As we know, Communication skill is more important now....especialy in English...so how to improve our english language?For me, my english is so bad...i don't know how to improve...sometimes i just follow the others...but it still not improve...so how????please help me...

it seems to me your english is already very much better than many
practise makes perfect is what they say, so keep up whoever you are following. perhaps a read up on some books might help as well

From your post, I can see that you have a fair command in English, speak to more people who is comfortable to converse in English with you, I learned mine that way. Cheers.

This post has been edited by bysquashy: Dec 26 2006, 05:51 PM

Comprehension-read more
Listening-listen more
Speaking-speak more
Also, treat your dictionary as your bible.
Easy as ABC
Happy New Year

start watching english tv shows and repeat its dialogs. this is what i did when i'm having a hard time learning/understanding british accent, eventhough i'm already fluent in english. make sure u repeat them, coz it really makes a difference.

Aw, come on. Your English is not that bad. =) Your English is not in desperate need of improvising, though you still need to brush up and polish just a little bit.

I assume you're referring to conversational skills, and not writing skills. The best way to become really good at English, is to speak it often. Like what a previous user suggested, find some friends who are comfortable in speaking English with you, and converse in English!

Don't worry too much about your grammar when you're talking; you'll pick them up and improvise as you go on.

Watching English TV shows/movies, reading English newspapers and listening to English radio stations might help, but don't rely on those entirely. They can be a good place to pick up new vocabulary words, though, especially the newspapers.

The most important [and effective!] way is to get firsthand practice.

Don't expect overnight results though. =P

Best of luck, mmhmm? =)

This post has been edited by Glassy: Dec 26 2006, 07:30 PM

I find that it really helps alot if you watch an English movie with the english subtitles. From there, you learn new words and the proper way of speaking and proper pronounciation.

Begin by reading english newspapers or if it suits you, read some english comics. Once you get the hang of it, move on by reading novels. Sometimes, listening to song while reading the lyrics also helps. ^^

I learn my mandarin and japanese via those methods. ^^

This thread existed before ...

Should try listening to Scottish or Irish accents

ps. for the laughs, and not to emulate that is...

agree... and must use english as the communicate language...

If you have less motivation to learn yourself by reading and watching materials, go attend some classes. You might feel motivated since you're paying for it.

read, listen n speak...thru these 3 ways u'll b able to master da language in no time...n yea try to avoid rojak/ sms english as often as possible eheh

Try not to be so attached by acronym used in chatting or SMS like c u, u 2, tomolo, good9. When you're too used with it, you may put them in your essay writing.

speak in english starting from now...

Just learning from books its not enough...

Just speak english with those english educated friend. As time goes,you can speak kinda well already~

Get more reading material such as newspaper and you will get along with it well...

not to forget dictionary too...

Seriously, I feel sad for those chinese ed students whom took their Bahasa and English for granted. Even at uni level, they're still struggling.... whats the whole point of going to primary and secondary school..

yup...i'm a mmu student...there's a few malays can't speak in english...when they first enter in MMU...after they mixed with a lot with people here including foreigners...their english become better.

Ahh... one more.
When you play video games, try not to skip over the plots and dialogues when the game proceeds. There's a lot of new words to be learned. I learnt a lot of vocab during the gameplay.

another useful tip:

don't watch mr bean the comedy series...you get nothing from it

just read newspaper everyday. guarantee 100%become good after 1 year.

try to speak and speak and speak... that's the only way to improve your command of language, no matter in the sense of writing or speaking...

good luck

My method: watching movie without subtitle... haha, actually, it quite hard.

First step, learn how to read. So, you had to read more english papers. I suggest The Star. I think this step won't be a problem for u.

Second step, learn how to listen. So, listen to english radio and watching english movie.

Third step, learn how to write. You try write blogs in english. there are a lot of weblog that you can subscribe e.g. http://wretch.cc/ or http://www.blogspot.com/

Final step, learn how to speak. Try to speak english with your friends, family, colleages and teachers.

