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 you are, 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 English ( 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 transcripts. You can google it and get a lot 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. It consumes too much time when it provides us convenience. In most cases for me, when I was going to

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"
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

本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛我们一般是读写很强，听说相对弱。
初到班里，觉得每天讲的东西很浅，“都会”！
但我们需要提高的是听力和口语。我觉得的“都会”只是在书面上或者在心里，如果同样的内容用耳朵听或者让我说出来，就不那么容易了。

我找到了问题所在，于是就充分利用LINC班的优点提高我的听说。
我所说的LINC班的优点主要是：这是专门面向新移民提高英语的地方，不但提供了让我们张开嘴说英语的地方，而且老师说得相对慢些，有耐心听我们的不标准甚至错误的英语，并从中理解我们要表达的意思，而且还纠正我们的错误。

语言这东西不是但靠认识多少单词就能说好的，还有如何组织语言的问题，说出来的是句子而不仅仅是句子中的关键词。
我最开始的时候问自己，我认识的单词能都灵活运用吗？最基本的语法能一下子说对吗（写当然不会错）？he 和 she 说串皮不？句子里的人称、单复数、时态、语态、助动词都匹配吗？我说出来的是english还是chinese-english？…… 很多看似简单的问题。

就是一个字——练！
我觉得在LINC班学是相当好的方法。
还可以从身边小事学习。比如去商店时就特意看看各种东西都叫什么名字，或者干脆看flyer；再比如成语，从书本上背成语不如在实际生活中学，而且成语这东西关键是上下文极其确切含义，从实际中学来的一般都印象比较深。除此之外，我还看电视练听力，学学老外怎么表达所要表达的意思。

BTW，在LINC班还可以了解加拿大的地理文化、风土人情，还能认识新朋友，交流各种信息。不要轻易说没有收获，cheer up！ ：-）

罗嗦了这么多，希望能对你有帮助。更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net

Now I am a full time student. Before I joined the school, I was enrolled in a pre-requisit course to improve English for international students. I felt quite comfortable with that because I could understand most English the instructors spoke (>99%). However, the real life is different when you are studying together with local students. The professors will not slow down like your ESL instructors. I can only understand at most 70% instruction in the first term although I got 8/8/7 in LINC test. Faint!

This term, surprisingly, I felt some progress in the listening and speaking. But when I had group meeting with local students, there was still language barriers unfortunately. However, I found that part time Chinese students I have ever studied with do NOT have this problem. They speak very nice English, although some grammer mistakes and Chinese accents in it...Admiring!

It is a dilema. No idea yet, but I am thinking to find a part time job, just want to practise English.

and I'm now working as a Product Specialist and talking with our customers all the time:
1. CICS LINC saturday class level 4 and 5, Kidist;
2. ESL listening and speaking at St.Aiden school, Chris-Anne.