Today, I am studying Preparatory Program for Overseas Universities (PPOU) in Institute of Liberal Studies, Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN). PPOU is an intensive, post-secondary, pre-university, preparatory program that prepares me to study abroad. In order for me to study abroad, I must pass my International English Language Testing System (IELTS) exam with good band. Thus, I have started to put rigorous efforts in improving my English language. There are four components in IELTS: listening, writing, reading and speaking skills. Do you want to know how I improve these four important skills?
One of the ways to improve my listening skill is by visiting the website, given to me by my English lecturer, like Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab. While doing these listening exercises, I listen carefully and concentrate on many different conversations like phone conversations, hotel reservation, enquiries, lectures, speeches and others. I often visit these websites to do listening practice as practice makes perfect. Another way to improve my listening skill is by watching television programmes. Watching news like Nightline not only enables me to know the current issues in our country, but also helps me to listen and understand the content and thus to improve my listening skill. Besides that, I also watch documentary programmes like National Geography and Discovery to improve my listening skill besides increasing my knowledge.
What about my writing skill? My English lecturer said that the best way to improve writing skill is by reading a lot of good sample essays. Therefore, I read at least one sample essay per day and it has become part of my daily routine. Reading sample essays certainly has brought me enormous good. I not only can learn how to organize the points in an essay, but also can learn how to use various sentence structures to make an essay more interesting. I can also learn many new words and thus improving my vocabulary. I often visit website like IELTS blog given by my English lecturer to read many band 8 IELTS essays. Apart from that, I train myself by writing an essay every weekend to publish on my blog. This helps me to reduce grammatical errors and spelling mistakes when writing essays.
In order to improve my reading skill, I read novels and storybooks like Harry Porter and The Pearl. While reading novels and storybooks, I try to understand the message and the content of the stories. Besides that, I also read newspaper everyday not only to know the latest issue in our world today, but also to improve my reading skill. I believe that reading a lot of reading materials makes me want to read more and enables me to read thoroughly and thus increasing my reading speed and reading skill. Reading materials nowadays somehow have become part of my life as I see them everyday.
How do I improve my speaking skill? It is simple. I watch English movies and I able to learn how people from different place of origin use fluent English to communicate with one another. I can also learn many new words used by native speakers. Apart from that, I speak English with my family at home since I was little and it helps me a lot in improving my speaking skill. I also use English language to communicate with my friends and lecturers at university. Speaking English with others has become my usual habit and it is essential that I am about to study abroad in a foreign country where English is the medium of instruction.
In the nutshell, these are the steps I take today to improve my English language. I will continue to work hard and improve my four important skills to pass my IELTS exam with flying colours and thus placing me in one of the top ranking universities in Oceania.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment