Because I now have the luxury of long daily chats on QQ with Ming, I have begun to help her with English to add to her knowlege she gets from her formal lessons.
From what I gather from her discussions, i dont think that the lessons she gets in China are really doing a lot of good, they seem to concentrate on just learning words, and a bit of pronunciation, not context or structure.
So...I had a few lengthy sessions with my Daughter (who teaches English to ESL students and Parents here in Aus) to get some help as to the most effective way to speed English learning..
Some of the key points she advises me about, in order to speed the learning process may help any of you who may be helping your ladies, either in person or via QQ or similar.
Firstly, it is important to understand the "syllable" issue. For a "newbie", trying to get the whole word off pat is often difficult because many words in English seem not to have logical construction if you try to get them in one bite !
To break each word into syllables speeds both the learning and the comprehension.
Secondly...and it is a very important point, particularly for Chinese speakers....is the actual sounds of the words and syllables. We apparently pay too much attention to getting the sounds exactly right in the early days of learning and we should understand that Chinese speech is so different...that they dont have the muscle structure developed enough to properly form the English word sounds. It is a similar impediment to us learning Chinese...except that the tonality and voices demand the use of correct sounds...difficult for us
This skill only comes with time and with the development of the correct and appropriate muscle structure in the tongue, mouth and throat.
So the advice is...dont be too picky about the English word sounds in the early days, better sounding pronunciation only comes after some time, as the correct muscles develop and strengthen.
For your information, hope it is helpful
David E
