*Two big secrets: not being able to understand or speak English*
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Secret 1: Not understanding the rules of liaison, weak pronunciation, and aspiration. In fact, what is heard is easy to understand when seen with eyes; the reason one cannot hear it clearly is twofold: either the sounds cannot be produced properly, or there is no proper handling of liaison and aspiration. For example: It is an old book. It sounds like: It~is~an~ol(d) book. (~ indicates liaison, () means it is not pronounced.) There’s another sentence that it took me half an hour to understand: Maybe you should’ve taken it three times a day. Link for downloading the audio: http://www.namipan.com/d/8a8875c35639dc1425c54a04fc7948d5013e817bd3bb0000. Rules for liaison: http://www.namipan.com/d/00942ecea81fdf0f4da84427b68dacd467e3878c00580000. Download of the nano-discs. Rules for Blasting: http://www.namipan.com/d/d891b907bcc85e56270d1dd0a2bfec0b4db7112800520000. Download of the nano-discs. Secret number two: Inadequate preparation. It’s best to prepare from aspects such as words, pronunciation, 900 common English sentences, and thinking skills. Thought is also culture; to learn their language, one must understand their linguistic culture, otherwise it will be difficult to make further progress once a certain level has been reached. There are two excellent solutions to these two problems, as long as you persevere: Solution 1: Listen to a passage of audio → write down what you hear sentence by sentence → mark consonant clusters and aspirations → repeat after the audio → compare your pronunciation with that of the original. In fact, this is a method that improves on Mr. Zhong Daolong’s reverse approach. Option 2: 900 English sentences → translate into Chinese → translate one’s own Chinese translation back into English → check. Ultimately, you’ll be able to speak English effortlessly once you know Chinese, and vice versa. Actually, my English is just average; I only attended a training session at New Oriental, and I gained some knowledge from it. I’m sharing this with everyone in the hope that it will be useful to them. Good luck! This post was last edited by gmway on 2009-3-13 20:47]
First of all, thanks to the original poster for sharing the file. However, I would say that I’ve heard before that there are people at New Oriental who haven’t passed the CET-4 yet, but are still taking courses to prepare for the CET-6. So it seems that it’s most important to want to learn on your own; training is merely a supplementary means :)
The methods vary from person to person, but as long as there is a foundation, results can be achieved. Thank you to the original poster for sharing these methods
The poster’s method is really good; in my opinion, perseverance is the most important thing when learning English
Personally, I think the key is to listen more, think more, and engage in more conversations