March 6th, 2008 English Learning Experience

Although I have spent almost 20 years to learn and improve English, I am still not satisfied with it . In terms of the four basic skills, listening, speaking, reading, and writing, I am able to read well and very weak with three others. First, I was not able to follow the news in the radio or the talking in the movie before I came to US. Most of the time, I heard the words, but I could not find the meaning very quickly. In another words, I had to translate English to Chinese in my mind for understanding the listening English. After five years of continuous listening, my capbility for this skill finally improves. Second, my English writing skill is still horrible. I am still not able to tell the minor differences among synonyms and feel difficult to find accurate word in writing. Very often, there is no natural connection between two contiguous sentences, which makes it suffering to read my writing. Notwithstanding I know that it is necessary to keep on writing to improve it, and I write English everyday, I still feel what I write is very awkward in terms of grammar and word selection. Finally, I have to say my English speaking is not acceptable at all. I keep making mistakes about the timing issue, the pronunciation, and plural form of nouns, which do not exist in Chinese. I am only able to speak in very simple form using simple words; hence, I repeat using same word when I present. Further, my voice always sounds dry and clumsy. The only way to improve my English is to practice and this is what I am going to do.