can-do attitude

How did you know that standard accent comes from Midwest ? Someone else said so but I dont believe it much.

It's unbelievable we can be together !

I can't agree with you more, sebastian Both your and Mr. longarm's posts are completely useful and I nearly have nothing more to add to!
Well, sebastian is quite right, not only does reading books facilitate us to enlarge our vocabulary but it also provides us with updated information, new technology and many many other interesting things. I suggest we read what we like at first, before moving to other complex fields. For me, I always find it interesting to read Teen Magazines, you can buy a lot with a really cheap price in Trang Tien and Ba Trieu Street. Reading novels is fun as well, but sometimes, you may find it difficult to make out thoroughly what is written since the words used are far complicated, hardly do we use it in our everyday life. I once tried to read "Hamlet" by Shakespeare when some of my friends performed the play before the class, yet I have to admit that I gave up right after the very first chapter Anyone of you has already read "Corny Acts or Trial By Love" by Gilbert and Sullivan???? My head was waving when I read it for the first time On the contrary, I finished with Harry Potter just for some days since I found it absolutely fascinating and close to reality. So, your interests obviously play a significant role.
When you're rather used to reading English books, you can choose to read some on other fields such as physics, astronomy, and social science.... (these subjects are recommended by trungleha ) By reading books, we are definitely able to have a full understanding of the world, which clearly is a great advantage
For listening and speaking, well.... it can't be denied that finding some foreigners who use English as their first or second language is not easy at all.. but it's not impossible. I have to say that I'm lucky to have a brother studying in the UK. When he came home on holiday, I asked him to speak in English with me, of course, he was willing to help. You know, sometimes we have some secrets we don't want to be heard by mom , so English was extremely useful then. My father also works for a non-governmental company, so I have chances to have some American friends, but.... we couldn't talk much as she's so busy.
I suppose those studying at the University also has a lot of opportunities to speak English with native-English speakers since your university must have some co-operations with other Universities in the world. Loads of my dad's students pay a visit to Vietnam anually to study as exchange students.
Watching movies and listening to music is absolutely one of the most effective ways to learn English. Well, I watch MTV and HBO as well as Star Movies a lot. My listening skill was terrible at first, I couldn't make out what Britney, Christina and other singers said when they answered interviews, but you'll soon get used to it so long as you try your best. Now I'm able to hear them perfectly well as a result of watching English-spoken channels most of the day.
And one more thing, you should practise English with your classmates as well. Itõ?Ts obviously an advantage to me to study in an English-specialized class, where itõ?Ts our duty to speak English with one another. But if you really want, you can ask your friends to practice with you, just to form the habit of thinking in English. Please donõ?Tt think in Vietnamese and then try to translate those sentences into English since itõ?Ts a really really bad way of studying E.
As we go on, we remember all the times we had together
As our lives change, come whatever
We will still be FRIENDS FOREVER
éu?c britneybritney s?a ch?a / chuy?n vo 16:14 ngy 02/07/2003

You're all going on and on about how to speak like natives with such great resources for practicing this skill as MTV, HBO, etc, which are so useful for improving listening skills as well.
However, you seem to forget that not all of Vietnamese students have access to what you have available for learning English. What is the percentage of people who have such stuff as HBO, CNN, American students, etc. to perfect their English skills? I can say without hesitation that just a tiny fraction of Vietnamese learners do have all of such stuff. You all live in cities, so you don't have any ****ing difficulty learning a language.
Therefore, for the general benefit of this club, I do beg you give advice on how to tackle problems in learning English, given the limited resources available to most of the Vietnamese students. Don't ever talk about those who have everything they wish to have to learn English. You're serving the general public, not the privileged minority!
Được nooneknow sửa chữa / chuyển vào 09:25 ngày 03/07/2003

