4 posts tagged “language learning”

Yesterday I started a conversation with a Japanese man in Kantalk, who is a rewarded horrible novelist. I found the words I could speak out was woefully inadequate; but out of surprise, I had a wonderful discussion with him. Within 5 minutes, he invited me to join a skypecast with his friends. There were three Japanese middle-age men talking with a Taiwan second year student at university.

At the start of the conversation, the novelist was the host that he let us introduce each other. One’s name was Joker, and the other was Ken. Joker’s sound liked students, but he mentioned he had visited Taiwan for business, stranded around Taipei to Kaohsiung so I supposed he was a businessman who copes with trade. Ken revealed that he saw many tourists came to Japanese when he was a…maybe a guard(?) in the airport. My stammer had become more aggravated when I finally got it that there was no youth at all. Nevertheless, I enjoy the talk very much since they raised many aspects involving tradition, media, manga, opera, singer, and very few feelings of trauma in the history. I was certain that we were all curious about each other’s opinions and feelings even though we might have generation gap(luckily, we didn't have) because we had many similar points.

Of course, first they asked about why people in Taiwan have such enormous interest in them since we have equivalent culture in different ways. I answered them in three parts:1) Opera 2) Anime 3) Manga 4) Literature. They laughed when I had the example of Densha Otoko(train man), which is a story relate to a 23-year-old otaku wins the love of a beautiful office lady.

It made cross-countries people felt more relaxed and found this conversation was more commonplace at the same time. It produced 100 times more confidence to meet the demand of fluency in communication. Though we may not find there is a huge harvest for input in conversation, the sustainable encouragement inspires learners’ bountiful endurance to custom-made active learning.

I have not been accustomed to the trend of anime, so I only told them the hottest one is Keroro; suddenly, they went mad. It is a story about out space funny fogs go prevailing the earth. Joker moaned ”Please fuck me, no~no~.”(Quite funny sound, no offensive) I felt interesting that why they feeling amazing, and unbelievable. Later Ken said that he cannot resist the culture shock that the most popular character in Japan has influenced Taiwan so immensely(I guessed he disliked it like many in Taiwan). We talked over the length of 30 minutes and stopped because the novelist had another skypecaste to follow.

This talk seems very promising, and I may soon be finding a skype discussion to join. By far I get into the area of output very few since I still focus on my input activity, but I envision a more interesting conversation with other people learning English.

In this semester, I went to a course changed me a lot. A speech course hold by one of my favorite professor, Jose, who is also a passionate and childlike language learner. His French is quite elegant.

One day, as always, I can not continue the rest of my speech, numbing on the platform and casting for words. Then he gave a precious suggestion to me, in fact, all the class.

"Hydra(I use this name in school out of my various personalities, but I switched to Pin when I acted as a receptionist last year, it was an inferno to explain the origin of Hydra for a foreigner), you don't have to tell the truth. Time is precious, remember, be a lier." I shocked, almost shouted out "Yikes!". In addition, he took over my place and demonstrated a period of "unbelievable" speech.

His supporting ideas flowed naturally and confidently, especially all the words he used were not fancy words. Clear and interesting, he can catch our attention even without an opener.One of the secret that you have to know being a lier is that you have to have many unlucky friends, friends, relatives.They injured, suffer from mental illness, have a pet,etc.

Another week, we hold a class in a starbucks on our campus, Jose talked about many of his entertainment mainly consist of traveling. He had been holding long and animated narration in detail, and I was smirking at times. Following this speech course, we went to our oral English class. In the class, our teacher asked if anyone would like to share one of the unforgettable or worthwhile experiences or events. Without thinking, I raised my hand at once when others were hesitating and having no idea what to say. Indeed, I didn't have my own one, either.

Then I copied the content of Jose, moreover, I was exaggerating much over while others who took the last same class frowning at me. I seldom stopped the "storytelling" since the words Jose had just used like specter haunting after my ear.

Sometimes, we may be depressed and frustrated why we have so little to output. In my view, beside the constant input, we have to try to be a lier. A potential lier.

Many topics are usually used when we talking to native speaker, like "My new year resolution","Pets","My favorite festivals","OOXX experience", but we may not have even though in our own language, or we never had that kind of experience. What you have to do is to present your daily input in width and depth(others' experiences) to him or her with courage, don't feel strange to it.Take me for instance, I have one more chance to improve my English than the rest of the class.If you attend the discussion which is paid, you lose more, don't you?

Why not be a lier than putting filling words or keeping silent next time? You will get hooked with it.

I am not a Christian, but had a one semester course of Bible literature which is depicted by many as a classic work of Western world. Regardless of religion, reading Bible is a good way to learn English and save your money. You can always find the translation in your native language on the Internet without looking up words in dictionaries. Bible has many versions, so how can we find a best one for English learners?

The terms and phrases used in NIV(New International Version) is the most moderate version, between the oral Englsih(everyday English) and writing English(academic writing). There is no old, difficult English words like in James.

Good News Bible(GNB) is advantageous to our oral English. Fairly easy I would say, it might have many vague words, but the illustration impressed in it is quite animating. Pitifully, currently I can't find any audio files of this version on the Internet.

It is sensible to know the traditions and cultures reflecting in the Bible, and avoid challenging the content with others. Relax and treat it as a novel or story books, you may take much benefit from the Bible. If you are a youth,still you refuse to read bible before you take a look at it,I would say you are indeed a conservative old people in this liberal age.

http://www.biblegateway.com/resources/audio/
This is a website provide many versions of audio bibles, and I strongly recommend that you have both the text and audio files of NIV Bible, read a littel verses at a time as you like. If you have a limited budget on English learning investment, bible would be your best choice! If you are ambitious enough, try to set a goal of finishing reading New Testament. But don't regard it as a commitment,a tough task. Put it beside your bed, have a favorite cup of coffee, playing some music, and input effortlessly at the same time.

Tips:Want to put the audio files into your ipod? Use Audacity to record the stereo sound, and export to mp3 files !

If you are suffering from the process of learning language, then you may definitely lead to the result of failure.

If you know the language learning culture,industry,and factory are wrong, then don't buy it.

If you haven't used a input-based system to learn but a poor analytical method to learn languages, or even you have this knowledge, nevertheless you still don't do it with any reasons, you should adapt it the sooner the better.

If you start to enjoy the feeling of input, keeping going and output only when the ideas pop out;otherwise, be a mute or hand-handicapped for a while would be better than the failure that you become deaf or dumb at last.

If you want to be faster and switch the way of input-orientated learning into analyzing,memorize,and output, you would be slowly than ever before.

If....If...If..you agree with these opinions would help you master at least one foreign language, welcome to the terminal !
Please sign your visa at the gate 67 before and view more.

______________________I am gate 67__________________________

This is a blog mainly set up for people who are enthusiastic of language learning. We are from all over the world and share our experiences there. No matter you're a member form the Linguist.com or Effortless English.com,or neither of above,I am happy to make friends with you because our concept is the same one:Pursuing for language learning freedom. I sincerely do hope that we can cooperate to be like the protagonist in the movie "the terminal" to make miracles.