How To Speak English Like A Native Speaker

            There are many ways offered by many people out there through many media to teach you about how to speak English like a native speaker. But here, I wanna share my experience how to speak English like a native speaker. One thing you gotta know in myself concerning to English is that once I was wondering about how to speak English like a native speaker (intention), then I did a lot of things that literally helped me out to be like that. Here, I conclude my ways into 5 ways, but they’re kind of challenging for you. But anyways, you necessarily have to notice them, let's get started!.

1.      Get used to speak to your pairs or English teachers/lecturers or native speakers

I have a unique introduction to American culture, I started to learn how to speak English when I was 18 years old as I was a freshman in university. I found a great lecturer who was a native speaker from USA teaching in my university. I was grateful for having him cause in my mind I could learn a lot from him even though we’re totally different.

One day I challenged myself to ask a question with full English to that native speaker after he explained the explanation, he taught me in odd semester which was second semester. I tried my best. Suddenly, he understood what I just asked. Of course, I was so happy and I got fired up, then I made his understanding as a meaningful reward for me to be a better person every single day, and I was determined to be able to speak like him one day.

I love practicing and I truly believe this quote “Practice Makes Perfect”. As a result, there are many English lecturers complemented me that I am an advanced students. I thought that maybe I’m in intermediate level, but they assessed me like that, even it is “Advanced”, I thanked to them. After that, I am determined to really have to sharpen my skills in order to try to be perfect. I actually don’t have someone to talk to in English in my class, but I try to talk to my English lecturers. Definitely they understand me. I feel really blessed to have these great people. I don’t wanna be a student who’s like a person with suit and tie sitting on a chair that doesn’t have anything to be proud of and doesn’t have any significant changes, but I wanna be the opposite to that. The most important thing in practicing is consistency, while the most important thing in speaking is fluency. Grammar is not really important in it, because the function of language is to make your listeners understand, just be confident in speaking!.

2.      Love singing

Singing involves voice to do it and speaking is derived from voice. So, it’s important for you to love singing English songs. It facilitates you to sound words by imitating and pretending like the voice in the song. In fact, most of people liking singing are facilitated to speak English easily, clearly, and beautifully. Even though you’re not a singer, but if you like singing so much, it’s not that important talking about how awesome you sing, but it’s important for you to notice how you can pronounce word per word to improve your pronunciation.

      3.      Make intonation

My English lecturer who’s a native speaker ever said that “When an American speaks in English, their intonation or tone is not flat in the whole of their speaking, but it’s like high and down, back and forth”. An accent of English is not the same with your region accent, you have to try to PRETEND TO BE A NATIVE SPEAKER as possibly as you can. If you’re into British Accent, I think you’re gonna sound like a native speaker if you use intonation in your speaking, try it!

4.      Sound “R” letter correctly if you’re into American Accent

This kind of sounds cliché, but it really works, tho. Sounding “R” triggers your listener feels that you’re like a native speaker and it’s so cool. For those who are not capable of sounding “R”, it means you tend to belong to Bristish Accent, but it doesn’t always omit the clear R for all the time. If you insist to be able to sound a good R, you can watch this video below and practice it every day, it really works, and I believe you can do it. 

5.      Practice alone in home every day

You know what? You are responsible for your own self. If you come up with your target, hold it, and that yourself is a huge influence on it. Don’t be embarrassed if other people think that you’re insane, it’s not true, you’re doing something useful, not something useless. You need to much motivation to be brave. Your life is yours, not theirs. Use any recordings either it's audio or video in order to evaluate your speaking in a long range of time, for example 1 month or 3 months you want to compare. Then, ask your surroundings to assess your speaking. I’m genuinely sure that you’re on the lookout for your target. Practice a lot whenever you want and do not take for granted this practice. JUST DO IT!!!

So, that’s what I did, too. See after you do them all in a few days or weeks or months or years, there must be any changes, trust me, it works!.

