Don’t Study English the Wrong Way (Written by zychen1973, revised by OliveOil)

OliveOil · 发表于 2004-12-19 08:54

When I first landed in Canada, I was always struck with frustration. Why? No one could understand my spoken English although I had studied English for almost 12 years in China and passed various exams with high scores. Still, I was constantly caught with the big frowns and “Pardon me?” from local people. It happened so often that I hesitated to open my mouth before others for a long time except before Chinese compatriot.

I am well aware that silence is not a smart choice to survive. How could I deal with the awkward situations?

-Problematic Process and Unfit Materials

Unless we are capable to communicate without trouble, we should fall back on all kinds of English books to equip ourselves with more “useful knowledge”. This is the study process that most Chinese, especially those college graduates, have acquired from years of experiences in learning foreign languages.

For the same reason I began to memorize mega amount of vocabulary and phrases from the preps of TOEFL and GRE. Unfortunately five months after I landed in Toronto, my English level still remained at silent stage. I was waiting for the right time to apply my knowledge as I believed that once I prepared enough vocabulary, some day, I would be able to face any challenge of English.

What a time-consuming and unreasonable practice! When I recalled that experience, I can still feel the bitterness.

Many immigrants have another similar experience: we dig through the dictionary or our reference notes to find a word or a phrase we think we want, but when we use the word communicating with local people, we see a confused face. We are talking in English but English-speaking people don’t quite get it.

I once wanted to fax some documents in the immigrant center but I didn’t know what the machine was called. After checking my electronic instant translator, I found the word “facsimile”. Not mention that my pronunciation was correct or not, I ran around the entire office building asking for the ‘facsimile’ but nobody could figure out what I was looking for until I found one myself and showed them. How embarrassing!

Well, our study focus may not be totally wrong but what it emphasized is unpractical. As we know, any language has its own vast and almost endless vocabulary. English is no exception. Before coming to Canada, we did not have the opportunities to read “authentic” English articles. What we can get in China are either from the famous English writers whose writings are too classic and faraway from everyday life, or from our own Chinese experts whose articles are purely bookish and in numerous occasions fail to be expressed correctly from the perspectives of North American English. I don’t mean those English articles are not good. What I am saying is those articles are not practical enough for us to learn and use.

-Diagnoses Own Needs, Set Practical Goals

What is wrong with our learning process or focus? How can one make any improvement by concentrating on isolated study but avoiding practice? How large a vocabulary is big enough? Where can we find practical words to express ourselves? How can we learn those words? Is our intended vocabulary the right choice? How long do we need to get “ready” to face the new world?

Now that we live and work in an English-speaking country, among English-speaking people, we have better opportunity to grasp the language. It is time for us to think more about the questions above. The outdated traditional study habits that we formed in China should be prohibited— we need to adjust the wrong focus, convert the time-consuming process and find effective learning materials!

The reason that causes communication misunderstanding is that we have not used English in common senses. We surely should study as big an English vocabulary as possible but we should also wisely choose what would be most sufficient for the daily communication required by different individuals. Most immigrants have limited time to study English. Within the limited time, we better select the vocabulary well related to our own life and work. It is more realistic to pick up our basic language skills than try to know everything.

When are we ready to precede using English? Since we have a tendency to assume we are not good enough, should we wait until we are perfect in our second language?  I always hear people say: as soon as my English is good enough, I will go look for a job as an engineer or a technician. Honestly, I deem this kind of attitude as lack of self-confidence, which was once my problem and excuse as well.

We can not refuse to communicate while waiting for the “perfect moment” to come. For some people, it may never happen—they may never be able to know terminologies in all kinds of fields in order to be perfect. But the vocabulary that seems not enough for him may be good and large enough for her. My point is different people have different needs for languages hence they don’t have to be perfect in something unrelated to them.

Take my family as an example: my husband works as an industrial engineer at GE, a company that serves the global customers with GE products. Part of my husband’s job is to solve the technical problems of the products over the phone.  The professional terms in that technology field are his basic needs and he has no trouble handling his work whatsoever. I believe he is excellent. However, he is not perfect because while he is home watching TV or reading newspapers, he can’t exceed me. Why? I have spent so much time as a couch potato that I picked up large amount of verbal expressions used regularly by media. In addition, I know many more word on education from my graduate courses. We are both fine but not perfect with our languages skills because we have different focuses in learning and using English in our own field.

Therefore, I recommend the new immigrants make clear to themselves what area your English targets at as the very first step in English study. Before you start, analysis your own problem; diagnose your own needs; set your own study goals; discover your own resolution. When we go for it, study hard and use it “hard”. You will see that new method makes difference and discover that you are learning faster while you are using it.

