Work smart, not hard

One of the biggest shocks that people have about high school English is that although everyone has studied English at school, hardly anyone speaks it. I'm sure you had English classes for many years in high school, yes? And can you speak fluent English? Just imaging if you had studied your own writing for 6 years in Elementary School and couldn't write a single word! So why can't you speak English? Well, the reason is that you were working hard, but not smart. You had the wrong goals and targets in mind. Up until now the High School English system was built on ideas from the Victorian period. In that time the target wasn't communication English, because there was no-one to communicate with! The aim then was to learn foreign knowledge. People would read books in German or English or Dutch about arms, or medicine or engineering. They would dissect the grammar and translate it into for everyone to read and understand. If you think about your high school English, it was probably something just like that. And in that respect the world has succeeded. But it's not the Victorian period anymore, it's now about communication. Unfortunately the school system hasn't caught up yet, but it will! So realise that what you learnt in high school won't really help you. But don't feel bad about the time you spent, you were just working towards an unsuitable goal. And now things are different, now you have a new goal, a new motivation, and a new determination to achieve that goal!