Hello everyone,
Let me introduce myself. My online name is Goodman, born in HK and immigrated to the US at 16. I started working in factories when I was13. My education background is not very glamorous because of family finance difficulty, but you can’t tell from reading or chatting with me. I had no knowledge of English when I arrived to the US but reality hit me really quickly. I had to put all my effort into English to adapt to the new life. The more I learned, the stronger the thirst for English became. Today, part of my job is involved in technical writing. Because of my own experience, I realize learning English is a very tall challenge to a lot of people; especially to Asian tongues. So I give some of my time offering my English knowledge to students who have English problems.
Here is what I observed. Americans use English in their daily lives; some use them properly but a large population does not. The reason is simple, they grew up listening and speaking it; as just many Caucasian speaking Cantonese in HK. When we are exposed to something at young age, we can learn almost anything. However, Cantonese don’t have the Grammar rules as in English, Therefore, English is easy to learn but difficult to master. In the US, some Americans don’t use English with the correct grammar. You may hear someone say “I don’t matter “ or “ He ain’t got it”. Although the meaning may be understood, but socially, he has made a negative impression. I have heard “we are judged my the words we use”. I think it makes perfect sense.
On the other hand, most ESL students learn English from the books and the teachers. Like learning anything, the learners must possess a strong interest in the subject(s) in order to ignite the spark of learning and then to improve. Merely receiving lessons from the class for a few hours a week is not sufficient. Secondly, the learners must create or find a setting to practice or use what they have learned. Otherwise, improvement may seem too distant. That’s what I see in the HK students. I have spent some time in other forums with students. A lot of the questions I came across were good questions but a lot of them repeated the same question after I gave them the explanations. The reason is, they memorized the answer but did not understand why and the context in which it was applied. Personally, I believe keeping the enthusiasm of learning, constant exposure and practice are the keys to improve English (or anything else for that matter). I was introduced to this forum an on-line friend and I find it very informative and useful for I like to keep learning and perhaps to share my experience with others. This is just my two cents.
Forum: General English grammar questions (EFL / ESL)
Posted: Aug 11, 6:39 PM [GMT 1]
Post Subject:
Re: Giving the best possible answers to grammar/language questionsPost author:
Eleana
I am a new member but only occasionally posting. Let me make some random comments coming from my ESL perspective.
It depends completely on the poster's language skills and how far he/she wants to get. It's a fair assumption that folks posting on a forum like this are eager to improve their skills and are aware of ambiguity of a language with out-ofcontext quotes.
I have been running myself very often into sentences where a straight answer was almost imposible. But any help is better than none. In explaining where the differences are and how the meaning of a sentence might change by using different grammar are extremely helpful
thus I enjoy reading the questions and answers given.