English Learning: Quite a Long Way to Go

It is quite amazing that I found an article that was written by myself about five years ago on some suggestions of how to improve the English to the young students. It was invited by my dorm mate Ding who used to be the dean of the department of study, the student union of dept. of Software Engineering and it was scheduled for a presentation. But I was not that confident to take it ( I was of no experience on lecturing at that time), and then it was posted as printed.

This is an article that was revised by Mr. Hutchison, a kind teacher from Canada, who is now still teaching in Changshu. The reason why I post that old article here is, there are really great piles of useful and native expressions from Mr. Hutchison, and they are significant to us even today, when our English has been greatly improved. Following is the old article without any modification. But remember that the copyright is sincerely preserved.

The Introduction of English Approaching

Gu Jun, 03 Statistics, Math Dept.

Distinguished mates:

Firstly I would like to introduce myself, I am Gu Jun, the 2^nd year student as a statistics major from Math Dept. I get extremely glad and delighted to be standing here, sharing my experience on my English approaching with all of you.

I am, of course, quite strange to you, while I am quite familiar with the mates in the 2^nd year, I am just fortunately invited by Ding Wei, many of you should be quite familiar with this name, who is the leader of the Study Dept in your Students’ Union and, also my dormmate.

Before my speech, I see that there has been 2 mates sharing their English study experience with you, and I don’t want to just repeat their words, such as how to enlarge your vocabulary, how to pass the finals, etc. What I want to talk about is just something about oral English and its relation with the traditional English learning.

You can apparently see the importance of oral English. English is not only a kind of tool that is only used for exams but it is a communicating tool, just similar to the mobile phones on your hands. Just taking your future as an instance, you all sitting here are software-engineering majors, who will go to some computer company to be programmers. But in many large companies, such as Intel, IBM, or Microsoft China, English is just their working language, you must communicate with others in English, but if you cannot speak even one simple English statement, how can you successfully worth your salt?

PRETCO, CET-4/6 is of course very important, I admit, I am now also very busy preparing for the CET-4 on Jan. 8, but I do remember they are not the only purpose that you learn English. Just consider that even you get the full mark in CET, but when coming across a foreigner, you get so nervous, or rather say fearful that you are unable, even to speak one word out, then I shall ask, where is the benefit that you learn English?

Following is just some personal advice on how to improve oral English, but human characteristics varies, you may find some better and more suitable methods for your present situation.

If you want to practice your spoken English, I think the first element that you need is just courage, you should be able to get rid of embarrassment whiling talking to others in English, you must learn to speak English with others, such as the foreigners in our campus. Have you ever seen the tall man? Yeah, he is Allistair Hutchison, who is really a kind man, and so is his wife. I talk to him sometimes, in fact, speaking English to some foreigner is not so fearful as you imagine, what you must do is just to say and be calm.

Once you want to speak good, smooth English, you need a lot of opportunities to practice, but you may tell me that you have not got the environment for that language, so do I, Chinese is our native language, not only you, but also I can seldom get the opportunity to speak English. So the way that I choose is just to write. I write about 20 English emails per week, the destinations are various, ranging from my brother, and my pen friend in USA or just my classmates here. The more you write, the more familiar you will be with English, once you are familiar enough with the frequent words in English, you are able to speak good English naturally.

The core of English study is actually very clear. That is, you should learn to think in English, instead of Chinese. You can speak English to yourself which I think a really good and sufficient promotion to your oral English practice.

What I talk about above is just the way to practice oral English, but I recognize that you are advised to read extensively. Without large vocabulary as the basis, how can you successfully express your minds in English?

Well, time is up, I think I should wrap up, wish you all would speak English smoothly in the coming future.

Thank you so much for your patience.

Gu

Math Department

Dec.7,2004

If you are interested in such topic, please contact the author with following email address directly: [email protected] (Not Available Any Longer)

Recommended by

The Study Department,

Student’s Union

Department of Software-engineering