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Teach English in Taihuai Zhen - Xinzhou Shi

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My foreign language experience is with English. My relationship with the English language may not be like everyone else because I am not an English native speaker. I born and lived in my country, Vietnam, for more than ten years before I came to the US and became an international student. Thus, I only started to learn English since I was ten years old. So, English is a foreign language that I have learned for many years. In the process of learning English, I have faced many difficult things that give me tons of experiences in learning a foreign language. Through my experience, the most two difficult things that foreign language learners have to face are pronunciation and vocabulary. Although I picked English as my major when I studied in my country and have learned English since I was ten, the way Vietnamese people use English is really different from here, in the US. I did not realize when I was in Vietnam, however; I knew there was a big difference between speaking or learning English in Vietnam and speaking or learning English in the US. People who I talked with could not understand very clearly what I told them. And they normally asked me to say again. That issue happened because the way I pronounce English words were not like the way native speakers say it or hear it. For example, there was a time when I had trouble with “can” and “can’t”. My friend could not distinguish whether I said “can” or “can’t”. And that caused a lot of trouble. Later, I learned that I should stress harder when I said “can’t” and much softer when I said “can”. Furthermore, I also learned that English learners should not use short versions of words. It would be easier if English learners just say “cannot” instead of “can’t”. My pronunciation is getting better now, and most of the time people can understand what I said now. And the reason for my improvement is that English is not just the language that I used only in classes anymore. In the US, I had to use English to communicate with people everywhere such as school, home, or outside the street. After I came to the US, English became my main language because I had to use English not only at school but also outside the school. Through this situation, I figured out that people can only learn a language when they use it. The more people use that foreign language, the better they will be in that language. Another difficult thing that every foreign English learner has to face is the vocabulary. A foreign language learner needs to study a lot of words as well as the meaning of the words. I still remember that there was a time when I could not express what I mean just because I do not know words. However, the worst problem that I had with vocabulary was that I could not understand what a speaker said. For example, there was a day that my grandmother needed to call an ambulance because she felt bad. When emergency staffs came to my house, they asked some basic questions which I did not understand to answer. Because I could not answer their questions, it wasted a lot of time before they could get my grandmother into the ambulance. Through that experience, I understand that learning vocabulary is very important. People need to understand what a speaker said so that they can communicate. Furthermore, vocabulary is not only important in speaking but also important in writing. People could not write an essay or paper in English if they do not know the English vocabulary. Based on my experience, one of the best way for foreign learners to learn as well as remember the vocabulary is that contact with the language as much as people can. In my case, I watch movies or TV shows in English. Plenty of words that I know right now is from movies and TV shows. For example, because of the discovery channel, I know that alligator and crocodile are the same animal. People just use different names for that animal because they live in a different region. For example, people in Texas would say an alligator instead of a crocodile. On the other hand, people in California would use crocodile rather than an alligator. If a leaner just know the word alligator, that learner would not understand what other people use the word crocodile. Thus, learners need to know both words. If the leaner just know one word instead of two, she cannot catch up with the conversation. Thus, the process of learning vocabulary is a long process that does not have an end. In conclusion, the problems that I had in pronunciation and vocabulary not only teach me to learn English harder but also give me experiences as well as the solutions for these problems. Foreign language learners should eliminate using short versions of any words because it will not only make the learners confuse but also make their listeners confuse. And one of the best way to learn vocabulary is through movies and TV.


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