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ESL. What is ESL?What is ESL? ESL, or English as a second language, is the term used for the study of English by native speakers of a different language. English is an extremely useful language to learn and is the most learned second language is the world. Estimates vary, but there are between 500 million and 1.5 billion speakers of English world wide. Learning English is a very good idea for anyone who wants to be able to communicate with a large number of people all around the world, and it is also an extremely useful language to learn for conducting business. A wide variety of courses are available for those who want to learn English, including online English classes.
When learning any foreign language, difficulties may be present for the student dependent upon his or her native language. For example, the English language has certain sounds that are uncommon in most other languages, even those that are closely related, for example the sounds represented by the letters 'th'. In addition, the pronunciation of words is not necessarily discernible from their spelling. For example, 'ough' has several different pronunciations, as in the following words: rough, cough, bough, thorough, and through. English also has a large amount of words which are spelled the same but pronounced differently depending on the context in which that word is used, for example the word 'read.' It is also nearly impossible to know which syllable in a given word is supposed to be stressed. Therefore, each individual word must be memorized rather than just a system for pronunciation.
To add yet another level of complication to ESL, there are several varieties of English spoken as a native language by people in different countries. Most notable perhaps is the contrast between American English and British English. Both of these dialects of English have quite different pronunciations for certain words, as well as different spellings, and even in some cases different vocabulary. All of these factors combine to make English a very challenging language to learn for a non-native speaker.
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