Improve Your English

Improve your English
by Silvia Yun

What do you think is the most important thing to improve your English? When they come to the U.S., and go abroad for study, many people feel nervous about English. I also felt nervous when I was going places in the U.S., and speaking to people.
I think English is a very difficult language for people who didn’t speak it before because it has difficult pronunciation, spelling and vocabulary. Each person has a different ability to improve English. What are the best ways to improve English?
Here are some ideas: Take an ESL class in college or university; Watch American movies and TV; Read children’s books and listen to audio books; Talk to American people;
Use the internet websites (YouTube, blogs, and so on); and Record your voice and check your pronunciation. These ideas are good guides to learning English for you and for me .
I am taking an ESL class now. It’s really good. The teacher is friendly, and the students are kind. You can enjoy the class, meet many people from other countries, and you can speak to them using English. It’s very nice.
Many people say “watching movies” is a good thing to improve English. At first, you need two language subtitles, but if you watch the movie for a definite period, you will begin to understand. Reading children’s books is a good thing. Children’s books are short, and they have many pictures. Also, they are composed of easy words, so you can listen to the whole book. I also say, “Go outside and talk to people!!” It is really good practice for English. They are so kind and they can fix your English. Don’t be shy!!
What do you do on the internet? Do you know the internet has English websites?
There are a lot of websites about learning English. Some examples are YouTube, blogs, dictionary.com and so on. YouTube has many videos about English. Blogs have many suggestions for learning English. Dictionary.com has good pronunciation resources.
I think these can help your study of English. Finally, I’m going to write about the best thing that I found.
Many successful people say “record your voice and check your pronunciation.”
Actually, I use this way. I think I get a better pronunciation, learn many words, and improve my reading ability. There are a lot of methods to improve English, but the most important thing is to try! Don’t think about the difficulty of English. I suggest you get more confidence. If you try and try, it will be worth the effort.

My Future Daily Routine

I'm Silvia. I'm a little bit lazy person, so I'm going to change my attitude and I will be a good student. At first, I will get up early in the morning. After I get up, I'm going to go to the gym. I will do exercises for 2 hours. When I come back home, I will go to the bathroom, and take a bath, and then I will put make up on my face, go to school, and enjoy having a class. When I get out of school, I will go to a library near by my house to study. I will stay there 3~4hours, and go home. Finally, I will write my daily diary, so that's my future daily routine. I will execute my plan.

Why My Kids Only Speak English - by Marisela

People always ask me why my kids only speak English. I will explain. When my first child started school, it was difficult because I didn’t know which school he needed to go to. We asked a few people, and they sent us to different schools. In his new school, there were only a few kids that spoke Spanish. I remember one family from my son’s school. She was from Peru, and she had two daughters - one of them was the age of my son.
photo © 2010 woodleywonderworks | more info (via: Wylio)
It was difficult for my son to learn when he started kindergarten. The school didn't have an ESL program for kids before, like they have now. All the time, the teacher left my son behind because he didn't understand what she said. Kindergarten was hard for him, but First grade was even harder. Sometimes the teacher was so mean with him because he didn't speak very well. After that time, I understood it is better to let my kids speak only English so they won’t have a problem in the future - that is what I think.

When he started middle school, one of the teachers sent him to ESL class because his last name was Spanish. The ESL teacher gave him a test and wrote a note for the other teacher to explain that he passed the test. She asked why he needs to take regular classes because he read and spoke English well. After that, the next two years were ok. He graduated from middle school and finished high school. Now he studies at PLU.

America's Products - by Yuko

photo © 2010 LGEPR | more info (via: Wylio)
America’s products are too simple and not cute. Japan’s products are so cute with a lot of variety. In Japan, products change design frequently. After I came to the U.S. in 1998, I went to the Sprint shop. I asked the worker for a cell phone, and then the worker showed me a huge cell phone. I said, “No, no, I don’t want a house phone. I want to buy a cell phone.” The worker was looking at me strangely. My husband couldn’t stand seeing our conversation. He explained to the worker that I’m not an idiot. We just moved from Japan and they have super tiny cell phones. But, I had no choice; I got a huge ugly cell phone. Of course, I was not happy.

