By: Ali Mansoor

Practical Ways to Learn and Master English Language

This presentation / Lecture has an alternate and Better title too

A 3 hours Presentation / Lecture on How to waste your time and Annoy foreign teachers by asking the same question over and over again on daily and weekly basis.

Teacher, Can you tell me some good ways to improve my English?

And when you are done saying that? I just go like

Unlike traditional teachers, this presentation / Lecture might have some slang and offensive slang. Do you mind? Of course not, because slang is English language too and we must learn English well

Contents that are gonna get your sweet attention

I will open your tiny eyes and pull you out of your sweet childish dream to bring you to reality of this world I will scold you for 3 hours. You better have cotton or earplugs if you are allergic to lectures and call it nothing but Bull Sh*t I will sound like a racist and shockingly prejudiced to Chinese Nation. Truth is totally against it. I love China and Chinese nation. Specially Girls I will share my own great English learning experience Then I will repeat the same crap again because you just love it, dont you? So sit tight, clean your dirty and clogged ears, keep your eyes open, listen, take notes and note down your silly questions that you are gonna throw at me at the end of lecture.

Introduction, Why English?

Answer is:

Are you satisfied? If not then listen

We must learn and master English because:

The most important thing is that we need to pass the exams and survive the anger of our baba and mama, also we need to get constant supply of money from our father and mother.

Who knows one day you meet some English speaking aliens from outer space who would destroy the world just because you couldnt communicate well and annoyed them by saying, my English is poor, can you tell me some ways to improve it? We can get all the hottest chicks and studs of the campus and get laid often Oops, did I just say that?

We can get married and produce lots of babies with bigger and lovely eyes
Well we can travel around the world without any troubles and get laid in each and every country. Damn! Did I just say that again? We can communicate effectively with foreigners and learn more foreign culture. A better understanding and effective communication will bring benefits to China. We can get better jobs and higher salaries. Remember! English is 2nd most spoken languages in the world We can have better lives

Traditional and common ways of learning English that are boring, and total piece of crap
Have you seen donkeys that walk on 2 legs? If not, look at our young generation and college students going to schools and colleges. They are hardworking donkeys on 2 legs cuz they have to carry huge load of books, study day and night and even sacrifice their precious weekends to attend additional classes with long faces and heavy eyelids in order to learn English and chase their parents dreams.

Studying in traditional classroom setup where teacher is trying his/her best to transfer knowledge from books to you without touching the minds of either parties. Reading and memorizing words without any targets just to pass some crappy TEM exams. Wasting time and energy to pass some exams that are total worthless in real life. Simply speaking, Books, classes and exams are not going to teach you English. Interesting thing is English Listening class. Students put on headphones, teacher plays recording, students tick answers, teachers open their mouth and Blah blah blah, students look out of the window and to their watches praying that class will end or thinking how to kill this teacher in order to get rid of this class for good.

Whats wrong with traditional ways

Well if I talk about traditional ways to learn English the list will go on and on

According to Students: Traditional ways of learning English are geared towards wasting time, passing exams and getting a degree asap. There is nothing interesting and nothing practical to students There is nothing practical that can help in our real lives after university graduation. According to my ideas Traditional in class English learning uses non interesting, and obsolete ways of studying that are boring, and not very effective. These traditional ways do not utilize the new methods and do not help students to bring out and use their own creativity. They provide less practical experiences, little learning and heavier load of reading more books. And Blah Blah Blah

Lets move on to better time wasting redundancies

Some Misunderstandings and stereotypes in our minds

We can learn English and start speaking in few days English is impossible to learn and master. We need a very special way to improve English We need foreigners and foreign teachers to learn and improve our English We have got some shortcuts to do a quickie learning just like you do a quickie with your hot chick in a dark corner at night. Did I just say that? We need to spend lots of money to learn English We need very expensive and pro stuff to learn English We need an environment and that is not here. So its not my fault that my English is poor. Go to hell, I hate English, its just my parents who push me to learn There is no use of English in real life, so lets just pass the exam no matter if we have to pay or do anything to keep teacher happy. I like the second one :D personally :D

The biggest mistake that you happily make and never feel sorry for it

If someone tells you the right way to improve your English, you simply say thanks and later ignore it. you know the best ways to improve your English but you just dont wanna do it. Because you are lazy or you have some very self satisfying lame excuses. Fortunately those excuses always work for you You never realize that learning English is all self consciousness, self practice and self awareness. You completely ignore the real effects of consistent practice. You never set target, model and you never follow. You make plans and set goals but your plans and goals together with your great ambition to learn English will be gone with the wind in few days. Why? Are you asking me to answer this why? Dont get me started. You know what a colleague of mine said one day? We are never going to lose our bread in China wanna Explanation?

