My English Autonomous Learning Plan

03121338

張旭凱

Kyle Chang

My English Autonomous Learning Plan

        Thanks to four year studying in the English Department of Soochow University, I have acquired the overall improvement in my English abilities, including listening, speaking, reading and writing. I will not make it if there had not been supports from teachers. However, coming to the end of my college life, it is rather a starting point that I will no longer receive any help from teachers but on my own. Thus, here is my English autonomous learning plan in the future.

        First, to keep reading. No matter what language I am going to learn, in my opinion, reading is the necessary way to get familiar with it because, by reading, we can know its origin, culture and also the decent word choices. Like Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, we could learn his 13 virtues. In the past four years, though I have read many novels, fictions, poems, it is not enough. In this modern society, merely speaking good English cannot make a living so I have to absorb as much as knowledge I can. Fortunately, English could be the best tool. I will visit BusinessInsider.com to acquire financial information and TheGuardian.com to know the changing in the world. Also, because of my translator job, I could learn knowledge more than I think. Like one of my case before, I have to do consecutive interpretation in a meeting and it is about medical issues. To do my best, I have to do the research, prepare the glossary and know how it works. For example, how does endocrine and apocrine hormones work. 

        Second, to listen. Except reading, listening is also the necessary way to acquire information and to speak English in right pronunciation. I always visit TED.com to learn the accent, gestures and pauses because they are delivering formal speeches, helping me be a better speaker and I also visit YouTube.com where assemble the most variable videos in the world. In YouTube, I can learn people around the world speaking English in their ways, different accents, which is important to understand what they are talking about. Furthermore, being a filmaholic, I watch movies to improve my English abilities. Actually, I have been doing this since I was a junior high school student. I watch all types of movies, including action, adventure, war, romance and drama. If there is a two hour movie, I will spend more than three hours on it because I press the pause button so many times in order to listen carefully to what characters say, how they say and in what circumstances they will say that kind of sentences. 

        Last but not least, there are so many tools and ways to learn English but one has to find his own one which helps him the best.