My Reflection on Learning English

My Reflection on Learning English

It is no doubt that to learn English well we must master skills in five aspects: listening, speaking, reading, writing as well as translating. Here I just focus on the first two skills. We usually put listening as the first, of course, it has the reason. Listening can be the key in the process of learning any language. It reminds me of the childhood. When we are just infants, we don’t know how to read, how to write or even how to speak, the only way for us to learn mother tongue is just listening. Kids from 1 to 2 years old learn speaking mainly by sources from mother to daddy’s conversation or other amusing entertainments. More specific, listening can be divided into intensive and extensive. Make sure that you will have half an hour of extensive listening. When we are in extensive listening, we don’t have to concentrate on what we are listening to, just putting the emphasis on intonation, rhyme as well as the speed. It just seems to be a way of training your feeling or your ears responding to English. Intensive listening is very difficult and complicated. We need to have strong will and be patient because it requires of we repeating the part we didn’t catch over and over again.

When it comes to speaking, I have three tips. Pronunciation should be the base, so correcting pronunciation is always necessary. Intonation, rhyme as well as the speed is the blood of body. We need all so that we can survive the speaking. To improve this, imitation is never outdated to be

applied. The American TV dramas, BBC, VOA or the essays can be the source of imitation.

Here I want to say more about oral English. Since I am not good at speaking, I spent a lot of time looking for a way to improve it. Finally I conclude my way. Just as a saying said, “learning English is like learning swimming. You will never acquire it unless you go into the water.” Here are some my tips for you to practice oral English:

Firstly, spend half an hour talking to yourself. The topics can be anything, such as food, clothes, movie plot, music, story, news, joke or even your trouble. Speak English as possible as you can, if you don’t speak, then you don’t have chance to take mistakes and correct it. If condition permitting, use a cell phone to record what you have said, and listen to it. Try your best to find your flaws and make up for it.

Secondly, go to English corner and talk to others. It’s better if you can find a foreigner. If you can’t, don’t worry. Non-native speaker also helps. It’s ridiculous that people believe only native speakers can help us improve English. Actually, our classmates also work. Why? They improved our grammar. The more grammar mistakes they expose in conversation, the less mistakes you will have in next talk.

Last one is to recite. Our memory is just like a box. Only you often open it then you can get what you want. Try your best to read more and recite more. If you want to live a memorable life, then you have to memorize.