我的英语学习历程my english learning journey

My English Learning Journey The first time I started to learn English was in the fifth year of primary school in an English training club. I found English was so different from Chinese and to some degree I thought English sounds more beautiful than Chinese. So I concentrated myself on English learning. One day my teacher praised me that I had very beautiful handwriting and a good talent in learning English. It was his praise that aroused my interest in English. And later on I had a special emotion for English. That was the beginning of my English learning journey and it was a good beginning. However, the study in this club was not systematic and it only lasted for one month. My systematic English learning started from middle shool. My English teachers used to teach us the pronunciation of words, the use of grammar and texts in our class. After class we were asked to do some homework about words and grammar. In this way I acquired a good ability to use grammar properly but a poor ability to speak and listen English. In high school I was taught almost by the same way as in middle school. All these teachers only paid attention to test scores and I always did very well in English tests. So I thought I had a good ability in English at that time. Only after I went to college did I realize what a long way I had to go before I really mastered English. I chose English as my major in college. In the first two years in college we were given some basic classes about listening, speaking, reading and writing. I could do quiet well in reading comprehension and writing, but not very well in listening and speaking. One of my teachers’ encouragement “Don’t be shy, just try” helped me a lot 1 to open my mouth and speak English. As for me, to express what I wanted to say in simple words was not so difficult, but my biggest problem lied in pronunciation. The pronunciation of many sounds which I used to use turned out to be wrong. Such as /θ/ ,/v/ and /e /. The sound /θ/and /e / is produced by touching the tip of the tongue to the front top teeth. When we pronounce/v/, the front teeth should touch the bottom lip. In order to get the right pronunciation, I made a lot of practice. Every time when these sounds appeared, I would form the right pronunciation in my mind and then gave the right pronunciation with my mouth. After a long time’s practice, I improved a lot both in speaking and listening. What’s more, this process made me realize that listening ability is greatly influenced by English learner himself’s pronunciation. Though I made a lot of improvement in pronunciation, I still had a long distance compared with native speakers. Once I downloaded some VOA and BBC materials and imitated the records, but it helped a little. After a lot of trial, I found a good method to learn English. This method is based on the book New Concept.I listened the records of the text and wrote down these sentences one by one at first. After writing down all the information I got, I looked up the original text and found my mistakes. Then I tried to analyze my mistakes and corrected them. At last I imitated the records and memorized some good sentences. This method did help me a lot. I also improved my English through other ways, such as reading English newspaper, novels and watching movies. This is my English learning journey and I know that this journey will be endless. 2