I just dont understand why do you have to pay for something that is totally free of cost? Are you really an airhead? Or youve really got so much money?

I sometimes feel like laughing when I see people spending 1000s of RMB for learning English and getting their kids to learn English. Why? because English is something that you can learn freely or with very little payment only. Spoken English is of course totally free

Setting targets to learn English

Ask yourself why do you want to improve your English? Where and for what do you want to use it for? How often do you have to use English and what skills you should focus more to develop? Reading, writing, speaking, listening or nothing at all? For pronunciation Set your target, American English or British English Set long term goals, medium term and short term goals for practice and study

All sorta Goals

Short term goals: What you should be able to do by the end of the day? Medium term goals: What you should be able to do and master by the end of the term or month? Long term goals: What skills you should have acquired by the time you graduate.

For spoken there is nothing but practice, set practice sessions accordingly. Again set targets and goals. Long, medium, short term goals Practice with friends. If you cant find friends, speak to yourself, speak in mirror, have an imaginary friend and talk to your imaginary friend. Dont care if people think you are mad or your father wanna take you to psychiatrist.

Live with English. Set English as your environment. You live with, eat, sleep, get up, look, talk and stay with English. Change your environment. Change your computer into English. Throw your Chinese books away, specially break your Chinese Dictionaries, English to Chinese Dictionaries now. Do it right now. Throw your Chinese music, movies, tapes out of the window.

Everything around you should be in English. Change your cell phone language to English. Do it right now. Change your girlfriend and parents too if possible You need this change and without a true dedication you can never be successful If you cant do it, then just pass the exam and be happy passing your life with a clerical job and a fat and smelly woman beside you.

My Golden Life and my own English learning experience

Before I move on and freely tell you the ways to learn English, ways that are worth a million USD I am gonna give you freely. Truth: My Test scores in TEFL TESOL International exam were Out of 100 (94 English Grammar, 99 Pronunciation n intonation, 98 Reading n writing, 99 Teaching English), and 101 Charms and Handsomeness LOLROF

How did I (Me, Ali) learn English? :P

1st. My Parents Training

I have the greatest father and mother in this world. Trust me. What I am today is all there continuous teachings, training, guidance, care and extreme love. My English skills are just one tiny effort of my parents.

My Childhood training (Parents were concerned bout it specially my mom trained me for English speaking, father was busy making money. Thats important too) I used to read English newspapers, and later talk to my parents in English about the news of my interest. I use to tell them in English what I just read. I went to English medium school starting off when I was 6 years old. All my subjects were in English. I used to use and mix up more English words in my own language. I lived and still live with English. I used and still use everything in English. I use computer in English, everything around me is in English. I chat in English, my phone language is in English. I never send messages in Chinese or in my language. I even chat with my parents and sister in English online. I had no friends in my childhood because they did not speak English and did not share my passion towards learning. It was and still is all my dedication towards this language. Whats more, outside class, I should be learning and speaking Chinese. I do learn, but I prefer to speak English all the times. What could be better than speaking Chinese with Chinese people around you mastering it. But I love English.

My Personal Learning methods

Apart from my parents training and early school I learnt English: With Movies, Songs, Internet websites and Chatting online in English By doing my exams always in English (writing) and speaking in English to my teachers, teachers wont but I did. (some of my teachers even were annoyed because my English was better than their English skill LOL) They called me show off. Was I? By making some foreign friends and hanging out with them. Being a free guide to tourists and taking them around in my car freely. By Speaking English consistently for 10 years, even spoke to myself when I was alone and did not find anyone around. Once was caught by police for doing so :D Kept an electronic English to English dictionary only (English to English, one explanation of word led me to learn 6 or 7 new words in order to understand that word I am looking up) thus rapidly increased my vocabulary.

