英语学习者面临三大挑战.doc

英语学习者面临三大挑战！Three biggest challenges facing an English learner1. Developing a passion for learning EnglishAllEnglish learners would like to speak English well. They are excited at the ideaof being able to communicate in English fluently. However, they usually dontcare about the learning process itself. For most learners, learning English isa duty something that they have to, but dont want to do. They dont seepleasure in learning English.In short,most learners would like to speak English well but dont like to be learningEnglish. This is the first and biggest problem facing an English learner,because a person who doesnt like to learn English will not learn it well. Ifyou dont love English, English wont love you back!If youwant to become a successful learner, you need to like the learning processitself. You need to treat time spent on English as time for pleasure andrelaxation. For example, you need to enjoy:reading English sentences and thinking abouttheir structurelearning new words from a dictionarywriting a correct English sentence byconsulting dictionaries, grammar guides, and the Webpracticing the pronunciation of English soundsand wordsIdeally,learning English should be your hobby. You should think of yourself as anEnglish Learner a person who has chosen learning English as one of theirfavorite activities.2. Making the first change to ones lifeThe decision to learn English requires changes in your life. For example, decidingthat one will read a book in English for 30 minutes every day and keeping tothat decision. Its very difficult to make a small, but permanent change toyour life, especially if learning English doesnt seem “fun”. However, learnersshould remember that studying English for 15 minutes every day gives you muchbetter results than studying for a whole day once a month.3. Making further changes toones lifeWhile thefirst change is the most difficult, each subsequent one is hard, too. A lot oflearners take the first step (e.g. they start reading a book in English everyday) and stop there. They do not engage in other English-building activities.A goodlearner will have a set of activities (reading, watching TV, practicingpronunciation, listening to recordings, etc.) and choose from that setaccording to his or her mood. One activity is not good enough, because (1) youget bored more quickly, and (2) it gives you a range of language skills that istypically too narrow. For example, reading in English cant improve yourpronunciation, although it can improve your grammar, vocabulary, readingcomprehension, and writing skills.)Why we dont like English classes 我们为什么不喜欢英语课Englishclasses are the most popular way in which people study English. They are soamazingly popular that most people do not even think abouthow to learn English. The process is automatic:I want to learn English, so I sign up for an English course. I will paysome money, sit in class for a few hours a week, and I will get good English.This isvery surprising, becauseEnglishclasses are a very poor way of learning English. We have spent alarge part of our lives in English classes (in high school, college, and atlanguage schools), and we know what they are like. With all our knowledge ofEnglish classes and courses, we would be surprised if we met a person who haslearned to speak English very well by going to English classes.If youattend English classes, you spend many hours a week on them. Often, you alsospend lots of your money. What do you get for your time and money? Hereiswhat you can do at an Englishclass: Listen to some bad English.Thepronunciation, grammar, andvocabularyof other students (and sometimes the teacher, too) will be bad. Sometimes as bad asthis, or worse. Surely listening to these people will not make your English better. Say five sentences in English.There are usually 10-20 students in the class, so there is little time for you to speak English. Normal English classes are very poor speaking practice. (Conversation classes are better.) Read a boringtextbook.Almost all English teachers usetextbooks. Want to know why? Because it makes their work easier. They dont have to prepare for every class. They just do the next unit in the book.Textbooksmake teaching easy. Andthey make learningboringand ineffective. You have to read stupid stories about Michael Jackson or a woman who lived in African jungle for two years. Then you have to answer questions about them and talk about them with other students. This is madness! All this nonsense that you dont care about. It makes you think that learning English isboring. Listen to a few grammar rules, such as “the present continuous tense is used for talking about developing and changing situations”. Learning grammar rules is the stupidest thing you can do. The two main reasons: 1) It is impossible tomemorizeall those hundreds of grammar rules anyway, 2) When speaking English, you dont have time to think: “What tense should I use? Lets see. I want to present the idea of action continuing up to the present time, so I should use the present perfect tense.” You want to use your English naturally. Grammar rules may improve your scores in tests, but they