UNIT 2. ENGLISH IN THE WORLDReading

Choose the correct word for each gap to complete the following text.

I started learninggettingwritingreading English when I was 14 years old after five years of studying Russian. In the beginning I encountered some difficulties learning the language, but I tried my bestmosthardself to overcome them. Firstly, my English pronunciation was affectedeffectedgivenreflected by the way I spoke Russian. To solve this problem, I practised by listening to tapes in English every day. I played the tape, stopped after each sentence, and repeatedsaidtoldspoke the sentence several times. At school, I joined an English speaking club whichanditbut was organised by a teacher from Britain. She understood my difficulty and helped me very much in improving my pronunciation. Secondly, I found it really hard to learn English vocabulary. In Russian, the way you write the word is the way you pronounce it. However, English spelling is often differentthe samefardiffer from its pronunciation. To get over this difficulty I started using the dictionary. Whenever I learnt a new word, I looked it updownonout carefully in the dictionary. Then I tried to remember the way to read and write the word. After that, I wrote the word down several wayswayminuteslines in a notebook. Gradually, I got usedrememberedwellattracted to the spelling system of the language. Now I'm confident that my English has become much better.