A Khmer apprentice wrote to me on YouTube and asked me to aftermath videos about how to apprehend English accent newspapers.
"I'd like to ask you to accomplish videos how to apprehend bi-weekly and construe it from English to Khmer. I Khmer and I accepting a botheration to acquire English phrases." Wrote the student.
Language learners generally address cogent me about some breadth of acquirements or breadth of their lives area they are experiencing difficulties of apperception and ask me for a ambush or a adviser to advice them learn.
As I acquire said in abundant added accent acquirements articles, there are no tricks and no hints. The added hours you invest, the bigger you will get. And if your ambition is to apprehend at a built-in apostle level, afresh you charge to apprehend things a built-in apostle reads. If you are a 22 year-old university graduate, afresh you charge to be account at that akin in the adopted language. And you will not get there by account textbooks ABOUT the language. You will get there by account books, articles, and textbooks IN rather than ABOUT the language.
If we assay this latest email, the apprentice says he has agitation reading, and he accurately singled out newspapers.
Obviously, account is reading. On some level, account a bi-weekly is no altered than account a atypical or account a abbreviate story.
If you are account novels and abbreviate stories, you should be able to apprehend newspapers. If I asked this student, however, he is apparently is not account one atypical per ages in English. If he were, bi-weekly account would just come.
Therefore, the botheration is not the account or the newspapers, per se. The botheration is the abridgement of practice.
I never took a advance alleged "Newspaper Reading" in English. I just started account newspapers. And at first, I had to apprentice to accord with the language, anatomy and alignment of bi-weekly writing, but no one accomplished me, or you. It just came to us. The aforementioned was accurate for German or Spanish newspapers which I can apprehend about as able-bodied as English. No one accomplished me, or accomplished Gunther or Pablo, it just came through practice.
A point, that I acquire fabricated abounding times in articles, is that if you activate acquirements a adopted language, you are not an idiot. You are not starting with an abandoned brain. One acumen it takes babies three years to apprentice their built-in argot is because they are aswell acquirements what a accent is and how accent works. You apperceive all of that, and abundant more. Babies don't apperceive that there is such a affair as grammar. Every individual section of cant has to be learned. A seven year old may not apperceive the words "population, economy, government, referendum, currency" in his built-in tongue. So, account a adopted bi-weekly would be difficult for him, because account a bi-weekly in his mother argot is difficult for him.
If you are an adult, advancing from a developed country, with at atomic a top academy or university akin of education, you should already be able to apprehend newspapers in your built-in tongue. At that point, account a bi-weekly in a adopted argot is artlessly a amount of vocabulary.
True there are altered uses of language, and styles of writing. And newspapers do acquire appearance which differs from added kinds of writing. But you just read, and apprehend and amount them out.
The botheration with a lot of learners, however, is that they aren't account novels and abbreviate stories. A lot of learners charge to just acquire that they charge practice. They charge to read, and read, and stumble, and fall, and apprehend again, until they get it.
I didn't advance a aftertaste for account the bi-weekly in English until I was in my backward twenties. But, by that time I had apprehend endless books in English, and completed 16 years of education. I alone began account newspapers because I had to apprehend adopted newspapers at college. Afresh I abstruse to apprehend the newspapers in English first, to advice me acquire the adopted newspaper.
One of the problems, accurately with Khmer learners is that there is so little accounting actual accessible in Khmer. American acceptance acquire had acknowledgment to newspapers, magazines, novels, advertence books, poetry, plays, encyclopedias, diaries, biographies, textbooks, banana books... A lot of Khmers haven't had this exposure.
If they haven't apprehend it in their built-in tongue, how could they apprehend it in a adopted language?
And, I am not just acrimonious on Khmers. Accurate these styles of autograph are not accessible in Khmer language, but even in Chinese, Korean, or Vietnamese education, area these abounding styles of autograph exist, acceptance may not acquire had acknowledgment to them. For example, Taiwanese academy acceptance said that during 12 years of primary academy they never wrote a individual assay paper.
But afresh they were asked to do that in English, in their ESL classes.
Currently, I acquire a Thai friend, called Em, who is belief in USA. He has been there for three years, belief English abounding time, and still can't account top abundant on his TOEFL assay to access an American association college. In Thailand he is a academy graduate, but apprenticeship in Thailand is way abaft western education. And in the developed world, American association colleges are about the individual easiest schools of academy acquirements to enter.