Wow, I am reaaally impressed with such a succinct, poignant and straight-to-the-point opinion . Your English is incredible . If you have never been trained in an English-speaking country and is really living in Trà Vinh , then your English skill is beyond perfect .
Wow !?! You have all my admirations, spinesplitter . By the way, how do you come up with such a scary nickname : SpineSplitter ?
There are 10 kinds of people in the world:
Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Well Spinesplitter,
I do appreciate your thoughtfulness and agree with you that most Vietnamese students do not have access to those resources needed for the English learning process, and that this has hindered their progress to a large extent. However, I believe there are ways to get over it, don't you think so? Britneybritney, how about you open a new thread asking people to contribute how we have access to useful resources? I guess it will be of great help to all of us.
While the majority of Vietnamese students, as you mentioned, are not fully equipped for English study, compared to some students especially those living in cities. It's so unfair, I have to say. But sadly enough, even those who have full access do not always realize or appreciate it. It is, therefore, the main task of this thread to help those students make use of everything they have, or have tried to search for. As for me, this board of English has proved to be quite useful. I think it's some kind of "Mission Impossible" to solve all problems at one time. I guess we'd rather do one thing at a time.
Concerning some articles posted in Can-do attitude, even though not all of them are applicable to everyone's case, I do believe that the gist of them - that is we can do everything if we want to - is absolutely neccessary. Since can-do attitude is still new to many Vietnamese students, I think it's good at least that we try adopting it.
Wishing you all can "Think big - Aim high - And do Well"
Cheers,

Just a heartbeat away

Scorps, I reply to your post at the right topic õ?oAmerican Accentõ?. Please check it out and we can discuss further if you are interested.
Regarding the newcomerõ?Ts post, I suppose who can have access to Internet, spend time and money reading a lot of ttvnol posts is likely to have pretty many advantages in learning English. If my memory serves me right, apart from watching MTV, HBO,õ?Ư longarm mentioned tons of other ways such as writing down your thoughts and feelings in English, surfing the Internet, exchanging mails with penpals in English, etc. And he did ask people to add more. If you really come from Tra Vinh and has such a good command of English, why donõ?Tt you share with people your own experience of learning English? Everyone loves to read constructive ideas.
Britney, Iõ?Tm very happy to see your nice and long post. You are always an enthusiastic EC member and an experienced English learner . Iõ?Tm quite busy now but hopefully I can join you soon.
Sebastian - Every day I learn

