Time for English

I was born on the 3^rd of June, 1977. It was a Friday, although I was obviously unaware of that at the time. There were many things I would not have been aware of, like Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee, the first democratic election in Spain after years of dictatorship, and the untimely death of Elvis Presley. The first Star Wars film was released that year, and NASA launched its Voyager spacecraft, which would help us to learn more about our solar system. I would spend the next two decades learning about more earthly pursuits, however. I played computer games and watched MTV, fairly typical of someone from Generation X.

Having been born in the latter part of the 20^th century, I eagerly awaited the beginning of the next century – the new millennium. As midnight approached on the 31^st of December, 1999, I joined a crowd of revellers gathered around the clock tower in the market town of Ormskirk, in the north of England. I spent the rest of the night having drunken conversations with people I hardly knew. That was over twenty years ago now. The time in between has robbed me of a fringe and given me wrinkles, but you would probably still recognise me had you known me back then.

Time flows like a river, it has often been said, and it carries each of us in its current as it moves ever forward in one direction only. We count it, spend it, save it and waste it; and we wonder where it goes and why we never seem to have enough of it. The word ‘time’ is the most commonly used noun in the English language, hardly surprising when you think about the modern obsession with time. We are ruled by the clock and the calendar. Time is money. We talk of hourly rates and weekly wages, monthly expenses and yearly profits. We have created a world in which every second has a monetary value, when really every second that passes is priceless.

When it comes to English grammar, time, or rather our perception of it, plays an important role. Take the sentence Lucy is sleeping on the sofa, for example. Our four-legged friend is, at this moment in time, lying on her side with her paws outstretched, dreaming about whatever dogs dream about. You will notice in that example the verb be in its third person form, but it has no meaning; it is an auxiliary verb. The verbs be, do, and have are all used as auxiliary verbs, and the English language relies heavily on them to convey various meanings with regard to time. To give an example using the verb eat: Lucy is not eating now; Lucy has already eaten. Coursebooks refer to these respectively as the Present Continuous and the Present Perfect, names which send a shudder down the spines of some people. I was never taught this grammar; I acquired it from an early age by listening to and interacting with the people around me.

How long does it take to learn English? There is no simple answer to that question other than 'a long time'. I always say that practice is by far the most important part of learning English. Use the language as much as you can – every day, if possible – and when you do not have an opportunity to speak or write in English, listen to a song or watch a video; read an article or a short story. I will finish with a quote from the American writer and philosopher Will Durant: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”