Please don’t study English in traditional ways

zychen1973 · 发表于 2004-12-7 13:34

Announcement:  I am not specialized in English major. My writing is just for fun. correction would be appreciated thanks in advance.
Plus: the following is just my personal opinions, maybe it is valuable to you.

Chapter One

  When I first landed in Canada, the feelings of frustration always haunted me. Why? No one could understand my spoken English although I studied English near 12 years in China and passed various exams with high score. Still, you caught the big frown and constant “Pardon me?” from local person. Those situations happened so often that I hesitated to open my mouth before others for a long time (except Chinese compatriot). However, silence is not a wise choice to survive in this English-spoken country, right? How could I deal with those awkward situations? Well, according to our so-called Chinese learning experience, we should fall back on all kinds of English books to supply ourselves with more “useful knowledge”. Ok, I began to recite the tons of vocabulary and phrases on TOEFL and GRE. What a time-consuming job and unreasonable practice it was at that time! When I recalled that period, a bitter smile always emerged on my face.

  Five months past since I landed in Toronto, my English level still stayed at silent stage. At that time, I believed that as long as I prepared enough vocabulary, someday, I would be ready for any challenge of English. Well, this study focus was not wrong but what I emphasized was unpractical.

  Let me explain to you in details: what kind of vocabulary we should learn? Where can we find practical words to express ourselves? How should we learn those words?

  As you know, there are tons of words in English, before came to Canada, we have no chance to read the normal articles written by local authors. What we can get in China, it is classical English writings by some famous writers (those essay are hard to master to us, and they are more academic), or some so-called English articles that wrote by our Chinese experts in English (they failed to express their meaning in Canadian way). I am not meant those English articles are not good. What I thought is those articles are not good enough for us to learn.

Every immigrant in Canada got this kind of experience: you looked up the dictionary and find a word or a phrase you want, when you communicated with local person by using this word, you got a confused face in front of you. Right? We spoke English but English-spoken people didn’t get what we were talking. For example, I want to use the fax machine once a time in immigrant center without knowing how to say fax machine. After checking the electronic dictionary, I found a big word “facsimile”. Not mention that my pronunciation was correct or not, I went around the whole office and kept saying ‘facsimile’ nobody could figure it out what I was looking for until I pointed it directly to them. What an embarrassment it is!  (To be continued)

[ Last edited by zychen1973 on 2004-12-7 at 06:16 PM ]

期待秋季 · 发表于 2004-12-9 15:28

ding :lol::lol::lol:

connie · 发表于 2004-12-10 06:51

Chapter One

  When I first landed in Canada, the feelings of frustration always haunted me. Why? No one could understand my spoken English although I studied English for nearly 12 years in China and passed various exams with a high score. Still, you caught the big frown and constant “Pardon me?” from local persons. Those situations happened so often that I hesitated to open my mouth before others for a long time (except Chinese compatriots). However, silence is not a wise choice to survive in this English-spoken country, right? How could I deal with those awkward situations? Well, according to our so-called Chinese learning experience, we should fall back on all kinds of English books to supply ourselves with more “useful knowledge”. Ok, I began to recite the tons of vocabulary and phrases on TOEFL and GRE. What a time-consuming job and unreasonable practice it was at that time! When I recalled that period, a bitter smile always emerged on my face.

  Five months past since I had landed in Toronto, my English level still stayed at a silent phase. At that time, I believed that as long as I prepared enough vocabulary, someday, I would be ready for any challenge of English. Well, this study focus was not wrong but what I emphasized was impractical.

  Let me explain to you in details(不要加s): what kind of vocabulary should we learn? Where can we find practical words to express ourselves? How should we learn those words?

  As you know, there are tons of words in English, before I came to Canada, we have had no chance to read the normal articles written by local authors. What we can get in China, it is classical English writings by some famous writers (those essay are hard to master to us, and they are more academic), or some so-called English articles that wrote by our Chinese experts in English (they failed to express their meaning in a Canadian way). I don't mean that those English articles are not good. What I thought is those articles are not good enough for us to learn.

Every immigrant in Canada got this kind of experience: you looked up the dictionary and find a word or a phrase you want, when you communicated with local person by using this word, you got a confused face in front of you. Right? We spoke English but English-speaking people didn’t get what we were saying. For example, I want to use the fax machine once a time in the immigrant center without knowing how to say fax machine. After checking the electronic dictionary, I found a big word “facsimile”. Not to mention that my pronunciation was correct or not, I went around the whole office and kept saying ‘facsimile’ nobody could figure it out what I was looking for until I pointed it directly to them. What an embarrassment it is!

年轻的心 · 发表于 2004-12-10 07:27

Good , waiting...

zychen1973 · 发表于 2004-12-10 08:41

thanks, connie. please continue correcting my rest of writing if you got free time.

youngheart: the rest of this topic had been posted, if you like, please read all of them and give me your comments on how do you think learning English?;)

账号		自动登录	找回密码
密码			注册