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I do agree with Mr. Brown’s A Practical Guide to Language Learning, I believe all the suggested readings are good for us, as I expected how Ivy would be. I am not going to give a detail reading report on this book, I think all my classmate may have heard about many of these, but we just can’t follow all the time.
I have heard about many of the strategies during the lessons even in my secondary time, I can understand what I should do to improve, but once I get in touch with the books, especially the academic assignments, I fell asleep immediately. I think the most important thing is to concentrate on what you are going to read, but that’s the most difficult thing for me! In my experience, I usually stick with same thing for more than one minute before I could concentrate on it. And even I was well prepared enough I would feel bored some minutes later. I think no one but myself could help, no one can force me to concentrate.
So even though I understand all my difficulties and agree with all the solution, I still need more time to make improvement.
In order to improve my language skills, I have read many book before the HKCEE, (a long time ago), but I still got a very low grade in the examination. I went to the English table every week, which is organized by the college, aims to offer a chance for us to speak with the native speaker. In the last summer, I went to Plymouth to have a summer course on General English. Until now, I found myself keeping on a really slow pace of progression.
Practicing is the most important from my past experience. Learning by asking is also useful but Chinese students seldom do this. Even I become shy in the class. It is the atmosphere affecting me I think. When all the classmates are silent I can’t feel free to express and reponse to the teacher.
I think the CALL workshop we had last week is quite useful, especially the introduction of useful web sites. As I seldom go to he ILC, I can now finish my ILC Review more easily with the web sites. Besides, WWW is always more interesting than the written articles I think.
I know reading exercises are gook for us but I don’t like them very much. I like operating PC windows better, but the exercises are installed in the MAC. If reading exercieses can be more dynamic I would try them more frequently. However, reading is reading, how can it be more dynamic? I know I am not patient enough, but I try best to “force” myself to do reading. I have read all passages under the life topic in the Versatext software.
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