Survey one!

Kanghoon Jang Thu May 08 2008, 20:10

Last Friday, on April 29^thwe conducted a special survey on what the best way to improve reading skills, writing skills, listening skills, speaking skills, grammar skills, and English vocabulary. We are supposed to ask those questions to four classmates. Therefore, there are four answers to each of questions. I am going to represent those answers and my own opinions as well regarding those questions.

First of all, there are good recommendations on improving reading skills. Hyun-a said that we try to remember many vocabulary because if we do not know any vocabulary in reading materials, we would not fully understand them and Jong-woo told me that we translate both Korea to English and English and Korea. Here is a interesting opinion that both In-kab and Sera suggested that we should read anything that we like to a lot and summarize what we read as much as we can because my friends living Canada also always said to me that if you want to improve your English abilities, especially reading one, you should read novels or write anything you like to. Plus, I think that if we enhance our reading abilities, we should read English newspapers. Based on my experiences that I usually read an English newspaper, especially a Korea Herald, we can improve the ability and broaden our aspects of many things that our society happens as well.

We also discuss how to improve writing proficiency in English. Considering that my classmates taking compositions this composition class, I think that everyone already know that writing skills get involved with reading skills. Therefore, it is really natural that Hee-young and Hwan-ki told me that we should need to read many articles to adapt ourselves into English. Furthermore, I and In-kab, we said that we write anything as much as possible. Based on my experience to write English reports and to see in-kab’s essays on our Forum, those suggestions are effective and persuasive.

Our discussion moved on how to become better with English listening skills. Our classmates already know that the skills get involved with speaking skills. That is why, Hyun-a said that we should listen to anything involved with English using Tape, CD and DVD. After that, we speak them up as soon as it finishes. Secondly, I and Su-jin suggest watching English movies and TV dramas to improve the skills. However, we should dictate and summarize what we listen to keep remembering and memorizing them as much as possible. Our memories are supposed to forget what we have learned as time goes by, so we need to keep watching them or listening to them when we have time.

As I mentioned before, listening skills are connecting to speaking skills. We also talked about it after the recommendations on listening one. Hyun-A said that we are open-mined and comfortable when we communicate with other people. Basically, Korean people are nervous and embarrassed, even though we have learned English for more than 10 years, when they use English for communications with foreigners. Therefore, we should try to destroy those feeling to improve our speaking skills. Plus, Hee-young told me that knowing many vocabularies would helpful because we can easily recognize what it is in English when we talk to other people. Moreover, In-kab stated that learning useful expressions and practicing those in real situations will advance the speaking skills. Lastly, I recommended that you should study English grammar before speaking English because we do not know how to make English sentences and if we do not know English grammar, there would be many mistakes and misunderstandings among people.

There were many aspects of gaining a better understanding of grammar. Firstly, In-kab told me that we need to master easy grammar books. However, Hee-young has a different opinion regarding this topic that studying grammar book first, next find grammatical patterns from reading, and finally apply it in writing. Hyun-A also totally agrees with her opinions because although we learn grammar, we actually do not know how to apply for any sentences. Therefore, we need to practice as much as possible. For me, I recommended that we should know many English vocabularies because we have to know what sentences mean to understand when we study grammar.

Lastly, we tried to find out what you need to improve their English vocabulary. Both I and In-kab suggested that we should keep memorizing English vocabularies and read English materials a lot. Hwan-ki and Namook also agree with our opinions but there is a slightly different view that we should learn words related to real situation because we always are faced with that. Therefore, it would be easy and practical way to build up our English vocabularies. Hyun-A recommended reading passages without dictionary. After that, we should guess meaning of the word.

After doing this survey, I realized there are many ways to develop our English skills such as reading, writing, listening, speaking, grammar, vocabulary effectively and practically. At the same time, I thought that all skills are involved with every single skill. Therefore, we do not think all of skills separately when we study English. Thus, in order to enhance writing skills, for instance, we should read many passages and for better listener, we need to practice speaking skills. Plus, I got something that I have never thought when I studied English so I am going to apply for those methods. Thank you, everyone!