Many years ago I used to teach remedial English in both public universities and a private college. As a rule, I would keep my six years of elementary Chinese education from my students. After I earned their respect, I still would pretend I don't understand Mandarin. But on the last lecture I would reveal the fact that I crossed over from being Chinese educated to living in the English educated group. Often, students asked me how I did it. It took genuine desire and years of discipline application.
Below I list the good habits one can form for the purpose of language learning:-
Means channels Media
eye read newspaper books magazines
ear hearing radio CD talking books
mouth speak friends teachers strangers
read aloud news poem stories
sing pop songs movie songs
hand write letters diary journal
eye/ear video U tube VCD/DVD TV movies
From age 12 to 21, I would have a piece of cardboard pinned on my bedroom wall. There would be drawn on it a chart for 3 months. Let's say that for the following three months I aspired to read :
1. The editorial page of the Sunday English newspaper
2. One fiction per week
3. One magazine per month
There would be boxes on my chart to tick and document if I do live up to expectation for that duration of three months.
As for hearing, I used to have a little transistor radio that I turned to English station as I did my home work in the afternoons. At night, I would listen to one hour of either BBC or Voice of America short wave broadcast at 11 pm to 12 am in bed. Forty years ago we used cassettes, I could hardly afford to buy anyway. There were no talking books on sale then. But on week end nights, I recall BBC used to put up plays and literature excerpts read by authors. Similarly I would record the hourly listening day by day.
When it came to speaking, it took conscious effort to find friends who would speak to me in English. At first I would open my mouth to talk to Indians girls I met in bus stops. From experience, they are usually English speaking if they are dressed in western clothes. I would join societies and carefully nurture friendships with girls who spoke English as a default language. Another group is teachers who appreciate students who venture into the staff room to ask them questions about class work.
Singing along to pop songs is a very fun way of learning colloquial English. I also used to watch musical and tried to find ways to copy the lyrics from friends. For example, I was singling "My favorite things" long before I understand individual words used by Julie Andrew in that song.
I had pen pals and wrote monthly letters. Starting from all Chinese entries in my Grade 6 diary, it changed gradually to all English entries in Grade 9. For my literature courses in college, I was keeping journal. Lately, I was laughing at the TV programs my children downloaded from the internet. A good example is the international students taught by Mr Brown in Mind Your Language. By borrowing DVD movies, I still make attempts to improve my listening skills. With the advent of 24 hours TV broadcast, watching National Geographic and Discovery Science would be wonderful avenues to improve our vocabulary.
This proverb is always true: where there is the will, we will find a way to achieve our heart's desire.
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