-learning to speak fluent english is a long but not too long process-

pay more efforts and good luck

marry an english man/woman...

thread starter english is okay. maybe you are not confident in speaking the language?

check out an example of bad english here..

http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/382202

do u all think mandarin is important than english?
my fren keep argue wif me that mandarin will b international language in the another few yrs...wtf la...now china ppl learn english oso le...where got western ppl learn mandarin rite?

although i m chinese...i dun ever think mandarin will b inter language....english is the best!

Actually, Mandarin is useful if you're conducting business in China, Taiwan and Singapore. But, don't stick to one language only. Broad your perspective by learning some new languages like Spanish, Japanese, Arabic and Hindi. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, you have to speak Russian. In Latin America, you have to speak Spanish. It's fun to learn new languages.

This post has been edited by APIITian: Dec 28 2006, 02:50 PM

That's what my father has been claiming, as well.

Well, to be honest, I wouldn't place my bets on whether the Mandarin language will overshadow English in terms of being an "international language", I suck at predicting stuff.

But one thing is for sure, China is booming with business opportunities and its potential is growing by the year. You'll definitely have a solid advantage if you are fluent in Mandarin. There are a lot of companies and businessmen in China, and it's quite likely you might have to deal with representatives from Chinese companies if you're working in a multi-national company. So, being able to speak Mandarin well would definitely help you in your job.

Well, yeah, considering English is the current international language, people in China are making efforts to learn the language in order to get ahead.

mandarin is already international. globally, more and more people are starting to learn mandarin/chinese which obviously is due to 'the rise of china' phenomenon.

i do hope as a chinese, you know how to speak, read/write chinese.

www.time.com/time/asia/covers/501060626/story.html

Chinese won't rise as the most international language on Earth at least for the coming few decades.

Let's see, can you write computer programs in Chinese?

Would some of the chinese parents in Malaysia or in some other countries start to teach their children Mandarin of which they won't teach if not for the language's future usefulness? (Here I assume learning one's own mother tongue is not for any other reasons but for the cause of our color skin)

Mandarin is and would be an important language, but it should not 'take over' the role of English as the most international language, at least not before those who are in the generations to be able to see this thread die.

heh, that's what most ppl tend to think. That's a big misconception actually, as most ppl never tend to look deeper. Being native speakers to the language, the one thing that they've got is confidence in using the language orally. However should you look deeper than that, there's quite a number of them with rather bad spelling and grammar when it comes to the written stuff.

we can't really discard chinese/mandarin since China now is on the verge of becoming the one of the world's most important economy or super power. so it would be wise to be multilinguistic. as for the improvement of english, basically, reading would be the best option to do so. reading improves the vocab, watching english shows (preferably English - English and not Yankee - English) does improve the pronounciation of certain words.

if u guys do wiki or google, u'll find out that mandarin is the most spoken language (as a first tongue) in the world. this followed by spanish, and english on 3rd place. thanks to chinese emperors who conquered and united china thousands of years ago.

however, english IS more widely used and already established itself as the international language. since more people have taken english as their 2nd language, this number is still growing. thanks to the british who colonized the world hundreds of year ago.

For me, having good English language through listening and reading is not enough. You need proper conversations. Yes, that's what I am lacking of and I think most people do. Try to make more conversation. When going to LowYat Plaza for example, I try to speak in English. Practice it with my friends and lecturers. Watching movie without subtitles or at least, English subtitle is quite fun too.

sheeshh..I was just kidding...Dun take it so hard...But, of course not MOST people do think that they should marry a person just to improve the language,don't they?..it so..then it spells 'ridiculous'....

Ok..now i serious here...
The key factor in mastering a language is to maintain consistency.Once u dysfunction the application of a language for a period of time..then it is more likely u lost.After that, u gotta start from scratch again...English is no different..Read books,talk more in English, express yourself in forms of writings,competitions,tv..internet..

I see a debate going on between Chinese and English educated Chinese here. Since I have NBTD, I'll post a long confession here.

