My English was just ‘snake snake fish fish’ before studying overseas
Learning English is always a challenge for me. I now still have to learn and improve my English skill. I was born in Bangkok and spend most of my life here. But I had to move with my parents from Bangkok to Chiang Mai for 2 years. I would say I have started loving English since I was in grade 5 in Chiang Mai. I still remember that a friend of mine in Chiang Mai sitting next to me showed me a set of English cassette tapes and a thick English book for practicing English. I took a look at them, and felt that I would like to have them. I didn’t know why I would like to possess them if it is possible. Perhaps, the book really looked so interesting to me. When I went back home, I asked my dad whether he could buy me this English-learning set. I didn’t expect much from my dad. This was becau
se it was quite relatively expensive considering the financial status of our family. Several days later, my dad bought it and gave it to me when I went home from school. Thank you so much, my dad : ) I practiced it for a while, and then I had to stop doing it. One of the reasons was that my English ability did not reach the level of English in the book. I practiced it again when I was in secondary school in Bangkok. But that did not last very long since I could not find anyone to talk to me in English. So I gave up at the end. So inspiration, motivation and environment to learn English are very important factors.
I think writing, reading, listening and speaking skills are equally important. But, personally, lis
tening and speaking are the most important skills for English beginners. I still remember when I was in an English class. I wanted to tell my native English teacher that I was TIRED. But he couldn’t understand what I said. He thought I was trying to tell him that I was THAI. So he said I knew you were Thai, why you had to tell me. The problem here is that I couldn’t pronounce the word ‘tired’ correctly. I hope you know what I mean that Thais will omit to pronounce the ‘ed’ sound. So ‘tired’ and ‘Thai’ was the same to me when I first tried to pronounce it. So my first task of learning English was to correct my pronunciation that I had previously studied. I bought a book coming with a cassette tape, ‘Speak English Clearly’. I practiced it for a couple months to change my pronunciation. I didn’t mean that I wanted to have British or American English accents. I just aimed that my English pronunciation could be understood internationally.
I think having good basic of pronunciation at the beginning of learning English is a good and long-term investment. The good pronunciation had helped a lot with my listening as well. The good pronunciation means people from any nationalities can understand what you say in English. When I studied abroad, I had lots of friends from different countries, North and South America, African continent, South Asia, East Asia, South East Asia, and so on. Each of them had their own accents. The most difficult thing I and my friends found when it came to listening is improper pronunciation. The improper pronunciation made us very hard to understand. Some people have too strong accent that make them pronounce English words improperly or even wrongly. So I think the first step of speaking is to have proper pronunciation.
In addition, don’t be shy to speak English. I think most people know about this, but some are just too shy to do so. One of the main approaches to English speaking skill is I learned from mistakes and remembered what mistakes I often made, and then tried to improve it. The learning through trial and error is very important at the beginning stage of speaking and pronunciation. Of course, grammar is important, but, for the beginners, it is not as important as speaking it out to see whether people understand what you say.
I would say practice makes perfect. It was about 6 years of spending time abroad and used English as a way of communication both in daily life and in the academic world. Although I didn’t study in the native English speaking countries, the environment itself forced me to use English almost all the time. Before going abroad, my English background was like many Thais of what we said, my English was ‘snake snake fish fish’ (little knowledge of English, especially my very bad listening and speaking skills). So I went to study English at English language schools and had English self-study for about 3-4 years. At the end my effort during this 4 year process had paid off. My English was now good enough to look for a scholarship to study abroad and to survive in the foreign countries. I love learning English and keep using it, so at the end my English skill was one day good enough for communication.
