I am learning English recently

Original link: https://elizen.me/posts/2023/07/begin-to-study-english/

I am learning English recently.

To be precise, this is the first time for me to learn English through 1V1, and the teacher James is a native speaker who taught at Tsinghua University before. It was Eric who first shared in the circle of friends that he had been studying with James silently for a year, and now he thinks the effect is very good, and he is going to try IELTS to test himself.

I chatted with Eric about my situation, and he also introduced James’ teaching style, advantages and disadvantages in detail, and helped me to have an English trial class. After the trial class, I recorded:

• I can understand most of what he said (most of the things I can’t understand are fixed collocations such as burn out), and his speaking speed is not slow> This gives me a certain level of confidence in my listening ability;
• A lot of simple sentences, when I read the text, I can’t judge whether it is right or wrong> This exposed my grammar problem is relatively big, the bad thing is that I don’t have any way to judge what is wrong and how to solve it, okay Now, James shows up, maybe I can fix this shortly;
• For open chats, I can express what the other party can understand, but I can’t be sure whether what I said is correct in structure, grammar, and culture> This is what I will focus on later;
• Today’s communication made me believe that I can carry out daily English communication. At least for now, it seems that my progress may be faster than I expected;
• The last thing is that hard work takes time. The time given by James is 300 hours – 500 hours, and high-quality learning time is useful. He also mentioned that for learning English, Brain needs time to digest The info, 3 hours of high-quality learning per week is enough. Too much or too little will affect the learning effect.

After this class, I chose to study with him. I remember that after the first class, I summed up a very interesting phenomenon:

• He can cover the four parts of listening, speaking, reading and writing in a single class. More powerful. This should not be a teaching method that can be accumulated in short-term English teaching.
• In terms of teaching methods, first, he distributes the textbooks of the day about 20 minutes before each class, does not give students time to preview, fully exposes my problems, and he will give detailed explanations according to the problems; second, he chooses The method of teaching materials is very interesting. All the teaching materials revolve around the students. He may only use one or two pages of each teaching material to solve a certain grammar or vocabulary problem.
• His speaking speed is always kept at a normal speed. This kind of communication itself is a kind of listening practice. I can express anything that I don’t understand. His answer is not to slow down, but to use typing + explanation + other The appended content makes me understand.
• I have never been exposed to the way he lectures today. It is different from all previous courses. The mode is also reading materials and doing a vocabulary, grammar and syntax exercise, but the ability to prescribe the right medicine is relatively strong. The content is also very impressive.
• This set of teaching materials is very good, but it is still difficult to practice by yourself. (Of course, maybe he will change the textbook in the next class, which can be regarded as his core competitiveness)
• At present, it seems that my reading level is not bad, and the listening part is only as expected, but there are relatively big problems in terms of vocabulary and grammar. I personally feel that he has a strong ability to prescribe the right medicine. The selected content is done on the principle of N+1 language acquisition.

After that, I have been studying with him, 3 classes a week, 1 hour for each class. As of today, 7 formal classes have been held. If you ask me to summarize what I have gained, to be honest, I still can’t sum it up. Many places are very vague, and I have hardly completed the Homework he assigned, but occasionally I will read the materials shared with me after class.

But those vague places are really meaningful. For example, this year I am supplementing “The Big Bang Theory” ^1. Although most of it still depends on subtitles, it seems that I can understand more when I slip away. For example, I seem to be able to use some English-style thinking to directly translate some English materials. For example, I seem to be able to describe some simple things in English, but in the process of meeting with foreigners, I found that I am still relatively unfamiliar with their speech speed, intonation and common language used in the meeting.

But what makes me confident is that the question of “how to learn” also has a vague answer, and in the process, I began to really use it as a tool, rather than simply memorizing two words and usage.

I don’t want to recommend an English teacher after a few lessons, but I think this 1V1 teaching method may be more suitable for adults to learn English. By the way, sometimes some problems can really be solved with money. The biggest gain of this kind of 1-on-1 tutoring is that they can prescribe the right medicine. As long as it is a reliable English teacher, I believe this kind of progress is predictable.

Of course, my goal is not too high. It is enough to be able to communicate with the foreigners at the meeting, to be able to express my views clearly, and to be able to understand life dramas like Moden Family .

After all, other things can be done by AI.

In fact, today’s article also has an extended topic about chatting. There will be a chance to talk about it later.

This article is transferred from: https://elizen.me/posts/2023/07/begin-to-study-english/
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