I'm an English educated guy and a pretty white banana , yes, I'm not scared to admit that. Ok, I used to be like some of you English educated people here during my school years (just last year actually), I thought that English will continue to be the dominant language in the world and blah blah blah with all that. At least, I always hoped things stayed that way for my sake, as I only know very basic chinese and can't converse properly. Fast forward a few months, and I'm out of school.

It was then that the realities of life in Malaysia hit me right in the face. Among them, the statement by a minister (I can't remember who), said that employers should drop mandarin as a requirement for hiring workers. Btw, as a banana, although I obviously stand much to gain if implemented, I opposed that statement on principle that the minister was clearly only interested in helping a *certain group of people*, and surely he did not have people like me in mind. But that's not the point, after discussing with a few people working for various recruitment agencies, coupled with some research, I learnt that employment opportunities in the private sector are far greater if one can speak mandarin, so the minister is right in that sense (that Mandarin is becoming a necessity in the private sector).

Secondly, I've been living in PJ my whole life, and all my friends are like me. English is more than sufficient for surviving in Klang Valley, with a smattering of cantonese to get by. Ever since leaving school, I've ventured beyond Klang Valley into other parts of Malaysia for a variety of reasons, only to experience a huge culture shock. Yes, I came into contact with other Chinese dudes my age who could barely speak any English. Bleh..... I soon realized that I was an extreme minority outside PJ. And as of now, in my college, all my friends speak mandarin among themselves, and its awkward for me to ask them to translate all the time. So it got pretty lonely at times as a result. No one likes being marginalized from their own kind.

Ok, as of that point, which was about half a year ago, I decided to overcome my fear of Mandarin and start learning it myself. At first I wondered if it was ever possible for me to be a fluent mandarin speaker, but as I learn, I realize that slowly, the "machine gun fire" of my friends begin to make sense, albeit bits and pieces here and there. Well, I started to attend some classes and by now I can recognize easily more than 100 characters. Well, I don't suppose I can ever catch up with those who have been learning chinese their whole lives, but if I can pass off as a mandarin speaker, that's an achievement by itself.

Well, so the truth is mandarin is gaining importance in Malaysia. Anecdotal experience suggests that Malaysian Chinese are sending their children to Chinese schools rather than national schools. This by itself shows that mandarin is gaining prominence in Malaysia. So, whether English will lose out to Mandarin or not, our local situation matters most. Besides, it will not change things much as both languages are set to remain the two most influential languages globally in the foreseeable future.

All in all, learning Mandarin will undoubtedly benefit you guys, for those of you who can't speak Chinese. Put aside that prejudice which probably stems out of fear. I don't know exactly what we fear, it could be that we fear what we do not understand. However, don't get me wrong as I'm not discounting the importance of English. English will remain an important language for many years to come as well. What I'm proposing is that if we can master both languages like the Singaporeans do, the world will be there for our taking. Go start learning! It's never too late.

This post has been edited by Havoc Knightmare: Dec 30 2006, 02:29 AM

Since when? Haven't you heard of Romanian? Polish? Latvian? Kazakh? etc

This post has been edited by feynman: Dec 30 2006, 02:45 AM

It's like, Russian is widely used especially at the former Communist states.

This post has been edited by Dark Steno: Dec 30 2006, 02:47 AM

you must have a friend that speak english and practice yourself with english daily ,by the time your english will be improve , my frend went to english class but still not much different because you must learn to communicate with english from now on ,though it may be broken sometimes but improving alot , myself cannot speak english well when i was in school but abit better after worked and had to comminucate english

Very true. You can't improve a language unless you speak it regularly. Of course, your friends must correct you if you speak wrongly, or else it will be of no use.

Btw, shamnemesis, your sig should read "In the Kingdom of the Blind , the One Eyed man is the king".

This post has been edited by Havoc Knightmare: Dec 30 2006, 03:35 AM

i dont know if this is weird,but i often talk to myself in english. coz.. it is rather shameful for me to talk english to my other friend,later they will all think me weird coz suddenly talk english to them..lol

I think it should be "In the Kingdom of the Blind, the One-Eyed man is<remove 'the'> king.

