Advice for English study

[align=center]Advice for English study[/align]
Preface
Today, more and more people realize the importance of mastering a foreign language in China, especially for IT practitioner. Most of them choose English, most of the left choose Japanese. I am in a company engaging out-sourcing business for Japanese, but I really hate Japanese, it is a boring language, so I made up my mind of studying English.
Fortunately, I found someone shared his or her experience in studying English on the internet; it is excellent, now I put it on my blog, wishing someone would get something by reading it. If there is anything wrong, please send a mail to: yaogao@gmail.com
Part A: General
1. We’d better develop our interest at the beginning of our study. To develop interest is not very hard. We may have the feeling of satisfaction and achievement from our English study when we are able to say something simple in English, talk with others, especially foreigners in English and act as others’ interpreters.
2. Plans are always very essential, so we must make some elaborate and workable plans before study. And we should certainly carry out there plans to the letter.
3. Notes should be make whenever we reading any book, we may follow this advice: Don’t read any book without making notes.
4. Watching English movies, English TV programs, listening English songs and learn English on some special occasions are also very excellent and vivid English learning ways as we may combine English with some certain sense to deepen our memory.
5. Never just memorize single word. Learn by heart the whole sentence and the phase that contain the new word so we may know how to use the word.
6. If time permits, we may read Mini Chinese-English dictionary carefully from cover to cover, which may help us widen our sight and master knowledge in all aspects.
7. Excellent personality is one the decisive factors in English study. Persistence, patience, self-confidence and determination are badly needed.
Part B: Detail methods
1. Oral English
A. We study spoken English in order to make oral communications, so this order of importance of oral English should be followed: Fluency, Accuracy, and Appropriateness. That is to say, we have to pay more attention to practical communicating ability instead of only laying emphasis on the grammatical correctness.
B. Try to find some partners practicing oral English together and English corner is good place as where we my exchange English study experience, widen our sight and improve interest in English.
C. If English partner is hard to get, then we have to create an English environment ourselves by speaking to ourselves.
D. This method is very effective and easy to insist on—interpreting Chinese-English novels or books. First we read the Chinese parts and try to interpret them into English and then compare our interpretation with the original versions in the novels or books so that we can find out the mistakes, shortcomings and progresses in our interpretation.
E. Interpreting what we hear
F. Oral composition and 3-minite training method: This method is suitable for intense training. Making an oral composition about certain topic for one minute the first time and record the composition on tape at the same time. Then listen to the composition and find out the room for improvement. Then make the same composition for two minutes for the second time and also record it. And at least repeat the above-mentioned for three minutes.
G. Retelling exercise: Retell some articles or English stories in our own words.
H. If possible, we may read some English tongue twisters loudly and quickly with one or two cakes of candy in our mouth to train our oral cavity muscle and tongues suitable for English pronunciation.
I. Paying more attention to phrases and small words as one major shortcoming of Chinese English is that Chinese student tend to use big words in their oral language, but the idiomatic oral English is abundant with short, active and vivid phrases. And most of such phrases are made of small words.
J. Oral English has its own features, but it is closely combined with other aspects of English, for example, writing may make oral English precise and accurate.
2. Listening comprehension
A. We may improve our aural ability by speaking English in the native and idiomatic way. The pronunciation, intonation and sentence structure should not be in Chinese style.
B. Keeping a relaxed, natural and steady mood when listening to some material. Namely, to establish self-confidence and to develop excellent psychological quality is essential in the improvement of aural ability.
C. We may make some simple notes, for examples, the names of people and places, time, age, distance, occupation, figures and so on to get a better understanding of the content.
D. Catching the drift of the content instead of understanding every word and never waste too much time on single words.
E. Pay more attention to CONCESSION and TRANSITION so as to correctly understand th attitudes of the speakers. The following words are most important: even though, even so, in spite of, unless, although, no matter, however etc.
F. If we may learn by heart new words by listening some word tapes, the results must be satisfactory.
3. Reading skills
A. Intensive reading: when we read the intensive articles, we should make notes of the new words and phrases and good sentences. After reading them, we may ask ourselves some questions about them by using such words: who, what, when and where. Then try answer them in our own words.
B. Extensive reading: We must train our ability to scan, skip and read fast. Namely, the ability to catch the key words, the topic sentences and the drift of the articles.
C. Reading speed: Three way to improve our reading speed:
1) Reading the articles from the beginning to the end without interval so as to catch the rough idea of the article on the whole. Never waste too much time on some new words and single sentences.
2) We may keep time when reading articles.
3) When reading articles, we can point at the words with our finger or pen point and our eyes move with the finger quickly so that we are able to read very fast.
D. Newspapers as good reading materials can widen our sight and richen our knowledge.
4. Writing skills
A. We have to accumulate abundant materials before we write something, say, leaning by heart crowds of articles.
B. Try to express one meaning in various ways.
C. Keeping English diary if possible
D. Prepare some new words, expressions and good sentences to be used before writing something.
E. We may also make some English pen pals to establish communication relationship through some media like newspaper and magazines.

2006-10-2