Here’s the place for collecting the notes from the English learning staff and keeping some memory for myself as well.
Private Use Only.
2007-03-27
Have fun with your Enligh
(The article below comes from a blog which belongs to a guy from Shanghai. (you can look at Here ) It's actually a piece of comments in that blog. And when I read it, I totally agreed with his/her points on how to make you comfortable with a language. So I decide to post it here to let you read it. I hope it'll be useful for the people who are still struggling with the damn English, who are too worried about making mistakes and feel shy to speak or write in English, especially like us. So stop hesitating and begin to use whatever we can pick from English to express our thoughts and have fun with it. )
English is just a language, like Chinese is a language, Japanese is a language, French is a language and Swahili is a language. I don't think anyone has the right to boast just because he or she knows a language well, grew up with a certain language, or picked it up quickly. Languages exist because people need to express themselves and communicate. Let's not confuse the means with the end.
Sometimes I fear that I'm slowly turning into a "languageless person," meaning there's not a single language I feel completely comfortable with. I'm increasingly running into things I can't express quite well enough either in English or Chinese. I remember when I was younger, for a few years I didn't allow myself to read, speak, or think in Chinese at all, except when I talked on the phone with my parents. I was the only Chinese person at my school and eager to fit in. Over the years, however, I've come to appreciate Chinese more and more. Now I read Chinese news, watch Chinese TV, and check out Chinese books from Chinatown. It really is a very beautiful language, so is English, and so I'm sure of any other language in this world.
It's unfortunate that, at least when people of my generation were taught English, they really didn't try to make it fun. I know I learned English by cramming for TOEFL and GRE :), but I didn't *really* learn it until I allowed myself to feel comfortable with whatever English I knew and just used it (well, it was more like I was forced to).
so, guess my two cents on learning a language, if any, is the following--throw all your worries outta the window and just have fun with it. The hell with pronunciation and grammar!
English is just a language, like Chinese is a language, Japanese is a language, French is a language and Swahili is a language. I don't think anyone has the right to boast just because he or she knows a language well, grew up with a certain language, or picked it up quickly. Languages exist because people need to express themselves and communicate. Let's not confuse the means with the end.
Sometimes I fear that I'm slowly turning into a "languageless person," meaning there's not a single language I feel completely comfortable with. I'm increasingly running into things I can't express quite well enough either in English or Chinese. I remember when I was younger, for a few years I didn't allow myself to read, speak, or think in Chinese at all, except when I talked on the phone with my parents. I was the only Chinese person at my school and eager to fit in. Over the years, however, I've come to appreciate Chinese more and more. Now I read Chinese news, watch Chinese TV, and check out Chinese books from Chinatown. It really is a very beautiful language, so is English, and so I'm sure of any other language in this world.
It's unfortunate that, at least when people of my generation were taught English, they really didn't try to make it fun. I know I learned English by cramming for TOEFL and GRE :), but I didn't *really* learn it until I allowed myself to feel comfortable with whatever English I knew and just used it (well, it was more like I was forced to).
so, guess my two cents on learning a language, if any, is the following--throw all your worries outta the window and just have fun with it. The hell with pronunciation and grammar!