Perfect your English with Irc

 

Irc is a software using the many opportunities offered by the Internet. It allows you to talk live with everybody connected over the world.

People connected on the net with this software can talk together on different channels. You can create your own private channel and converse with some people you have invited on your channel or connect to " public " channels where people from everywhere can have a discussion. So this software allows you to meet people from many different countries, speak of their culture, their habits, their political feelings,... and make new friends everywhere over the earth

As a matter of fact the tong spoken on the net is, of course, the most international one : English. So if you do not take into account the technical problems, linked to the use of the software, the main problem is the language.

When you write a message to the people you are chatting with, the message appears on their screen. When the screen is full, the messages scroll up. Then on some channels, more than four hundred people are connected and try to talk together. So your screen scrolls very fast and you have to read and understand very quickly if you want to read what was sent to you. Another point is that on the net you are expected to speak English quite well. So if you are too slow to answer someone or if your English is really too bad, people quickly get bored and do not talk to you anymore.

Confronted to these two problems, you have no other solution but improve yourself. The first improvement is only a question of habit : you will quickly be used to type your text very fast. But that is not enough. It will not unable you to hold an interesting and constructive discussion. You should go further if you do not want to feel frustrated because you cannot answer as fast as you would like to : you will have to think in English. The trick I found was to say, faced to my computer’s screen : " Now you must think English! ". Then, when you have been writing English on the net for ten minutes, you do not have to make efforts anymore : you automatically think in English. It quickly becomes an habit and after some days, at the moment you connect, you think in English. It is really an immersion in an English speaking world. I can assure you that when you have been connected four hours long it is really difficult to come back to French. For instance, once, a friend called me in the computer’s room and the only thing I was able to answer was " yes! " !

The last stage of improvement will be the use of English abbreviations, such as " r u " to mean " are you ". It can seem difficult at the beginning because you have to think of the phonetic pronunciation. But in fact you learn by reading the other’s messages.

To conclude, irc can help anybody to improve himself in written English. You are submitted to the same immersion as if you were in an English speaking country. And very often the people you are talking to, correct your mistakes. Even if it can be a bit offending, there is nothing better to improve your English expression.

In fact it is a very diverting way to improve oneself in many fields - not only English : office automation, message typing... while making you new friends and discovering foreign cultures.

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