do not improve your English. Do some grammar exercises. After talking about grammar rules, teachers usually give you some exercises, such as multiple choice or gap filling tests. Grammar exercises have two functions: 1) they make you review the grammar rules, 2) they test your English. The first function is useless because grammar rules are useless (see previous section). The second function, testing, is okay if you want to compare your knowledge with other people. But testing does not teach you any English. Get a homework assignment. The homework is usually a grammar exercise (seeprevioussection) or acomposition. The subject of thecompositionwill usually be something that you dont care about. Examples:Your opinion on the proverb “Blood is thicker than water”,Is it good to be famous?. What nonsense. Doingboringthings is not going to help your English. It will only decrease yourmotivation.Englishclasses will not teach yougood pronunciation(whichis simply necessary for communication!). Most teachers completely ignore it,sometimes because their ownpronunciationis bad. Some teachers will correct your mistakeswhen you speak. But very few teachers will tell you how you can avoid makingthe same mistakes again. Very few teachers will tell you about the sounds ofEnglish and how to use a dictionary to learn about thepronunciationof words.Mostteachers willnotencourageyou to read in English, to buy agood English-English dictionary, to listen to English-language recordings on your own.They will just do theirtextbookand the exercises in it. If your teacher isdifferent, you are lucky.This iswhat most English classes look like. Think about your classes. If they are likethat boringand ineffective then you are simply wasting yourtime. (Dont worry: you are not alone. Millions of people around the world wastetheir time by going to English classes, even though they do not improve theirEnglish.)You canreplace ineffective andboringclasses with interesting things which will reallyimprove your English: Instead of listening to bad English in the classroom, turn on your TV and watch CNN International or another English-language channel. You will get lots of perfect sentences in excellent English. Instead of sitting for two hours to say five sentences in English, sign up for a conversation class with anative speaker. Or start speaking English with your best friend. Instead of working with aboringtextbook, read something interesting. There are so many interesting texts in English! Surf to English-language sites on the Web. Read a good book in English. Simply, read something that interests you. Something that wont bore you to death. Instead ofmemorizinggrammar rules and doing grammar exercises, read and listen to English.Inputis the only way to learnimpressive, natural English. Instead of writingcompositionsabout the subject that your teacher gave you, write about something that you care about. For example, write some e-mail in English. Dont write for your teacher write for yourself!You can damage your English by writing and speaking写英语说英语有可能毁掉你的英语How practice can damage your EnglishIf you ask“How can I learn to speak English better?”, many people will tell you“Practice, practice, practice”. “Speak and write in English whenever you can”,theyll say. All English classes are full of activities which involve speakingand writing. You produce sentences when you do an exercise in your textbook,when your teacher makes you speak in class, or when you have to write acomposition. All these activities are supposed to help you with your English.Practicecan be very useful. Its even necessary to learn English well. So whats theproblem? The problem is thatfor many learners, speaking or writing means making alot of mistakes. Some people make a mistake in every sentence!Supposeyou are writing an e-mail message in English. Your English is not perfect andyou want to write the message quickly. You write (incorrectly):I want speak English.When youwrite a sentence, you also read it. So the incorrect sentence becomes “toxicinput”for your brain. The next time you write a message, you will be more likely towriteI want finishorI want be happy. Why? BecauseI want speak Englishis fresh inyour head you recently used it! And when you writeI want a few more times, youll getabad habit:I wantwill become your natural way of speaking English.Such bad habits can be very difficult to eliminate. Even if somebodylaterpoints outyourmistake and you concentrate very hard to avoid making it again, the bad habitis often stronger. Its anuphill battle.Every timeyou write or speak with mistakes, youreinforcethosemistakes. As you repeat your mistakes, you develop bad habits. If you make alot of mistakes, practice becomes a harmful activity because it teaches youmore bad English than good English. Some learners make so many mistakes thatthe more they practice, the worse their English becomes!What about “learning from your mistakes”?The onlyway you can learn something from your mistakes is when somebody corrects them.If you say an incorrect sentence, and if someone points out the mistake andtells you the proper way to express your meaning, then your knowledge