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| armatura Triglot Newbie Armenia Joined 5935 days ago 17 posts - 21 votes Speaks: Russian, Armenian*, EnglishC1 Studies: German Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 2 29 August 2008 at 5:58am | IP Logged |
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Well, here's my story of dealing with English language
Until 2004, my knowledge of English consisted of alphabet; 500-word vocabulary, Simple tenses, and a couple of crammed short songs, that's how much I got from my high school and a month of an individual paid course. I was bored with unproductive school textbooks with stupid grammar & useless exercises, Eckersley's uninteresting stories in "Essential English for foreign students", I wasn't able to read ordinary English text or understand ordinary speech or say a couple of normal sentences, so I used to hate that language. As for medical books, they all were in Armenian and Russian, even Windows in my computer was Russian, so I didn't feel any urge to learn English. In the fall of 2004, the situation has changed radically. I started the last year of my medical university, connected to the internet and got involved in a clinical research program. I needed the freshest medical reviews and guidelines for my research and I needed to learn clinical epidemiology/statistics to analyse the collected data. Guidelines in Russian were heavily outdated and improperly translated, there were no medical statistics books in Armenian/Russian... hell, everything what I needed was in English. So I made a decision and said to myself - "you are not going to be a good doctor/researcher, you're not even going to be considered an educated person unless you learn English, and you better start it today, pal!". So I found a private tutor, a very sociable teacher from English department of my university. We started doing grammar by "red" Murphy (Essential English Grammar), after 2 weeks moved to "blue" Murphy (English Grammar In Use for Intermediate Students) and finished it in 3 months. *My advice to beginners: if you know English alphabet and a couple of hundreds basic words, then you better study with monolingual English grammar book. Raymond Murphy's "Essential Grammar In Use" is IMHO the best book to start with, it has clear structure (1 lesson is for 1 hour study every 1 day, consists of a page of grammar and a page if exercises with answers in the of the book). It teaches you grammar rules in simple terms, not making you confused with complex linguistic ones. She gave me graded Longman/Penguin readers, I started with Level 2 and got to Level 5-6 in 3 months. I would never have made it if there wasn't ABBYY Lingvo, an excellent electronic multilingual dictionary for PC (Windows). *My advice to beginners: don't try to read non-adapted texts at the very first, start with easy graded readers and gradually move to higher levels, it makes you feel that you can actually read foreign literature, keeps you motivated. And don't buy paper dictionaries, frequent word-hunt in them will make you tired and demotivated soon, use electronic dictionaries instead: they gave you easy, quick search as well as word forms, usage, etymology, voice pronunciation. The only listening I had was her speech and the only speaking I had was my chat with my tutor. It was enough, though, since she managed to create simple conversations and involve me without making me uncomfortable with my limited listening/speaking skills. Her sociability freed me from shyness and hang-up, which used to be my inseparable satellites in foreign language for a long time. My advice to beginners: later you can study yourself, but for a good start find yourself a good tutor, and he/she better be an easy, sociable teacher than a heavy, serious professor of English. After 3 months of intensive study, I started 1) reading professional literature and unabridged fiction ebooks on my Pocket PC (Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket LOOX 720), using AlReader light, translating hundreds of unfamiliar words with ABBYY Lingvo Mobile and memorizing them with the help of SuperMemo mobile 2)listening to graded (later - unabridged) audiobooks 3)watching English-language movies with English subtitles. After having read Level 2 The Man in the Black Suit reader I fell in love with Stephen King works, so I've been reading his books, listening to his audiobooks and watching movies based on his works up to this date. *My advice to beginners: don't read paper books, ebooks of text/HTML/FB2 format are much easier to read on mobile devices, you can change the font type, size, color, direction, background; translate words and idioms by a single touch, memorize some words with special programs (Supermemo or Lingvo tutor). Choose a favorite English-language contemporary fiction writer, read tons of his work, get used to his vocabulary, listen to his audiobooks and watch movies based on his/her books (if there are any), you'll meet the same words, idioms and structures again and again, so you'll learn them quickly, you'll even be able to remember which words and structured did you learn from which stories. Here are the unabridged books which I've read and listened to in English, the ones with a movie adaptation are marked with Italic font. I'm going to fill this list with new books, as soon as I have read them. Stephen King * 1974 - Carrie * 1977 - The Shining * 1979 - The Dead Zone * 1982 - Different Seasons (Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, The Body, Apt Pupil) * 1985 - The Bachman Books (The Long Walk, The Running Man, Thinner, Rage) * 1985 - The Mist * 1987 - The Eyes of the Dragon * 1987 - Misery * 1990 - The Stand * 1990 - The Langoliers * 1992 - Gerald's Game * 1993 - Dolores Claiborne * 1995 - Rose Madder * 1996 - The Green Mile * 1998 - Bag of Bones * 1999 - Hearts in Atlantis * 2002 - From a Buick 8 * 2002 - 1408 Dan Brown * 2000 - Angels & Demons * 2003 - The Da Vinci Code Jeffrey Eugenides * 2002 - Middlesex * 1993 - Virgin Suicides Winston Groom * 1986 - Forrest Gump * 1995 - Gump and Co. This year I passed TOEFL PBT scoring 607. My weakest side remains speaking (I have to form the sentences in Armenian first than to translate and express them in English). Also I have a problem with understanding very quick speech from TV news and action movies, if there's no script. Edited by armatura on 29 August 2008 at 11:28am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| armatura Triglot Newbie Armenia Joined 5935 days ago 17 posts - 21 votes Speaks: Russian, Armenian*, EnglishC1 Studies: German Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 2 29 August 2008 at 10:43am | IP Logged |
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Today I've finished "The Langoliers", one of four novellas published in the Stephen King book "Four Past Midnight" in 1990. Awesome action story about time-travelling. The language is easy. Recommended.
Now I'm thinking of starting another SK novel - "Insomnia", or Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men". Meanwhile, I'll try to find The Langoliers audiobook and the TV series. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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