How to improve my English

Recently I paid a three-week visit to California and chatted with dozens of people on all occasions. Although It has been many years since I said my ABC, this was the first time for me to live in an English-dominating environment. And I got some clues on further improvement of my English.

Accent

Nonnative speakers can well sense that they speak differently. The point is to know how and why this happens. For example, Chinese often pronounce ‘that‘ as ‘zat‘, ‘thought‘ as ‘sought‘, because Chinese (including those speak mandarin and dialects) never put their tongue between their teeth. We tend to neglect, or pronounce poorly, phoneme not existing in our mother tongue. On the other hand, Chinese do have much more complex  intonation systems, and they affect the way we speak English. The biggest effect is that we often replace a down tone with a flat tone, which is common in Chinese. Paying special attention to phoneme that are absent in my first language and eliminating tones not popular in English are two key points of eliminating accent.

Vocabulary

During my several flights, there were plenty of chances to chat around with native English speakers. I was upset to realize that my vocabulary could hardly support a dialog beyond everyday life. I cannot master less popular, but important phrases or words barely through learning the language itself. It is the lack of systematic education in English. Therefore, the ability to talk like an well-educated English speaker requires formal education in English. It could be a time-consuming plan, but must help a lot if one goes through textbooks from grade 1 to 12 in the next 3 years. I believe it will significantly boost my proficiency of English, let’s see.