Learning English

As I have learned English for more than 8 years, I have some reflections on English learning. To learn English, the key thing is how you regard English. If you regard English as a tool for communication, speaking and listening are the most important. If you regard English as a kind of culture, reading and writing will instead the upper two.

For those people who learn English just for communicate with the others, speaking and listening are both the most important parts. As a tool for communication, the first thing is to make you and the others understand each other. If your pronunciation is as horrible as Japanese, most English speaking people would misunderstand you and probably think you are speaking a language which comes from Mars. If you can’t even understand the English comes from president Obama, I don’t think there exists any difference between you and a person who has never known the difference between English and sandwich. To improve speaking and listening, you can follow the BBC or CNN broadcast, or watch English movies.

  For those people who regard English as a kind of culture, reading and writing become the most important. To understand and be overwhelming with English culture, you need to read a large amount of English books. And you also need to write some essay to express your feeling. Vocabulary is the decisive part in reading and writing, which is also my weak point. As I’m trying to get better, I read a pile of English books and newspapers to improve my vocabulary.

 English is interesting if you put your soul on the line for it.