If Em assuredly passes the TOEFL and gets into association college, in the aboriginal two years of amount requirements for an American Bachelor's Degree, he will be accustomed assignments such as "Read George Orwell's 1984, and explain how it is an apologue for communism, and how it applies to the Homeland Security Act in the US."
When adopted acceptance blunder on an appointment like this, they consistently accusation their English level. But I am assured that the boilerplate alum from a lot of Asian countries couldn't do this appointment in his built-in tongue. Their chic just doesn't cover these types of analytic book reports.
When I was teaching in Korea, there was a acclaimed adventure circulating about the abstaining ESL community. A Korean girl, from a affluent family, had won a civic English contest. She had been accomplished by big-ticket home teacher, about aback birth, and her English akin was exceptional. The cost was a scholarship to a celebrated boarding academy in the Unites States, graduation from which about affirmed acceptance to an Ivy League school.
Apparently, one of the aboriginal assignments she was accustomed at her new academy in America was to apprehend a composition and address an aboriginal assay of it, and afresh accord a presentation in class. If it came time for her presentation, the apprentice stood up and accurately recited the poem, chat for word, she aswell regurgitated, exactly, what the academician had said about the composition in class. And she failed.
In Korea, her absurd anamnesis and adeptness to accurately echo what the abecedary had said, had kept her at the top of her class. But in America, she was getting asked to do abundant added than that; think, and analyze, create, present, and defend.
The majority of learners accept that their adversity in ambidextrous with adopted education, books, newspapers, or conversations lies in their abridgement of cant or failings of language. But already they posses a almost ample vocabulary, the absolute botheration is some aggregate of ability and practice.
Getting aback to the Khmer apprentice and his botheration account English newspapers: To acquire English newspapers you aswell acquire to apperceive all of the account and concepts in the newspaper. The best way to accord with adopted newspapers, at the beginning, is to first, apprehend a account adventure in your own language. Afresh apprehend the aforementioned account adventure in the adopted accent newspaper. Aswell you can watch the account in your own accent and afresh in whatever accent you are studying, and compare.
Translation isn't just about alive words. You acquire to apperceive concepts. The aboriginal aphorism of adaptation is that the accounting argument accept to back the aforementioned acceptation in the ambition accent as it did in the antecedent language. Even if the wording, in the end, is not even accidentally like the original. No amount how acceptable your adopted accent abilities are, you cannot back acceptation which you don't apperceive in your built-in tongue.
Recently, newspapers in Asia were active belief about the Taiwan Y2K crisis.
To acquire the bi-weekly stories, you would aboriginal charge to acquire the original, all-around Y2K crisis. The all-around Y2K affair was something that Cambodia wasn't actual complex in because there were so few computers in Cambodia in the year 1999. There were apparently beneath than one hundred or so internet access in Cambodia at that time. Next, you would acquire to apperceive and acquire that Taiwan has its own calendar, based on the founding of the Republic of China in 1911. Government offices and banks in Taiwan, almanac contest according to the Republic of China calendar, which means, if you yield money out of an ATM apparatus today, the year will appearance as 99.
Once you apperceive and acquire these facts, afresh you would apperceive that Taiwan is about to ability its aboriginal century, in the year 2011, and is adverse a mini-Y2K crisis, because the year allocation of the date in the computer alone has two digits.
The aggregate of my readers do not reside in Asia, and may not acquire accepted annihilation about the history of Taiwan, or the Taiwan date. But, any being with a accustomed account akin should acquire accepted my explanation. It is not necessarily a claim that you posses above-mentioned ability of the exact bearings you are account about, but you can chronicle it to added things you apperceive about, for example, added calendars and otherY2K problems.
If you attending at the aloft explanation, the cant is adequately simple. There are apparently alone a baby scattering of words, conceivably 5 or six, which an average accent abecedarian wouldn't know. So, those words could be looked up in a dictionary. And for a European student, with a ample abject of apprenticeship and experience, that would be all of the advice he would need. But for acceptance advancing from the apprenticeship systems of Asia, decidedly anatomy Cambodia which is just now accommodating in all-around contest such as the Olympic Games, for the aboriginal time, it would be difficult, even absurd to acquire this or agnate bi-weekly stories.
The key lies in accepted education, not English lessons. Acceptance charge to apprehend consistently and artlessly body their accepted education, in their own accent first, afresh in English, or abroad they will never acquire English newspapers or TV shows.
