your chinese is okay already. level 6 is nothing to scoff at. the English education provided by secondary and even collegiate instruction in China isn't very good. i snuck into an english lecture once at a chinese college, and sadly... the professors english wasn't really all that great. you could watch CCTV9, and start getting your news from cnn.com. as for writing and vocab building. try to learn word roots. especially if you want to prepare for TOEFL. as for speaking and accent, i once took a look at the "crazy english" (feng kuang ying yuu) package and it was pretty good... i disagree with all these new attempts to make money off of the Chinese public with all these random English learning products... but the crazy english stuff is pretty good, just not worth its price tag. my line on this situation is... English is great, but as long as you are not planning to live in america, then there's no need to immerse yourself in it. nor is there really any way to do it. what i find kind of interesting is that there's similarly been a exponential growth in the interest of americans in China and Chinese over the past 5 to 10 years. a lot of my american friends from school want to go work in China and are learning chinese just as diligently as you are learning english. there's supply, and there's demand... but there's some sort of barrier to trade somewhere. meanwhile crazy looking canadian guys like da shan are making millions.
Lol, eventhough one can probably comprehend only half of what he is singing in his lyrics (optimistically rounded up to the nearest half ), you have to admit some of his songs are quite catchy. And just to clarify, I am not a diehard jay chou fan and I have enough friends already -G'day-
That, and OTHER things we are grateful for. Well said. I don't know, however, if most of the people here would take their time as you did, to write something meaningful without using so many idioms to relate to something people from other cultures would understand. I have so much fun, being an English as a Second Language Speaker, with the literary meaning against the figurative meaning of most of the stuff people say at work. Whether you're CHINESE, MEXICAN, GERMAN, FRENCH (I can't believe I mentioned those guys), or JAPANESE, English is hard to not only pronounce, but to speak it, and to figure out rules that apply only a certain time and others it won't. I try my best not to use figurative language, because you won't know exactly what comes across. Culture and regional meaning have changed this very much. I am imagining, jjryulee, that your name must be a RYU + BRUCE LEE Combination? Just kidding. Welcome, friend from China, and feel free to place me in your Buddy list on this BBS.
That's not true! I'm French and when I speak english I have an American accent! ...Then again that's maybe cause younger,I lived in NJ, Tyler and Houston! Now that I think about it, maybe that's why I couldn't that many chicks... ALA
This thread has so much potential... too bad images are turned off. I like this guys profile: Biography: winnerÂ_ That's awesome! Wanna learn proper English pronunciation? Say this phrase over and over: "how now brown cow" with your mouth like this and exaggerate your mouth movements a lot. I think that's how Jackie Chan got his English to be so good. He can recite Shakespeare and stuff now. BTW, we need to introduce this guy to T_J and tell him the best way to get on his good side is to talk about the joys of socialized medicine.
No....you will instead have to attack and grab and grope in order to get a piece of American ass....just like Arnold did (yes, yes, i know he's Austrian )
Your english is pretty good, man, don't worry too hard about that. My friend (Korean) learned English solely through the Simpsons, so the best way is to really immerse yourself in the culture and hope it sticks. And Asian accents are sick...especially Vietnamese and Cantonese. Those are some harsh tongues; add those accents in with English, and it just sounds rough on the ears...not to be racist or anything...