Thank you so much for reading this, hopefully this blog will be useful for y’all, you may leave a comment and I’ll see you guys in the next blog… peace😘

Tips and Tricks for Learning and Mastering English Grammar

            5 Tips for answering Grammar questions by my experience added with recommended resources. It’s up to you to try this or not, if you can get along with your preceding ways and you feel that’s very successful, that’s okay, you gotta keep it up, if you feel that you got failure and you wanna be better, better you try my tips below. This is intended to help English learners out on how to learn and master Grammar.

1.      Think of what is practical is important

When you get a drill assigned by your English teacher, make sure that your heart thinks of practicality as you’re happy playing something then it facilitates you to remember the activity. You know what? People prefer your good skill rather than your high score, and that’s you’re going to show off to them. Your skill is a down-to-earth thing you need to emphasize. When you get an English exercise or exam, you are subconsciously going to be able to answer all the questions easily and quickly and you’re not being worry at all.

2.      Make sure that you have a leisure/free time to practice

“Practice makes perfect”, this quote I firstly found when I wanted to start how to speak English and learn all of the skills. If you don’t believe it, I give an example, you can ask a former national swimmer athlete “How could she/he be a winner that won many competitions and awards and became a play-off?”. It’s because of exercising a lot. So, it’s important for you to practice whenever in order to reach your own perfectness of English. My lecturer ever said: THERE’S NO APPROPRIATE TIME TO PRACTICE, you JUST DO IT WHENEVER IT IS. I know the time like morning is the best time for practicing, but how about if you all of a sudden got an emergency activity? It’s better for you to do that, cause practicing can be done whenever you want. My morning routine is actually practicing by speaking English as possible as I do. You know what? I have ever meditated myself for 3 months to learn English Grammar as I was a beginner at that time. I meditated by practicing a lot. It really worked.

3.      Don’t be afraid of making mistakes

You know what? “We learn nothing if we’re right all the time”. It’s okay for you to make mistakes because you can learn something from that and can be a better person every single day. Some people think that they’re being unconfident if they’re not perfect on their preparation of English, that’s absolutely crazy. Are you perfect as a human? Remember, we’re continually learning. Again and again, it’s okay for you to make mistakes (good mistakes). If your pairs laugh at your speaking, for example, laugh together!

4.      Use existing medias

As long as you have a phone, you can use it wisely and do the paramount things you’ve to use from it such as watching English movies on YouTube. I think YouTube is a very useful and well-known media among others in learning English. You can watch many videos using English by turning on the subtitle. Then, screenshot grammatical words from that, and learn about it after watching. Instead of watching TV a lot or checking other social media which is perhaps less important for you, you can watch YouTube. You can also promote level of your speaking and your listening, as well. Another interesting social media you can try is Instagram. If you follow native speakers or pairs, look at the caption on the photo posted, because there must be a bunch of words that are familiar. Moreover, you can keep up the recent information or notification in the feed icon on social media, so you can learn English every day as wisely as you use.

5.      Study by your own self first, ask others later

Some people are used to expecting other people to teach them English all the time. If you’re used to it, you may be pent up in every situation. Now change it, guys!. A teacher has their own occupations in every time, you cannot force them to accompany and teach you in home for all the time, it’s kind of impossible. If you misunderstood about grammar, the first thing you’ve to do is that you have to learn it first by your own self, you have GOOGLE, search for it in it, or you can use English books. You didn’t realize that you live in Millennial Era in which sophisticated technologies are appearing, you have to be grateful for that. You can also use YouTube to learn Grammar, look for Grammar lesson videos that has a tutor in it, it will help you out, and I'm sure you will understand fast because most of us are visual learners. After studying by your own self, you can ask your pairs or your teachers about any difficult parts you don’t understand, you may get the point. It’s actually easy and it’s effective. Especially, for students, imagine you pay the tuition in a university, what do you get in that university?, it’s important for you to ask. Your lecturer’s salary is as well paid as your asking.