Anyway, as others have said before this, get a fluent English speaking friend and talk to him frequently to improve your English and ask him to correct you if you speak it wrongly. If you can't, try to find some cousins or relatives that can speak it well and make it a point to speak to them as often as possible.

For getting a better vocabulary, read books and highlight the words that you dont understand.When you finish the chapter(or lets say 20-40 pages depending on the difficulty of the book) list down the words and their meanings in a book so you can refer back to them for the meaning of the words you have forgotten.

For me, I managed to find plenty of new words by reading stories written by neopets writers and other books including Lee Kuan Yew's biography my dad happened to have. *Stop laughing, I know this sounds silly*

Also, Google is your friend here. use the command,
define:(type in your word here)
or answers.com/(type in your word here) answers.com has something that can pronounce the word for you as well which is very useful.

Sing English song is a good way, at least for me. If you want to talk English in a good speed like those foreign ppl, rap song do help you I think. Watch English channel / movie without looking at the subtitle(or without subtitle at all) is another way. Read English fiction is good too, play games do help.

There are plenty of ways to improve and talk English daily is probably the best.

During my school years, my english was pretty good because I always playing PC games. I like to mimic those voices and an English dictionary was always by my side when playing them.

same... OXFORD Wordpower always by my side too... pno doubt dat playing games might improve our english.. hehe..

take any engish short courses....my sister took it before entering matrix...the course is more to public speaking

is it really useful and helpful? those short couse from language centre is costly man..

A good way to improve spoken English may be to improve written English at the first place. From certain perspectives, writing English is much easier than speaking English.

You'll need more than just basic grammar knowledge to speak decent English. (You don't really need good grammar if you're going to speak lah-lah-lah English)

The problem with people who are not courageous to speak English to other people may just be that they're afraid of being looked at with queer eyes telling them that they're not saying good English. If you could get your grammar right, what fear should you have?

How you pronounce is not that bad actually. We could guess how a Russian might speak, daa? But the important thing is the grammar.

hail shamnemesis, we meet again...and again and again in every forum


agree with u a bit there.

Start by reading a lot of story books.

Talk to friends in english, and even see english movies. Playing games with a lot of conversation involved can help also.

most effective by far, and i see so far noone mentioned : WRITE WRITW WRITE your own stories. Not only can it expand your imagination, you can build up confidence in speaking english in real life. U can write your own short stories, maybe your own version of final fantasy with u as the hero, or a fan fiction of your favourite video game, and then ask your friends with good english or anyone else to read. in addition to that, its a better hobby than lepaking lol

like what my English teacher used to say, though it sounds stupid, reading fairytales story books do help. because they use simple English. Read it more than once. You'll naturally catch the grammer and all. Then you can go on to newspaper all and blahblahblah VOILA!

of course, speaking if more regularly, helps too. and i do agree that, if you used to talk to your friends in Mandarin, it's a bit tad weird to speak English out of a sudden. Ask them to help, for you want to improve ;p

And don't be afraid to make mistakes, because we learn from mistakes.

agree.. start wif those vocabulary and grammar dat easy to be understand 1st... do it step by step..

well, kidding or not kidding, that's not what I'm trying to say. My point is, do not fall for the common misconception that native English speakers all has got a good command of the language. Its rather interesting to take note of all the different slangs and so forth, but at the same time its also important to be able to tell what is slang and what is proper English.

thats pretty interesting view point.
what video games u play?

not really...some are affordable-worth the money
one that i suggest is this english course put up by UTAR (the one at PJ)
something on improving your proficiency in English....saw that in the newspaper advertisement ...for 12 weeks, got elementary, intermediate and advanced level....so need to take test...then they put you at the level u need 2 improve...

u can try lar..call the UTAR and check

This post has been edited by Je$$ie: Jan 5 2007, 12:06 PM

Given that English is the language of use (if not of choice) in the international community, it will always be important until they find something else.

