Dmitry Krutov

Yes, and here we start count discrepancies between classic education and "retraining activity". All classic language educational systems were based on the strong assumption that language "is a knowledge" despite the fact that this this is a model of human being first.

Yes, this functionality realized here. http://123abceng.com Writing - it's part of "spell" exercise. You can add your own word list, and web-application will start vocabulary descriptions and images related to your word list. For your task you can set up to 0 all grammar quizzes, and work only with Most Common exercise and Spells. Most common exercise still important for your case, because system is going go describe your active vocabulary and show to you word descriptions on the base on your knowledge. Than more your level is getting higher, than more complicated dictionary descriptions system will show to you.

For people who learn English. The web-site presents unique method to train vocabulary, grammar and spelling just on the one first page. Web server based on the 3 dictionaries, that covers in total 180 000 words, 3 000 000 sentences and more than 40 000 grammar quizzes (most of them has explanations). Special learning algorithm for adults provides adaptive stream of trainings that can be very useful for people with low cognitive abilities. Users can adjust amount of specific exercises - how many grammars, how many quizzes, how many most common sentences should be processed in the repeated line. Web site has name "How To Think English". It's realizes skills like: prediction the word in the sentence, auto-grammar - when you able to speak like natives, knowing dictionary language and advanced spelling. The method provides services for people with zero language experience and for advanced learners too.

Motivation in language studying is always a relation to significant persons. For somebody it could be "people from the book culture", for others - people who play significant role in theri life. Just kidding. Mother and Father - most important persons, and because of them you have been learned your "mother's tongue" very quickly. If you will fall in love to somebody who speak foreign language... Trust me... you will get first 100 words in the first month of your relationship... Authorities. Yes, that's really important too. If you can be adjusted mentally to people who you respect. That's why scientific world so comprehensive to different languages. People just have a mental attachment to each other. So, in common words, the root of the motivation is a people who you are going to speak with...

Language primarily related to the human behaviour and experience. So, school is a good decision for young students, because it's a source of the new situations. It doesn't means what's particularly have been happening with you when you were being in the language school, but if it was "new", related to your feelings ("love"), contained improvement of your social connections - the final result of education will be good. We actually don't remember "rules" or "words", we remember success and disaster related to our language actions... Could it be useful for adults to visit a school? People have their own families, neighbourhood, social relationships... Who are the teachers for them? Very often - just a dude, like many others. Who are classmates for them? Just nothing! What could happen with adult during educational period? Usually nothing new, nothing interesting. There is a reason, why "easy way" doesn't work for some people...

Only one reason why grammar is so difficult. Broca's area in the brain of age 16 years is usually completely full of native language's patterns. For adults we can't say "learn language", we should say "struggling to restructure small overloaded piece of the brain".

As my closest friend, who is being a poet, have been said once upon a time: And here we should take into account, that language's "complexity" usually primarily relates to society levels. Language is a method people segregation. it contains hundreds almost invisible signs, that allow people from the same social group recognize each other. So, countries with a flat social model usually have easy language. But problem is that: Language from those countries can't be interesting for learning for the vast majority of people.

The Agree. The best results comes with watching movies with subtitles. The source of video is most important, because it relates to "motivation" things. There is impossible to repeat right after actors (or other speakers) who you dislike, or even disrespect. Shadowing is a really hard exercise, because it includes coordination between Audio cortex, Motor Cortex, wide set of interpretation patterns, and finally it's related to Lobe parts of the brain, because each "story", or each "personality" has very deep affecting to our behaviour. 20 minutes video should become a 60 minutes training, and all difficulties, that students can face during this process just show that training is going effectively. Meanwhile, and this is the most important, I guess, the worst scenario for improving pronunciation is a decision to stop paying attention to specific sounds. People, who have been made this mistake wherever in the past, should pass through a long period to "retraining" ignoring patterns in the brain. It relates to the motor cortex first (how you move muscles in your mouth to pronounce words) , but as second, includes problems in audio cortex too (people just can't hear a difference between closest sounds).