Part 4
Here are possible reasons why you might be learning English.
As you read through the list, think about every single reason for a while. It's very likely that you will find some that you can use to make your own decision to learn English even stronger.
1) I want to learn more about success principles and human behavior.
It's a fact that English speaking nations are amongst the most successful throughout the world. Despite or maybe because of all political challenges, the USA is still the single most powerful nation on our planet. So, regardless of your political or religious views you should find out why the Americans and other English speaking people have been able to achieve this level of success. Their mentality and way of thinking are obviously different from those of others. Often those differences are very small and rather subtle. To understand the way English speakers think and live, you have to listen to what they listen to, read what they read and ask them questions. Why are English speaking countries so powerful, why are they dominating in fields like business, technology, science, entertainment and society? To understand their secrets of success you have to read books like "How To Win Friends And Influence People", "The Science Of Personal Achievement" or "The Magic Of Thinking Big". Of course you could probably read those books in your own language as they have been translated into quite a lot of languages.
However, a translation is never as good as its original. There are certain concepts and principles that cannot be expressed in a different language from English. Also, as you will see later on, winners are constantly looking for new ways to achieve their goals. That's why they need English as a means of communication. I grew up in a socialist country as the son of two state school teachers so you can imagine the exposure I got to the idea of communism. As a child I read Nikolai Ostrovsky's book "How the Steel Was Tempered" and at that time the story had a huge impact on me. It was about a young man who fought for the freedom of his country. At least that's how the author wanted his hero to appear and he did an excellent job. The book inspired me to learn Russian so I could speak to Russians and ask them about their ideals. Of course I thought that everyone was like the hero in that novel. A few years later, when I started to learn English in earnest I finally got access to another ideology -- the "philosophy of success" as I call it.
Interestingly enough, both ideologies -- the one promoted by the communists as well as the "philosophy of success" have a lot in common. The fact that I was already familiar with the socialist ideology when I started to learn English made it much easier for me to absorb and understand the "philosophy of success". What's more, knowing both ideologies I could compare them and select the best of both.
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Why are you learning English?
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