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behnam December 3rd 2007

Dear friends,

Thank you for studying this writing.

I am Behnam, male, 28 from Iran. I am a teacher and I teach Physics which is my love in my life. Apart from this fact, I love the English language as well. I love it, because it has got good intonation in speaking. I mean falling and rising the voice when someone speaks. I am trying my best to learn English as completely and correctly as I can.

As you all know completely well, one of the most important ways to learn a language is writing. As a matter of fact, we might as well make use of the vocabulary which we have got. When we try to write, we make our passive vocabulary active.
As You know, it is, sometimes, impossible to write without sharing information with a partner. As far as language is concerned, a friend is much more important than taking part in an English class.

I am going to write that I am really interested in making friends with people from all over the world. It makes no difference to me the gender, the skin colour or other factors. I am interested in making friends with some people, who are interested in English, just in order to write in English and make a good progress in writing.

I am looking forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.

Yours Truly,
Behnam 3 December, 2007
My E-mail is: behrampednam@yahoo.com

bugcow December 3rd 2007

Dear Behnam
I'm so glad to see your writing .
Now I will introduce me firt.My name is wangcheng,I come from china.The same with you I like English very much.So I think we will be good friends since this letter.My e-mail:chengwang524@yahoo.com.cn
I'm looking forward to hear from you as soon as possible
Best wishs
Yours Truly,
Wangcheng dec 3rd 2007

NRLHOSSAIN December 3rd 2007

Hello Benham
Good Morning
Thank you for your nice letter. Long days ago I had an opportunity to read your email about some problem in english sentence and grammer in english grammer help section. The email was sent to clare and penapls but you were only people could not satisfy in reply of your question received from other penpals. I feel proud of your confidence about your knowledge in english. The email was published for many times to seek good reply.
I think when anybody wants to write about some topic have to have full confidence of it. You could overcome this matter.To this opportunity i want to know from you as a foreign people how can i write english good without convert.Suppose Bangla is our Ist language.So it is natural when any thinks comes to my mind first i try to speak Bangla but in writing english feels some problem when this sentence some words may be different to understand the reader what i wanted to exact to meaning.So my asking question to you is it possible without coversiion to write english well like me people.
Meantime i wanted to be your good friend .
Best Regards
Hossain

behnam December 3rd 2007

Dear Wangcheng,

Thank you so much for your reply.

As far as I am aware, the life without friends is a tomb. This is a feeling in fact. I am often right with my feeling. As an old saying, the best things in life are free. If we ask someone, what are the best things in life, from your point of view? Everybody will answer to this question in a different way. In my book, Love and friendship are two important things that we cannot buy them. Of course, they are free. Some people think that they can even buy love or friendship if they pay enough money. In my poor opinion, they are absolutely wrong. They pay and get something, but it is not love.

I will take it as a golden opportunity to make friends with you. Please let me know, what can I write to you? What are your interests? I am going to send you a letter as soon as I can.

I wish you would write me too. I am interested in reading about your country, particularly, about its culture and history.

Please write me as soon as you can.

Yours Faithfully,
Behnam 4 December, 2007

behnam December 4th 2007

Dear Hossain,


Thank you very much for your reply. You cannot imagine how it made me happy.
First of all, I am going to ask you about the matter which you have mentioned in your writing. To be honest, I am a bit confused. You have written about something, whereas I cannot remember it at all. Would you please make it a bit clear? When and where have I challenged the accuracy of grammar? Would you please address it to me?

You have written something about fear of writing! The biggest problem most people face in learning a new language is their own fear. They worry that they will not say or write things correctly or that they will look stupid so they do not talk and write at all. Do not do this. Like anything, learning English requires practice. As an old saying goes, practice makes perfect. Do not let a little fear stop you from getting what you want.

You have mentioned that you often translate your mother tongue into English. Do not worry about it. That is just common sense. All the people in the world, who are going to learn English as a second language, while they are a teenage or an adult, are facing with this problem. For me, the problem is much more complicated. My mother tongue is Azari. As you, perhaps, know, the official language of Iran is Persian. I, therefore, think in Azari. When I want to write or say something in English, I have to think in Azari, after that I try to translate it into Persian then into English. What will happen? I am not worry about it. You should forget these kinds of things. Just try to speak and to write. We should learn it as correctly as we can. That is true. The new language learning process is, almost, long and slow. We learn it little by little. A point should be made that we are not going to speak English as a native speaker. In fact, we cannot do that, as mentioned before. We need it as long as people can understand us and as long as we make ourselves understood.

Hossain, I am not going to teach you something, because of the fact that I am a learner myself. I am at the begging of a long distance way. No matter at what point of this way I am. It is extremely important to be on right way. As your writing implies, you are on correct way too. It should be mentioned that a good begging is half the work.

English language, on the one hand, is one of the best one in all over the world. On the other hand, it is so complicated to learn. I love it because of its intonation and stress. The negative side of English is that it is sound based instead of being spelling based. We write something and we pronounce other thing.

