studying for english?
wednesday it's been a while since i've posted anything of contemplative and/or food-for-thought inducing. i realised it's partially because since i've left secondary school, my standard, level of understanding and usage of english has been on a steady decline. it's gotten even worse since i've enlisted. of course it's convenient to blame the environment that i was in but then it would only be blaming everything and everyone else except myself. but i'd like to believe that i still have a high enough standard of english to hold a debate and have conversations with anyone.
i've stopped reading my Time magazines on a regular basis. the occasional reading of The Economist has stopped. Readers' Digest has all but dropped from my reading list and Newsweek isn't so interesting anymore with all the focus on US politics. i've moved on to more mainstream fiction. travelling novels like Steven Clarke's 'A Year in the Merde' series, inspirational books by Mitch Albion and now Yeni's got me hooked on Cecelia Ahern.
people always asked. how is it i was always so good in english. composition, comprehension, the works, back in secondary school and even in poly when i was taking modules like Exploring Contemporary Issues, World Issues : A Singapore Perspective and Oral Communication. more commonly asked though, is the wrong question: how do i study for english?
well. the answer is i don't. you can't study english. you can't study any language for that matter. learn is the word to use. understanding and appreciation of the language is what most people fail to do. for me it's always been about reading. reading the above-mentioned magazines since i was 14. reading books with a dictionary at my side and occasionally reading the dictionary.
funnily enough, as a kid when i was growing up, i never read books. comics yes but not books. i remember clearly the day i asked my dad to buy me my first book. to his surprise it was a book that kids my age don't read until we're much older. and i still have that book till today. Tom Clancy's Op-Center. it kicked off a reading habit that has since grown. i've read every single Op-Center series book and almost all the books written by Tom Clancy, even the non-fiction ones. Michael Crichton invaded my life next with a books like Airframe, Jurassic Park, Lost World and more recently, Timeline.
but having read all that, the ones that captivated me the most were the military history ones that i read a lot in secondary school. Stephen Ambrose. his research and style of writing captured my imagination with the way he presented historical fact and more so the stories of the people whom he wrote about. his Second World War books were tales of bravery, comradeship, camaraderie, extraordinary people overcoming overwhelming odds and brilliant tactical maneuvers. one may argue that Band of Brothers is his best written book but for me, it stands out as the more famous one because of the tv series made from it. D-Day is the one that remains on my all-time favourite.
it started me on writing poetry also. however childish and lousy it may sound now, i was very proud then of what i had written. i have 3 full books full of poetry that i doodled, sat down to think about or just came to me when i was in the bus or train. another fourth book that i never got to finish because my interest died down soon after.
i'm very sure that it was the military history books that spurred me on to pursue a career in the SAF (which has since faltered because of events i shall not want to mention). anyway, i guess the whole point about this is that reading is one of the most essential of things that must be done in order to learn and have a better understanding of a language, be it english, french or even chinese.
if reading's not your thing and you'd rather watch tv. well. watching programs on Discovery Channel, National Geographic and news channels BBC and CNN will help. oh, i happen to watch these four pretty often, more so Discovery though. they just happen to have more interesting programs than the rest.
in recent times, i've been around people who don't use singlish all too often, if at all. so i guess it helps a lot also. people like bertrand, james, yeni, lini and even my sister. so yeah. i'll probably score an A2 or B3 for english if i retook my O levels now but i'm intending to improve my english as much as my chinese when i'm here in taiwan. So to end off, two of my favourite quotes:
Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are, the more necessary it is to be plain.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
- William Shakespeare (1564-1616); Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 3
i've stopped reading my Time magazines on a regular basis. the occasional reading of The Economist has stopped. Readers' Digest has all but dropped from my reading list and Newsweek isn't so interesting anymore with all the focus on US politics. i've moved on to more mainstream fiction. travelling novels like Steven Clarke's 'A Year in the Merde' series, inspirational books by Mitch Albion and now Yeni's got me hooked on Cecelia Ahern.
people always asked. how is it i was always so good in english. composition, comprehension, the works, back in secondary school and even in poly when i was taking modules like Exploring Contemporary Issues, World Issues : A Singapore Perspective and Oral Communication. more commonly asked though, is the wrong question: how do i study for english?
well. the answer is i don't. you can't study english. you can't study any language for that matter. learn is the word to use. understanding and appreciation of the language is what most people fail to do. for me it's always been about reading. reading the above-mentioned magazines since i was 14. reading books with a dictionary at my side and occasionally reading the dictionary.
funnily enough, as a kid when i was growing up, i never read books. comics yes but not books. i remember clearly the day i asked my dad to buy me my first book. to his surprise it was a book that kids my age don't read until we're much older. and i still have that book till today. Tom Clancy's Op-Center. it kicked off a reading habit that has since grown. i've read every single Op-Center series book and almost all the books written by Tom Clancy, even the non-fiction ones. Michael Crichton invaded my life next with a books like Airframe, Jurassic Park, Lost World and more recently, Timeline.
but having read all that, the ones that captivated me the most were the military history ones that i read a lot in secondary school. Stephen Ambrose. his research and style of writing captured my imagination with the way he presented historical fact and more so the stories of the people whom he wrote about. his Second World War books were tales of bravery, comradeship, camaraderie, extraordinary people overcoming overwhelming odds and brilliant tactical maneuvers. one may argue that Band of Brothers is his best written book but for me, it stands out as the more famous one because of the tv series made from it. D-Day is the one that remains on my all-time favourite.
it started me on writing poetry also. however childish and lousy it may sound now, i was very proud then of what i had written. i have 3 full books full of poetry that i doodled, sat down to think about or just came to me when i was in the bus or train. another fourth book that i never got to finish because my interest died down soon after.
i'm very sure that it was the military history books that spurred me on to pursue a career in the SAF (which has since faltered because of events i shall not want to mention). anyway, i guess the whole point about this is that reading is one of the most essential of things that must be done in order to learn and have a better understanding of a language, be it english, french or even chinese.
if reading's not your thing and you'd rather watch tv. well. watching programs on Discovery Channel, National Geographic and news channels BBC and CNN will help. oh, i happen to watch these four pretty often, more so Discovery though. they just happen to have more interesting programs than the rest.
in recent times, i've been around people who don't use singlish all too often, if at all. so i guess it helps a lot also. people like bertrand, james, yeni, lini and even my sister. so yeah. i'll probably score an A2 or B3 for english if i retook my O levels now but i'm intending to improve my english as much as my chinese when i'm here in taiwan. So to end off, two of my favourite quotes:
Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are, the more necessary it is to be plain.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
- William Shakespeare (1564-1616); Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 3
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