Is it really necessary to immerse yourself in the American culture or environment to improve your English? To answer this question, we need to know what are the differences between learning English in the United States and leaning English in tour own country. First of all, if you are learning English in your own country, you will not be exposed to English all the time while you can have this advantage learning English in the United States. You may just have few chances to be connected to English. On the contrary, when you are in the United States, you are literally exposing yourself to English twenty four-seven. You will hear people speaking English wherever you go. Also, you will see English words everywhere, such as the advertisements on the roads, the names of the shops, the newspapers, etc. This kind of environment would actually help your English gradually, as opposed to learning English in your own nation. Second, when you are learning English in your own country, you would not have many chances to know what a certain word is pronounced. Why? It may be so because you would not have many chances to hear how exactly the local people pronounce the English words. Take Taiwan for example. In Taiwan, when children learn English, teachers would not pay particular attention to their pronunciation. Part of the reasons may result from the educational system in Taiwan. What is the educational system in Taiwan? In general, in the period of elementary school, junior high school and senior high school, the major point of learning English is actually preparing students for the entrance exams to the university. Therefore, the focus of learning English in these periods tends to concentrate more on our reading and writing skills, whereas the pars of speaking and listening English skills may not be practiced as much by the students. Third, the understanding of different uses of different words and phrases could be misunderstood if you learn English in your own country. Why? It may be so because when you learn English in your own country, you depend on translation too much. As a matter of fact, it is not a good thing because when an English word is translated into a different language, there would be distortions of the word’s true meanings less or more. In addition, you may know the meaning of the word, but you do not know in what occasions or situations to use this word properly. Sometimes, you may even offend people because you use a word in a wrong occasion. The same situation happens to the use of phrases and slangs. On the contrary, if you lean English in the United States, you would avoid these problems much more easily because you would hear how native speakers use different words and phrases so that you can gain a general understanding of the accurate use of them. Therefore, we can know from what has been mentioned above that the ways of learning English really matter to you. When you are in your own country learning English, you may consider using an English version of dictionary to look up words which you do not understand. By doing this, you can avoid some errors and misunderstandings of a translation version of dictionary. In fact, there are really a lot of ways that can help you not step into the traps of the barriers of different languages.
There is a commercial video which is about a language school. In the commercial, there are a lot of different students who come from different nations to the United States to learn English. In this video, the major point which the students mention is the accent of the native teachers. The students think that the best benefit of the language school is the teachers’ accent. They think that when they are learning English in their own country, they do not have too many opportunities to be able to get exposed to the real accent of the real native speakers. This is one of the major differences between learning English in your own country and learning English in the United States. After all, the main reason why we learn English is to be able to connect ourselves to the world. We learn English in order to communicate with foreigners well. If we can not understand the accent of an English native speaker, we can not understand what on earth he or she is talking about. The same thing happens to us when we can not speak like an English native speaker, people in the United States may not understand what we are talking about at all. Thus, many people would think that it is necessary to immerse themselves in the United Sates in order to learn English well. However, is it really necessary to do so? Actually, with all the advancement and development of cutting-edge technology, people can make their own environment like an American environment. You can watch American television shows so that you can hear all the characters’ accent and learn from them. As a matter of fact, learning English from American television show is a very popular way for people all over the world now. Why? It may be so because when you are watching an American television show, you will indulge yourself in the story of the television show so much that you will not feel like you are learning English. When we are not feeling like we are learning English, we can keep watching the shows because we would not feel bored. Therefore, we would learn English unconsciously when watching the television shows. In addition, the parts of English we are learning English by the television shows would mostly be the parts of listening abilities. On the other hand, there are also many organizations nowadays for people who are not English native speakers to improve their speaking English abilities. Therefore, In fact, we do not really need to immerse ourselves in the United States in order to improve our English speaking and listening abilities, as long as you know how to use the resources well in your own country.
