Improve My English
Not like many of the other students in NUS, I am from a non-English speaking country. Strategically, Isuppose, the only way to improve English is to use it. As they say, you either use it or lose it. Hence, I think that the key to improve my English ability is just to stay motivated, keep working on it and keep practicing it.
However, from the experience of lots of my friends, tactically there are many ways to polish my English, as "all roads lead to Rome". Therefore, I hope to set a more effective way for my own situation. In fact, what problems I am faced with is generally concern with English writhing.
First of all, reading becomes one of my choices. From my point of view, it is the easiest way to "feel" English. It is not painful, but helps a lot. Although, there are many materials to read, I hope to find the most useful ones. Just as this course, my purpose is to improve my academic writing. As a result, I find that the academic level reading and knowledge base reading are of the best choices. Besides, for interests, newspapers and magazines are highly prefered for extensive reading, because the things reported are always changing, and I would never get bored of that.
Besides printed materials, sometimes I also do Web reading. With these reading, I could get myself familiar with the ways of speaking, narrating and thinking in English rather than in Chinese which is my mother tongue. Sometimes, I could just memorize some words, phrases or sentences. Then I felt like to use them no matter in my writing or speaking. Furthermore, reading could also contributes to my comprehension. As an university level student, an more critical way of thinking is required. In my opinion, if I read more on self ability improvement or current affairs, I can get more than expected.
Besides, one of the other way I chose to improve my English is more relaxing. I watch English movies and English television frequently. Except just watching, I will always recite some of the subtitles from the movies impressed me. And also those classical dialogues. By the way, imitating how they pronounce the words excited me as well. There are something else I have tried, though they are not my most favored, is to watch the TV news, because I can learn about how to discuss current events and talk with others in English.
However, there is still a lot of problems with my English. It is not easy for my to apply and use what I have learned. Simultaneously, speaking and writing are still two of the most troublesome parts and blocks. Then I think I am going to find my friends and teachers, who are native speakers, to talk to. I am trying to find people to practice English. As everyone knows that language is for communication, which is an interactive process. Reading books, watching TV or listening to music only improve my understanding and word choice. Practice makes perfect. The best practice is conversation. I have to socialize with those proficient in the language. The more I speak, the more comfortable and confident I feel with English. And also, I want to find someone critical so that my faults can be pointed out directly.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Three Of My Common Grammar Mistakes
My Three Common Grammar Mistakes:
It has been quite a long time since the beginning of my learning English. Generally speaking, it is not a easy work. One of the reasons is that Chinese is my mother tongue, and there are plenty of difference between these two languages, grammar in particular. After finish my two writing assignments, I find three common grammar mistakes of my assignment writting.
First of all, there comes the problem of word form. For instance, there is a sentence in my essay: "When comparing with previous or existing energy supply, solar power is much more clean and less polluted." Here, what I wanted to do is to compare the two kinds of energy supply and let people figure out the environmental benefit of solar energy. However, there is word form problems with the word comparing and polluted. Since it is passive voice for solar energy which is the subject and the word polluted is of passive meaning, the sentence should be changed into the correct one:"when being compared with previous or existing energy supply, solar power is much more clean and less polluting." There are quite a lot of word form mistakes in my essay, and mainly it is because I have problems with catching the exact and extent meanings of the words I used. From my point of view, memorising will be a good way.
Secondly, I notice that I have some mistakes on subject verb agreement. In my essay, one of the incorrect sentences is "Moreover, solar power need to be generally applied." Here, solar power is singular, then the verb after it should agree with a singular form. Then the correct one is "Moreover, solar power needs to be generally applied." Generally, the mistakes are due to carelessness. However, there are often some other conditions in which SVA mistakes happen easily, like the subjects have different meaning on both singular and plural, the subjects can act as both countable and uncountable, or the subjects and verbs separated by some other patterns.
Besides, another mistake which often appears in my essays is article mistakes. This is the kind of mistake that happens much more commonly, such an "Hybrid engine vehicle technology, the opponents clam, is not economically worthwhile to most of the consumers who are currently using the conventional engine vehicles."(conventional engine vehicles is referred for the first time) and "Nevertheless, the potential problems of driving HEV, claimed by those big car companies, have been minimized to the lowest extent." Here, each of the sentences has the problem of article. In the first one, as I marked, conventional engine is mentioned for the first time, so there should be a "the" ahead because "the" is used for none that everyone has known. And so does the second sentence.
After summarising all my common grammar mistakes, I realize that so many easy mistakes are there in my English writing. It seems there is a urgent need to improve it. Hope to improve and refine my grammar skills by taking this course.
It has been quite a long time since the beginning of my learning English. Generally speaking, it is not a easy work. One of the reasons is that Chinese is my mother tongue, and there are plenty of difference between these two languages, grammar in particular. After finish my two writing assignments, I find three common grammar mistakes of my assignment writting.
First of all, there comes the problem of word form. For instance, there is a sentence in my essay: "When comparing with previous or existing energy supply, solar power is much more clean and less polluted." Here, what I wanted to do is to compare the two kinds of energy supply and let people figure out the environmental benefit of solar energy. However, there is word form problems with the word comparing and polluted. Since it is passive voice for solar energy which is the subject and the word polluted is of passive meaning, the sentence should be changed into the correct one:"when being compared with previous or existing energy supply, solar power is much more clean and less polluting." There are quite a lot of word form mistakes in my essay, and mainly it is because I have problems with catching the exact and extent meanings of the words I used. From my point of view, memorising will be a good way.
Secondly, I notice that I have some mistakes on subject verb agreement. In my essay, one of the incorrect sentences is "Moreover, solar power need to be generally applied." Here, solar power is singular, then the verb after it should agree with a singular form. Then the correct one is "Moreover, solar power needs to be generally applied." Generally, the mistakes are due to carelessness. However, there are often some other conditions in which SVA mistakes happen easily, like the subjects have different meaning on both singular and plural, the subjects can act as both countable and uncountable, or the subjects and verbs separated by some other patterns.
Besides, another mistake which often appears in my essays is article mistakes. This is the kind of mistake that happens much more commonly, such an "Hybrid engine vehicle technology, the opponents clam, is not economically worthwhile to most of the consumers who are currently using the conventional engine vehicles."(conventional engine vehicles is referred for the first time) and "Nevertheless, the potential problems of driving HEV, claimed by those big car companies, have been minimized to the lowest extent." Here, each of the sentences has the problem of article. In the first one, as I marked, conventional engine is mentioned for the first time, so there should be a "the" ahead because "the" is used for none that everyone has known. And so does the second sentence.
After summarising all my common grammar mistakes, I realize that so many easy mistakes are there in my English writing. It seems there is a urgent need to improve it. Hope to improve and refine my grammar skills by taking this course.
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