Skip to main content

The naive English user

Image
By

Language is one of the most important things for anyone, and also one of the hardest. That’s what I came up with after along time fighting with it.
Before I came to Petra, I had already been trying to pronounce like an American. I kept listen to what they said then try to say exactly the same way. After a period of time, I got better, and I supposed my speaking skill was closer to American than any other Vietnamese I had ever met.
Then I came to the US, to Petra. Not many people could understand what I said, and I had to face the fact that my voice was really different than what I heard from myself. Despite the previous useless effort, I got to do things over again. The extremely intense year in Petra did improve my English, not only my speaking but also my writing and listening skills faster than I could ever get. And so, I came back to Vietnam in joy and gladness.
However, when we stop we are left behind. The following months in college were busy, yet in different way than before. Believing that I got my proper English, I focused on other things. Then Bozeman once again showed me that thought was wrong, totally wrong. The more happiness I had when I became the best student in my public speaking class, the greater disappointment I got when I saw my real English level. The climax was the moment when Holden told me that my English was just the same, and I even lost some gestures which I used to have. It was a much more powerful strike to me than any physical punch I could possibly take. I once again had to face the fact that my English turned worse only.
Therefore, I have to try again – exactly the way I did to survive in Petra. This time it’s only me myself, fighting to survive through the text books to any other kind of junk I can get. The next time I return, I will surely get better, though the improvement may be too small for you to see. I will get better.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Many Words in This List That You Know?

By
How are you doing on your readings in general and more specifically in developing your vocabularies? Recently I started reading a book for my Finance class called The End of Wall Street by Roger Lowenstein. In the very first chapter of the book – a short 6-page prologue, there were many words that I did not know, and I am listing them here: destitute somnolent bulwark scrutinize (to) prick quiescent laudatory salient fervent (adj) frothy parlance umbilical (cord) placate carnage plenitude opiate dictum stupendous I was so surprised to see so many new words in such a small amount of pages! How is this Roger Lowenstein guy? You would think that while reading a finance book, the only words you would stumble upon are technical terms or lingos. Or maybe I am just bad. How many words in the list above that you already know?
1 comment
Read more

It's Hard to Share!

By
I like to share. It’s not like donating stuffs (it’s good too) but more like… introducing to other people what I find interesting. So actually this post’s title should be: “ It’s Hard to… Introduce ”, but it wouldn’t sound as good. So there you go. Songs, books, movies, games… Whenever I find one interesting I’d love to show it to another person – like a “maven”*, if you know the term, even though I am not as specialized and valuable. It’s pretty much become a hobby of mine. “ Hey, you want to hang out? Come to my place and I’ll show you this awesome video clip I found last week!” And one day I finally realized the ugly truth, and I am sharing it with you right now. Well, the title exposes it: sharing interesting things is hard. It’s very weird, really, because when I share with someone the stuff I found, it’s not as interesting as before ! Almost always, when I play a movie or the song while introducing about it super-enthusiastically, I will feel that the movie or the ...
6 comments
Read more

Origami Extreme - Part 08!!!

By
The other day, I came to watch some of my friends performing in the play called The Birds, and it was really fun! So I decided to make another Origami collection; this time it’s about birds – small birds which (supposedly) are all nice and peaceful. Anyway, I love things that fly. Talking about Origami, I now find myself avoiding overly-complicated models each of which would take days to complete. Instead, I’d go for fairly simple ones which are fast to make and still look really nice. That’s why I like more and more the models of John Montroll: really efficient.   PART 08: THE LITTLE BIRD   CURLEW by Tom Defoirdt – I had no idea that a curlew was. I had fun time folding it nonetheless. EXTINCT BIRD by Nicolas Terry – Mr. Terry always creates unique models. This “bird” was the most challenging for me in this collection. GORRION SPARROW by Roman Diaz – What?! There are different types of sparrows? I never knew! HORNED OWL by Hideo Komatsu – The thin...
2 comments
Read more