some kind soul help me,plz,how to learn english well

Read to achieve.

 

Quick question: what is your first language?
I originaly speak French( ),and the biggest challenge of being bilangual is to not translate word by word the expression you have in your own language!

ALA

 

Your english doesn't sound very bad. Doesn't seem like that big of a problem to you.

If you really want to learn perfect English (okay I know that my english isn't perfect either), do this everyday: Read English newspapers. Don't read the literature stuff. Read the international news, the sports news (not so boring), the front page news. Only after you have a strong grasp of the OFFICIAL english, then you can read some novels and literature stuff. Don't do it the other way round. The reason is that you must learn the correct grammar (from newspapers) before you start learning the difficult vocabularies (from novels). Actually the words that you'll find in a newspaper are more than enough for most forms of communications unless your boyfriend/girlfriend studies literature.

Then, if you are going to have to communicate with an American in your lifetime, you should also watch some Hollywood movies and read some American BBS posts. Because Americans don't speak "normal" english in their everyday lifes. "What's up" doesn't exist in the dictionary.

What your teacher said is total CRAP. She is the one who couldn't learn english well and finds an excuse for herself. She should resign and go mop the school hallways.

But like you said, your problem is listening. Watch some movies. I'll recommend a few: Ocean's 11, The Italian Job (2003), all movies starring Sean Connery, Fight Club, Phonebooth, James Bond movies. Make sure they have original english subtitles. Try to listen and read the subtitles at the same time. Don't go for Mandarin or other language subtitles. Most Mandarin subtitles that I've seen are COMPLETELY wrong! They don't know what they're translating! They should pay me to do the translation!

And don't watch BadBoys II or stuff like that. Because the characters talk too fast, too much swearing and they don't talk clearly enough. Many non-Americans will find it difficult to understand the dialogs.

Just my 2 cents.

 

I forgot one important point.

If you are Chinese, then don't fall into the mistake of learning the "english slang" or tone. Because there's no "english slang". There're only American slang, Texas slang, Australian slang, Britain slang, Ireland slang etc. I think neither one is the standard.

Mandarin is very different from the english language. In mandarin, the same pronouciation but with two different tones will have different meanings. Tones are important in Mandarin, but not in English. So don't be bothered with the "correct" tone, because there's no correct tone.

Then later when you feel comfortable, it's up to you whether or not you want to emulate any slangs. But you don't have to. I think my rather flat tone of spoken english is just nice.

Do you know what happens when an english student tries to sound like an American? Neither an American nor a Chinese understands what he's talking about.

 

breathe...

 

Ease up AB, I don't think any harm was intended. His point is to learn basic formal grammatical English first, before tackling slang.

Same advice would apply for avoiding learning English skills from movies like "Clockwork Orange" or "Monty Python's Holy Grail" or "Sid and Nancy" or any movie that is written in a particular idiom outside of basic formal grammatical English.

lilier, your English is very understandable.

 

SOUD?!?!?!

guys he is typing not talking

you want to speak english well I am assuming as it is an entirely different thing from typing or writing.

to lear any language you must surround yourself with people who only speak that language and you must get by without you native tongue.

do a study abroad progream if you are still in HS or at university. go to a school that is not vary ethnicly diverse. do not give yourself cruches.

my father is a school teacher and he has had several chinese kids learn english in one semester simply because they had to. Yao gave himself a cruch in having a translator and in living in a chinese community and going home. he should move in with steve and cat and just learn english one summer.

I have tought myself spanish by talking with my latino employees.
I force myself to have the converstaion in spanish when i could just as easily make them speak in english

I hope my typing is understandable to you

 

Right, right because none of these movies have ANY slang and Sean Connery's english is superb. BTW ignore Don Cheadle in Ocean's 11 because that'll really throw you off.

 

Fargo people, its all about Fargo

oh that and strange brew

I would like to meet chinese people speaking like silly canadians and North dakotans

 

AB, my apologies, I only read the line you quoted in your response.

 

Yeah and If you ever watch Star Wars, don't listen to Lando or Darth Vader's machine voice! and if you watch Shrek, don't listen to the donkey!

Sling Blade! now them's a mighty fine movie to learn english offa'.

 

None required, it's just another day in the Hangout.

 

Hmm...how come some of my posts resulted in a misunderstanding.

I meant to refer to movies where the dialogs are not that fast and don't have unconventional (if you know what I mean) phrases. Because when I watched those movies that I've listed, I had no problem listening and perfectly understanding what the characters were talking about, without reading the subtitles. And yes, to me, Sean Connery's english is very understandable. I think he makes it a point to pronounce his dialogs clearly.

That's my perspective, you know, from a non-American-watching-english-language-movies point of view.

I apologize for the misunderstanding caused. But I won't say sorry for what I said, because I know I didn't say something wrong morally.