时间过得真快，本周要离开了。
毕业前，要准备一场演讲。
Good afternoon teachers, students and friends.
My name is Edward, I am from Shenzhen, China. It is my great pleasure to have this opportunity here to give you a speech. Here we have friends coming from different countries. Many of you are coming from Korea, China, also, there are friends coming from Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Laos and many other countries. But we all come here for the same purpose, to study English.
As regards to English studying, I am sure you all have your own experience, Right? Here I am also glad to share some of my experience with you.
First, set your goals as clear as possible. Especially for adults who don’t always have enough time to learn English.
Think in terms of: I want to be able to.... For example, if we want to be able to manage travel situations. We need to focus on listening and speaking more than grammar. Also, we would learn more travel and daily life related vocabulary. In this case, we were not supposed to put words regarding aerospace and aliens on the top of our list. By identifying specific goals and designing our learning around them, we shall avoid wasting time on unnecessary vocabulary.
Taking myself as an example, I am a businessman, so I would put business related vocabulary on the top of the list, like inquiry, offer, prices negotiation, shipping, insurance and so on. Most of time, I keep in contact with my clients via email, so I spend more time on business writing. Well, I am not telling you that speaking is not important, as I also need to call my clients sometimes. I had just put writing on priority, if I had more time, I shall practice speaking as well. Actually, in the first two years of working as an international merchandiser, I couldn’t speak English fluently. But I managed the calls by writing a memo for the issues I need to discuss over phone.
Before talking on the 2nd point, I would ask you a question? Do you like Chinese Kungfu, also known as martial arts? Maybe yes, especially for friends from China! So, you might have read some famous novel written by Jing Yong, whose English name is Louis Cha, like <Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre>, <The Legend of the Condor Heros>. In these novels, many of the heroes would study martial arts in an isolated valley or even cave. They are either guided by their coach or a mysterious book or even animals. In any cases, after studying hardly for many years, they would become a Kungfu master, then they will leave the valley or cave; going back to so-called Jianghu, that’s the public society. There they would fight against bad gangsters, teach martial skills to poor people, and do lots of other jobs to win honor and become a respected hero. Can we learn English well like this way?
Well, most probably, we could not! We should not isolate ourselves from others, so instead of a valley or cave, we all learn English in schools, or at home. We need to practice and communicate with others in English. Try to practice as much as possible would greatly help us to learn faster. Not like fighting against gangsters, to practice English is much safer, at least we don’t need to worry about being killed right? So, use your English whatever your current level is, don’t wait till you become an English master!
Find someone to speak to regularly. There are many websites where we can meet a language partner, some of them are even free. Perfect, right? But it does take a certain personality to introduce ourselves to a community of strangers, set up a day and time to speak with them. To develop an interesting and mutually beneficial relationship with other learners also takes time and patience. If you can manage this process, you are all set. Speaking regularly is the best way to improve quickly.
We don't need to speak to a native speaker, though we might want to get correction from a native or near-native speaker from time to time, to make sure that any mistakes you are making don't become deeply ingrained.
Many of students here are mother or father. Helping kids to do his/her homework is a headache for parents, do you agree? I check my son’s Chinese homework many times. Every day, he needs to read and write Chinese, check unknown words from dictionary, make sentences. After he started grade 4, he needs to write an article every week. Chinese is his mother tongue, and mine as well. I never thought Chinese is so difficult and one need to spend so many times to study it. Before that, I thought English is really difficult and Chinese is much easier! But after that, I realized that’s not true, I mastered Chinese also by years of studying from kindergarten to college, like my son is doing now! It is also a long run job, much longer than a marathon. To win a marathon, the most important factor is not strength, but perseverance! We shall encounter lots of difficulties, frustrations! We may want to give up, to walk through the hard time and keep on running, we must use the goal and interests as our guide! This is the 3rd experience of mine.
Lastly, don’t be afraid of tests. Considering it a way to find out your current level, your weakness, that will help you to improve your studying methods.
Hope my experience would be helpful for you. Thank you and God bless us all. Have a great day!
iOS fly ~