What You Say Is What You Get

In computer field, there is a term WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). It indicates that when you have designed an image on your computer and you print it, you will get the printed image precisely like the one you see on the monitor. It needs, of course, a lot of conditions. One of them is that the printer should support it. However, the term is related to html (Sorry, this article is not about computer itself.)

In learning how to speak English well, the term WYSIWYG can be adopted. What You Say Is What You Get. Just say what you want to say, never worried about making mistakes. People are usually worried about making grammatical mistakes.

When a child learns to speak, he doesn’t care whether or not he makes mistakes. He doesn’t care about grammar at all. He expresses his feeling and thought in his own ‘language‘. It often sounds funny. I don’t mean that grammar is not important, what I mean here is that in speaking English we shouldn’t tie ourselves to the strict grammar rules. Frankly speaking, do we speak bahasa Indonesia grammatically? We don’t.

So, the more you say English words (speak English) the better you will get the result. A proverb says, “Practice makes perfect”.

Writing is also one of the ways to practice ‘speaking‘. (By David Solafide)

This article is also put on Kompasiana.