Time flies like a intangible bird whose
value is charming but unable to be saved.
In September1st, 2013, many senior highs are
turning into freshmen, stepping into their
new learning environment, and so do I.
Before we go to the different environment,
something cannot be mentioned - our deficiency
in speaking and writing English.
As an educated student under Taiwan-culture approach, including forcing me to memorizing enormous vocabularies, what I've seen is that talking to a foreigner in English troubles us. From junior to senior, this period gives almost 6 years to students to learn it. Nevertheless, due to such a high-pressure exam circumstance, we only have reached a high level of reading and listening without the two others. Even worse, in many situations, like listening to CNN News or reading a article from New York Times, understanding what they are listening and reading makes them frustrated. Another main problem is that we don't teach students how to learn English. In another words, teachers regard it as a subject, not a communication tool. Thus, high stress of learning it comes, and deprive the fun of learning of students.
Let's recap to the topic : How to Learn English Well? Here I get two points for you.
First, a good way of learning a thing should follow this route of four points:
- Set the Precise Goal : What kind of level do you want to reach? If you want to study aboard by having a high TOFEL score, you may need to pay more efforts. Or if you want to get promotion by joining TOEIC test, listening and reading skills are priorities.
- Make a well-planned Learning Route : How much time are you planning to spare? In daily life, how much time can you spend everyday? Generally speaking, 15 minutes per day will be quite enough.
- Choose Proper Learning Tool : In my opinion, this can be separated into two stages, grammars and magazines :
- 英語句型與翻譯 written by 三民書局. It tells you many useful grammars.
- You can choose your textbooks by exams or choose a series of learning magazines, like ABC to LiveABC to All Plus from LiveABC Inc. or 大家說英語 to 空中英語教室 to 彭蒙惠英語 from StudioClassroom.
- Give yourself some pleasures and power by learning it : Think of something delightful when you are tried of learning English, like I can talk to Americans in English, sounds cool, right? Try to give yourself a reason to drive your learning engine. Laziness can blows your efforts away in a second.
Second, you may build some habits when learning it :
- Try to memorize the way of expression the author used as possible. For example, in Chinese 我吃飽了, cannot not be stated like "I had enough." It'd be stated like "I have had a lot." In this part, you need to "understand" it and then memorize it.
- Always speak the paragraph, either dialogues or articles will be fine. Use multi-senses to help you learn quicker.
- Listen podcast and read good article. Good podcasts may be ESL-English as Second Language, BBC World Service, APM-American Public Media and so forth. Excellent articles come from The Economists, International Herald Tribune and so on.
Have fun!