            For the tricks, maybe you have your own great tricks to learn Grammar. For me, there’s only 1 trick for learning grammar, but it's very useful, though. This trick is also once said by my English lecturers, that is be CONSISTENT! (Grammar must be parallel and based on the context)

Thank you so much for reading this, hopefully this blog will be useful for y’all, you may leave a comment, and I’ll see you guys in the next blog… peace😘

Encountering An Unexpected Thing and Challenging It

            I have ever experienced the saddest thing in my life. You know what? I almost died because I suddenly suffered a disease called “stiff” when I was in first grade in elementary school, probably like I was 6 or 7 years old. I need to tell this.

Every day, I had to move around my body because of it. I was nursed in ULIN hospital Banjarmasin for some days and I was injected with many medicines at that time. It’s ever so miserable in my lifetime. I didn’t really remember, but my mom did. My mom said that she put her index finger under my nose, that there’s no breath in it. Then she touched and tried to press slightly the pulse of my wrist, she told me that it didn’t throb anymore for a long time. After that, all of a sudden God’s miracle came up me and eventually I could be alive again. Now, I surely feel really blessed because of that. Every day, I teach myself how to be stronger every single day and work on the improvements of my passions in order to make this life more color and more meaningful even if I still have weakness in myself, but at least I try to be better and look forward by using inner eyes, not using naked eyes. When I try to encourage myself “I CAN DO IT”, it really does.

I have ever experienced another sad thing is that I accidentally got a crash at Karya Budi Utama Residence on August 11^th, 2018 at 10.40 AM, I need to remember this. It affected to some parts of my body, but I don’t want to mention them because it will make me ashamed, just my kind friends know about it. Last but not least, it made me depressed and stressed out thinking of it. On the contrary, I felt like I was tested by God how to be a grateful person even though you had body shaming.

            I challenged myself by participating myself into an agenda in my campus that was held by my lecturer of Phonology subject in which there was entertainment session at that time. I volunteered myself to be a singer and an announcer at once. That’s the way of me to look up to God that I had to do something before passing away from this world.

            It’s kind of hard for me to sing in the higher octave as my mouth can’t be wide-opened mouth at that time. On the day before the day of the agenda, I set up the preparation, I practiced singing. When I warmed up my voice with a microphone, there’s someone who mocked me so much because I couldn’t open my mouth widely and it affected to my voice. I actually wanted to infuse whistle voice in my singing as it is very high and beautiful, so it’s going to be awesome to be heard by other people. During my mouth area condition, I couldn’t sing with high head voice, let alone whistle voice. I sang two songs, in the morning, the first song was “Mine”, I sang solo, I used the techniques: chest voice, falsetto, mid-head voice, and vibrato. The second one in the afternoon was a song offered by my friend to sing duet, that was “Perfect” unfortunately I didn’t really remember the lyrics because I was not into it, I was being anxious about it, but I tried to sing along with the audience. Hahaha… I’m a quirky person and I am comfortable on stage till now.

Surprisingly, I became an announcer using English in a radio studio named RAFADA FM 107.7 in my campus. I announced for the first time exactly on Saturday/ December 28^th 2018 at 5 PM and I sang on Monday. So, before I performed at the agenda, the preceding agenda I got was announcing. I felt really blessed to have this opportunity and I did my best.

My unexpected thing frightening me turned into my expected thing by my own bravery to deal with it. Normal humans are not allowed to consider abnormal humans that “Hey... You’re supposed to do this!, You’re not supposed to do that!”, even abnormal humans are capable of doing something beyond normal humans’ capabilities. Who are you? Which one are you? Are you normal or not normal?. Luckily, now I can be normal again without considering body shaming and currently I love exercising, I love sport because it teaches me discipline and keeps my health. Thank you so much for the people who always support me in whatever I do. It really means a lot.

“Misery loves company” is the thing I must avoid because if they can’t do it doesn’t mean I can’t do it, too. That's not me. When people try to put me in their little boxes, my deep heart says "Well, I am sorry... I'm not gonna be in your little boxes, cause I'm here to move the boxes." If I CAN DO IT, I want my surroundings that I influence can do the same thing that THEY CAN DO IT, too. I’m the type of person who likes encouraging people, not discouraging them.

