Week 5-5/6/17 Mon. Notes

The key point in spoken English: to convey the message, to let people know what you feel and what you're thinking

Pitfall One: Translation-grammar method

1. To use English to learn English

2. To use your English logic to speak English

Pitfall Two: Why it's difficult to read in English?

1. Reading English books is the best way to learn grammar and form your English logic

2. 20/80 principle: 20% new words; 20% concentration on the content, 80% on English learning (as time goes by -> 80% concentration on the content, 20% on English learning)

I’m so thrilled and exhilarated to …

to embark on the amazing adventure

conduct this lesson/lesson conducted by foreigners

conduct a conversation

to make some ground rules…

ground rules: the basic principles on which future action will be based.

these are all pretexts, these are all excuses

peace out: goodbye

In retrospect:

Indeed, I was learning English with Chinese and paid too much attention on grammar so that I always got excellent scores in exams but were a mess in English speaking, listening to native English speakers and reading English books. And what's so funny is that, I was translating my words into English when I was speaking English. I've heard of the saying "English logic" long time ago, but just didn't get it. Now I reckon that it is just like another computer operating system compared to the "Chinese logic", like IOS to Windows. And it takes too much time to transfer every Pages document to Word when the amount is large. So don't transfer, just use another system.

Reading English books. Yep. Somehow, deep down in my heart, I'm perfectly clear that it's one of the best ways to learn English, but I just let the unknown words stopped me. Now I won't just allow myself to be lazy, after Jason showed how magical it is to keep reading English books and other materials.

Plans:

I definitely have plans. I just don't feel like writing it here now. :)