"My English is lackluster but I am working hard on it." Say that instead of "My English is poor." How to make yourself a fluent English user when you can talk freely off the top of your head?
We can see English learners here holding a book all day long to study English. They study just for the sake of studying. They are not studying smartly. I always tell them to remove the book from their face. What they have to do is to sit down with a piece of paper and pen to write something in English. The key is LEARN IT and USE IT.
It is a luxury to get someone in China to talk to entirely in English. Mind you, you have to get someone who is really an English user, not just another English user of average standard. You can be picking up each other’s mistakes if the two of you practice together.
Only when you start writing, you will be assured again that it is indeed hard to express yourself entirely in English. You will then use all the grammatical rules and the vocabulary you have learnt to try express yourself. It takes time. Am I correct? This is the reason why I always emphasize that you must write before you talk.
Here I am referring to those who are not scared of talking. This is very different from the other group who dare not open their mouth to make some English sounds out of shame or embarrassment in case they make mistakes in sound or construction of sentences.
You are in the group that can talk but just cannot say much. You can do the usual boring stuff like:-
1) How are you?
2) Where do you come from?
3) It is a pleasure meeting you.
4) Do you enjoy your stay in China?
You imagine that one day you can discuss a movie with the person you talk to. You can discuss about the economic crisis, the financial tsunami, the price hike, etc.
Then I advise you to talk these out on paper first. You have plenty of time in your hands to look up for the necessary vocab if you don’t know them yet. If you have a living person standing there to wait for you to search your brain for them, you are just making a fool of yourself. I know it is difficult when you start off writing for the first time, but after a while you will find writing is in fact an enjoyable activity. It prepares you to talk in real time. People talking to you want you to respond instantly. It is on the spot interaction. So, be patient. Prepare yourself for a fluent conversation with a real English speaker by writing.
“I write better than I speak.” This is what we hear often in China from English users or learners. I for one will challenge the speaker of that line. Show me your writing first. Yes, you can write something albeit still with a lot of errors. You certainly cannot talk much because of that.
Heed my advice. Spend time writing. Keep a diary or journal daily even if it is a few sentences which make sense. We are grateful for what the internet can provide us these days. Go get an instant messenger like QQ, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, UC which is complete with a free blog in which you can keep your writings. Keep it private to yourself as you don’t want others to see your mistakes. Some of you are smart enough to correct the mistakes yourself. They will be able to make steady improvement as they keep writing. Others who are weaker and cannot identify their mistakes may have to get a qualified coach to help them out. Get someone to review your writings so you know what’s wrong with them.
It is pointless to keep learning new vocab through reading if you never put those new vocab into use. A college graduate could have easily spent more than 10 years on learning English. A lot of time has been wasted learning how to do the multiple choice questions on grammar for the exams that determine if they pass or fail.
You can only blame the environment here in mainland China when classroom teachers cannot do much other than wasting time on teaching you grammatical rules. Yes, grammar is important but you need learn only the basic rules of grammar. You will pick up the sense for correct English through reading. If you think you have been reading a lot of articles, you are wrong. I can share with you my own experience when I worked really hard at age 12. I read all sorts of English books on all subjects from age 13 through 20, more than ten books a week. I read smartly. I scan the book quickly. I didn’t read English word by word. English is not a language like Chinese which is pictorial. You can picture from each Chinese character and associate them to make sense. English is composed of ideas delivered in phrases and clauses. Your eyes have to scan a number of words quickly. Don’t waste your time on single words. If you are reading, you know what you are reading for. You know the subject and what to expect. Try guess for the meaning of the single word that you don’t know. Follow the thought of the writer. He must be trying to tell you something with a direction. Guess. It doesn’t matter if you fail. If the word is common, it surely will pop up again. After a few rounds, the word may make sense. Guess. Speculate as you read. This is the reading strategy for your benefit. Try this out next time when you are reading something in English.
At the end of the day, you still have to put what you have read on paper in writings. By this, I mean you can pound the keyboard and record them on the free blogs on internet. Make that blog available to a coach who can go in and review your writings to point out to you the errors you have made. This is the only way to prepare yourself to talk fluently on any subject later on. There is no short-cut.
Just in case you want to argue with me again, you can skip the writing only and only if you are staying in a place where English is being used daily as a living language. Say if you are flown into New York City tomorrow, and you don’t stick around with your own Chinese folks, you go out to mix with native speakers in New York City and talk to them often in English. You will learn fast under that environment. If you are still stuck in China, writing is the only route to prepare yourself to talk.
Posted originally by Uncle Martin in his QQ blog:-
http://user.qzone.qq.com/1401687220/blog/1260499862
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本帖最后由 unclemartin 于 2009-12-11 17:18 编辑 ]