ofEnglish increases.You maytherefore think that speaking or writing with mistakes is not so bad because itis a chance to fix your errors and learn something new. Unfortunately, this istrueonly if you have acheckera competent person who will correct your mistakes. If you dont have achecker, speaking or writing with mistakes will only give you bad habits.If yourethinking that anEnglish teachercouldbe your checker, consider this:Many teachers (especially non-native speakers)are simply incompetent. Sometimes they will find “errors” in correct sentencesor suggest bad alternatives. I couldnt count the number of times it happenedto me in high school.Most teachers correct only the biggest mistakesand ignore the rest. The reason is simple: class time is limited. If theycorrected every mistake of every student, they wouldnt be able to teach theirlessons. You could get some kind of private tutor, but how much would it costto have him correct everything you write and say in English?What about“randomnative speakers”? This category includes any native speakerswho are not your teachers: your American friends, Australian penpals, nativespeakers on Internet forums, or just regular people around you, if you are inan English-speaking country. Can they be effective checkers?Notlikely. In general,native speakers will not correct your mistakes!As long as they can understand what you mean, they will completely ignore allyour mistakes in grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. For example, themessage below is perfectly understandable and could easily pass uncorrected:I am want make question for knowing how to able speak English proper way.I need of a internet learn book for American word of slang. I will thank yourhelp for life.Why isthat?As a case in point, I get a lot of e-mail from Englishlearners. I love English and I like correcting mistakes. But I almost neverpoint out mistakes. Why? Because if I did, it would often take me 10 moreminutes to reply to a message. And I usually dont have 10 more minutes.Correcting mistakes requires not only greatEnglish skills. To correct someone, you have to pay attention to what he saysor writes. If something is wrong, you have to think of a better way to sayit.Correction takes time andeffort. And people are lazy and dont have the time to fix someone elsessentences. Its much easier to ignore the mistakes andkeep theconversation going.Its always stressful to tell someone that theymade a mistake. Many native speakers will be afraid of anawkwardsocialsituation and when you make a mistake, they will pretend that nothing hashappened. Some of them will even think they are being polite.“Learning from your mistakes” sounds good, butit is not easy, because making mistakes is not enough you still need someoneto give youfeedback. And itis difficult to find a competent person to help you.Besides,even if you had such a person available whenever you speak or write in English,making mistakes would probably still be harmful, since mistakes can lead to badhabits even if they are corrected.The sooner you realize you cannot “speak your way” to goodEnglish, the sooner you will make some real progress.Solution: Stop making mistakes!We havesaid that when you practice, you reinforce your mistakes, and that you cannotrely onfeedbackfromother people. We have also said that you need practice to learn English.There is asimple solution to thisparadox:Never makemistakes!Before you conclude that we havecompletelylost it, pleaseread what Michal has written about his experiences:It is close to the truth that I have neverwritten an incorrect English sentence.I knew many grammatical structures and I usedonly those that I knew.My sentences were similar to sentences which I knewto be correct.I followed good examples, so all mysentences were good.In the beginning, I could write only verysimple sentences, but all the simple sentences were correct. Then as Iadvanced, I added more and more complicated structures, and again all mysentences were correct.Because of this approach, I was neverreinforcing bad habits. I never had any bad habits! From the beginning, Icopied only correct sentences. With every sentence that I wrote, I reinforcedmy good habits.You canspeak and write with almost no mistakes, too.FAQ“But if Im afraid to make amistake, I will never open my mouth!”You willnot be afraid to make a mistake if you know how to say things in English. Youwill know how to say things in English if you get enoughinputthat is, if you keep reading and listening to correct English sentences untilcorrect English phrases sound natural to you and incorrect phrases sound weirdto you. Then you will be sure that youre speaking correctly.“I make a lot mistakes when Ispeak Englishwhat should I do?”1.Definitely get a lot ofinput. If youmake mistakes in your English sentences, that means you dont know how to saythings in English. You need to learn how to say them. You wont learn that byspeaking or writing.You must read and listen to correct Englishsentences.There is no other way.2.Try to be more careful use therules of error-free speaking. If youstill make a lot of mistakes, you probablyshouldntopen yo