本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛Obviously, my English hasn't been good enough to avoid mistakes. Please bear with me. I will appreciate it if you can correct some of them.
From my personal experience, the biggest misunderstanding here is considering English learning as a sophisticated thing and trying to figure out how to speak English fluently instead of practising.
I've ever spent too much time flipping over among the various study materials and learning approachs. Then I realized the most effective approach is just practising as much as you can. In order to improve English ability, it doesn't depend on how many approachs you have and how fancy your plan is, but how hard you practise them.
There's one thing I coudn't imagine before I came to Canada. That's not even the bad job market. That's I couldn't even find a chance to speak English for more than 5 consecutive minutes in this English speaking country. How ridiculous it is ! Yes,that's absolutely ture if you have no job, in most cases which keep your connections to this society. Then what I am doing is finding a local people who wants to learn Chinese and teaching him Chinese in English. It helps a lot.
I would like to tell you what I'm doing to improve English ability .It might be also helpful to you.
1)Teaching a local guy Chinese( you would like to visit chinese.meetup.com to find some clues, they have a monthly meeting)
2)Read aloud and try to memorize some TV show's transcripts. You can google it and get lots of such sites.
3)Read columnist Linwood Barclay's articles on Toronto Star. I feel some of column articles are very helpful to improve your ability of spoken English and letter-writing. You can visit the Toronto Star's website(thestar.com) and get a list of all columnists by hitting the link "Star Columnists". Just pick up what most interests you.
4)Watching TV. So far that's supposed to be the most effective way to improve one's listening comprehension, I was suggested to do this by tons of people.
5)Sometimes stay away from a computer.This is not specific for learning English, but absolutely right. Computer consumes too much time when it provides us convenience.
6)Use an English-English dictionary if you want to learn new words as a local people. I know it's hard to do.So I still usually use JinShanCiBai, but I choose an English-English dictionary when I'm not sure about a word's subtle meaning.
Finally, I would like to share a saying excerpted from "美国士兵守则" with everyone.
If a way is stupid but works, it is not stupid.
By the way, as a Java shark, you must know the book "Thinking in Java".For English learning, our final goal is thinking in English. However, nobody can force herself / himself to do that, the only feasible way is just practice.
Hope it can help a little.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net
From my personal experience, the biggest misunderstanding here is considering English learning as a sophisticated thing and trying to figure out how to speak English fluently instead of practising.
I've ever spent too much time flipping over among the various study materials and learning approachs. Then I realized the most effective approach is just practising as much as you can. In order to improve English ability, it doesn't depend on how many approachs you have and how fancy your plan is, but how hard you practise them.
There's one thing I coudn't imagine before I came to Canada. That's not even the bad job market. That's I couldn't even find a chance to speak English for more than 5 consecutive minutes in this English speaking country. How ridiculous it is ! Yes,that's absolutely ture if you have no job, in most cases which keep your connections to this society. Then what I am doing is finding a local people who wants to learn Chinese and teaching him Chinese in English. It helps a lot.
I would like to tell you what I'm doing to improve English ability .It might be also helpful to you.
1)Teaching a local guy Chinese( you would like to visit chinese.meetup.com to find some clues, they have a monthly meeting)
2)Read aloud and try to memorize some TV show's transcripts. You can google it and get lots of such sites.
3)Read columnist Linwood Barclay's articles on Toronto Star. I feel some of column articles are very helpful to improve your ability of spoken English and letter-writing. You can visit the Toronto Star's website(thestar.com) and get a list of all columnists by hitting the link "Star Columnists". Just pick up what most interests you.
4)Watching TV. So far that's supposed to be the most effective way to improve one's listening comprehension, I was suggested to do this by tons of people.
5)Sometimes stay away from a computer.This is not specific for learning English, but absolutely right. Computer consumes too much time when it provides us convenience.
6)Use an English-English dictionary if you want to learn new words as a local people. I know it's hard to do.So I still usually use JinShanCiBai, but I choose an English-English dictionary when I'm not sure about a word's subtle meaning.
Finally, I would like to share a saying excerpted from "美国士兵守则" with everyone.
If a way is stupid but works, it is not stupid.
By the way, as a Java shark, you must know the book "Thinking in Java".For English learning, our final goal is thinking in English. However, nobody can force herself / himself to do that, the only feasible way is just practice.
Hope it can help a little.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net