-Learn to Communicate, Choose Right Resources

How and when to use it? Communicate. We need words and topics to talk about. What learning resources can we take advantage of to attract people and hold a conversation? Simple--Read local newspapers, surf English websites and watch TV with or without captions on! It took me three years to figure that out but they turned out really helpful.

There might be another problem when we do communicate with others. Say if it is enjoyable to listen to exotic music, it is oppressive to listen to someone’s broken incomprehensible language with strong accents.

Many complain that we seldom have chances to communicate with local people because they do not want to talk to us. It might be true. When I first time sat in a classroom full of Canadian students three years ago in Grand MacEwen College, I was not one who our classmates would prefer to chit chat with. During class breaks, some students initiated the conversations with me but then they would soon turn around to chat with somebody else instead. I did not appreciate their impatience and quick change of the center of attention, until I experienced the same situation myself. I once visited a church where the Canadian christens preached Bible in Mandarin. His hard-to-be-distinguished Chinese made me realize that how nice my Canadian classmates are to me by just keeping talking with me for ten minutes.

How can we get by? Learn to rid the accent by, again, following the TV, or  Radio! Also, the more you open up your mouth to talk, the less broken your sentences would become.

-Find Efficient Learning Procedure, Abandon Pencil and Paper

Chinese have developed a learning habit under the teaching system in China: take notes whenever there are new words and expressions. We would prefer to make them available in writing, in the notebook, in the backpack, where we can STUDY. What a long way and complicated technique to store our “knowledge”! Purpose? For later reference and review. Necessary? Absolutely not!

The notes, full of Chinese translations and explications, will not help us learn fast, but on the contrary become a stumbling block to improve with our limited time schedules. How many immigrants have the time and stamina to constantly go over the notes? The number is very limited as far as I hear.
Moreover, if we have the notes, we KNOW we HAVE them and get too lazy to memorize compellingly or instinctively.  We unconsciously remind ourselves that no matter what, we already have the everlasting written record in our own procession so why bother to worry that some new words may slip out of our minds? Because of that, subconsciously we tend not to utilize our brain to its full functions so as to reinforce our memory.

Most of us have noticed that immigrant children are able to speak fluent English within one school year. It is not because they work harder, rather, they never take notes for the purpose of improving their language abilities. They just distinctly pick up the words they hear and apply them right away, appropriately or not because the frequency of using the words picked would eventually show their appropriate circumstances. That is the way we learn our mother tongue and it is the best way to learn the second language as well.

(There are many theories about how children learn a second or third language I have learned in my graduate school and that I would like to share here but it is hard due to the limited space).

In conclusion, learn how to learn before we learn, then fully exploit our brains and mouths rather than pencil and paper. We can probably see a very different world and may be surprised by the significant progress we are going to make where the new methods are applied.

Good luck to all who read my article and to me myself in English study!

zychen1973 · 发表于 2004-12-19 10:25

Excellent job!
Why don't you tell us your story about studying English that would be more valuable.

zychen1973 · 发表于 2004-12-19 10:34

How can we get by? Learn to rid the accent by, again, following the TV, or Radio! Also, the more you open up your mouth to talk, the less broken your sentences would become.

Good to know. I am practicing this way now.

OliveOil, after you polishing, my article looks much better than the original one. Thanks a lot. I still hope I can get a chance to consult you about my writting problems.

OliveOil · 发表于 2004-12-19 16:41

Mine is simple: listen, speak, read and write, IN ENGLISH. NO CHINESE even at home unless I have to talk to people who don't know English at all.

You don't have major problems. The only problem is what we Chinese all have: we are trying to translate.

I don't know if you saw a post in this forum by someone asking about 2 words for English translation. http://edmontonchina.com/viewthread.php?tid=9950 What are the differences between stressed and tense; relaxed and relieved? Almost none--they are just different expressions basically talking about the similar feelings in that situation although they may be different in other situations. I didn't argue but he or she got study problems there.

I am not saying I don't have the same problem but I believe we are getting better and better with time being!

Other tiny mistakes, I think you would be able to make less and less before you even notice, given that you are using English all the time.

I would like to talk about English study with someone in whichever way: this forum, via email or by phone. I am not in Canada so we may not be able to meet in person :( Remember I do think you are one of the best here.

[ Last edited by OliveOil on 2004-12-19 at 06:03 PM ]

三思 · 发表于 2004-12-19 17:14

:o
I thought oliveoil was in Canada. i was wrong.
:)
I am in awe of your guys for being so keen on English study

excuse me if i made any english errors here...nervously clicking my keyboard;)

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