My learning journey

[tuquynh]

I improve my speaking skill step by step:

Firstly, I learnt to think in English. When I was driving, I often thought of many things. You know, driving is boring, especially when there are lots of traffics. So, I thought of my study, my work, my boyfriend, my family, my friends, etc. I thought of everything; therefore I was rarely annoyed by the traffic jam. When I get used to English thinking, I can speak and write more easily. Now, I just write what I'm thinking. I don't translate. I don't care of grammar or vocabulary. That's dangerous because I still make careless mistakes. But it helps me to speak more fluently.

Secondly, I learn how to pronounce correctly. I attended the Pronunciation course at Apollo. It was very helpful. The teacher was very passionate. She inspired me to speak correctly. But I think we can also learn by ourselves. The textbook that was used in Apollo is "Pronunciation in Use" of Mark Hancook. It's really useful and engaging. The first thing we should learn is the phonetic chart. I recognize that English phonetic syllabus is just exactly the same as Vietnamese. When you are aware of that, it will be a lot easier for you to pronounce correctly. I advise you to pay attention to the ending sound because it's the heart of English speaking. By the way, it took me 3 months to get used to the right pronunciation.

The next step is improving my intonation. You would have recognized that native speaker's voice are up and down, up and down as they are singing. I deeply fall in love with English because of that. But I couldn't do that until recently. I don't want to sound like a Vietnamese speaking English, I want to speak as natives. So, it took me 2 years to improve my intonation. At this moment, I'm still not very satisfied with my speaking skill. But overall, I'm doing good and maybe better than many.

How did I improve my intonation? That was mainly because I had chance to listen to native speakers every day when I was in Melbourne (Australia accent was strange to me btw). I listened to them every time I went out. For the first 2 months, I couldn't get what they said, but I still listened to them. Honestly, it was hard not to listen to them when they were surrounding me. You may find that my above experience is not useful because you are not surrounding by the native speakers. How about making them surrounding you? I recommend the following podcasts that you can listen to.

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/multimedia/podcasts.html
http://www.newyorker.com/online/podcasts/fiction
http://www.radiolab.org/
http://www.cnet.com/buzz-out-loud-podcast/
http://www.mnsu.edu/voices/projects/humanrace.html

I think you should listen to the podcast without script so that you can pay more attention to their rhyme, tones, and accent rather than the content. So, I spent 6 months to listen to native speakers. When I came home, I was still not good at Speaking!!!!!!!!!

The chance came when I agreed to host a Swiss girl. She came here to attend the International Week as an international student. She lived with me at the same room. At the first night, we talked in 4 hours!!!! Thanks God, she has excellent speaking skill. So, I both learnt from her and talked to her. We talked almost every night in 2 weeks she staying here. When she came home, I can finally talk without translating in my mind and my intonation is good.

Hope the above helps 

[tuquynh]

Replied by Nguyen Tien


That must be an interesting journey of you to be fluent in this
language. I'm impressed!

Thinking in English be a great tip and I heard about that before but sometimes this caused me headache. Anyway still it bring good result. The thing is we need to commit to learn and be strict to train
ourselves, in order to see the progress.

Thanks for the resource of podcast that you gave, I ve been stick to New Yorker podcast can their pronunciation is great! others I haven't tested yet. By the way, it raise me thoughts : their are quite many different types of English not only American English, British English but Singapore English, Australia English,etc. and each of them create different sounds of pronunciation, intonation, this troubled me when I traveled in different countries and couldn't have smooth communication with locals because of accents ! You guys can take notice of that, and my advise from my experiences is that if you decide to improve in
order to use one English type in communication, stick to it, and make it yours, don't mix or it will cause wasted time to adapt,to twist in different types.

Yes it's very important to commit yourself in learning, day after day.
You will see great improvement by being patient !

[Quynh Dang]

What a journey! I strongly find the "up and down" part the most exciting. This seems to be one of the hardest barrier for Vietnamese students to overcome. I used to watch Hollywood movies a lot to better my intonation.

[tuquynh]

Thanks Quynh Dang for your sharing   

[minhtruong]

wow, what an arduous journey you've been through! (TESTING POST) LOL

[filmfinder]

I am a new member of this forum and I found this topic so interesting due to the fact that the writer has honestly shared her experience. Furthermore, I have to admitted that her journey has seemed to be highly clear and that I now find it a little bit easier to restart the process of English Study, especially the Listening and Speaking skills, after getting the 6.0 Ielts last month.

Besides, there is one more thing that I strongly believe it needs to be mentioned here is that I hope to receive the kindly help from all of you, the members of this community, in order that I can effectively improve my English.

Thanks for creating the space for me to use English. I miss speaking Enlish!!!!

[tigercub]

Thanks for sharing your tips!!!

I am strongly agree with you that driving is so boring!. Actually, the way I study English is quite similar to yours. But it seems English is not my cup of tea, I have spent about two years for learning about pronunciation and intonation. The former was taken about six months with helping from some native speakers, and I realized that is just acceptable. The later one, OMG, it is not my thing, I can't get it until now . Even though I also had a year live in oversea, I couldn't get this opportunity to accumulate my intonation skill.

By the way, I appreciate to all sharing of members here!!!

Tigercub