Jie Zhang: Advice for ESL Students

Jie Zhang is a student in Distance Learning. 

She shares her advice for ESL students here.  

This piece was published in a shortened version in the Easy English Times.


               Advice for ESL Students
                             
                        by Jie Zhang


1. How to learn English

First thing first, you need an English teacher. Some people would say "I can learn English by watching TV series and movies", or say "I can learn English from daily work". Yes, that is true. But I still need a teacher who can provide me professional advice on English learning. Adult schools and community colleges offer ESL courses. The learning schedule is flexible. The tuition is affordable. You can learn at your own pace. The only thing you need is to keep on.

Second, if you meet some difficulty, do not seek help from your friends and family at once. Every difficulty is a great chance to learn. If other people do it for you, you will lose the chance. It is challenging and stressful. But you will learn faster.

Third, if your English teacher gives you some learning advice, give them a try and tell your teacher how you feel. Your feedback is important to your teacher and yourself. If it not works on you, that is OK. You can discuss with your teacher to find a more comfortable way. Your teacher cannot help you if you don't take some action and interact with your teacher.

I have some personal experience to share.

One is when I started to learn English, I would record my voice, replay it and compare it with the standard one. At first, I was ashamed to hear my voice from the earphone. It sounded weird. But quickly, I found my voice sounded not that bad and I dared to replay it out loud from the speaker. Now I am sure that my voice sounds good when I speak English.

Another is my secret method, which comes from an article about how foreign language university students practice their listening in English. Every week, I have my new learning video. I usually watch through it twice by switching off the subtitles. I will not go through the handout in advance. Then I pick a 10 minutes fragment, listen one sentence, pause the video, write down the sentence, then play next sentence. When I finish them all, I will turn on the subtitles, circle out the mistakes in my writing. By analyzing the reason for my mistakes, I can easily find out my weaknesses in English. It is an exhausting job. I don't do it very often. It not only benefits your listening but also grammar, spelling and even corrects your pronunciation.

2. How to succeed in US culture?

For me, it is too early to say "succeed" in US culture. I believe that the respect is the essential element to succeed in US culture. What I do is to keep a neutral point of view, try to neither resist the culture nor pursue it too much. I would like to experience some US life style. If I don't like it, I just stop doing it.
 

3. How to feel comfortable in US culture?

That is easy. US culture is diversified, which is my favorite part. You can always find something that makes you comfortable from US culture, or you can create and add your own culture into US culture. So, just keep your curiosity like a cat, observe, explore and experience US culture. You would never need to worry about not being able to feel comfortable in US culture


4. What not to do.

- Don't feel bad when you make mistakes. We all learn from our mistakes.

- Don't haunt on "Why we speak English like this way". A language is not a mathematic theory. Some times it is  hard to explain why. Keep it in mind for now, maybe you will understand later.

- If you like watching TV series and movies, please be careful. The language used in a TV series or a movie has it's cultural background. You would definitely not want to speak like a gang member, would you? Ask your English teacher if you are not sure if you can use the same expression in the real life.