My Effort in Improving My English

Last Tuesday, February 26 2014 Mr.Marsigit give English Class to my class, Mathematics Education C about the method to improve English ability. Although I didn’t attend the class but i get the recording of the matter from my friend. Mr.Marsigit tell us that English is very important because English is life. English is used to communicate to other people in International Communication. So we have to improve our English. In my ways to improve my English I have some efforts, that is by articles, song, video/movie, chatting, vocabulary cards and application in my smartphone. I like to read articles from electronic newspaper, blog or website. Ussualy I read from Jakarta Post, New York Times or Wikipedia. From the articles I have read I found difficult vocabularies. Then I made a list of the difficult words in my book and then I look for the meaning of the words in my  Alfalink or Dictionary. This way give me big benefit, not only make me understand many vocabularies but also scientific / high level vocabularies.  It’s not enough to see the meaning from dictionary. It’s better for us to write them to make our memory do better to memorize them.  If you read the meaning only, you will forget them quickly. The second one to improve my English is by English Song. I listen the song, search the lyric and the meaning of the song. From this way i also learn listening and i know the pronouncation, we know how to speak English word well. And of course we get many vocabylaries. The third way is coming from video/movie. I also use movie to improve my English. Not far from the song, by watching movie we also understand the pronouncation and the conversation. Please don’t read the translatation first. Just hear the conversation and guess the meaning from the action. If you still not able to understand the meaning hear the conversation and guess the meaning from the action. If you still not able to understand the meaning you can see the translatation. Not only from movie but also from other video like video from You Tube. From You Tube you can see many English Video. The most i love is National Geographic. You see others according to your interest. By watching video/movie make you able to communicate well. This teach you to accept information and make you able to speak English well. The successfull in English not only calculate from the rich the vocabularies but also from your listening ability and speak English well is the most. English not only reading or writting but also listening and speak. We are forced to understand what people said and they understand what we said. The other effort to improve my English is by chatting with foreign people. I use Italki and Facebook. From Italki we can choose people with specific language. The example we look for people who speak English and want to learn Indonesian and also we can choose the country. In Italki we can chat and also make a note. Maybe you can write your experience or some text. Then the native will correct our text. So we can learn the gramatical well. I prefer like to use the note than make a chat in Italki.  It is different to Facebook, I ussualy use it for chat to foreign people. But in my chat we also discuss some topics. From Facebook I have got several friends from aboard but I got two good realtionship friends. They are from Iran and Pakistan. My friend from Iran learn Indonesian so we make a chat in Indonesian. I can’t learn English from him. But I learn English from my friend from Pakistan. He speak English well and we have many disscussion about many things. Then we make group in Facebook named “My Overseas Friends”. We invite our friends to join the group and make some disscuccion or a conversation. It’s not the whole of my efforts. I also have tried make vocabulary cards. I made some cards from color carton in 3 cm x 5 cm. I wrote 5-10 words in every cards with have same category. The example is I want to learn about Family. So I write down Father, Mother, Sister, etc. After that I write the meaning in the backside of the cards. Maybe some of you like this way. But I didn’t enjoy this way so I left it. I also use my smartphone in my effort. I download some application from the smartphone like dictionary and English Test application. There is many exercises of English Test with the answer key. So we can learn English well. And the newest way in improving my English is by reading English novel. I bought “The Land of Five Towers”,  English version of “Negeri 5 Menara” compiled by Ahmad Fuadi. I have read the Indonesian version 3 years ago and i want to try to read the English. But actually it is hard for me. I have read a little but I have gave up to continue to read this novel. Maybe in the future. That is all of my efforts in improving my English ability. I hope I can communicate well in English in the future.