【沪江英语】华丽CM第一幕：烦闷学习的新出路

沪江英语对外推广 Act I
场景：On Campus
A：中国学生，下课时间苦背各种长难单词  （扮演者：vivcat）
B：外教，偶尔路过，一时好奇而开口询问  （扮演者：Alison）

A：abnormal, abolish, abrupt, absurd, abundance……antiauthoritarianism, antifluoridationist……

B：Excuse me, eh, I'm sorry to interrupt, but, I've been listening for a while, are you memorizing all the words beginning with A?

A：Yes. I have to memorize all those words, phrases, and spell them out and read again and again and again and again…… Otherwise I would soon forget.

B：Does it really help, reciting words from this vocabulary book?

A：I'm not sure……But is there a better way to help build one's vocabulary? To my knowledge this is the most common method.

B：OK, let me ask another question, do you enjoy memorizing words this way?

A：No, not at all. I'd rather say I hate it.

B：I'm not surprised. Vocabulary books are helpful, but memorizing random lists of words is certainly not the best tool for language learning.

A：But how else can I improve my English?

B：There are so many more interesting ways. For example, have you ever heard of HJ

A： Is it a web site?

B：Yes, but it's so much more than that. To begin with, if you want to focus on your vocabulary, it has an online dictionary at .This part of the site has a huge word library with various catalogs sorted by subjects such as "business" "science" "economy" etc. You can choose one catalog and start learning, or you can do recitation practice, and creat your own glossary of new words. It's so much more convenient than carrying around a vocabulary book.

A：So what exactly is this online recitation practice?

B：It's simple. It gives a Chinese definition and lets you here the pronunciation of a word, then if you know this word, you type it in; but if you don't know this word, you can add it to your glossary. I think you can learn much more efficiently like this, because you're just focusing on the words you have trouble with, instead of reading through huge lists in a vocabulary book.

A：I think I should try this. But there is another problem: even if I have memorized a lot of words, I still have difficulty in using them in conversations. I know speaking fluently is also important in language learning. Simply enlarging my vocabulary doesn't seem to help improving my oral English.

B：You are right. Big words are useless unless you are comfortable using them. I think speaking is difficult for every language learner. The fact is, in order to improve, you have to grab every opportunity to open your mouth and practice. But sometimes it's boring or feels weird to practice on your own, speaking to yourself. It's also hard to know if you're improving.

A：Exactly. Do you have any suggestions?

B：I do actually. Remember the website I just mentioned? It has an online community called HJ bulo of over 6 million, almost 7 million registered users. It has so many different applications, programmes. And one of its applications is called daily practice, which includes activities such as sentence building, fill-in-the-blank and oral practice. Oral practice is really cool. First you listen to a sentence usually from movie clips or news, then you read it to yourself and upload your recording using HJ's online recorder. Then the system will grade your reading. Of course the grading is not 100% accurate, but you can also listen to others' recordings and they can listen to and leave comments on yours. So everyone learns from each other. Listening to your own voice is also a good way to find out if there's any problem in your pronunciation.

A：Sounds cool! I think I like this kind of practice. You just mentioned there are other practices like sentence building, fill-in-the-blank. What is sentence building exactly?

B：Sentence building is more like a game. It gives a full sentence and reads it for you while you try to remember it. Then this sentence is broken up into words, and you have to rebuild it. It's kind of like a jigsaw puzzle that tests your memory.

A：That's just what I need! I always have trouble reciting sentences.

B：And the fill-in-the-blank activity, it's just fun. In fact it's a kind of listening practice. You listen to a movie clip, part of an English song, or a clip of news, and fill in one blank of the transcript.

A：Listening is a nightmare to me. That's why I spend a lot of time memorizing words, because when I do the listening practice I often get confused by new words.

B：Right. But reciting new words isn't enough.You still have to practice listening a lot while you work on your vocabulary. This fill-in-the-blank activity is more for fun, if you really want to focus on improving your listening, you should check out the listening centre.

A：The listening centre?What's that?

B：It's another application in HJ bulo, where you can do dictations. First you start by doing dictations of text-books, then you can try VOA English recordings and when that becomes easy for you, you can move up to standard VOA recordings, and then onto BBC and other English news reports. But if listening to news reports sounds boring or too serious, there are other materials you can choose, such as passages from books, essays, poems, jokes, things like that.

A：Amazing! I can't wait to creat my listening practice plan! I've always had problems in the past not knowing what to listen to, and where to find the materials. It's great I can now find it all in one place.

B：And don't forget to write down all the new words your hear in your listening practice, that's another great way to enrich your vocabulary.

A：Thank you. I'm considering signing up now so I can try all these applications.

B：OK, cool. I'm excited to hear what you think of it.