Language is one of the best skills to master. You will never regret learning more languages. You've seen the Indian guy in the Astro ads? That guy is amazing - I've often wished I could speak so many languages fluently.

i guess that person has the flair for learning languages. i also wish i can speak japanese or french or spanish..... but till i am good or moderately good in one language mebe i will learn anotehr language

If u really wanna learn english, u've gotta constantly speak it. Mix around with english-speakers. And just as many other forumers say, listening isn't enough. I'm an indian (well, half) and i'm really interested in learning mandarin cos i mix mainly with the chinese crowd. I can understand words or short phrases but i'm not fluent enuf to hold conversation yet. But, whenever i can, if i wanna say something, i try to say it in Mandarin. Oh yes, you'll get laughed at, at first... Don't let it get to you. It's almost always from the guy frens (girls are more supportive hehe) but u know they're there to cheer u on!

Cheers mate!!

Yes, English is important now.
The more you spend time in this forum & meeting the people here in real-life in any of their gatherings, the better you'll be, even if some of them speaks broken English - it doesn't matter. What's important is having the confident to speak/read/write/understand.

lol.. im studying at utar... but i don nid dat course la.. my fren got take but it seems like nt helpful..

I have to disagree. My English getting worse day by day.

playing max payne taught me new words and metaphors

hehe cute but anyways, as I had mentioned before in a previous post, such mataphors or phrases and so on right? Do take note of when its proper to use them, and when its improper to use them and so forth. Choosing the right words to be used at the right time is important too.

In fact, even something that's considered as bad English such as the infamous 'lar' or 'lor' can come in pretty handy at times when you need to draw emphasis to a point that you're making. But just take care not to overdo it.

serious?
ur fren still cannot do well in english is it?

i do agree with you.
some words may sound okie in a computer game...but if applied in a real-situation, those words can be distorted. i guess learning language is sometimes done the hard way.

now, all one needs is to converse more, not afraid to make mistakes, and also one more thing to remember, learning language and to be perfect in that language takes a long time and it is a daily learning experience.

i agree. This forum definitely suck balls when it comes to English. My English is deteriorating ever since i visited this forum "frequently".

The you can choose to leave ...

i oways stren my EYES veryday readn staf ppl... written in LYN. normalli CAN faham... but oways x understnd coz ppl use weird spellg hor... summore ppl use icons ^^ i osso x faham huhu :-(. u learn englsh if refer LYN u die one! follow david83 said, choose leave, englsh can get better LOL.

hahaah yeah of course you cant simply apply them. it has be to in accordance with the situation. you can't use the idiom "beat around the bush" when talking bout a gardener tending his garden right? of course, thats if theres no conversation involved.

no need to speak (ahem... type) in such way la... i'm sure u're forced to type that way here...

English is certainly becoming more and more important towards the students in the country. For one reason i understand is that the government realized that learning certain subjects like Mathematics, Science, Physics, Chemistry and Biology in English very much important for further studies in colleges and universities.

Though, it was kinda shock to see on the news papers yesterday on The Star's MOE section, at the open channel column, the particular ministry can't even know how to use the present, past and future tense properly and we laugh at those Chinese direct translation in China, so on and so forth.

alamak kantoi.

i have to admit i dont even know how to write like that. it took me atleast 3 minutes to write those. must play MMORPG more! or else people will start calling me old man!

OT here, but was wondering, how much time did u spent translating your normal written english to what u just written above?

he jz said 3 mins. read his post.

y don u go to real world issue section.. i nid check dictionary for many words dat i read from there..

Hmm.. if you expect a short course to turn your friend into Shakespeare overnight that's a bit too much.

Myb dts hs wy of drwng attntn 2 his pnt...? sorry bad in net lingo ^-^

today without english, you are going no where

everywhere its being used

This post has been edited by Thedonbk: Jan 7 2007, 02:05 AM

English is important now? You've got it wrong. English HAS been important since god knows when. It's just that the government thought that BM is much more important than English and now they are regretting it.

I oways think the gov is a fool for implementing BM as the language for maths and science. they shudn't hv done so. Look at SG. they've used and stressed on the importance of ENG since their independence. now they're leaping ahead of us in terms of tech and development even tho SG is a relatively young nation.