My point in this blog is whatever you want to be, to be nice, to be exceptional, to be different, to be popular, to be awesome, to be badass, whatsoever… Remember this!: Man is man, man is not God, it’s not that difficult to distract people’s attention to you. That there’s something useful and meaningful you have to show off to them before passing away from this world is important. Be happy! You don’t need to think about the hype that’s been going on, you just focus on what you’ve been doing, you're going to get fired up to go through obstacles and challenges in your own life. Do not focus on talking about someone’s weakness or mistakes, that’s very draining!. It’s nice to make mistakes, because we can learn something from that and we’re going to be better every single day and will arrive at the peak of perfectness of your own. You know what? “We learn nothing if we’re right all the time”. So, just do it! You gotta keep going.

Thank you so much for reading this, hopefully this blog will be useful for y’all, you may leave a comment, and I’ll see you guys in the next blog… peace😘

Draw My Life - Irfansyah

Hi, good people. First of all, I definitely want to tell a little bit about myself. I don't know whether it's going to be concise or not, cause I just want to reveal and speak up what's in my mind. My full name is Irfansyah. I was born on October 28^th, 1998 in Banjarmasin, South Borneo, Indonesia, but there’s something sucks on my birthday, is that I inevitably have to use my fake birthday, May 3^rd, 1998 cause there’s an error done by one of the teachers in elementary school I was registered. All the letters and cards of mine are using that fake birthday, such as licence, etc. Every time I wanted to fill in the identity part of any registration, I got furious. Then, one time I asked my mother “Mom… did you do any mistakes when you registered me in elementary school?”, she said “No, at all. I said the right birthday of you, I don’t know, either why it is wrong.” So, that’s okay. It’s perhaps my destiny. Later, I want to change it to a civil that may be able to help me out about this problem. Anybody knows how to change it? Please inform me!

 I want to tell many nick names after telling the members of my family for the first. I have two brothers who both are older than me and one sister. Of course, I have a father and a mother. They all are such great angels in my life. I am so grateful for that. I have a lot of nick names given by my surroundings, especially my friends. There are some unique nick names, such as Ipan, when I was a kid like a petite boy exactly in elementary school, I really hated to be called as "Ipan" with the letter P while my full name is Irfansyah. In my mind, the letter P triggered me to think that there was a fruit on my name called "Pisang" in Indonesian language that means banana. I really wanted to be called with the letter F. Moreover, they wrote down my nick name on the whiteboard with that name. It sucks!. When I continued my study in junior high school, it turned into "Fansyah'' called by my friends, it sounded so cool but, but I didn’t really like it cause it’s too cool for me. Then, some of my teachers called me “Irfan”, that’s what I want to be called, I absolutely really like it, it’s awesome. When I entered senior high school, some of my teachers called “Irfan”, too, but some of my friends called me “Alex” when I was in grade 11, it was so much ridiculous for me, not related to my full name at all. Do you know what I was called like that? The reason is that I did bald on my hair as I like changing hairstyle, at the same time there’s a familiar film series on TV called “Anak Jalanan” (Urban Children) in which there’s a well-known actor named “Alex”, and they thought I looked like an “Alex”, the photo is going to be like:

This photo was taken when I joined scout camping south borneo and central borneo. It’s funny. The hair started to get longer and the skin got a little bit dark cause I was heated under the sun as I had to attend all the activities and go through all the challenges throughout the day. Sometimes I felt stressed out to be called as “Alex”, but it’s cool at the same. Till now they some of my classmates of senior high school call me like that. It sucks!. Actually, I am called “Ifan” by my family, many of my friends, and other people. It’s very cool like the name of a vocalist of Seventeen Band in Indnesia. Lol. It’s that important talking about name, you can call me as comfortably as you want that sounds not ridiculous and makes me comfortable with, as well.

So, yeah, that’s my concise “Draw My Life” – Irfansyah. I will also share other articles.

Thank you so much for reading this, hopefully this blog will be useful for y’all, you may leave a comment, and I’ll see you guys in the next blog… peace 😘