I played and still play Computer games always in English. If I buy games and later if I find its in Japanese or Chinese, I will simply break the CD/DVD into two pieces and throw it away. I practiced a lot that I nearly forgot my own language. There was time I had difficulties speaking my own language. I think in English, and I even dream in English now. if you are at this stage. You can stop learning English Playing English word games a lot in E dictionary and Played Scrabble a lot (I have got scrabble here with me. Let me introduce it to you. The best way to improve vocabulary in this world is playing scrabble daily. (Ive got scrabble here with me, I will give it to you but trust me, I will sell it to you, its not free, so sorry. I have to charge you for your ignorance)

I improved my English but my pronunciation was still Pakistani LOL that funny pronunciation that left foreigners LOLROF. Foreigners laughed at me. I ignored it and kept on practicing. I started teaching English and finally got a job offer in China. They gave me 3 months to improve my pronunciation. I used LTSE intensive practice for 2 months. For improving pronunciation, I find nothing better than Learn to Speak English. What is LTSE? Allow me to introduce it. For slang and daily life English I watch and follow movies a lot for pronunciation, intonation, phrases, expressions, words and slang. Even some Americans admire my knowledge of Slang ;) When I watch movies, I always follow the dialogue styles, I practice speaking words and phrases with similar feelings and tones shown in the movie. And thats what you never do even if teachers ask you to. You just wanna WAF Movie :D what is WAF?

Allow me to give you a demonstration of how you (Students ) behave in a non traditional English class by an expert and most professional Handsome charming and intelligent teacher with big lovely eyes like me :D Situation: In a non traditional Spoken English Class.

T: All right students, what shall we do today? Ss: (screaming) Movie

(there goes your ambition. You just wanna have fun and waste your own time) T: forget it. I have a very interesting lesson plan for you Ss: Aaaawww, (and all you see are long faces) Now Teacher can see that and knows he just messed up his class, no one is gonna take interest in class any more except that Ss will give him the feeling that they are forced to do it. Class is now going to be a boring and time wasting. Nothing would work except that all of us would just want to get out of the class asap.

Example Situation 2: T: Morning students. What shall we do today? Ss: Practice spoken English T: very good. (now T lays out the dialogue or class activity plan) T: lets make pairs. Ss: doing nothing but giving a strange look at teacher. Finally after wasting a lot of time pairs are made. And activity notes are distributed, activity has been explained. Ss know what to do.

Whats happening now? All of Ss are speaking in Chinese in order to prepare for activity or dialogue. (first biggest mistake that shows total ignorance and lack of interest in learning English). Some of them still dont know what they should do. They just sit and look at others.
Ss. Prepare in what ever way they can have fun with, without paying attention to practicing in their own pair, without talking to other pairs and getting their suggestion, without helping others, without even asking teacher for help. Result? Little learning, not much fun, no creativity, and total piece of crap performance due to lack of practice and interest. Sometimes no learning at all. Question is,

How to fully benefit from a non traditional activity based classes?

Follow teacher, be active, ambitious and keep a good mood. Forget everything else. Get activity and before starting preparations, raise your hands and talk to teacher. Clarify everything. Once you understand what to do, get some suggestions from teacher. Call teacher often during preparation and ask for suggestions. Talk to your partner(s) in English only. Get ideas, give ideas and prepare. Speak English all the time. Pay attention to language, get help from peers and teacher. Be creative and unique.

Talk to other pairs and groups in English and ask for their suggestions to your performance idea and preparation. Give your suggestions to other groups and pairs Before performing ask Teacher for correction of mistakes if you think there are any. Try to be the first one to perform and always be ready to perform again if you think first attempt wasnt good. Listen to others performing and take notes on good and bad style, language and mistakes.

After everyone has performed, share your notes with teacher. Have a feedback session to discuss and learn new related vocabulary and language points. Note down the language points. Go home / dorm and review language, add new ideas, new language points and improve your situation performance.

In the next class, dont go for a new activity. Have the same activity again and this time performing with learnt language, vocabulary and improved practice.
See the difference all by yourself.

Now do you ever do that or would you ever do that?

4 P(s) of Learning English

Well what was said before, that was all about me Now what about college students? How to get along well with English learning during college life? I am gonna take speaking in consideration only, not reading and writing Same rules apply to reading, writing and listening with minor changes. Here are 4 Ps. Planning, Practice, Practice, and Practice

How to memorize new words?

Best time to memorize words is early morning Dry fruit keeps the memory healthy. Almond, walnuts and pistachios are best. Use vocabulary cards, and try to use learnt words when you practice speaking with friend or in class. Learn selected vocabulary, dont try everything. Use words in speech practice that you memorize. Set vocabulary targets carefully that you can use in practice later. Use recorders. Record words, definition and a sample sentence using new word.