pls find below a few of my comments all along the line in this thought-provoking discussion:
1) The so-called CAN-DO-IT attitude: can't agree with you more. Yet, it is just a mirror image of the broader approaches to tackling whatever is difficult in the real world. For example, you are often taught to be self-confident. If you believe anything is possible, you already have 3 out of 4 chances of successfully doing it. Therefore, as far as English stuff is concerned, you should build up your confidence, i.e you just think you're going to do 90% as well as a native speaker, if not to say just as well. This frame of mind really works!
2) Motivate yourself: It's common knowledge that if you like something, you do it much better than things you don't like. Therefore, 90% of the guys who always complain about failing to have a good command of English are the ones that don't like English very much. They learn it not because of their passion for it, but because of their forced wish to do it. If you don't like it, you can't do it well.
3) How to motivate yourself: Some think English helps open the door to a better job, while others believe they will understand a foreign culture much better through their English. As a result, they give themselves the strong urge to do things they believe will bring them a good benefit. In my case, English looks much easier after I've decided that I must learn it to understand what mesmerizes me all day long - death metal. In conclusion, you must make yourself like it if you are to learn it well.
4) Resources: If you don't have such great resources as Animal Planet, HBO, CNN, CNBC, VH1, and the like, you always still can rely on cheaper, more readily available facilities such as a cheap radio that you use to tune in the likes of BBC World Service, etc. This is of course not only for the listening part but for learning vocabulary and improving your response to any of the common situations where English is used. Now come the vocabulary, writing and reading parts. Speaking of how to improve these parts, what I really want to emphasize is you should learn to HATE ANYTHING THAT IS ACCOMPANIED BY VIETNAMESE TEXT, e.g. translations, Vietnamese-English columns, etc. The more you expose yourself to, say, an English-language story with the Vietnamese-language translation, the lazier you are in working out the hard vocabulary and structures. Don't make yourself a lazy guy by simply referring to the Vietnamese text whenever you have some troubling understanding a phrase, sentence, etc. As for the resources for learning and expanding vocabulary, I strongly recommend, from my past experience, and as I said above, that you should use the monolingual only. Such resources are plentiful out there and you can always get a dictionary for a reasonable 100.000. You may like Oxford, Longman, or whatever is available for sale at a bookstore in any of the major cities in Vietnam. For me, I always am faithful to Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, 10th E***ion. Some say this doesn't have many entries for phrasal verbs and idioms. However, to do it justice, this dictionary contain a huge source of vocabulary of the present English. For example, I couldn't find the entry "Pathogen" in the latest Oxford or even Longman, but when I looked it up in the Merriam, the word is there, clear and easy to find!!! What's more, as a follow-up to the idea of using the monolingual, I also suggest you forget the likes of Vietnam News, Vietnam Courier and so forth, even though their English is PERFECT. The logic behind this suggestion is they don't give you a good chance of working with truly hard materials. Most of the things inside either of these is straightforward in terms of usages, vocabulary, etc, so you deprive yourself of the privilege of improving your reading skills and working with hard vocabulary. Therefore, you should become familiar with such things as Newsweek, Times, etc. For years now, I've always chosen The Economist over all the others, mainly for its style, language, form and technical terms in economics, which is my major.
4) Never think you can speak exactly like a native. The expert advice from many of the Vietnamese who are believed to be among the top English learners say that unless you learn English at an early age, say 4-5 years of age, you will NEVER sound like an American, simply because the structure that works your tongue in uttering a word has already been molded to speak Vietnamese. Therefore, it's really difficult to adjust the physical structure of your tongue, or throat, or anything that facilitates your pronunciation of Vietnamese. Not long ago, I read a Newsweek article that many of the Chinese girls and boys in Shanghai rushed to the surgeries to have their throats and tongues adjusted to the advantage of delivering better English words. So you see what I mean????
Simply can't have time sharing my own experience. See you next time.
NOTE: WHAT I HAVE WORKED IN MY CASE MAY NOT WORK OR EVEN BACKFIRE IN OTHERS'. THEREFORE, IT'S IMPORANT YOU UNDERSTAND THIS AND TREAT MY IDEAS AS TENTATIVE ONLY. YOU KNOW YOURSELF MUCH BETTER THAN ANYBODY ELSE.

Được spinesplitter sửa chữa / chuyển vào 17:30 ngày 03/07/2003

To Spine Splitter :Very impressive article , spinesplitter ! You have great writing skills as well as beneficial experiences. I salute !
To Mods : I really don't understand why you guys changed the previous post of SpineSplitter into a small font -- the normal one. For long posts, I think it's a good idea to put the article in the big font and different colors. It's easier to see and to read. I'm tired of reading long articles in a very tiny font. My eyes are getting worse everyday.
To Sebastian : Thanks for your informative reply. I've read it already and found it plausible.Evidence and sources are always most convincible.

It's unbelievable we can be together !

Well, this topic is so great. Thank you all so much for your contribution. Everyone has their own ideas coming from their own experiences in learning English. I appreciate it very much, looking forward to reading more posts from you, longarm, sebatian, Wolfy, spinesplintter, Scorp, brit...
To Scorp: oh really, I myself the text of large fonts, red color, bold style is difficult to read. But I must say sorry to everybody if I am wrong. Well, I will take care more. Thank you!
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010
Được nooneknow sửa chữa / chuyển vào 00:16 ngày 07/07/2003

To 010:
Thank you for changing the aggressive red colour into blue -> much easier to read and feedback
To spinesplitter:
1. You don't know this quote, do you
"Did you ever see an unhappy horse? Did you ever see a bird that has the blues? One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses." - Dale Carnegie
2.

Tell me what you know about accent before you give your "expert advice" !
Được fight_to_death sửa chữa / chuyển vào 21:01 ngày 09/07/2003
Được fight_to_death sửa chữa / chuyển vào 21:05 ngày 09/07/2003