During my third week of learning English, there are significant challenges. Now, I am not in the mood to write about the school trip in Monol (I went to Clarke Lake and came back yesterday). I will mainly share the challenges encountered in learning here.
Challenge 1
The purpose of studying in Monol is learning IELTS; it seems to me that the result of this week mock test was not as expected. It depends on the spoken language to increase the grade. There is still a large gap between the target score and my score now. Hence, I noticed the challenge of learning. The overall score of 3.5 is very unsatisfactory (Listening 2, Reading 2.5, Writing 4, Speaking 5).
Challenge 2
Originally, my plan was to study IELTS courses, but the personal concerns are too strong now, although my score of 3.5 is qualified to go to class.
In MONOL, one term is for one month. The week before the start of each term is the time to decide on what course to take for the next term and to pay for registration. The IELTS course is more expensive than the ESL course, and it specializes in exams. ESL courses are focused on English that we usually use in life.
The bottleneck encountered in learning is it is difficult to improve the Listening skill. If students do not preview properly, the listening class will be very laborious and ineffective. The recording of the course is very different from the spoken communication in daily life; hence, it is hard to understand it.
It is necessary to rely on oneself now for high-intensity training. My current promotion method is (6-8am) practicing Listening by myself every day (write it down while listening to the article). Other Listening time is 6 – 7 pm, 22 pm – 6 am during weekdays and 48th on weekends.
It is also said that the period of improvement in Listening is 3 months. The detailed method is based on Taiwan’s author Cheng Han’s book, “English is not a good study”. In addition, the Listening material in the IELTS mock test is pronounced clearly and not too quickly. My main problem is about the range of vocabularies and the overall understanding.
The reading class is my favorite because it has a moderate difficulty. You just need to preview before class and complete the homework on time. The bottleneck of my reading outside of the class is mainly the overall comprehension of the article and the shortage of vocabulary. The speed of my reading comprehension is very slow. I really get a headache just because of the small amount of reading. My way of improving the score in Reading is deep learning. I have to understand a short article completely and learning it around 30 times to 50 times.
The IELTS test is divided into 4 parts, with difficulty ranging from low to high. Usually, I just finished the second part, and then the one-hour examination time is almost over.
The writing part is a mess. The major problems are wrong vocabularies, grammatical errors and simple sentences. This is in addition to by writing as much as possible and having the patience to correct the mistakes. I think there is no other way.
Studying: China vs. Philippines
Maybe you are curious about the difference between studying here and studying in China.
First of all, the environment in Monol is living in an English environment from waking up to sleeping. When you encounter questions, you can also acquire answer immediately and the most obvious is to correct the pronunciation. People can’t understand you when you speak in the wrong way. Therefore, you need to explain it immediately and get the correct answer.
Second, the difficulties of learning English in the home country is we do not have enough time for studying, it is also necessary to deal with a large number of problems in life. The difference between Chinese and English thinking also makes the students confused. So learning is more difficult.
In the end, it is humanity. Learning English is an essential thing to go abroad, but it is the further studies in China. As a result, it is really important.
by Myles Chen