I am always sad when I go shopping. American grocery stores have poor vegetables and fruits. Worse, there is no breed improvement of vegetables and fruits. In Japan, there is always research in the pursuit of fruits and vegetables which taste sweeter and have better shapes.

Now I wonder about TVs. In Japan, there are already 3D TVs. They even have one you can watch without glasses. I hope to get the 3D TV without glasses in America as soon as Japan.

My New Language

In my country, I learned Korean, Chinese, and a little bit of Japanese. I thought, I will not use another language in my life. What happened? One day, a man came into my life, so I needed to change everything. First, I needed to move my life from China to America, and I needed to adapt myself to new circumstances. But that is not my biggest problem. My biggest problem is conversation because I don't know any English.



Now that I'm living in America, I need and want to know English, so I'm taking classes at Pierce College. I'm studying vocabulary, grammar, reading, and writing. When I first started ESL classes, I was very shy because I didn't understand what the teacher said. I always just copied what the teacher wrote, and when I went back home, I reviewed my English lessons with my copied papers.



After a couple of days, I could understand a little bit what the teacher said, but I always asked the student next to me to be sure. One day, my husband gave me a new idea. He required me to remember five English words everyday. I needed to know what the words meant and how to write and read them. That was difficult for me. I had so much stress. My husband was very patient. He encouraged me with my English. After a few days, although English was difficult for me, I had become fond of it.



I want to be a translator. I hope to translate Chinese, Korean and English because I want to help immigrant workers that don't know English.

Defend Our Earth

We know how to have a good environment, although we don't always do anything about it. Recently, most of the natural disasters occur because of environmental pollution, especially "GLOBAL WARMING." When I spent time watching a T.V show which was a story about Africa, I saw that a lot of animals died of hunger because a river was vanishing little by little. They couldn't eat anything, so eventually they died. I was a little shocked about that. Of course, I have heard of the seriousness of environmental pollution before, but I didn't care and just skipped that.

Why are a lot of animals dying? The reason is we're living in the wrong way with lots of cars with smoke, disposable products, synthetic detergents, vinyls, etc. Because of those O2 emissions in the air, such animals are dying. If we do nothing, the earth will get hotter and hotter so spring and fall of the season will disappear, and then all of the islands and lands will vanish in the world.

So, what are we going to do to prevent this? First, reduce the synthetic detergents; many people use synthetic detergents to clean, do laundry or whatever. This causes water pollution. Therefore, we must try to reduce the synthetic detergents. Second, conserve energy; most people forget to unplug appliances what they don't use. We must never forget it ! Finally, recycling can help the earth. We can find reusable things here and there and everywhere, such as papers, bottles, aluminum cans, glass, plastics, cardboard, batteries,etc. All of these can be used again. Also, there are many other things we can do. Thus, let's start with small things so step by step. In conclusion, we must realize the importance of fixing the problem of environmental pollution, and we have to defend our earth!!

My Favorite Cartoon is Vanishing

Have you ever seen an apisode of the cartoon "Tom and Jerry"?

The cartoon is about a cat named Tom doing everthing he can to catch a mouse called Jerry. I grew up with this cartoon. When I was watching the cartoon I saw that Tom was despicable and tried to defeat Jerry, but he never stopped to catch and tease Jerry.

Everyone said that Tom was silly, but I never thought that. He seemed lonely because he wanted to make friends so he just bothered Jerry. He actually liked Jerry so he really just wanted to make friends. When I was child People told me that if some one bothers, they like you. I still believe that.

However, I think the cartoon is vanishing and I haven't seen this cartoon of late. Why? Why!
I wonder what would happen if Tom caught Jerry. How could Tom do it? Would devour Jerry? No, I don't think so. Tom could catch Jerry if he wanted to, but he doesn't because he wants to be friends with Jerry. Thus, the stories of Tom and Jerry are touching and funny. I'd like to see that forever.