In my experience, two factors make English difficult to learn.
1. Pronunciation and Spelling
In English spelling and pronunciation are not identical. English inherited a lot of foreign words, including Latin, French, Dutch, and German and they kept the original spelling but anglicised the pronunciation.
Sound /f/ is usually spelt with “f” in words “ fake, fix, frame”, but it can also be spelt with “gh” in words “laugh, tough” or with “ph” in words “phone, philosophy, phobia”.
At the same time, words with different spelling and meanings may have the same pronunciation. Here are a few examples: one - won; soul - sole; steal - steel; mean - meen; write -right.
Many letters are silent in English. For example, silent /w/ in words “write, who, whimsical, wholesale”, or silent /l/ in words “walk, talk, chalk”, and so on.
To master spelling and pronunciation download the app Elocution Lessons. Then follow up with the apps Get Rid of your Accent UK1, Business English Speech (British English) or American Accent App (American English).
2. Phrasal verbs, idiomatic and colloquial expressions and the use of prepositions
Many students make the mistake of memorising separate words and creating expressions with them. That leads to many mistakes with the use of prepositions and the phrases are not what natives would usually use.In my experience, it is more efficient to memorise phrases to avoid making mistakes with phrasal verbs and prepositions.
I recommend that you download the app Fluent English Speech; you will master connected speech patterns and sound more like a native English speaker linking words in a phrase. You will also learn lots of idiomatic and colloquial expressions used by native English speakers.
The same apps are also available on Google Play. The functionality is ideal: read, listen, record and compare your speech with the model (actors with perfect pronunciation were used to create soundtracks for these apps). The apps have spelling variations for all English sounds and mouth diagrams to help you make the correct speech organ positions in words, phrases and poetry.
When starting your practice with these apps, go to “How to use this app” and click on: the difficult sounds typical for your nationality, then click on your nationality to work effectively with a more focused approach.
The apps contain:
1. A CD function, recording and comparing functions
2. Spelling variations for all sounds
3. Fluency and difficult speech patterns exercises
4. Intonation and sentence stress exercises
5. Pronunciation and articulation exercises
6. Tongue twisters