English, the most difficult language we are learning?

I wanna ask a question: How many years have you been studying English? I think most of you must answer: more than 10 years. However, I notice that not many people can speak fluent English. Why? Now, even the kindergarten kids are learning English. I just wonder why we couldn't speak in fulent English after so many hard working. Is it the most difficult language we are learning?

sometimes I think English is difficult . I like it ,so I want to learn well. It is not difficult ,it needs us to practise . While many people don't try their best .Some people can speak several kinds of language very well；because they spare no effort

Ally wrote:I wanna ask a question: How many years have you been studying English? I think most of you must answer: more than 10 years. However, I notice that not many people can speak fluent English. Why? Now, even the kindergarten kids are learning English. I just wonder why we couldn't speak in fulent English after so many hard working. Is it the most difficult language we are learning?

yeah,sometime i also think over this question.maybe it lies that we haven't found a way which is fitted us to learn it well.

Because we never open our mouth to practice our oral english. We are afraid of losing face .

NOOOOOOOOO. I do not think English is one of the hardest languages to learn. I am not saying it is easy either. I'm not good at English myself. Well, not as good as I've always wanted to be. English has the largest amount of vocabulary among all languages (if I'm not mistaken). And its word/sentence stress and sound-linking are quite hard for us Chinese since it is an intonation language whereas Chinese is a tone language. And we have so many things to work on, pronunciation, intonation, vocabulary, grammar, just to name a few. I just personally think that many of us are not learning English the right way. It does NOT matter how many years you have learned English, but HOW MUCH attention you have paid to it during the process of learning it. For instance, some people can pass their driving test in just a day, (I'm not making a story up, it is for real, I heard that yesterday morning from a teacher from Shaoda). Because if you got to keep practicing driving for 5 or 6 hours on end, you could actually master all the skills needed for getting a license. But that's not very possible because your coach probably wouldn’t allow you to do that. It's the same thing in learning a language. It is not about time, but about efficiency. I think faith is the most fundamental necessity in learning English. Some students think they lack talents in English, thus unconsciously tell themselves "I will never ever learn it well ‘cause it is so hard." I used to hate English a lot when I was 12. I hated it because I didn't think I was able to learn it well, also because I sucked at it. But when I was getting better I found myself in love with this subject. I was gaining faith. I'm a firm believer in "Interest is the best teacher". Why would a person have interest in something? Probably because he/she can do well in it, thus gains a sense of achievement from it. Learning a language is not easy, it never is, it is more than just learning a language, it is also about learning a culture, about making sense of the mindset of people of certain cultural/ethnical group. If you learn English for the sake of job-hunting, you probably, too, need to learn your mother tongue well enough. But if you learn English just out of interest, there is no this requirement as to learning Chinese well. It is no easy task to learn a language. I like Chinese language but I often find myself make unclear statements in Chinese about what I think. (I actually have quite some grand ideas about many many things, but I just can't express myself well. When I want to talk about something, I just can't find the right word to use. It is very sad being a Chinese but has difficulty in expressing his thoughts in Chinese.) Learning English needs every effort from us, and it demands lifelong commitment.(hehe) I used to put the blame on our educational system, which resulted from the wrong idea that students from other countries of my age spoke good English. And it turns out I was wrong. If you go to an English forum and pay a little bit attention you should find that only a small number of non-native speakers get their messages across with ease. There are bad non-natives as well. Just like us, have both “good” and “bad” students. So I started to realize having good English ability is more of an individual thing. Rather than a country one. Those non-natives who have good English ability MUST have worked on their English the right way and put enough efforts into it.