YET, eng native speakers are predicted to decline in the future due to a huge surge for newcomers such as the burgeoning Chinese language and maybe in the near future, Hindi and Arabic. Spanish importance is also expected to rise, and right now the native speakers of Spanish have exceeded English.

This post has been edited by europology: Jan 7 2007, 03:13 AM

language matters jack in development, attitude is the main factor.

I can't leave. This is the best local forum that I had ever visited. I will miss the Bulk Section, Garage sales, and Audiophiles subforums.


Lover, why don't you try going to the real world issue section now? It's awesome back then, but recently it is filled with spams and useless posts that i find the threads tiring and boring to read. Although i cannot deny that one or two gems appear once in a while.

oh yah....i heard about the spanish too.... and it seems like french is going to be left out in the near future? dunno how true is it?

if this happens, spanish will become lingua franca for united states of america, instead of english.

sometimes, being able to speak in spanish allows you to find the hot latino chicks.

This post has been edited by quintessential: Jan 7 2007, 05:49 PM

hola senorita!

eleh.

u guys should learn portuguese! brazil is the plastic surgery capital of the world! u can mengorat adriana lima summore!

currently l felt annoyed with the government......working on "Memartabatkan Bahasa Melayu".....as long as malay live...there is no way for bahasa to hilang that easily....

what?

bahasa can simple implode on its own if users insist on using bahasa rojak. the thing about memartabatkan BM is about the preservation of using the original, proper and contextual language. how many people use BM properly? do u?

memartabatkan BM is not about race, my friend. language can easily dissolve especially from outside influence. look at singapore. how many malays know how to speak BM anymore? look at indonesia. how much Bahasa Indonesia is the original, without the influence of Bahasa Jawa?

without preservation, it will loose out.

yaa...you do?....missed called or panggilan tidak terjawab.....toilet or tandas....did hello included in the malay dictionary.....answer?

ur point being....?

I dont even know how to converse before in english, but can read well, i memorized a script for an interview for a customer svc post, and now tada! i can converse in english very well, spontaneous.. customer svc is a very good job to brush up your tongue..

The one good thing now about our education system is that... they've changed Maths & Science to english!!! Wheeee!!!! Oh yea, and the G is certainly trying to model some subjects after the US edu sytem. Take our ICT subject, anyway, that's out of topic XD

I do think the gov is trying hard to improve the english standard, although they do have to try harder, dammit, u can't even understand what some of the teachers are talking about, and they end up communicating in BM instead... but then again, that's only a very rare case for me, so far, my current teachers are good at the language.

What I've been drilled with:
- watch BBC, astro 93 and 26(little britain, anyone?)
- read!!! comics -> news articles -> contemporary novels -> the classics, brrr....
- speak? hmm, with so much rojak and bad grammar going around, that's a challenge...
- and to a certain extent, videogames, dammit, i have admit, u do get some uncommon terms in those MMORPGs. But beware, certain translated asian MMOPRGS with horrible english, remember RO?

I love watching CNN, BBC, Discovery, Nat Geo, Al Jazeera English all those channels. In one way ur English gets improved, in another, ur general knowledge is widened.

eng important coz all country oso communicate using eng

well...
if u r okay in understanding,writing,reading english....
n not gud in speakin it...
mayb pronunciation prob...
or unable 2 contruct sentence...
listen 2 RAP song den....
american rap song...
learn 2 rap...
look at d lyric n rap according 2 d song...
after 1 month, c d differences...
after 2 months, c d differences again....
n i think by d 3rd month u will felt more confident in speaking english...
(of course in d rapping time u need 2 practise by speaking english 2 others)
YOU ARE NEVER BEATEN UNTIL YOU QUIT...

waa learning using rap songs....play computer games also can improve ur english...to add...ps2 games(from JP)...there's to many dialogue to read

English is important but it is not the ultimate perfect language.....

Mandarin; Spanish; Arabic is picking up.....

Don`t stuck with English.......

Btw..... I hate those anglo-phones who think they are more superior by conversing english as their first language....

As a matter of fact... Do english makes you more superior?