Though I was used to be a student of EMI school, I don’t think I’m very good at English. Actually, there are many ways to learn English, the way used in schools are not the only. This time I would like to share with you all some of my experience, and hope you will found them useful too.
In schools (not only EMI), students are usually practice and practice, followed by dictations and tests, no matter for vocabularies, grammars, speaking and so on. Undoubtedly (無可否認) some of the steps are necessary, but we can make them more interesting:
Games: Scrabble, word clozes are good to enhance your vocabulary. Online games and Facebook games which are from foreign countries give you chances to communicate with people around the world, which English is the most common language inside the chatrooms.
Media: Newspapers are good but you may think SCMP is too heavy. Instead, The Standard or the English section in Metro Daily (都市日報) and Sing Tao Daily (星島日報) are suitable to start out. TV programs are good too; start with the ones you like, personally I like to watch Heroes, 24 and Discovery channel.
Books: For CMI students, try to acquire the English textbooks or notes inside tutorial classes. Not only the glossary and jargons (專業術語), but also the composition of sentences and organization of information are useful. Furthermore, guide books and novels are tools to improve writing skills; I will recommend some at the end of this blog entry.
Daily life: English is everywhere in our life, from package of products, food menu, to signs at outdoors. Be a good observer when you hang out next time. J
Above is some ways I have used in years, yet there are still many other ways out there and waiting for you to discover. Believe me; you will have a lot of fun when you have success without using a traditional way. Last but not least, questions and comments are welcomed.
Further reading:
(MLA style citation used in here, please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_MLA_Style_Manual to learn how to use it, which is useful (and necessary) to quote from materials when doing projects.)
Diamond, Harriet and Phyllis Dutwin. Grammar in Plain English (3rd Ed.). New York: Barron's Educational Series, Inc., 1997.
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Batko, Ann. When Bad Grammar happens to Good people – How to avoid common errors in English. New Jersey: The Career press, 2004.
Remarks: Learn from mistakes are the fastest way to improve your English.
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Colfer, Eoin. Artemis Fowl. New York: Viking press, 2001.
Remarks: Artemis Fowl series are interesting novels.
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Clancy, Tom. Rainbow Six. New York: Putnam, 2001.
Remarks: The original novel of the well-known video game.