Why the English language is important? In other worlds, why do we have to learn it? Well, this is a great question. Nowadays, English is referring as a global language. That is a language of communication and technology. Everybody seems to be learning English. These days if someone does not know English he/she is in danger of being excluded from what is going on in education, at work and especially in the world of technological advances. Very soon English will be the second language of all the people in the world. This is happening while I am writing to you. We cannot be certain how long the process will take, but there is no doubt it will happen.

In order to bring this writing to a close and to make conclusion, it should be mentioned that we have to learn English as far as we can. How can we do that? Well, there are a lot of ways. One of the most important and effective method is writing. When we try to write something, we look for the worlds which we have already learned. In this case, our passive vocabulary turns active.

Now, I am going to say that you all come and give me a helping hand with the English language. I am looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours Sincerely,
Behnam 4 December, 2007

PS. I would like to express my special thanks to Clare, the owner of this site, who has given us this golden opportunity to present our ideas and to write whatever we like. Dear Clare, Thank you very much indeed.

kedus December 4th 2007

hey behnam how are you? I am a new member englishe-at-home my name is kedus.I am 18 years old andI come from Ethiopia but now I live in Australia. I have to improve my englishe language so I would like to communicate with envery one form all over the world and thank you for your nice letter .I think we will be good friend since this letter.
my e-mail is kedus2007@yahoo.com
your penpal kedus

NRLHOSSAIN December 8th 2007

Hello Benham---
Good Morning... . I was very happy that you had replied with a great clarification . But you were little bit confused about my email that could not remember your past experaince written in help section which i can remember because i was a member of this site since 2006. If i had the opportunity to find this email from this site by searching will be glad again. So it is better to forget because you could not remember the seenario anymore which i appreciated to grow confidence from your writing and there was a email of me written to you as well as i can remember.

In your letter i have understand everything but one sentence i could not able to clear myself such as "our passive vocabulary turns active" Can you pls give me an example to clear the meaning.

02) " when we try to write something ,we look for the worlds
which we have learned" i

Can you pls give me the acutal meaning which i can understand.

Here are some question of me which i can raise to you for solution.

I want to write some topic in newspaper. Sometimes it is difficult to start the presnet and past tenese to build the sentence. Is there any restriction to start let present tense tense and to end sentence same tense.

I want to maintain a schedule of writing.How can i do that and what subject i can chose. Can you give advice.

Thank you again
Hossain

behnam December 10th 2007

Dear Hossain,

Thank you for your letter.

You have asked some questions. In order to answer them It should be written that we, as everybody, have got two kinds of vocabularies: Passive vocabulary and active vocabulary. Passive vocabulary is the words and phrases we recognise, know and understand even if we cannot use them all with confidence. Active vocabulary is the words and phrases we not only understand but can use confidently ourselves.

Which is bigger, our active or passive vocabulary? We can increase our passive vocabulary by reading, listening and using books. We can increase our active vocabulary by using these words in conversation and writing. All in all, if we want the words to become part of our active vocabulary, we must use them in conversation, composition and letters.

Your last quetion was so complicated to grasp. My advice to you is to speak to experts.

I hope this helps.

Please do not hesitate to write to me.

Yours Sincerely,
Behnam 10 December, 2007

NRLHOSSAIN December 10th 2007

Hello Benham..
If you give me an example I could understand this point. Can you pls write me specificly.I am waiting for your example.

thank you.
Hossian

behnam December 11th 2007

Dear Hossain,

Thanks a million for your writing.

You have asked for an example. As a matter of fact, It is impossible to give an example about this subject. The only thing that I can do is, to make it a bit simpl. I am going to write something, in the hope that it makes a bit clear. I am not sure, but sometimes going into more details makes subject much more complicated. In other words, we try to find out one things, we face with a lot of unpredictable questions.

Almost all people have got two hands, some people can write with both of them and some people can write only with one of them. in this case, we can say that one oftheir hands is passive in writing. As you know, some footballers are called two-legged. It means that they can play and shoot the football ball with both of their legs. In this case, both of their legs are active. I write with my right hand. I cannot write with my left hand well. Therefore, it is passive now. If I begin to try to write with my left hand, after some months or, maybe, some years, I will be able to write with my left hand as well. In this case, we can say, my passive hand turns active.

Let us imagine that we are studying a book that gives us some informatin about a particular subject. Suppose There are two paragraphs on page 25 and we are studying one of them. We, sometimes,can easily understand what is written in this paragraph, even though there are some words that we do not know their true meaning. To put it another way, in spite of the fact that we do not know the meaning of some words in the paragraph, we can grasp what it is going to give us. In this case, we make guess about the meaning of unknown words. After getting the information which that paragraph gives us, we close the book and make decision to write what we have already understood from that paragraph, in a simple way. We try hard and we find it very difficult to write about it. What is the reason? We both have understood it easily, but when it comes to writing, it seems too difficult. Why?
Now, we should get, in conclusion, that there is a world difference between understanding something and being able to write it. As far as I am concerned, the same difference goes between passive vocabulary and active vocabulary.

I hope this helps.

Please do not hesitate to write to me.

Yours Sincerely,
Behnam, 11 December, 2007