We just had a 7-day workshop on American accent training. It seemed like students learned a lot and took away some valuable lessons. Actually, the person who may have learned the most was me! Thinking about what students need help with, and trying to understand what they feel—trying think what their experience must be like—really helped me a lot.
Today I want to talk about setting a practice routine（練習路徑）. I’m afraid that much of what I taught, and much of what you learn, goes in one ear and out the other (左耳進， 右耳出). In order to stop that, let’s talk about setting a practice routine.
Practice deliberately 刻意練習
You can look this up on your own. There is a lot of research on deliberate practice. Here is a basic way to understanding this: you must practice with focus, intention and duration.
你必須聚焦、有目的且持久地訓練
保持聚焦
Do you practice with focus? The opposite of this would be trying to learn passively—which we all wish we could just do. Examples of passive “learning” would be watching TV shows, listening to English songs, and listening to the news in English as you casually do your homework or some housework. This is not terrible, and doing these things would be great, however, they don’t constitute deliberate practice. You are being passive when you do these things. You are most likely not actively participating and pushing yourself to understand. Again, that’s not bad, it just means that your focus is on other things, and not immediately on the task at hand.
Deliberate practice is almost like what someone does when they learn a musical instrument. They often start by having intention for their practice session. For example, they’ll decide that day they’ll learn a song. That means that they will start with the beginning of the song, perhaps just the first 30 seconds of the song. After understanding the basics, they’ll practice and repeat just part over and over again until they can play it.
目的導向
Do you practice with intention? When you sit down, do you decide that for those 15, 30, or 45 minutes that you will work to improve your pronunciation while focusing on 3 phonemes, or that you will memorize the first 2 minutes of lines from a movie? Those are just examples, but it would be a good idea to have a simple goal for what you want to do with your time.
持久堅持
Do you practice with duration? Many students lament the fact that their English isn’t improving. I can understand the feeling. After coming to China, my Spanish skills really started to slide. That’s no good! (I started to focus more on learning Chinese.) I must speak to my mom and dad in Spanish. I had a simple fix. I just needed to use the language. Afterwards, I decided that I would simply start to read. I got a novel and started reading it. It took me hours and I was really slow at first. Still, 3-4 days out of the week I read (w/ audio) in Spanish now to keep my skills up. Mind you that Spanish is something that I learned as a child—I found that I was starting to lose it by not using it.
Only relying on the English you learned years ago isn’t going to make your English good now(“吃老本”對你現在的英語學習沒有什麼好處）. Unless you put in the time consistently, you won’t get the results you want. You must put in the time to learn new, different stuff.
I highly recommend that you join Echo on his 21-day challenges. It’s easier to do it when other people are doing it together. On top of that, make a plan that you will study English regularly.
Decide:
What you will study (phonetics, grammar, intonation, listening skills, etc.)
Where you will study (at home? the library? in a park?)
What materials you will use (TED talks, workbooks, novels, TV shows, textbooks, etc.)
How much time you will study (15-30-45 minutes?)
What your goals are (pass CET 6, improve English vowel pronunciation, understand linking and reduced sounds, etc.)
PRACTICAL:
Before your next practice session, write a sentence in a notebook saying what you will do. A few examples would be:
I will practice the /t/, /d/, /ð/ phonemes while making sure not to aspirate the /d/ as much as /t/ and /ð/.
I will memorize 10 or more words by memorizing sentences that use those words.
I will watch a TED talk and then listen and repeat in order to improve my intonation.
Conclusion
Make a plan, or if you already have a plan, think about it if there are ways that you can improve your English learning plan. Make an effort to deliberately practice by focusing, having intention, and protecting your duration and consistency.
That’s all for today! Until next time…
本篇推文主創簡介
美化排版| 藥藥同學
封面圖片 l 梁宇兒
審核| 小津