How I learn my oral English

I would like to say that interest is the best teacher if anyone ever asks me how to learn oral English. Like many learners of English, I began to learn English when I went to junior high school. That was a school, which was quite poor in language-teaching facilities. No projector, no computer, and what could be used in the classroom was a small recorder. But my first teacher of English worked hard to teach well. He didn’t have a chance to go to college to study English. He was actually a self-taught learner of English, but he spoke English well. I really appreciate his speaking English with a perfect British accent. He used to keep telling us that interest is the best teacher and he asked us to listen carefully to the native speakers of English, to imitate them and to speak English as much as possible.

Encouraged by what he said, I bought a transistor radio and listened to BBC or VOA in my spare time. Soon I found I could speak a little English. But you need a good partner to practice English with if you want to learn oral English, and you also need certain topics to talk about. Generally speaking, listening and speaking plays an important role in communication. If you can’t understand what the other is saying, you are deaf; if you can’t express yourself in the same language as the other is using, you are mute. Listening and speaking helps me a lot in my reading and writing.

Now I find “Studio Classroom (空中英语教室)” the best of all media. I try to catch each telecast of the program. I find that I have hardly any difficulty in communicating with native speakers of English. I owe all this to my first teacher of English.

In a word, if you want to learn oral English well, you have to get interested in it, find a good partner and also good medium. The most important of all is, perhaps, your persistence in practicing oral English.