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1、 How to learn English well - Vantage A good English class is a valuable means for acquiring and practicing English, but still the reality is that much of your progress will arise from your own self-study strategies. As a teacher for close to 10 years now, I am often asked for advice on how best to s
2、elf-study English for fast results. I suspect sometimes my students are looking for that magic shortcut or panacea which can deliver them from all the blood, sweat, and tears that often surrounds the process of learning a second language. There is, of course, no magic, but on the other hand, there m
3、ay also be no need to engage in self-torturous activities that drain your energy. Part of the self- torture that students inflict upon themselves results from misconceptions formed along the way. I would like in this article to discuss a few of these misconceptions and offer some alternative advice
4、for self-studying English. A.H. Whitehead once said, not ignorance but the ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge. In other words, it is important to understand misconceptions before they inhibit your self-study. Misconception If I communicate with a Chinese partner, my English will get wo
5、rse. There is a common perspective here in Beijing that the only way to improve your English is by speaking with a native speaker. It stems from the perception that speaking to another second language learner has a negative effect, since the partner speaks Chinglish. Consequently, many desperately l
6、ook for native-speaking partners, some paying a small fortune for the luxury of speaking with inexperienced expatriates who do little more than chat. Worse yet, opportunities to speak regularly with a Chinese partner at little or no cost are ignored out of fear. In short, the native speaker s Englis
7、h craze is somewhat synonymous with the Chinglish phobia. The view that communicating with another student somehow damages your English rests on the age-old, erroneous6 assumption that language acquisition is a linear progression, with the native speaker at the top of the hierarchy. Perhaps native s
8、peaker teachers are guilty of feeding this perception by labeling courses, students, textbooks sequentially in terms of levels (i.e. beginner, pre- intermediate, intermediate etc); in the arrangement of grammar structures from simple to complex; and in reading and listening passages selected by the
9、number of words they contain (i.e. easy, moderate, difficult). Linguists who have studied the actual process of learning a second language know that developing a second language is anything but a linear process. It can follow patterns and steps but these steps and patterns frequently break down. Lan
10、guage learning often progresses randomly and chaotically. We sometimes progress rapidly, at other times we learn slowly, there are areas we seem to master easily, and areas in which we never seem to make any headway. Sometimes the words and sentences come easily; sometimes they do not. Moreover, whe
11、n we talk about the quality of English we must be prepared to acknowledge that it is very much a subjective and contextual evaluation. We know that formal standard professor may find her English very effective in front of her peers, but next to useless with inner city teenagers in New York. Therefor
12、e, can we still say that her English is better than the teenagers? Obviously, it would depend on who was judging. With English, quality is often an issue of appropriateness as well as grammaticality. Researchers who have studied English language learning have found that people progress as they pract
13、ice, and ultimately they self-correct what they say. It is unnecessary to have someone correct your English constantly, because mistakes most often derive from a lack of English instincts rather than a lack of awareness or knowledge of the correct grammar structure. The same student who never makes
14、a mistake doing grammar exercises on paper will make them while speaking but ultimately he will adjust his structures as he continues to use them. Moreover, researchers who have conducted studies of various groups of learners have found that learners who communicate with partners of a similar level
15、tend to progress faster than learners whose partners levels are much higher or lower. One can understand why this is so when a learner communicates with someone at a lower level, but why is it also true of those who communicate with someone at a higher level? The reasons are mostly psychological. Ha
16、ving a partner whose English is much more developed discourages the speaker and the fear of making mistakes tends to stifle smooth conversation. However, the researchers found that those who communicated with partners who were near their own level progressed faster. Thus, in fact your classmate who is at the same level of English as you may indeed be your finest teacher. Misconception If I want to learn
