On my experience, there are things that have worked for me on learning English as a second language. Taking an intensive English program, either in your country but better abroad will work, but just if you practice.
In my country, Mexico, I took an intensive English program for two years and learned a lot. When I first began studying English there, I was 18, and I knew just a few words in English. After the two years I knew a lot of grammar, writing skills, vocabulary, but it was not enough. Then I realized it was because I never practiced it on doing things like watching English programs on TV, listening English music or having conversations with English speaking people. Thus I decided to go abroad to practice more.
I came to Montreal, 8 years ago, as an exchange student for the business program in Concordia. Of course I was afraid of failing all my courses because of my lack of practice in English. Then, before the FALL term, I enrolled on the 5 weeks summer course on the CELI at Concordia. I was on the intermediate II level with students from all over the world. That was really worth it, it helped me a lot on the listening skills, also because most of them had different accents that I couldn’t understand at the beginning of the course.
After a few years, I still need to practice more to speak better in English. Thus I’m taking the 5 weeks advance II course at Concordia.
Population Blog
13 years ago