Dont ever use Chinese to write meanings, or pronunciation. Thats the most pathetic and worthless attempt to learn new words. Listen to your recorded words later every evening. Listen to it before sleeping. Helps catching your pronunciation mistakes too. Record same words again with new improved pronunciation Play Scrabble a lot (buy it from me first LOL)

Practicing Speaking
Plan speaking activities, attend English activities, movie clubs, English corners and English saloons. If there are none, arrange your own English corners every evening.

Go out with friends and take a walk while speaking English only. Give yourself challenging and different topics everyday to talk about.
Use more English words in between Chinese language. Practice is the key. The more you practice the quicker you improve

Record your speaking sessions, and listen to them later.

Ask your teachers to listen to them and give you suggestions. Do it politely and first find out if you teacher has time to watch your master piece LOL.
Ask yourself how many hours a day do you speak Chinese? Speak English in totally opposite to the result. get my point? If you say its not possible, then stop trying to learn English. Just pass the exam thats enough for you.

Watch and follow: Watch movies selectively as per your target of learning. Watch movies and follow the dialogues with feelings, style and pronunciation. Act them out in similar ways together with your friends. Perform for other Ss during English activities. Volunteer for it. Record your own acted voices, feelings, styles n pronunciation if you have rich baba who can buy you a Sony HDD Handy Cam with 30GB Hard Disk.

Watch your recorded sessions and correct your mistakes. Practice same thing over and over again till you master it. Then move on.
In the beginning it will be frustrating. You cant sound right, or even close. But remember Persistency and dedication is the key. Keep up the work and practice daily. Dont ever give up or you will be among all those losers that you see around campus hanging with older and ugly girls

7 days with a movie

Day 1, choose a movie, watch with English subtitles, note down vocabulary n phrases
Day 2, watch the movie again with vocabulary n phrases already looked up in the English to English dictionary. Remember so far you should have broken your English to Chinese dictionaries. Day 3, watch the movie and select dialogues to practice Day 4, watch the movie, pause and follow the dialogues, practice and record sessions Day 5, listen to your recorded sessions and correct mistakes Day 6, go out and regenerate the dialogues with a friend. Follow style, tones and feelings Day 7, relax and have a free talk with a friend. Or put on a show in an English activity.

Last Words to open your eyes even wider

Make good friends with a foreigner / teacher and pass more time with them. Of course you have to earn this time, by doing favors, and working and helping foreign teacher Remember nothing is free, you need to invest something to get something.
One more thing that I am sure about is listening to this lecture is not going to help you, not a bit. Only you, yourself are going to.

If you think you can master English the way you are trying to now, I am sorry to say you will never and I am ready to bet that you will never ever learn English and I will always have my job.
Its not that easy as you thought, and its easier than you even expected. Confusing statement, but true, cuz you need to break the Chinese shell that you live in, and build an English shell around you. And thats something you never wanna do, never will do. Will you ever?

And before I say that Im done, one last picture will encourage you to be successful in life

Well then I am sure I and other foreigners are doing their job very well, with ambitions, with aims, with care and respect to Chinese nation. Question is are you doing your job?

And thats all Folks!

Now lets Move on to QnA session if you have some strength left

The End

A movie clip to utilize right now

Well lets watch a movie clip and see if we can make good use of it. Using Ice Age. 1. 2. 3. 4. Watch and take notes to learn phrases, vocabulary and sentences Watch and follow tones Re-produce with a partner or alone. Take your time. Dont worry about your body language or acting at this point.

Now how can you use the learnt language in your daily life?

Using LTSE What is Learn to speak English 8.0?

First thing first its on sale, Buy it from me LOL Ask your father to rob a bank and get you a P4 computer system with Internet, microphone and sound system. Spend at least 3 Days on each lesson (in your free time only) Day 1, learn and do exercises (piece of cake, click answers on each exercise if you dont wanna spend more time) Day 2, practice phrases, and vocabulary pronunciation over and over again. Record and move your pronunciation diagnostic meter to green. Only then move to next word. Day 3, practice dialogues with a friend, regenerate or create new dialogues, record your session for later review of mistakes Day 4, Consult your teacher or the one who sold you LTSE (that will be me) :P