What every working professional needs to know from painful experiences to pick up English again~

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This post was last edited by The sound of the waves remains the same 8228 on 2015-12-3 20:21. After working for a few years, I still think it’s necessary to pick up English again and study it. Whether looking at future prospects, such as finding a better job or working for a foreign company, or feeling that one doesn’t know much in daily life and wanting to improve, starting with learning English seems to be the right choice. Now I’m able to communicate with foreigners normally, and I’m planning to switch to a foreign-owned company. I’ve interviewed with a few companies, and the offers they made were all good, but after those interviews I felt I could find something even better; English must be a very important factor in that. I have to give myself a pat on the back for mustering the courage to learn English back then! Well, without further ado, I think many office workers must also be struggling with their English skills. Like everyone else, I also went through those tough times of rote memorization while studying*. I’d like to share some of my experiences here, in the hope that they can be helpful to everyone. The first piece of advice: when choosing textbooks, there’s no need to spend too much time on it. To figure out which textbooks to use, I asked people around for advice; it took over a month before I could decide on anything. Looking back, I realize I wasted a lot of time choosing and hesitating. I wasted so much time making a choice because I was afraid. I’m afraid I won’t be able to learn well or keep going, and I’m also a bit at a loss; after all, it’s been a long time since I last studied, and I feel like I have no foundation at all and don’t know where to start. In the end, after much consideration, I decided to study New Concept. If I had known this, I would have chosen the most popular textbooks from the start; there was no need to worry so much. Experience Rule No. 2: If you really want to learn well, you can’t rely on free resources. After choosing the textbooks, I spent a few days searching on Baidu for various methods and videos related to learning New Concept English. I found plenty of free materials on forums, but realized that I had never used them before. Many of the posts suggested a learning approach that involved listening, memorizing words, reading, and then memorizing the text passages; moreover, many people online said that to learn New Concept English one must memorize all the text passages by heart. And so my miserable journey of memorizing texts began... Short texts were okay, but those that were a bit longer often led to mistakes, and most importantly, it didn’t seem like I was making much progress even after memorizing them! It almost exhausted my patience; I almost gave up on learning the New Concept again. People who work have little time to spare, and their minds aren’t particularly sharp either; they keep forgetting things. Sometimes I feel like I can’t even memorize the words, and I still have to struggle with the texts; it’s really painful. Gradually, I became impatient and found it hard to persevere. It is recommended to speak and listen more in English, interact more with foreigners, and integrate English into one’s daily life. And one must be brave enough to say that this is mainly done to boost one’s confidence in learning English. Third piece of advice: never rely on rote memorization; learn to speak first! To be honest, those days of rote memorization were really tough; my mind was in chaos. Later, I talked with a classmate who works in foreign trade; he advised me to stop trying to memorize things and to focus first on learning how to speak. He had gone through the same stage when learning English, and it was only by practicing spoken English with teachers online that his English skills improved to what they are now. So, I changed my learning strategy and focused on spoken language. Seeing that foreign teachers offered classes at times that could be arranged according to one’s own schedule online, I promptly signed up for a free trial class. Since the lessons are taught one-on-one, it’s easy to keep a good pace. Most importantly, practicing with foreigners makes one more confident overall. There are free trial sessions available, so everyone can give them a try. It’s only after entering society that one realizes how competitive it is to have good English skills. If your current or future work will involve English in terms of design, I hope you will pay attention to it now, so as not to regret it like I did. Finally, I wish all the students studying here to feel their progress and keep getting better; let’s all study together!