a new tactic of learning english

孤寒一剑 · 发表于 2005-2-17 13:31

There are so many posting talking about improve english slkills, all are good and to the point. Here I want to entertain a new unconventional way.

most of us as immigrant had very good education in English, My experience tells me that most of us have better knowledge about the English than majority of the Canadians. so why we are still suffering from the "lack of english skill"?

The root of the problem is we know english by reading it but not by listenning it. that's why we can read/write very good english (except myself, I am very poor on gramma :) ). but still can not communicate with others day in and day out. also that is why a lot of time we can't get what people are saying, so we have to ask them to write it down, only to find out we know every single word of it.
Another problem is a lot of us is translating when we use english. when we read/write/listenning/speaking, we translate back to chinese then understand it. that practise dramatically slows down our comprehansen speed, showing as we can't catch other people's saying.

so much for the problem, now the solution:

Watching TV, and watch it as much as possible!
I suggest at least 8 hours a day. when we don't have TV around, we can also listen to radio. the key is to have english always in your ear, to train your ear be familiar with it and build the path between your ear to your brain.

here are some theory behind it:

first of all, we have to ask ourselves, how children learn english? I believe most of us know children can learn english way faster than we do. why?

the reason is the way of learning is different.

we, adult, learn english by remember some word, then when we encounter those word, we translate them back into chinese, then we understand it.
for example, for word apple, we remember it as "a-p-p-l-e" and associate it with "ping guo", then remember it.

children learns in different way. children learn by remember a sound associate with a picture. the same example of apple, children will remember the sound of "apple" with a picture of apple. so next time when that child hear a sound "apple", he knows. that's why children can speak very well, but may not even know any single word in spelling.

Adult's way of learning also brings in another problem: bad pronouncation. because we don't know what "a-p-p-l-e" should sund like, or we dont' care what it should sound like, so we "invent" the way we think it should be sound. therefore when we say it, others won't understand, and when others say it, we can't relate it back to the word "a-p-p-l-e", so we can't understand it.

watching TV will make you build the direct connection between sound and picture, instead of sound->word->meaning.
during our day to day conversation, what make you understand other is the ability to capture the sound and translate it into picture in your head so you understand it.

watching TV will give us sense of north america life. so when we engage in a conversation, we have the context of the topic.

another important factor for this tactic to success is to watch movie instead of news.

movie sure have less talks which some may think not good, but it is exactly the reason why we should start with movie. movie has more action to keep us interested. news will just make us go to sleep.

movie will introduce a lot of different pictures in connection with the sound, news is just some one sitting there talking, unless you understand what he is saying, there is no use to watch it.

the same reason also put watching tv a better learning tool than even find a canadian partner to praticse english with, because when you "talking" to your pal, it is the same as watching a news channel, or even worse, your canadian friend
will only use simple words so you can understand, to gives you false sense of success.

Above proactise have been very successful on my own, so I think it may shed some light to the others.

happy learning!!

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