First, pronunciation is the foundation
With my experience of learning Japanese, I realised pronunciation is super important when it comes to learning a foreign language. Since I put a lot of effort to learn Japanese pronunciation the correct way, I could pronounce Japanese almost perfectly, so I always enjoyed reading Japanese. Therefore, I read a lot when I was studying Japanese, later on I realised it was definitely one of the main reasons why I can speak Japanese almost like a native Japanese speaker.
So, when I decided to relearn English from scratch, the first thing I did was to correct my English pronunciation.
But, how to do it? Here are the two steps that I took.
First, learn pronunciation the right way from some very basic words, like one, two, three, four… and I am not joking, that’s exactly what I did, after learning English in school for more than 10 years.
Secondly, go find a native English speaker to correct your pronunciation.
I did some language exchange for a few months before I left Shanghai for Japan. My language partner back then was a Canadian American. So after we met for a few times, one day, he suddenly said to me, do you know that you never pronounced “th” the right way? You always pronounced it as “s”. I was totally confused, they are different??
Then, he explained to me how to pronounce “th” correctly, it took me a few days to practice to make it right, but it’s totally worth it.
My second tip is, grammar doesn’t matter once you know the basics.
We spent way too much time on learning grammar back in school, but how’s the outcome? Could most people speak English fluently because the effort they put on learning grammar? Well, we all know the answer.
So, once you can understand basic sentences, don’t waste your time on memorising grammar rules anymore. The mistakes many people make when they learn English or a foreign language is that they try so hard to memorise all the rules, and then they try to create their own sentences when they are speaking, so in the end, they don’t sound natural at all.
We don’t need to create any sentences, because they are already there, spoken by all the native English speakers everyday. What we need to do is to memorise “the chunks”, which I will explain later in this article. As for grammar, believe me, you’ll memorise them naturally by repeating enough times.
I found the definition of chunks from a dictionary. It says,
A phrase or group of words which can be learnt as a unit by sb who is learning a language. Examples of chunks are ‘Can I have the bill, please?’ and ‘Pleased to meet you’.
The first step is to get familiar with all the chunks, especially those being used on a daily base.
In the sentence I just said, “to get familiar with” and “on a daily base” are both chunks. For example, you can’t translate “on a daily base” from Chinese directly. If you translate from Chinese, then you probably would say “everyday use”, but then it doesn’t sound natural, because it’s not the way native English speakers would say.
When people ask me, how could you speak English so well? I usually answer, by watching Friends. Well, it may sound like a joke, but not entirely.
Which led to my 3rd point, input matters, because you’ll get the sense from lots of input, which is super important if you ever wanna talk like a native English speaker.
Here’s what I did to learn English.
For a few years in Japan, I only watched American TV series when I was bored, or wanna kill my time. (Yes, I learned English while I lived in Japan, since I was bored of speaking Japanese everyday.)
My favourite TV show is Friends. I love it so much so I can watch it again and again but never get bored, I don’t know exactly how many times I have watched the whole seasons, which is 10, sounds crazy, I know. But without even noticing it, I memorised so many chunks, and also the way native English speakers talk. And soon I found myself being able to communicate with native English speakers. Well, ok, that’s not completely true, I admit. because there is another step in between.
Go find your favourite show, could be a TV series, or a movie, that you can watch it many times but will never get bored. So after you get the story, you can focus on the language. And repeating is the key, don’t move from one show to another, that wouldn’t improve your English.
So what is the step in between?
Well, you might have guessed, that step is,
you’ve got to use English.
It may sound obvious, but the funny reality is, most Chinese people never really use English despite of the fact that they put so much effort on learning it, even when they move overseas, most of them only search information in Chinese, and only make friends with Chinese people.
I know it’s really difficult to get started, we can feel awkward when speaking a language we haven’t mastered. But who doesn’t stumble over a few words on the way of mastering a new language? So, be brave, if you make mistakes, no big deal, everyone does, and the more mistakes you make, the better your English will become.
The first step is to find someone who will bear with you when you speak super slowly, and most likely make lots of mistakes.
My experience in a share-house
Back in 2012, my 2nd year in Japan, I lost my job, lost my company-paid apartment, so I had to move into a share house where only none Japanese people can move in. Before that I already spent quite a lot of time learning English including watching Friends many times, but never really got to speak English. It was that share-house got me started.
Since I was jobless, I spent most of my time in the apartment. There I met a room mate who’s an American, doing intern in Tokyo but only worked for 2 to 3 days a week, so he spent lots of time in the apartment as well. And since both of us only have a super tiny room for ourselves, we spent most of our time in the living room, talking. Which turned out to be a huge benefit to me because he didn’t speak any Japanese, so he had to bear with my terrible English.
At first I spoke very slow, took me like forever to finish a story, but he was patient and nice, so I didn’t feel that awkward. But only for a month or so, I could already tell a story with normal speed, I felt I was not translating in my mind anymore.
One day, we had a guest, anther American guy from upstairs. When I walked into the living room, they were talking, so I said Hi and joined them, surprisingly, not only I understood their conversation almost perfectly, I could even join the conversation, and I realised I could actually speak English normally.
From then on, I started to use English a lot.
During my time in Japan, I made my effort to meet foreigners and make friends with them. I even speak English to some of my Japanese friends, because I found English is the most efficient way to communicate. And also because some of my Japanese friends used to live overseas when they were growing up, so they speak English very well.
What if you can’t find a native English speaker or a foreigner to speak English with you?
Well, I believe if you really make your effort, there’s no way you can’t find one. But in case that happens, go find a Chinese who also wants to practice English, the point is not to have someone correct for you, but to speak, you can even talk to yourself. And no, it’s not silly at all.
When I was in Germany, since I didn’t speak any German, and I still don’t. So my friend, and my friend’s friends, they would all speak English to each other so that I can understand what they were talking about. Despite of the fact that they are all native German speakers. The funny thing is, after I left the conversation, they were still talking in English. So when I came back and finding them talking English to each other, I said, well you can switch to German, I’m not in the conversation anyway. Then they said, well, just forgot to switch it back.
So, talking to your Chinese friends in English is not weird at all.
Make use of English so you can improve your English even more.
English is the most used language all over the world, whatever information you are looking for, if you search in English, you’ll have the best chance to find what you want. So, use English, even you just started to learn English, like my German. I would exchange a few messages with my German friends, since I told them that I started to learn German.
Last, make friends with people all over the world, especially if you’re overseas, don’t just make friends with Chinese people. And living in China is not an excuse, we all know that there’re a lot of foreigners living or traveling in China.
But sure, now it’s not the best time to meet people because of the coronavirus pandemic. But it will be over soon, hopefully, in the meanwhile, there’re still plenty of things you can do to improve your English. So start from today, not tomorrow! If you really wanna make any change in your life :)
Relearning English and being able to speak like a native speaker is not impossible, just follow the 3 steps.
Correct your pronunciation → Lots of input, memorise chunks → Get started in speaking, then speak a lot, and let English serve your everyday
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