« Home | Not In My Backyard » | Sukseskah desentralisasi di Indonesia? » | Déjà vu » | How do loyalty, group power work in jihadists circ... » | Questioning Australian asylum granting policy » 

10 April 2006 

How to improve your English

Martin Manurung, Norwich

University of East Anglia
's international students office recently asked to share our experience in improving our English.

There are many ways to improve your English. I am going to share some of them, which I found simple and you can do it in your daily life.

First, enjoy your life. Learning a language must be active, not passive. Make friends, go to parties whenever you can and push yourself to talk. Many international students only mingle with their own nationalities. For sure, this is not a good way to make your English better. Make more friends who do not speak your mother tongue and you do not speak their mother tongue too. Therefore, the only way to communicate with them is by using English.

Second, do speak! Since English is not your mother tongue, don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Mind that native speakers do make mistakes too, so why should you be worried? In fact, mistakes are useful so you can learn from them.

Third, stop translating. Many non English native speakers do translation when they speak or write. In my opinion, this is not a good way to learn a language. The reason is because your language system might be very different with English. When you can speak spontaneously, or even when you can dream in English, it means you are beginning to grasp the language into your unconsciousness.

Martin,
Saking enjoy my life disini, gue malah bisa mempengaruhi kegilaan slank indonesia ke bahasa inggris.. dan gilanya lagi, temen2 bule gue malah jadi ikut2an gue.. misalnya, gue inget banget bang dedy suka bilang 'want to know aja' dan sekarang temen bule gue dah pada bisa bilang gitu, dan dengan ekspresi yang sama persis dengan ekspresinya bang dedy wktu di kelas fco dulu... hehe

Post a Comment

About us

Quote of the Day

Syndication & Statistic

    Syndicate this site (XML)

    Subscribe to Brainstorm

    Add to Google

    Blogger Templates

    eXTReMe Tracker