With all this talk about accent, we also need to consider the situation if you were really in the United States, would you really improve your accent? In the article, “Speaking without an Accent”, written by Elizabeth Baier, its examples of speaking English without an accent can give us some ideas. In this article, it is mentioned that many professionals see an accent as a weakness in a competitive workforce. Therefore, it is actually very important for us to improve our speaking ability to the next level in which we would sound much more like a native speaker. One of the examples mentioned in this article is Sourav Bhunia, who is a native Indian who started studying English in grade school. Although he leads quite a successful life in Massachusetts, Bhunia is still one of the many non-native English speakers who strive to be better understood. He decided to take a course at the University of Minnesota to improve his accent. His goal is to sound more like a native American, and less Indian, when he speaks English. From this example, we can know that your accent is not guaranteed to be better even if you immerse yourself in the American culture. As a matter of fact, you need to take courses, just as what Bhunia does, to improve your accent. Otherwise, it may not be so easy just to immerse yourself in the Amrican culture to improve your accent. Although you hear native American people speaking English wherever you go in the United States, you may still not be able to get the point to speak English like them. From the article, we could know that if you are in the United States for a period of time, you are supposed to be able to express yourself in English, but not necessary mean you would be understood by others completely. It requires personal training, like the course Bhunia takes. In conclusion, the point here is that is it easier to find this kind of courses in the United States? The answer may be yes or may be not. But if you really want to improve your accent and try hard to find help, you can still find this kind of courses and learn the pronunciation well in your own country.
What we have discussed so far seems to tell us that it is better to immerse yourself in the United Sates in order to learn English well. However, the article, “Study Debunks Myth That Early Immigrants Quickly Learned English”, may assert the opposite. The article presents a whole new point of view about how German immigrants immigrating to Wisconsin in the mid-1800s adapted themselves to the English-speaking country. Contrary to what we have discussed above, evidence shows that some of them are actually slow and passive in learning English because they did not really need to change their language in order to survive in that English-dominating country. What is more surprising is the fact that, as it is mentioned in the article, Some second- and even third-generation German immigrants who were born in Wisconsin were still monolingual in German as adults. The reason why all this is happening is partly because the multitude of the German immigrants gather together as in many communities. Therefore, they need not learn a second language to communicate with each other in their communities simply because everybody speaks German there. This discovery is completely opposite to our general idea about learning English in the United States. We often think that we would improve our English very quickly if we learn English in the United States. However, these German immigrants prove the theory false. If people behave like these German immigrants, it is really no use and meaning to go to the United States to learn English. It is just like when a Chinese student goes to the United States, we can not expect that his English would be improved by his hanging around in China towns every single day. You need to find chances to practice English by yourself and try as many opportunities as possible to polish your English skills in the United States. Otherwise, perhaps it would be better to stay in your own native country to study it.
The last difference between learning English in the United States and learning English in your own country is the different levels of understanding in words and phrases. In the academic article, “Language Learning”, it mentioned different ways to learn English. In the article, it mentions how the dictionary can help its users best depends on a lot of things mentioned in the journal. One of the things is that you can look up a word in a dictionary and understand how to use it in a sentence by looking the examples provided in the dictionary. This tells us that it is better to be in an English-speaking country to fully understand how to use a word than just to learn the word by its Chinese translation in your own country. Of course you can still learn English well in your own country, but we can not deny the fact that you will have more chances to be exposed to the correct ways of using the right word by everyday conversations with native speakers and the whole English environment. Though it depends on different people’s ways of learning English, the fact is that we are more likely to misunderstand an English word by learning its Chinese translation in your own country.
In conclusion, according to all the arguments above, we can know that it is not really necessary to immerse yourself in the American culture in order to learn English well. Though it is true that we can get more chances to expose ourselves to English in the United States, the key is actually in your own attitude. If you really want to learn English well, you can still find a lot of opportunities to do so with the technology and all the available resources. Therefore, it really depends on your own.
Works Cited
Joseph, Salmons. “Study Debunks Myth that Early Immigrants Quickly Learned English.” 17 October 2008. <http://www.physorg.com/news143471567.html>
Elizabeth, Baier. “Speaking without an Accent” Minnesota Public Radio 28 October 2008
Nomeglobal. “Nomen Global: Learn English Fast!” Youtube 3 April 2008 <http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak-cjqFJGhY>
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