Friday, July 24, 2009
Where can I find someone to listen to me
At the right time when it is just the half of my summer intern, all I can see in store for me is frustration. I totally lost the confidence to struggle on. Frustrated by my bad speaking English everyday, everytime, how I wish to improve my English in a sudden. Still having no idea of where my experiment will lead me to, I just desperately find that there are always something that you cannot change by effort. For a long time I am conscious that I am not smart in the least. The only way for me to catch up with others is to devote my time to the limited things to make sure that I can manage them. I just cannot remember how many times when I am at a loss about what things should be handled. Who can I turn to pour all the depression inside my heart to?
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Maybe this will help: what I've noticed in a lot of people studying a foreign language is that they go through several phases:
ReplyDelete(1) Early learning: you know you're not very good, but you keep trying, and you start to improve.
(2) Early competency: you can start to actually hold conversations in your new language
(3) Fluency: you can survive on your own in your new language.
Then, at this point, if you start to immerse yourself in the new language, you suddenly hit a new phase:
(4) Improved listening: suddenly, your ability to hear your mistakes improves, and it sounds like you're SO MUCH WORSE than you used to be. But what's really happening is that you're improving, and so is your ability to hear your mistakes. So this is a VERY GOOD thing. :)
(5) Confidence: As you begin to correct those mistakes, you start to become more confident about your speaking skills, and from then on, it's a much easier path!
So, don't lose hope about your English - you're in exactly the right place to get so much better. If you try to speak as much English as you can, every day, with native speakers, and use Brenda's yes-log technique, I think you'll feel much more improvement!
You might also think about culture shock as a factor? Brenda says that there's been a lot of research on the phases of culture shock (anger, grief, depression, etc) so your feelings are very normal for someone who's moved to another culture, not to mention another language, AND with all the work you have on your plate! Feel free to grab one of us for a nice long chat about how you're feeling - either one of us would be very willing to sit down and talk about it with you.