I am not good at English though, but, I have a clear strategy. I am thinking that we need to learn English in this order.
Pronunciations -> Listening -> Reading -> reading aloud -> shadowing (if you want) -> reading a lot.
Which skill do you think you have to learn first? My answer is very clear, that skill is listening. Your good listening skill makes everything easier. But for the listening skill, you need to learn pronunciations first. Let me explain.
If I were asked what is the most important talent for musician? I would say that he must have good ear to listen music. I am sure if he had good ears he will be a good musician. For the listening skill, of course, there are skills which are given and can be learned. The listening skill in born is a talent you cannot change. But you do have also what you can learn. What you can do is playing instrument to know the music better.
Listening skill is most important. For those who people around 30 years old, this is hardest part. When you look at websites and blogs about life in English country, many people are saying “I can’t listen to English well. I could listen to lecture or professional conversation barely though, the conversation in daily life was hardest!!” I am also having this problem all the time. I spent huge amount time for this. But, once you learn listening, you can do a lot, because for listening, you don’t need to stop what you are doing, so you can have more time to spend English. I am listening books or TV programs which was extracted from DVD all the time during walking, cleaning, and so on. I wish I had more listening skill.
The next question is how to get good listening skill or be good listener? I am thinking like a musician. To be honest, I am not sure the musician has good listening skill because of his training or inborn. But, at least, I know the way to be better listener. That is performing some music instrument. Once you start playing a music instrument. You would realize that you are trying to listen carefully, because you want to listen to play by yourself. I believe that happen in English. In English, you need to play standard pronunciation of sound by yourself. That’s why you need to start practice pronunciations. To do this, I have three suggestions,
- Tango mimi by Matsuzawa Kiyoshi.
I practice pronunciations every single day for 1 hour. I am using ‘Tango mimi, Level 1-4’. The books 8000 words are categorized by (1000 words with vowels and consonants, 1000-3000 with syllables, 3000-5500 with roots, and 5500- 8000 with combination) CD was recorded for 7 hours. I repeated more than 500 times though, still I need to improve, I can pronounce actually several times because I get used to pronounce. When you make 8000 words your active vocabulary, you would get around 3 times of passive vocabulary. These are enough for those who speak English as second language.
- Reading aloud
Some people say that learning foreign language starts reading aloud and end in reading aloud. Someone says if you finish 300 hours of reading aloud, you would be able to speak with confident. I agree. But, for beginner, why don’t you set 100 hours or 10 hours for your goal? Reading aloud is like a running, 10 minutes is fine but keep practicing every day. If you can read aloud 1 hour straight, that would be great. You should keep reading aloud every day.
- Shadowing favorite presentation.
If you do two above, you will find someone who speaks very sexy. You might want to listen more. That is good start. Why not trying to imitate everything, like you play pieces from your favorite CDs? I will recommend listening TED, you can download audio files and also the text.