such as Zoom and video chats, I joined language groups, and I met new people. Also, I especially want to mention the work of my teachers. They helped me a lot. There were days when I stopped making progress, but they always supported and motivated me to get back on track. Since my mother works as a teacher, I went to school and sat in on English lessons to learn how the lesson is taught and how the teacher should behave during the lesson. I started teaching English lessons to young children, and while teaching, firstly, I repeated old topics that I had forgotten, and secondly, I taught children to speak English fluently. There is nothing better than seeing the results of your lessons on your students. At first, I watched English movies with subtitles, but soon, I understood movies without subtitles and downloaded various English songs, and listened to them. In May, as I mentioned before, I passed the IELTS and got band score 6. Yes, it is a modest result, but I did my best to learn the language. Therefore, even with the help of this certificate, I did not pass the exams in English. Now I am studying at the University of World Languages. My groupmates know English better than I do, this makes me try to speak English more and more. Thanks to professional teachers, I have attained a lot. The main thing that I learned thanks to these classes is the ability to join any conversation and find a common language with everyone. I really loved the methods of our teachers because they let us do everything on our own, and because of this, we learn how to do everything independently of others.

This is my path in learning English. This goal is still far away, and I will continue until I learn everything about this language. But language is not an exact science, so it will develop and improve day by day.